What Does Gender Bias Mean? And How Can I Protect Myself From It? A Lawyer Weights In…
Georgina Calvert-Lee reveals how calling out sex discrimination can elicit meaningful change
The past 18 months have been a gruelling experience for all of us. Yet there is increasing evidence that the brunt of the pandemic has been disproportionately borne by working women. During this period, they have been almost twice as likely as men to have lost their jobs, while in the UK, over 130,000 more women than men were placed on the furlough scheme between March and August last year. Meanwhile, those who did keep their jobs may at times have wished that they hadn’t, as they found themselves taking on far more of the burden of homeschooling, caring for children and the elderly – equating, according to research by UN Women, to about 31 hours a week, almost as much as a second full-time job. This, unsurprisingly, has led to many opting to step back in their careers or even to leave the labour market permanently.
Against this bleak economic backdrop, the idea that post-pandemic flexible working will lead to greater equality for working mothers seems unlikely. On the contrary: COVID-19 is being blamed for a ‘she-cession’, with progress for women in work dropping back to 2017 levels.
“The pandemic hasn’t happened against the backdrop of a perfect system,” explains Georgina Calvert-Lee, who leads the UK employment and equality team at the transatlantic law firm McAllister Olivarius. “There were existing disparities and COVID-19 has exacerbated them.” Now, she anticipates a flurry of cases as firms look to restructure to offset pandemic-related losses, with women first in the firing line. “If you close schools and childcare facilities, then someone still has to provide this service, and women feel the societal pressure to do it, especially because for years they have earned less than their male partner and so the family’s income is less impacted if they take this on too.
With so much extra demand on their time, it’s not surprising that some have jumped at taking furlough; but as a result, they’re perceived as less committed and less essential to their employed work. This, along with the fact they have also missed out on opportunities and promotions over the past months, which have gone to the men, feeds into the already present gender pay gap.”
Georgina, who is elegant and lively with a head of appropriately fiery hair, has made her reputation as a champion of the underdog with several high-profile cases, including representing the YouTube star Chrissy Chambers in the first publicised civil claim for the publication of intimate images without consent; and the settlement of a discrimination claim against Warwick University brought by female students targeted in a Facebook chat.
Her acute sense of fairness was developed early – “as the youngest in a busy household with two older brothers, there are all those little injustices around the kitchen table that your parents don’t necessarily notice – I realised you have to have a voice to be heard.” Her father John was an actor, but he lost his voice to rapid-onset multiple sclerosis when his daughter was a teenager. “That was a fairly traumatic thing and so ironic, since he was very vocal and dramatic, always the life and soul of any gathering. Seeing someone literally lose their power of speech really emphasised that innate feeling I had that having a voice is so important – it made me recognise the horror of having your voice stifled, and being buried within your own body – or, in society, buried by the culture you live in. That was what led me into being a lawyer in the first place.”
However, it was her experience working for a big American law firm early in her career that honed her understanding of discrimination. “Initially, the firm was very keen to get young women associates onboard, and I had a lot of support. But as soon as I started trying to have children, the scales fell from my eyes,” she says. “I was going through fertility treatment and had to have regular injections in the office. Naively, I didn’t make a secret of it.” One powerful senior partner had early on appointed himself her champion. “He’d always been very keen to find time alone with me in the evenings, and I considered him a friend. So I confided in him about the treatment and the stress of it.” Shortly afterwards, she received her annual performance reviews; the one from this senior partner stood out as “atrocious”, although the only work she had done for him that year had been carried out in partnership with a male colleague, their contributions were indistinguishable and the partner had given him a stellar review. “As a discrimination lawyer, I can see now what a fabulously easy case it would have been to bring,” she says. “It brought it home to me that discrimination is real, and particularly rampant when a woman has children.”
The systemic biases run throughout the system up to board level, she says, assisted partly by the assumption that women will accept unfair treatment. “We’re so modest in our demands! I meet feisty feminist senior executives who are clearly extremely robust and intelligent, but are also so quick to blame themselves. It’s deeply ingrained that we won’t make a fuss, and so we will think first about all the legitimate reasons why someone else might have got the promotion instead.”
Her advice to women who believe they have been unfairly treated? “Put in a grievance, and call it out for what it is – discrimination – that gives you more protection. Keep a log of what’s happened, so you know the dates and can refer to them. If enough women do that, then I think companies would clean up their workplace and behave better. If you have the strength to call it out, the law is there to help you.” Advice that may be well worth considering in the months to come.
Photography: © 1988 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s October 2021 issue