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Women will take 10% pay cut for flexible job, more purpose & supportive management: IBM report

Findings show 'coveted female talent could be easily lured away' if companies don’t act urgently, study says. Firms prioritising gender equality report 19% higher revenue growth.

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New Delhi: Women are ready to take a 10 per cent pay cut if the job offered has features like a flexible work schedule, is a more meaningful job, or has supportive management, according to a study released by IT giant IBM.

The report, ‘Women in leadership: Why perception outpaces the pipeline— and what to do about it’, was released 6 March and is from the IBM Institute for Business Value.

“Almost half of women would take up to a 10 per cent salary cut for a job that offered any one of these advantages: More supportive management, More flexible work locations, A stronger environmental, social, and governance (ESG) profile, Better daycare or care facilities for children, More flexible work schedules,” it says.

“…their (women’s) answers convey yet another sobering signal that coveted female talent could be easily lured away if companies don’t act with urgency to address their concerns.”

The study shows in the next year, 30 per cent of women say they plan to “actively seek a new job”; 30 per cent expect to leave the job temporarily to take care of family; 27 percent anticipate resigning for physical or mental health reasons, and 24 per cent say they plan to “leave the workforce permanently”.

“For some women, sticking it out so they can — maybe, someday — land a senior leadership role is just not worth the price.”

The IBM study shows companies that were first to make it a formal priority to promote women to more senior job roles and sees gender inclusivity as a driver of financial performance, benefit more than its competitors in the market. Companies that make gender equality a priority “report 19 per cent higher revenue growth over the past two years”.


Also Read: What reports on Indian women’s falling participation in labour force don’t tell you


‘Stubborn stagnation’ 

A positive finding was that women in the C-suite (executive-level managers within a company) and on executive boards have both gone up to 12 per cent. In the IBM 2021 and 2019 surveys, there were 10 per cent women in the C-suite, while women on executive boards of companies comprised only 8 per cent.

“The other bright spot for women in 2023 is at the start of the leadership pipeline — junior professionals/specialists. After a small decrease of women in 2021, this role has surpassed 2019’s numbers, and today, 40 per cent are women, making it by far the role closest to gender parity,” the study says.

But the bad news is a “stubborn stagnation of women in roles between junior professional and the C-suite”.

The 2023 survey shows fewer women in roles between junior and C-suite level in positions like ‘senior professional’, ‘middle manager’, ‘senior manager’, vice-president or director, senior vice-president, than there were in 2019.

“These roles act as feeders for the C-suite and executive boards. If organisations are making significant progress in the advancement of women to top leadership positions, the percentage of female executives should be higher,” the IBM study says.

A reason for the lack of women reaching the top echelon may be how the leadership role is designed. “Just because a woman can advance into a leadership role doesn’t mean that role is attractive or fits into her life. I mean, we can’t even get the room temperature of a building to suit a woman’s body. You can make the case that roles and workplaces were created as male-centric and haven’t ever been redesigned to be more inclusive,” the study cites Lisa Shalett, Co-Founder, Extraordinary Women on Boards, a private membership community for accomplished women.

Another reason holding back women maybe their need to also be a mother and take leave for this at “precisely when they could be tapped for promotion”.

“Managers may worry that female subordinates with children won’t be able to focus enough energy toward their work,” says Qi Shu Guang, Vice Chief Engineer, CTTL System Laboratory, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

Wanting to balance their career, with family, and their health may be why women might opt for jobs that pay less if it’s a flexible work environment with meaningful work and supportive management, the survey says.

About the report

This is the third time the report was published after editions in 2021 and 2019.

For the 2023 study, IBM worked with Oxford Economics to survey 2,500 professionals, represented by equal numbers of men and women respondents from organisations in 12 countries and 10 industries.

The countries surveyed were Germany, the Nordic region (Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden), the UK, Brazil, Kenya, the US, China, India, and Japan. Each country or region represented about 11 per cent of the total sample (Nordic countries counted as one unit).

The respondents, included CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, CMOs, COOs, CHROs, senior VPs, VPs, directors, middle managers, and non-managerial professionals, working in banking, consumer products, education, government, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, retail, technology, and telecommunications.

“The countries/regions in our survey represent a mix of areas where the gender equity gap ranges from small to large, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2017…we have used this resource to enable a balanced, longitudinal analysis of progress over the years,” the report says and categorises India in the group with a “Large gap” in work-related gender equality along with China and Japan.

The press note for the study says, “39 per cent of those surveyed in India report they have made advancing more women into leadership roles a top, formal business priorities — 6 per cent lower than the global figure of 45 per cent”.

For the report, IBM says it also worked with ‘Chief’, a network for senior executive women, to gather insights from its members about findings from the survey.

(Edited by Tony Rai)


Also Read: Burdened by domestic work, nearly 50% of India’s urban women don’t step out even once a day


 

 

 

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