Written by Dr Emma Waltham | Parental Returners Expert
International Women’s Day 2023 is fast approaching, with this year’s theme #EmbraceEquity highlighting the need to tackle discrimination and drive gender parity, while celebrating women’s achievements - on International Women's Day and beyond.
It’s fantastic to see women being celebrated, though it's important to take this opportunity to review how much progress towards gender parity is really being made. There is still a glass ceiling for women, as we can see in slow growth in numbers of women reaching senior posts. Today only 5% of C-Suite roles are held by women. Research undertaken by the Government Equalities Office found that working mums were half as likely as working dads to be promoted.
Asking difficult questions
This International Women’s Day, as well as celebrating the women in your workplace, why not use this opportunity to review how many women with children are there in your senior leadership team? How many are in your talent pipeline? What support is in place to support and enable women to stay on their career pathways when they become parents?
“After every session, I left feeling empowered. Emma is an excellent listener and instead of giving direct advice, she guides the conversation so I can use my own tools to solve the issues I wanted to discuss.” Coachee, Biomedical Research Institute
Parental transition coaching – a tangible difference
The organisations I work with recognise the impact of maternity on women’s careers, and one way they are tackling this is through investing in parental transitional coaching. Our coaching sessions provide support to returning parents, helping them develop strategies to more easily blend their caring and professional responsibilities, while keeping confidence and productivity high. With this intensive, 1:1 support, maternity returners are more likely to make a positive return to work, continue on their career pathway and stay in the organisation long term. We receive overwhelmingly positive feedback from clients. They tell us that our parental transition coaching is an excellent investment in their people, strengthening the female talent pipeline at a time that is often very disruptive professionally, and is vital to supporting new parents’ career development.
“The coaching has been an excellent return on investment. We had great feedback from participants, and we can really see the value. Providing coaching helps with wellbeing and participants have been promoted while going through the programme.” Valerie Hardie, New Parents Champion, Frazer-Nash Consultancy
Take action today
So, this International Women’s Day, take action and do something that will make a genuine difference to the women in your workplace. Let’s start a conversation about how we can implement a parental transition coaching programme for your returning mums.