Eight game-changing ideas for women at work

An ideal world for women at work would look very different to the one we’re working in today.

Indeed, you’ve probably had many ‘imagine if’ discussions with friends, colleagues, mentors and various other contacts, regarding how work could better work for women, and consequently help create fairer pay, equal opportunity and more equitable representation.

On Women’s Agenda we know we certainly have.

Since launching two years ago, the Women’s Agenda team has had hundreds of conversations exploring ‘what if’ style scenarios for things employers, governments and community organisations could do to better support women at work.

These conversations usually come after expressing disappointment that progress for women is glacially slow. There’s plenty of talk regarding programs and initiatives designed to better support women at work, but the lack of measured progress on the pay gap, for women on boards, studies on discrimination and other metrics used to determine how we’re going indicate more needs to be done. We often find in our conversations that while large employers say they’re doing one thing, women employed by such organisations declare the reality is far from the rhetoric. True flexible careers, for example, are still difficult to come by.

So what more could be done? Over the next two weeks we’ll be sharing eight ground breaking ideas for women at work — to celebrate our 8/8 birthday.

Of course, these are just some of the ideas that could help. We’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas too. Share what you believe could work in the comments field below and join in the conversation at #makeworkbetter.

And it’s not just about women. We believe these ideas for women at work could ultimately make work better for everyone.

The eight ideas to be covered include:

1. Flexible ‘transition’ periods for mums returning to work
2. Compulsory Mentoring Service for graduates
3. A one childcare place for every child policy
4. Make all salaries transparent
5. Mandate quotas for five years from 2016
6. Make all roles flexible and reward outcomes over hours
7. Pay women more superannuation
8. Mainstream office ‘nap rooms’ and movement programs for employees