New workplace paradigm
With many employees having worked from home since the start of the pandemic, and remote working now widely accepted as the norm in many firms, it could be assumed that workplace safety incidents might have decreased, but surveys show that the new model of work has instead unleashed a raft of new safety concerns for female employees.
A recent survey by charity organisation Rights of Women found that 45 per cent of women who have experienced sexual harassment, reported experiencing the harassment remotely. This included sexual messages sent by email, text, or social media as well as cyber harassment via Zoom, Teams, Slack or even sexual or intimidating phone calls outside of office hours.
“These statistics echo what women have been telling us already, sexual harassment at work happens online as well as in-person. Although more women are working from home, online sexual harassment has increased and women continue to suffer sexual harassment despite the Covid-19 pandemic,” Deeba Syed, Senior Legal Officer, Rights of Women, says. “Women working from home have seen their harassers take to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, social media, messages, and phone calls, to continue the torrent of abuse. What is more, women’s health and safety from sexual harassment at work is being undermined and overlooked by their employers.”
New models of working have also helped to blur the boundaries between work and home, leading many women to feel that their privacy has been invaded as colleagues can see directly inside home, often even their bedroom, during work video meetings.
Highlighting the stark reality of cyber harassment, one woman explains “the director of the company uses Zoom to take screenshots of myself and other women which he shares with colleagues making derogatory statements and implying the photos look like we’re doing sexual acts.”
Remote working has also raised issues for policing of workplace policies, as the perpetrators are oftentimes also working from home, making the handling of any complaint more drawn out.
“Women have told us that employers are exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic to delay and frustrate the justice processes for women who do come forward to report harassment. In doing so, they continue to neglect their legal responsibility to prevent and protect women from sexual harassment at work,” Syed of Rights Of Women notes.
Return to the office?
While remote working may be fraught with issues, the return to the physical office also presents a number of fresh safety concerns for female employees. Just 31 per cent of women say they will feel safe in the workplace when the COVID restrictions lift versus 39 per cent of men and one key reason for this disparity is the commute to and from work.
A global study of 327,403 subway and bus passengers by Imperial College London
found that women are ten per cent more likely to feel unsafe than men on urban public transport.
“The expectation that women should be able to get home safe without having to trade this off against potential financial implications, should be a given,” Simone Thomas, Head of Organisational Development at Bauer Media Group, says, “while broader societal factors are being addressed, it is essential that measures that help to reduce the disproportionate risk to women’s safety are readily accessible.”
As many businesses face turbulent times in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic the need to ensure safety for women, both in the workplace and during the commute, has been reinforced by the so-called Great Resignation. The International Labour Organization (ILO) reports that 2020 saw a record decrease in the number of working women, with the Americas region falling most sharply and posting a 9.4 per cent decline in female employment and there are fears decades of progress in female representation at work may now be undone.
Survey data from McKinsey shows that women are more frequently called on to provide socioemotional and relational support for colleagues alongside their own workload, resulting in record cases of burnout.
“As burnout takes its toll and people leave, work often shifts to those who remain, driving even more burnout,” Burns of McKinsey explains. “Women have been particularly impacted: 42 per cent report they are often or almost always burned out, compared to 35 per cent of men.”
Prior to the pandemic, global consultancy Deloitte predicted that women would make up 47.2 per cent of the US workforce by 2024, but as the Great Resignation continues there are fears that lack of workplace safety may be a leading cause for women to abandon the workplace altogether.
SEE ALSO: Are We Too Trusting of Remote Working?