Gender equality: The myth of flexibility for women in the workplace

If employees and employers have a trust relationship, work-life balance can be customised like never before.

Since the pandemic, many employers and employees have come to value greater flexibility in working arrangements. Flexibility is often framed as a women’s issue: when the insurance firm Zurich included the words “part-time”, “job-share” and “flexible working” in its job adverts, for example, the number of women applying for management roles increased by nearly 20 per cent.

I have even noticed people starting to talk about flexibility as if it could be a cure-all for the systemic issues that hold back women in the workplace. This is a myth. Flexibility cannot, alone, tackle deep-rooted issues such as the gender pay gap,