Kate Brooks

Partner, Solicitor & Head of Employment/HR Services

DATE PUBLISHED: 07 Mar 2019 LAST UPDATED: 29 Nov 2022

Is your business winning the gender diversity race! #BalanceforBetter #IWD2019

Is your business winning the gender diversity race! We are striving to win this race.

It is not for individuals to fight for gender equality, but for us as businesses to strive to achieve gender diversity.

What, why and how?

Gender diversity means fair representation of people of different genders. This involves considering the community around you to make sure that you are well represented in each area of diversity. This will lead to better recruitment and retention and undoubtedly more clients and profits!

Today we are celebrating International Women’s Day and focusing on achieving a fair balance for women in the workplace.

There are laws that protect us from gender discrimination. For example all individuals are protected from:

1. Direct discrimination e.g. when an employee is overlooked for promotion as a result of being a female;

2. Indirect discrimination e.g. a company has a practice of not allowing flexible work requests. This could be discriminatory towards working mothers;

3. Harassment e.g. a male colleague ignores a female colleague; a male colleague always makes comments to a female
colleague about not being able to do board reports and gives her less important tasks when compared to a male colleague of the same level. The female feels degraded.

4. Victimisation e.g. a female colleague mentions that she feels uncomfortable in one of her male colleagues’ company due to him making inappropriate comments about his girlfriend. The female colleague is not invited on an away day as the company is worried there will be further inappropriate comments.

How can you win the gender equality race?:

1. Make someone or a team of people in your organisation responsible for equality, diversity and inclusion;

2. Lead from the top – get your management on board with equality, diversity and inclusion;

3. Zero tolerance of discriminatory behaviour;

4. Ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion is part of your internal, external processes and culture. As a bare minimum you should have an Equality and Diversity policy; and

5. Carry out equality, diversity and inclusion training to educate and develop your staff.

If you need help or advice on gender equality, preparing documents or providing equality, diversity and inclusion training, contact Kate Brooks via email or call on 01202 057754.

How can we help?

When you submit this form an email will be sent to the relevant department who will contact you within 48 hours. If you require urgent advice please call 01202 525333.

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