Women at work 2024: How are we doing?
When women try to balance work and family life, it’s often a tough choice: career or kids? Recent research about the declining birth rate indicates that women want to work in worthwhile jobs and to be productive. But there’s still a lot to do to help women make this balance easier.
Some significant changes in UK employment law have been implemented over the past year or so. These have been designed to improve women’s lot by tackling issues like fair pay, safe working environments, and family responsibilities. Here’s a snapshot of how we women are doing. We’re getting there, though we wish it could be faster!
Carer’s leave
The Carer’s Leave Act came into force in April 2024. It gave employees a legal entitlement to take up to one week of unpaid leave per year to care for dependents with long-term needs. Available from the first day of employment, this leave has been particularly useful for women, who often bear the brunt of caregiving duties.
The downside is that the leave is unpaid, but it’s a positive step toward recognizing the importance of women as caregivers in a balanced work-life environment.
Maternity and paternity issues
Statutory maternity, paternity, adoption, and shared parental pay rates all increased in April 2024 – for the first time since 2018 – helping families manage finances during these important life stages.
We think that’s a positive step, but that the pay needs to be increased more frequently and in line with other regular benefits.
The updated Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act meant that, from April 2024, employees on maternity leave, as well as those on adoption leave and shared parental leave, have the right to be offered any suitable alternative vacancy in a redundancy situation.
Again, this is of some help to the women concerned, although it would of course be better if the redundancy didn’t occur in the first place.
Support for working women with menopause
Recognizing the impact of menopause on employment, new guidelines called ‘Menopause in the workplace’ were issued in 2024 by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This encourages employers to support women experiencing menopausal symptoms so they can maintain their careers without suffering in silence or feeling forced to leave their jobs.
The support is not compulsory, but is a step in the right direction.
Flexible working
From April 2024, employees were given the right to request flexible working arrangements from their first day of employment. (It was previously only after 26 weeks.)
This change is a welcome shift toward supporting work-life balance, particularly for women who are managing both work and caregiving responsibilities.
Tackling workplace harassment
We were particularly pleased to welcome implementation of the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act which took effect in October 2024. As indicated in our guide on harassment, it and particularly sexual harassment, is much more commonplace than previously thought and the new law requires employers in the UK to take positive steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
There’s still a lot of work to be done to encourage open, effective reporting mechanisms, but it’s a fair start.
The new Employment Rights Bill
In October 2024 the government introduced their Employment Rights Bill promising that its provisions would take effect in 2026.
It includes major benefits for women, such as banning exploitative zero-hours contracts, giving ‘day-one’ rights to protection against unfair dismissal and to parental and bereavement leave, making flexible working the default position and removing the lower earnings limit before you’re entitled to statutory sick pay.
All of these initiatives should help strengthen women’s job security and support a fairer working environment. See this Gov.uk page for more.
Breaking the glass ceiling
To finish off, we’d like to take a brief look at how all the above initiatives can and do help enable career development for women. You may not want to become a senior business woman. However, if you haven’t got the support you need to learn about making money from working, then you aren’t going to be able to develop your career, and you’re unlikely to play a leading role in a major UK company.
But for those of you who want to play such a role – or just think about playing – here’s a glimpse of where we are in breaking that glass ceiling, based on the 2024 report of the ‘FTSE Women Leaders Review: Achieving Gender Balance’:
- Women in leadership roles in the FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) top 100 and 250 companies are apparently making ‘reasonable’ progress’.
- In the FTSE 100 they now now make up 35.2% of senior roles. That’s a slight increase from the year before, with 41% of new appointments going to women.
- The FTSE 250 has also seen an increase, with women holding 33.9% of these roles, up from 32.8%. However, in the FTSE 250 companies, fewer women are being appointed to senior roles compared to before, suggesting progress is starting to level off.
Worryingly, the Review reports that ‘there have been a number of competing voices recently offering contradictory opinions, some saying that progress for women has ‘gone far enough’.’
However, Monaco Solicitors certainly don’t support that view and neither does the Review. As for whether women are capable of succeeding in senior roles in British business, the Review concludes that:
‘There is no shortage of capable, experienced women and the pipeline has never been stronger, with sustained ambition from business, all is set fair for further gains to come.’
What next?
Whether your problem at work relates to discrimination at work or anything else, get in touch with Monaco Solicitors if you’d like friendly and professional advice from an experienced team of specialist employment law solicitors. We only work with employees, so we understand where you’re coming from!
If you want to know whether or not you have a legal case that’s worth making a claim for, click the ‘Get Started’ button below.
