International Women’s Day 2025: How is Gerald Edelman Accelerating Action?

Every year on 8 March, the world celebrates International Women’s Day, driving awareness on the continued challenges women face in society, but also to celebrate incredible women everywhere. This day also serves as a call to action for everyone—regardless of gender—to work together towards a more equitable society. 

International Women’s Day is a day to reflect on the past, act in the present and pave the way for the future. According to data by the World Economic Forum, it will take until 2158, or five generations, to reach complete gender parity if we were to continue at our current speed of progress.  

This year’s theme, #AccelerateAction, emphasises the urgency for change. It calls for increased momentum and tangible action to be taken to address systemic barriers and biases that women face, both in their professional and personal lives.  

There is still much work to be done around gender equality, but we cannot ignore the progress that has been made in recent years.  

Where we stand in 2025 

In 2024, Grant Thornton completed their International Women In Business Report, to understand the key challenges women face, particularly in professional services. They completed an anonymous survey with 600 women that have worked in professional services over 10-25 years and found:  

• Parental leave and flexible working are important to them, with 69% having caring responsibilities, 40% having a flexible working pattern and 77% having taken a career break at some point.  
• 54% say parental leave negatively impacted their careers, 31% felt the same about flexible working. 
• 1 in 4, felt that different working patterns were not encouraged.  
• UK employers are more flexible (58%) than the global average (54%). 
• Fully office-based working is on the rise again with 37% of businesses saying they are now primarily office-based. An increase of 4% since 2023.  
• Flexible organisations have more women in senior roles. 

How we’re playing our part 

Economic empowerment 

When gathering data for our B Corp application, we took a deeper dive into gender equality at our firm. We found that we already maintained gender equality when it came to salary, with no two individuals doing the same role being paid differently based on their gender. This was a positive finding, alongside the gender representation at our firm, being 54.5% Male and 45.5% Female.  

Retaining our best talent  

The 9-5 working pattern doesn’t work for everyone, so at Gerald Edelman we recently introduced our Core Hours policy.  

Under the policy we ask that our team are available between the hours of 10:00am-4:00pm, but outside of this, they can make up their time when is best for them. We also have many team members working on their own flexible working arrangements, ensuring that we retain our best talent by offering balance and space to complete work on their own terms, while maintaining consistency internally and for our clients.  

We have also maintained hybrid working, another benefit that helps all our employees achieve a better work-life balance. This flexibility not only boosts our employee satisfaction but also enhances productivity, as individuals can choose environments that best suit their work styles.   

“I truly appreciate the flexibility that GE offers, which has been invaluable since becoming a mother. It has enabled me to continue pursuing my career while still being present for important family moments like school drop-offs and pick-ups. Although juggling everything remains challenging, GE’s flexible working arrangements have made it more manageable. I’ve never felt held back in my career, and I’m grateful for the support that allows me to balance my professional and personal life effectively.” Lauren Kelly, Head of Marketing.  

Supporting women in leadership and business 

Our Women in Business network host regular sessions throughout the year to encourage new connections, have the important conversations and inspire members to try new ventures and share their ideas.  

Recent events we have hosted include: 

• A personal safety seminar with WalkSafe.  
• Several roundtable events on topics including challenging stereotypes, work life balance and how to stand out. 

This International Women’s Day, the group will also be hosting a breakfast for our team on – Advocating for yourself: How to ask for what you want – A practical discussion on negotiation techniques, from salary to project assignments. 

Supporting the advancement of women and girls  

Through our partner charity, London Youth, we support their Good for Girls programme, that offers young women and girls from Black, Asian and/or minority ethnic communities’ access to relevant, holistic early intervention mental health support in trusted grassroots community youth spaces.    

We’ve supported this by:

• Providing health/beauty donations for a residential trip.
• Hosting a personal safety seminar with WalkSafe for the youth workers that support these groups, to pass on relevant personal safety information and advice.
• In April, we will also be hosting an Employability Day in our office to encourage more young women and girls to consider accounting and finance for a future career. 

Next steps 

The road to gender equality will be a continuous journey. As an employer, our role is to listen to our team, act on their feedback and inspire other employers to do the same.  

Together, on International Women’s Day and in the future, we will continue to #AccelerateAction, with the aim of having a positive impact on Our People, Our Clients, Our Community and Our Planet.