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Ben Black, Director, My Family Care

Work+Family Summary: Jan 2016

Ben Black, Director, My Family Care

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Regular work+family updates for
HR and diversity professionals.

Ben Black's monthly summary of everything you need to know about work+family - female leadership, flexible working, gender diversity and a bit of childcare and eldercare news to boot...

 

We've kicked off 2016 in some style, just not necessarily the right style...

Sexism / Villains

West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle made headlines for daring to flirt with the Australian sports anchor during his post-match interview. She's a professional and it's her workplace and he was therefore widely and rightly castigated. If only there weren't all the scantily clad cheerleaders doing their thing in the background.

Reckitt Benckiser was also in trouble for producing women only adverts for Cillit Bang that might have been the norm 50 years ago.

And whilst there were plenty of scare stories in January about the rise of the robots it was, as Hilary Lewis in the Times pointed out, depressing that there was a media wide assumption that it was only female secretaries who would be replaced.

Winning - gender equality

It isn't all bad - the Fawcett Society, under the new and inspiring leadership of Sam Smethers, produced its Gender Equality State of the Nation Report. More men (71%) than women actually think that equality would be a good thing. Wow!

Eldercare needs better PR

I've always thought that eldercare suffers from a potentially catastrophic lack of funding partly because it's bad at PR. We still hear more about childcare when relatively it's in much better shape. It's encouraging therefore to hear that the costs of care homes now exceed the costs of sending your son to Eton. Sadly it's headlines that influence politicians and the industry needs more of them.

Gervais on women's salaries

The gender pay gap makes news everywhere and even Ricky Gervais couldn't resist getting in on the act. He might be outrageous as well as funny, but he genuinely seems to get it.

One of the reasons for the pay gap is that men are just more assertive. So yes, there's a new app that helps stop women saying "sorry". I kid you not. Meanwhile, if you want to see real progress, then just look at how women are progressing into the elected ranks in Saudi Arabia. A small first step, but it's amazing all the same.

Childcare and working parents

Working Families produced its annual Modern Families Index. Nothing too startling although it once again reinforces that today's working parents are under incredible pressure from all sides. Meanwhile David Cameron made a call for more "Tiger Parenting".  Work hard, never give up seemed to be the message even if the Guardian wasn't so sure it made sense.

Anne-Marie Slaughter

Finally Anne-Marie Slaughter was in London in January, although she was slightly upstaged at Intelligence Squared by Daniel Glaser. Tiny neurological differences between the sexes get amplified by society and its desire to simplify everything into bite sized chunks. That's the problem.

Ben Black

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