IWD 2025: employers can drive gender equality by acting on harassment law

Tracey Roberts and Kieron O’Reilly of Pinsent Masons, and Joeli Brearley, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, which campaigns on parental rights issues, were commenting after discussing how organisations can accelerate action for gender equality at a recent Pinsent Masons event.

The event preceded International Women’s Day (IWD) on 8 March 2025, where the central theme was ‘accelerate action’ – a concept that emphasises taking swift and decisive steps towards gender equality, including by promoting economic empowerment for women, increasing women's leadership and representation, and strengthening and enforcing laws that promote gender equality.

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the world is moving further away from, rather than closer to, gender parity.

In its global gender gap report in 2020, the WEF predicted it would take about 100 years to achieve full gender parity. Last year, the prediction was further extended to 134 years. The annual WEF report assesses relative gaps between women and men everything from educational attainment and participation in the labour market, to political empowerment, the pay gap and health outcomes.

In the UK, there are some indicators of progress on gender equality. For example, since gender pay gap reporting obligations were introduced by the UK government in 2017, the mean gender pay gap across the UK economy has fallen from 9.1% to 7%. In addition, the number of women on boards at FTSE 350 companies has increased to 43.4% compared to just 9.5% in 2011, the Financial Times reported recently.

The data reflects employers addressing issues like part-time work and career breaks for childcare that affect women's earnings, as well as further interventions to promote women into senior roles. These initiatives have, in UK financial services, been underpinned by regulatory requirements that have driven some positive change – for example, listed financial firms are required to report on their diversity and inclusion policies and practices in relation to their senior management teams, under rules overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), while the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) has consulted on proposals that would require PRA-regulated firms to improve diversity and inclusion.

Despite this, Roberts, O’Reilly and Brearley were agreed that much more needs to be done to deliver true gender equality in the UK.

Brearley highlighted how the so-called ‘motherhood penalty’ accounts for about 80% of the gender pay gap. In 2022-2023, the average pay gap between mothers and fathers increased by £1 per hour, resulting in an overall difference of £4.44/hr, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Brearley said issues with the childcare system, systematic bias, failures in properly enabling women to return to work after having children, and poor paternity benefits for men, all contribute to the problem.

"We need to get the return-to-work period right,” said Brearley. “Women are often more productive after having a child, but only if the environment facilitates it."

Brearley said that Pregnant Then Screwed has been lobbying for changes to be made to the Employment Rights Bill as it makes its way through the UK parliament, to facilitate more flexible working. Proposed changes under the Bill include making paternity leave and shared parental leave available from 'day one' of employment, introducing bereavement leave, and enhanced protections from dismissal for pregnant women, women on maternity leave and for six months after their return to work.

“We are trying to get an amendment added to the Bill to ensure your right to request flexible working is from job offer, rather than the first day of employment." Brearley said, who described the current parental leave system in the UK as “antiquated” with the worst paternity benefit in Europe.

According to O’Reilly and Roberts, obligations employers face under the Worker Protection Act 2023, which came into force on 26 October 2024, can be a driver of positive changes in relation to gender equality.

The legislation, which amended the Equality Act 2010, imposes a positive duty on UK employers to take reasonable steps to prevent their employees experiencing workplace sexual harassment.

“Part of gender equality is about being able to speak up,” O’Reilly said. “Having the ability to speak up on things like sexual harassment is something that employers must now take steps on to enable to happen, with this new legislation. Central to that enablement is the organisational culture and the channels that employers have in place to enable that reporting.”

“What a lot of organisations are doing now is to put in place an anonymous ‘speak up’ channel that operates separate to existing line-manager, HR and whistleblowing channels, to create a safe space to enable employees to speak up,” he said.

“What this legislation also does is require employers to be proactive – to carry out a risk assessment to identify where in the business sexual harassment might occur and put policies and actions in place to stop it. If employers don’t act and an incident happens, they face significant potential liabilities. So, we have been helping employers to bolster staff training and awareness of what constitutes sexual harassment and how to report it, and thereafter to assist employers in investigating these sensitive cases,” O’Reilly said.

“We are already seeing that this legislation is changing behaviours and promoting not just gender equality but a wider evaluation of how to enable the successful integration of different people, of different gender, age, race, beliefs and other differentiating factors, to perform well together in teams,” he said.

Roberts added: “These changes in legislation show a step in the right direction to a requirement to prevent, not just react, to workplace harassment. However, the legislation alone is not enough. We must challenge ourselves to consider culture both in the workplace and a wider society to make meaningful changes to ensure the safety of women. Only once there is a culture shift – which can be achieved by everyone taking action however big or small in their everyday lives – will we achieve an environment in which we all can thrive.”

Brearley said equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives can improve recruitment, retention, and productivity.

“The motherhood penalty exists because of gendered care,” she said. “We all need to look at our own homes and address the balance and we need to create a culture in organisations where parents feel confident to talk about the messy reality of balancing work and care.”

O’Reilly said: “Employers that have not already done so should look to implement the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance on sexual harassment and harassment at work. Not only will that help them avoid the risk of being investigated and of potential enforcement action, it will mean they take practical steps to create a better working environment for everyone, making it comfortable and safe for everyone to come to work and get on with their jobs, and enable the productivity businesses need to grow and be successful.”