The Country Manager for Microsoft Nigeria, Mr. Ola Williams has said that the coming of flexible, hybrid work, the prevailing sentiment from Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index (WTI) is a piece of good news for innovation.
According to him, this is because innovation surges when diversity increases, and one thing that remote and hybrid workplaces have enabled is more diverse hiring. He added that the WTI notes that remote-work opportunities were found to be more attractive to diverse applicants: women, Gen Z jobseekers (those currently aged 18 to 25), and those without a graduate degree were more likely to apply for remote positions on LinkedIn.
Williams disclosed that for gendered diversity in the workplace, remote work is driving much-needed improvement, saying that global statistics on gender equality in employment reveal a deeply entrenched disparity, with men participating more in the labour force and advancing more within it than their female counterparts.
“Alarmingly, if we remain on the current hiring and promoting trajectory, it will take just over 135 years to close the gender gap worldwide. This was the finding of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its latest 2021 Global Gender Gap Report.”
Williams noted that the pandemic has served to widen this gap, with WEF sharing early projections that show 5 percent of all employed women lost their jobs
in the resulting economic disruption, compared with 3.9 per cent of employed men.
Looking at the category of Economic Participation and Opportunity, WEF reported favourable results for sub-Saharan Africa, with the region having closed just over 66 per cent of the gender gap, outperforming the global average of 58.3 per cent.
Out of the 156 countries surveyed globally, Nigeria comes in at 139 on the list for overall gender parity, placing it at number 32 out of the 35 countries surveyed across sub-Saharan Africa.
