Bristol women campaign for gender equality workplaces

(L-R) Sonia Cohen, Kristal McNamara, Sarah Byfield and Sandra Gordon

A group of women are campaigning for businesses to offer further support to their female employees.

The organisation is raising awareness of issues which affect women, with the ultimate goal of achieving equality.

The organisation's aim is to make Bristol a gender-balanced city, raising awareness about menopause, childbirth and unpaid care.

Sandra Gordon the director of the Bristol Women's Commission (BWC) hoped more businesses would sign up.

"Working together we can get a much wider understanding of what the issues are and more importantly, what the solution is," said Ms Gordon.

In 2020, Ms Gordon and the team launched the Women in Business Charter, with Kristal McNamara, Sonia Cohen and Sarah Byfield.

The Charter is designed to help accelerate the pace of change that will benefit women, the businesses they work in and the communities they live in.

Currently, 45 businesses with a total of 44,000 employees are signed up, but the BWC wants more organisations to get involved to tackle issues like the gender pay gap.

The scheme is not sector or size specific.

Career lifeline

The Charter consists of seven objectives, but the BWC recommends that participating businesses sign up to achieve two or three goals, before checking in for a progress review after 12 months.

"It's about trying to understand what we need to do to help businesses to understand the barriers for women.

"Sometimes, unfortunately, it's men in senior positions making these decisions; they're not looking at it from a woman's perspective.

"There's a career lifeline for women and there's different stages that businesses are just starting to catch on to.

"It's about looking at the Charter through an intersectional lens - we're talking about disabilities, race, sexuality, we're talking about all the other aspects that feed into the inequalities that sit in our society", she added.