Elevating Women’s Voices on LinkedIn

The Covid-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on how we work and live our lives, but new research and data from LinkedIn shows that the changes are having a bigger impact on women.

Ahead of International Women’s Day, LinkedIn data and analysis of the global labour market has found that women’s jobs are more vulnerable - prone to economic shocks and business disruption - than men’s, and that women have been more adversely affected in industries such as retail, travel and leisure.

While the data shows that the share of women being hired has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, improvement won’t offset women’s disproportionate job losses and sharp decline in hiring during the initial Covid-19 outbreak. 

In the face of such stark figures, we have been working with educational charity, The Female Lead, to understand the impact on women more fully. We commissioned research - conducted amongst 2,000 UK workers - which reveals that 40% of women believe their career had been set back or put on hold since the pandemic hit, and another 41% have left or considered leaving the workforce during the pandemic.

While Covid-19 has undoubtedly had a lasting impact on women’s careers and opportunities, the research also highlights a deeper inequality in the attitudes of men and women at work: the ‘entitlement gap’. The research follows the publication of the The Female Lead’s ‘Women at Work’ report authored by Cambridge University psychologist Dr. Terri Apter, which highlights an ‘Unentitled Mindset’ amongst women - a feeling of not being as deserving as men when it comes to pay rises, promotions and career progression, which is a result of being “socially conditioned to feel less entitled than men” - creating the ‘entitlement gap’. 

Almost half (44%) of women surveyed believed that women feel less entitled to promotions or increased pay in the workplace, while a third of men (37%) admitted they would apply for a new role if they felt they met approximately 50% of the criteria required, versus just 27% of women. 

Combating our own internalized biases won’t happen over-night, but we can immediately take action by vocalizing our strengths, sharing our new ideas and highlighting our accomplishments. This is something I encourage from my own team and I would urge others to do so too.

Disruption caused by Covid-19 means that workplaces are at a pivotal moment, as policies and practices are being completely overhauled. As part of this shift in how businesses operate, organisations must work on raising awareness of this entitlement gap, and introduce ideas that address this imbalance.

I hope that by shining a light on this issue, we can encourage conversations that help more organisations address policies to re-balance male and female entitlement, ultimately improving the future for women in the workplace.

To help people and businesses take steps to improve gender equality in the workplace, LinkedIn is making free online learning courses available to everyone: Leadership Strategies for Women, Planning Your Family Leave and Return, Proven Success Strategies for Women at Work, Own It: The Power of Women at Work, and Becoming a Male Ally at Work (available from February 28 to March 31).

Join the conversation on LinkedIn by @tagging a woman in your community that you’d like to celebrate with the hashtag #WeCanDoIt.