The Pandemic’s Toll on Women: Why We Must Fight Harder for Gender Equality

The last in-person event I attended was an International Women’s Day celebration last March at our WPP office in New York. The day felt joyous and hopeful. I got to introduce the brilliant Frances Frei to my colleagues, and we talked about celebrating and cherishing women as one way to strengthen our inclusive culture.

That same week, the COVID-19 pandemic was escalating at warp speed. Our team – like those across companies, governments and communities – worked tirelessly to grapple with tough decisions and adapt our response. As countries closed borders and locked down, we put our people’s safety first and shifted into remote work around the globe.

Responding to the crisis was complex, uncertain work. But what I remember most about that week was my job as a mother: trying to get my oldest daughter back home from college safely, keeping everyone healthy and wondering when schools would reopen for both my daughters.

I can hardly believe a year has passed. We have witnessed incredible resilience. I have seen my colleagues deliver extraordinary work under difficult conditions. At home, I have watched my daughters cope as our family did our best to push forward. I feel fortunate and privileged.

Yet even as vaccine rollouts give us more reason for hope, I feel heartbroken for millions of women across the world who have been devastated by the pandemic. UN Women shines a light on these stories, reminding us that “the impacts of crises are never gender-neutral, and COVID-19 is no exception.”

UN Women outlines the tragic consequences. The mounting burden of unpaid care and domestic work – such as caring for children or elderly family members – falls largely to women, who already did nearly three times as much unpaid care as men, on average, before the pandemic. The gender poverty gap is growing as women lose jobs at a disproportionate rate. 40 percent of all employed women work in the sectors most affected by the pandemic, like food service, retail and entertainment. 72 percent of domestic workers have lost their jobs, a sector in which 80 percent of the workforce are women. 11 million girls may leave school by the end of the pandemic. Poor and marginalized women face even higher risk of exposure to COVID, job loss, reduced wages and gender-based violence. The examples are endless and staggering.

Working mothers are living a tenuous balancing act. They juggle the unique obstacles and responsibilities amplified by the pandemic, such as taking care of kids struggling with isolation and online learning while also trying stay healthy, both physically and mentally. The New York Times published a series last month, “The Primal Scream: America’s Mothers Are in Crisis.” The report emphasized how intense the pandemic has been: “Almost 1 million mothers have left the workforce — with Black mothers, Hispanic mothers and single mothers among the hardest hit. Almost one in four children experienced food insecurity in 2020, which is intimately related to the loss of maternal income. And more than three quarters of parents with children ages 8 to 12 say the uncertainty around the current school year is causing them stress.”

The damage is global, cross-cutting, overwhelming. Women in all kinds of work and family situations feel it in so many ways.

Last year, as International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month events faded into the background, I wrote that we can still celebrate the stories of women making history during the crisis. The health, social, frontline and domestic workers, caregivers, teachers, mothers and so many more have kept our communities afloat. No doubt these women deserve our gratitude; more important, they deserve stronger support.

At WPP, that means recommitting ourselves to gender equity. We’re moving toward gender parity on our board, from 33 percent women in 2018 to 43 percent today. Women make up 51 percent of our senior managers, but we must make do more at the senior executive level. That is why we continue to open doors for new opportunities and expand leadership development programs designed for women, particularly women of color. Women made up 71 percent of the participants in our NextGen Leaders virtual learning series for early-career talent. When the pandemic hit, we created new policies to improve support for our people in caregiving roles. And at a broader level, we focused more on the wellbeing of all our people. We developed and shared new resources to help during this exceptionally demanding time, and we expanded access to free mental health and financial counseling across the company.  

We will also continue to use our voice and platform beyond WPP, which is why we partner with UN Women to tackle gender inequality through our pro bono work. This includes support for the Unstereotype Alliance, an initiative to eradicate harmful gender stereotypes from all media and advertising content.

We are on a journey to do better. In the past few months our company was named in the  Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI) for the third consecutive year, top 10 in the U.K. Hampton-Alexander Review of FTSE 350 companies, and top five in Equileap’s fourth global Report on Gender Equality. This recognition indicates we are on the right track, but we are clear-eyed about the progress we need to make. That is one reason why we have added diversity, equity and inclusion goals in business performance reviews and incentive schemes for all our senior leaders. 

The past year shows us, once again, why we must achieve gender equality in all aspects of society. As we mark International Women’s Day, we must not forget women who face emerging and intensifying obstacles to equality because of the pandemic. When we recognize these struggles, we can strengthen our resolve to make a positive difference for all women.