Remedying gender parity

Wendy Warham, Head of Networks and Telecoms at Fujitsu, explains the importance of analysing Gender Pay Reporting.

Monday 25 March 2019

Wendy Warham, Head of Networks and Telecoms at Fujitsu, explains the importance of analysing Gender Pay Reporting.

At Fujitsu we are proud to achieve a 1.5% decrease in our second Gender Pay Gap report – a decrease from 17.9% in 2017 to 16.4% in 2018. While our gender pay gap is significantly better than the technology sector average, we are committed to remedying it.

It’s our ambition as a responsible business to achieve gender parity, especially in senior leadership which has been exposed by mandatory gender pay gap reporting as a problem area.

It is reported that 78% of UK organisations are reporting a gender pay gap in favour of men. and this has led to our route to achieving gender parity in leadership being brought into greater focus. The latest Hampton Alexander Review reported that women’s representation on boards of FTSE 250 companies is at 24.9%, just short of the 25% target set in 2015. However, it also reported that there are still 74 boards with only one woman.

The World Economic Forum estimated that it will take 217 years for disparities in the pay and employment between men and women to end. This is 47 years longer than they predicted in 2016. The Office for National Statistics also found that women carry out about 60% more unpaid work than men. This imbalance in society exacerbates the gender imbalance in leadership as women in employment may still be expected to take ownership of household management. Unfortunately, we do not seem to be moving forward in our quest for gender parity at senior levels.

Achieving change requires committed leadership, sustained effort and systematic focus to shift attitudes, transform cultures, improve processes and tackle hidden biases. It also involves challenging mind-sets and behaviours that are deeply ingrained in our society and culture. This is not an easy goal but we are determined to make those changes at Fujitsu, to enable more women to progress into leadership roles.

At Fujitsu we encourage collaboration between organisations and sectors and we bring together our customers and partners for an honest debate about why we are all struggling to shift the dial on this issue. We want to get a deeper insight into the challenges we face and explore our shared barriers, so we can identify solutions and understand how we can work together to achieve real change.

We want to explore challenging questions like:

How do we overcome feelings of fatigue with the continued need to push for parity and avoid the disillusionment of activists?
How can we support women to advance in work despite taking on heavier domestic burdens at home?
How do we make sure women are promoted for merit and not for their gender?
How to shape leadership culture into a place that is attractive to women?

We believe collaboration is key to achieving gender parity, especially in senior leadership. In 2019 we continue with our action plan and share the outcomes from events and our strategy to reduce the gender pay gap.