How Covid-19 is a tipping point for women

The pandemic has accelerated trends that were already underway.

Has Covid been a tipping point for women? Picture: Istock

Since futurist Malcolm Gladwell wrote about tipping points 20 years ago, we see them everywhere – those moments when something we never believed possible just happens. Big and small, we know from our experiences that some changes are inevitable even if they are a long time coming.

Still it’s a shock sometimes when a dream tips over to a reality. Covid-19 delivered some of those shocks around everything from technology take-up to flexible work to parental leave. Women, especially, have experienced major shifts thanks to the rearrangement of work. For them, the big change has been increased flexibility about where and just as importantly, when, they work.

The freedom to chop up your working day around family offers a liberation generations of women considered impossible. A tipping point indeed. Extended parental leave, offered to men and women, is recognised as inevitable: it’s only a matter of time, now the principle is understood. It’s another tipping point that could see a realignment of labour at home as well as at work. And it could see more women staying in companies big enough to afford gold standard parental leave, rather than creating portfolio careers that allow time for the kids. The trend for women to get in touch with their inner entrepreneur and establish their own business will doubtless continue, but companies with good parental leave will attract.

There are more changes from Covid-19. The power of workers relative to their bosses has changed, with many people more confident now interactions take place remotely. And the shortages caused by closed borders make it an employees’ market for some people. For women, the pandemic has brought other changes: working from home freed them from the tyranny of high heels, from dressing “up” every day, from the routines of hair and makeup. Zoom meetings were a challenge and ring lights became a must-have item. Some thought of wigs, some used digital tools to apply perfect makeup to their virtual selves, but mainly women revelled in the sense, that just like men, they could throw on a shirt, put a comb through their hair and get on with it.

So, a lot of change, shifts we will take a look at this November as we explore key elements of the working lives of women. Over four weeks, The Deal will talk to a range of women about their experiences and their dreams, their challenges and their successes.

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