Versatile working was meant to degree the gender enjoying discipline. Hybrid and distant roles have helped many ladies stability paid work with caring duties who would possibly in any other case have left the workforce.
However when breaking down flexibility by pay grade, a divide turns into clear.
Senior, higher-paid roles are nonetheless much less prone to supply flexibility, whereas lower-paid and part-time roles usually tend to. Specialists warn it isn’t flexibility itself that’s the downside, however the unequal method it’s distributed.
For Worldwide Ladies’s Day on 8 March, The Unbiased appears to be like at how unequal entry to flexibility – moderately than flexibility itself – is shaping ladies’s long-term monetary safety.
Flexibility concentrated on the backside
Dr Sara Reis, deputy director on the Ladies’s Finances Group, says the difficulty is structural. “The difficulty right here will not be versatile work,” she says. “The dearth of entry to it in senior, well-paid roles is.
“Ladies nonetheless do 50 per cent extra unpaid care than males, and so usually tend to take up jobs that provide versatile working with the intention to higher mix their unpaid caring duties with their paid job.
“However proper now, we see that flexibility is most of the time concentrated in lower-paid jobs with restricted development. That imbalance has penalties for girls’s earnings, pensions and long-term monetary safety, and gender equality extra broadly.”
In follow, many ladies go for school-hour or distant roles, whereas senior posts stay much less accessible.
The result’s a widening pay and pension hole.
The compounding pension impact
Jeannie Boyle, director and chartered monetary planner at EQ Buyers, says even modest wage variations can snowball. “Decrease salaries imply decrease pension contributions,” she says. “Somebody incomes £100,000 over a 20-year interval can count on to build up a further £70,000 of their pension fund in comparison with somebody incomes £80,000.
“This assumes they’re each paying 5 per cent of their wage into pensions, which develop at 10 per cent a yr. What’s more durable to evaluate is how the upper wage connected to extra senior roles impacts the flexibility to speculate for the longer term.”
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The hole widens considerably if greater earners enhance contributions as their pay rises. “It’s solely when salaries begin to speed up that many individuals have the capability to make important financial savings into pensions and ISAs,” Boyle says.
“When persons are promoted into senior roles, they discover they’ll afford to extend pension contributions. If the individual incomes £100,000 a yr can afford to contribute 10 per cent into their pension, the hole after 20 years widens to over £350,000.”
The visibility penalty
Hybrid working has additionally altered office dynamics. Whereas flexibility can enhance work-life stability, it could scale back visibility – one thing that also influences promotion choices.
Boyle says: “Males, usually with fewer duties at residence, deal with constructing the networks that assist them transfer into senior roles. They’re exercising affect by being within the room for the post-meeting chat, out there for after-work drinks, and accepting the invitation to look at rugby on the weekend.
“For girls working at residence or part-time round childcare, these alternatives aren’t out there. Ladies are discovering that competence will take them thus far of their careers, but it surely isn’t sufficient to achieve extra senior roles, and their careers can stall on the center degree.”
Each consultants stress that proscribing versatile working will not be the reply. “Doing that might solely make it more durable for girls to remain in work,” says Reis.
“The actual problem is guaranteeing flexibility is genuinely out there throughout all ranges of seniority, and to take away stigma in order that individuals who work flexibly or hybrid aren’t penalised as a result of managers favour those that are most seen within the workplace moderately than these delivering outcomes.”
She provides that versatile working is especially essential for disabled ladies and people with persistent well being situations, for whom inflexible patterns could be a barrier to employment.
The Employment Rights Act is increasing entry, however Reis argues extra might be carried out, together with a requirement for jobs to be marketed as versatile by default until not fairly possible.
Defending your long-term wealth
For girls who select flexibility, or depend on it, proactive monetary planning issues.
“Employer assist and engagement is essential to profession success if you’re working differently to most of your colleagues,” Boyle says. “Attempt to work for a female-led organisation with out the boys’ membership mentality.”
She additionally emphasises sustaining contributions the place doable. “Strive to make sure you are investing for the longer term, even when budgets are tight,” she says. “It’s possible you’ll not be capable of depend on an enormous wage uplift later to present you extra financial savings capability.”
As Worldwide Ladies’s Day prompts reflection on financial equality, hybrid working presents each alternative and danger. Until flexibility is embedded at each degree, it dangers entrenching the very wealth gaps it was meant to shut.
When investing, your capital is in danger, and it’s possible you’ll get again lower than invested. Previous efficiency doesn’t assure future outcomes.
Learn The Unbiased’s affect checklist for Worldwide Ladies’s Day 2026 right here.
