Author Pandora Sykes on women in the workplace: ‘Work is still so gendered’

‘It’s not just about mothers, for starters, and the fact we need affordable childcare in the UK to support women to get back into the workplace — it’s the whole spectrum.

‘All anyone is talking about at the moment is Ukraine and I feel passionately about how women in conflict zones aren’t getting period products. So many girls drop out of schools in poorer countries when they start their period due to the shame because they don’t have products. Worldwide free access to period products would be revolutionary.’

This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is ‘gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow’, focusing on helping the younger generation improve on what’s been done already.

‘I see this with my children all the time,’ says Pandora of her daughter and son, who are three and two. ‘It’s thinking from a grassroots level of how you speak to little girls and boys about the roles they can hold in society: the jobs they can do, what you value in them. So little girls aren’t just pretty and boys aren’t just brave. It’s about seeing representations on screen and in books where it’s not just the princess being rescued. But also, it’s how to raise a feminist boy.

‘It starts there but obviously goes way higher — 75% of mothers are now working but women are still paid less than men to do the same job.

‘90% of men work outside the home compared to 75% of women — but women now spend more time with kids than they did in the ’70s. So many gaps need to be closed. Work is still so gendered.’

Pandora and her marketing executive husband, Ollie Tritton, both work full time. Pandora wrote best-selling book How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? in 2020, has just launched a book club subscription called Pandora’s Books, hosts podcasts and is a judge on the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

She says they share the parenting load equally but it does take a lot of ‘negotiation’.

‘I think far more it’s the woman’s job to negotiate that administrative load,’ she says. ‘If it’s a child’s birthday, women tend to think that’s their role so things are unequal from the beginning. You have to actively fight against how most hetero-normative partnerships pan out. Friends of mine in same-sex relationships with kids have the opportunity to create their own dynamic. There’s a freedom there.’

So does Pandora feel that women can have it all and actually ‘do it right’?

‘Oh, the old having it all — I constantly fall foul of it,’ she admits. ‘I think I’ve figured it out and then find myself doing too much again. I’ve definitely taken on too much work with small children. I find it hard to balance that and don’t look after myself.’

She thinks men and women would benefit from learning from each other.

‘We tend to look at the elite women but it’s vital there are women involved at every level, not just in the really visible roles,’ she says. ‘Female leadership doesn’t have to mean putting kisses on your emails, it means you’ve got a different skill.

‘Feminine characteristics can be adopted by men: women can be much better at compromise and more sensitive with tricky topics.

‘But women can take things from men in the workplace too: men don’t doubt themselves so much. We should all be bits of both.’

See what Pandora is reading this month at pandorasbooks.co.uk.

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