Month: January 2023

Average differences in earnings between men and women continue to make headlines globally. Aisha Khan investigates how the perpetuation of traditional gender norms and current working practices limit opportunities for women at several stages in their careers.

The reporting of gender differences in earnings has become the norm in many companies, but growing evidence indicates that systematic inequalities and cultural stereotypes hinder career progression for female employees.

A study conducted by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, a UK-based think-tank, found there are “stark gender differences” in the payoff to achieving a first-class degree at the most selective universities. The report found that the average payoff for male graduates with a first-class degree compared to lower classifications was around 14 percent, whereas the percentage for female students with a first-class degree was near zero, suggesting that fewer higher-achieving women go on to have highly remunerative careers.

Needless to say, a single study doesn’t draw any definitive conclusions, nor should we forget that higher education institutions enrich students in other ways aside from future earnings. However, recognising that the gender pay gap may start as early as graduation is key to understanding possible solutions.

An important distinction to bear in mind is that equal pay differs from the gender pay gap mentioned in this context. While legislation in countries such as the UK (the 2010 Equality Act) prohibits paying men and women unequal salaries for performing the same work at the same level, the gender pay gap is concerned with the average difference in earnings between men and women across a whole organisation.

Understanding stereotypes

If we think about inequality in the workplace, it’s worth asking when fundamental disparities begin in a woman’s life. Mary Evans, an Emeritus Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Kent and a centennial professor at the London School of Economics (LSE), suggests the disparity starts from the beginning. “Most of the studies that discuss early socialisation underline the binary difference between blue for boys and pink for girls. Research suggests that, throughout education, girls are rewarded for coherent and neat work, whereas boys are more likely to be rewarded for originality and thinking outside the box.

“It obviously doesn’t hold true across all schools and all parts of the education system, but the general patterns of reward structure make a difference.” She says this is noticeable in the private sector, where employers reward those who have done what they see as ‘hard subjects’, such as STEM, rather than ‘soft subjects’ which some employers believe the humanities fall under.

Previous studies have implied that one reason for the discrepancy in earnings is the fact that female students choose subjects with low financial returns. Vicky Miller has worked as a career consultant at NEOMA Business School for the last six years and provides individualised career coaching to students.

Along with Isabelle Chavelier, Director of the Talent & Careers department and the rest of the team, they’ve been working with students to raise awareness on gender equality in the workplace. The school surveys its graduates every year, including information on their choice of specialisation and salary. “We found out that only 17 percent of our female students are choosing to specialise in finance. It makes a great difference to those entering the financial field where the remuneration level is one of the highest so there is a clear link between the choice of subject and the choice of career,” says Miller.

Pervasive self-censorship Subject choice may explain gender disparity to an extent but acknowledging its connection to self-censorship is important. As the name suggests, self-censorship means refraining from saying or doing something, often due to anxiety or fear of how others will perceive said behaviour. Despite being coined in the context of freedom of speech, the term has entered the vernacular of gender norms and glass ceilings. When NEOMA organised a conference to raise awareness on the issue, Isabelle was surprised to find that many female students didn’t believe there was a problem. “We shared data on the percentage of females choosing to specialise in finance and implications on future earnings, but I was hearing reasons such as ‘I’m not good at mathematics’ or ‘I want to work in luxury marketing’, reflecting gender stereotypes about subject choice,” Chavelier says.

A potential explanation for the denial of the problem is that female students have noticed there are fewer women going into finance than men and therefore assume that it’s a hostile sector to work in. “It means they’re more likely to choose a different subject and will then reproduce that gender split because they’ve noticed it’s happening already,” adds Miller.

The school hopes to overcome issues around self-censorship by running workshops on areas such as negotiation and encouraging students to identify any beliefs or stereotypes that might be holding them back. “We have sessions where female students can talk about their concerns as well as role playing salary negotiation, salary rises and other conditions of their employment package.”

Strong female role models and networks

Sharing inspirational stories from women who have been through the same process is one way
to help students feel confident about entering the workplace. At NEOMA Business School, the alumni association has a branch called Neoma Wo.Men, indicating that the group is also inclusive of male students. Miller says: “The group is similar to HeForShe in the types of values it has, and it essentially puts a spotlight on successful female graduates and facilitates discussion on issues such as professional equality”. They also offer a mentorship programme where female alumni mentor students and graduates.

“We had a senior HR manager from GEODIS who attended one of the school’s events and reinforced the idea that it is possible to have it all but don’t waste time – negotiate your salary from the start, go for top jobs and keep going. There are compromises to make, as you would expect, but it’s about saying to women that you can do both.”

Achieving gender parity across all levels can prove difficult in male-dominated industries. In Singapore, women make up 44 percent of the nation’s workforce but only a quarter of business owners.

Rachel Eng, a managing director at a law firm, serves as the chairperson of the Singapore Women Entrepreneurs Network (SG- WEN) – an initiative that aims to “coalesce the women entrepreneurs in Singapore and connect them with other women entrepreneurs, business leaders and trade associations in the Asia-Pacific, in particular the ASEAN member states.”

When asked in an interview with Tatler Asia about why she felt the need to establish SG-WEN, she said the lack of female representation in senior roles “runs contrary to the fact that the women workforce in Singapore is a highly educated one.”

She felt there was a gap “which may be served by a network like SG-WEN where we could advocate not just for women leaders in general but more importantly, for women entrepreneurs and the unique challenges they face”.

Onus falls on employers and policymakers

Without action from government and businesses, fundamental change to improve representation of women in the workplace is unattainable. Miller and Chavelier point out that measures are being introduced by the French government to address concerns about the lack of female representation, particularly in senior roles. The Rixain Law, enacted last year, introduces new requirements for companies with over 1,000 employees to achieve gender equality. For example, one such obligation states that 40 percent of managerial positions need to be occupied by women by 2030. Failure to meet the required quotas for two years from March 2030 may subject a company to fines of up to one percent of their annual payroll.

“Many women were previously hesitant about the idea of quotas to improve representation but now they’ve realised it’s one of the most impactful ways to make a change. Companies are changing their succession policies and building women’s careers in a way they didn’t do before,” says Chavelier.

Thinking back to gender stereotypes on subject choice, Professor Evans believes that universities and government should resist downgrading humanities subjects. “Universities have a responsibility to argue for the legitimacy of subjects outside of STEM which in turn endorses the choices that women are making.”

The Government Equalities Office in the UK has underlined its commitment to changing workplace cultures so that every woman can reach her career potential. “We are encouraging employers to offer more flexibility within roles – something which we piloted with Zurich as a key enabler – as well as prompting employers to have clear and fair performance management processes and transparency on salary information,” says a spokesperson for the office.

It’s evident that a variety of structural factors continue to affect career mobility for women, starting from graduation to further down the line. A widening of opportunities is on the horizon but without a critical re-think in how we value women’s contributions in their personal and professional lives, the current society risks stifling talent from half of the world’s population.

This article was from the QS Global Education News Issue 10. Download the full edition.

In a time of global uncertainty, the design industry is growing exponentially as the world looks for creative solutions to our environmental and societal challenges. Laura Lightfinch looks at how design education can help to create a workforce equipped to make positive change for people and the planet.

Design is a powerful tool in the world right now. That’s according to the Design Council, the UK’s national strategic advisor for design, which revealed in its 2022 Design Economy report that the industry is growing twice as fast as the rest of the UK economy. In fact, one in 20 of all UK workers are in a design-related role.

Beyond the UK, countries including China, Korea, the United States, Japan, India and Turkey have all also shown significant contributions to the design economy. In 2021, Forbes reported that the size of the global design industry was estimated to be US$162 billion and growing.

Why is design flourishing across global economies? Bernard Hay is the head of research and design practise for the Design Council in the UK and co-author of the Design Economy report. He says: “We’re seeing that design is playing a much bigger role in the public and private sectors now. Designers can understand and interrogate the opportunities and challenges at the very start of a project. They’re not only great problem solvers, but problem framers and identifiers. That’s critical in today’s context.”

77 percent of designers in the UK now work in non-design sectors like finance, retail and construction. As a discipline, design covers a broad scope of roles from architecture to digital and service design, craft, product design and even policymaking. What brings them together is the ability to apply creative problem-solving to visualise and imagine things that don’t yet exist.

A call for curriculum reform

As part of their report, the Design Council is calling for curriculum reform to create more future designers. Between 2010 and 2021 there was a 68 percent decrease in students taking design and technology at GCSE, a threat to the design industry’s ability to continue to skills pipeline. For Hay, it’s not just about increasing that number with the existing curriculum but “ensuring sustainable and regenerative design principles and methods are embedded in the curriculum from an early age”.

Some of the world’s top institutions for design are trying to lead the way to create innovative and adaptable designers who can solve today’s global challenges across a vast range of sectors. The Royal College of Art (RCA) ranks first in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023: Art and Design and offers programmes across 18 areas of art and design, including architecture and environment, curating and culture, fashion, graphic and illustration, and experiential design.

Vice Chancellor, Dr Paul Thompson, shares the same concerns as Hay. “The curriculum needs to be addressed as a priority,” he says. “There’s a lot of work to do in pre-16 education, but I think the future of university design must be human-centred and societal. The days of training people to design endless variations of a consumer product aren’t going to grab the minds of young people anymore.” RCA takes its position as a leader in global design education seriously and understands the need for designers who can work as part of multidisciplinary teams and apply their creative skillset to a vast range of industries, whatever their discipline.

With the knowledge that today’s students will have a different set of parameters placed on them to consider bigger issues, RCA is rethinking the curriculum. “One of the bolder pushes has been encouraging students to work across more diverse, multidisciplinary teams with students outside of the field,” says Dr Thompson.

The school has introduced links with the scientific disciplines including material science, computer science, AI and robotics. With a multidisciplinary lens, students are set broader challenges. One such example is looking at how marine farming can be used to feed the planet more effectively without polluting water and damaging wild species.

“The Terra Carta Design Lab is another way we invite students to design a credible product, service or system for people and planet,” he says. “We had two very successful AgriTech products developed by students that have now been launched as start-up companies.”

As design continues to grow in Italy, Politecnico di Milano receives over 6,000 applications yearly for their bachelor’s design courses, with just 1,000 places on offer and an almost 100 percent employability rate. Francesco Zurlo, Dean of the School of Design, believes that’s because the school offers a “lively context that stimulates curiosity and entrepreneurship”.

“Our graduates end their studies with a specific skill like product, interior or graphic design, but they also acquire a set of soft skills that allows them to deal with work contexts which are not necessarily in line with their original path of choice,” says Zurlo.

The power of design education for change

The COVID-19 pandemic presented overwhelming challenges for public health, but design played a significant role in creating innovative solutions for hospitals. Product design and technology student Dominic Leatherland developed an oxygen-delivery system while studying at Loughborough University, using human-centred design to adapt to the needs of each patient.

The mask was developed with Avon Protection’s senior design engineer, Nick Hunter, and was approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for use in hospitals across the country. Fenja Rebell is a communications design student at the University of Europe for Applied Science in Germany. Alongside her studies, Rebellalso works for a creative agency that focuses on sustainability and creating change for good.

Working with a list of clients to provide environmentally conscious business solutions, she uses the skills and knowledge from her design degree for positive change. “Designers have a responsibility to lead society in a better direction through our designs,” says Rebell. “It’s my mission to stay curious, observe the world’s challenges, question critically and be a part of the solution. Without these qualities, I don’t believe new and innovative design can emerge.”

Shaping student potential

The RSA Student Design Awards have been challenging budding designers to tackle social, environmental and economic issues for almost 100 years. The global competition inspires school pupils and higher education students across the world to understand their potential as changemakers.

Each year, over 700 applications are made to the RSA Design Awards. Nat Ortiz is senior designer and head of collaboration and learning design at RSA. Ortiz provides strategic input for the awards, focusing on the intersection of design, creativity and social change.
“We work collaboratively with industry partners to understand the challenges facing society and to develop a brief that inspires students to think about change,” says Ortiz. “Our briefs might focus on how we can protect the dignity of refugees, how we might democratise health and wellbeing, or rethinking clothing production.

“Students decide on the form of their proposal based on their own context and we support them to tackle the challenge. It doesn’t have to be a product or service, so the richness of entries we receive each year is fascinating.”

With the growth of technology and digital services, RSA Design Awards has seen an increase in submissions for the design of experiences. Organisations like the NHS are working with service designers to streamline healthcare systems, and government bodies are working with designers to create and test policies. Ortiz echoes the concerns about the current curriculum and says: “We often hear from schools and educational institutions that the curriculum is still commercially-focused…We want to inspire students to look at the harder, more complex and systematic issues, and challenge themselves to apply their skills to shaping a more regenerative, resilient and rebalanced world. “The possibilities are out there already,” she adds. “We want to show young people that these roles and careers are possible.”

The future of impactful design

Sophie Morice studies design and innovation at the Open University and is part of the youth climate movement. Alongside her degree, Sophie is a brand associate at Reckitt, owner of household names such as Air Wick, Vanish and Finish, where the company is working on design innovation projects in its plight to create a cleaner, healthier world.

With such conviction in climate activism, a move to the FMCG sector might not be the obvious one, but Morice says, “you either sit back and try to stop the massive machine on the outside, or you go on the inside and understand how something works in order to influence change”.
Today’s generation of student designers are poised to make a difference. They have a deeper understanding of their place in shaping the world and are driven by purpose and values. Whether it’s climate and sustainability or social justice, design education plays a key role in helping them realise their potential and make real change across whichever discipline or industry they choose.

This article was from the QS Global Education News Issue 10. Download the full edition.