He says, she says: Your female employees still don’t feel like they belong at work

The pandemic forced 2.3 million women out of the workforce — but now that they’re ready to come back, this new workplace reality isn’t very promising.

In spite of vocal efforts by some companies to create more equitable workplaces, women were 23% less likely than men to say their needs were being met by their company's DEI efforts and only 22% of women reported a strong sense of belonging in the workplace, compared to 31% of men, according to the 2021 Culture Report from Achievers Workforce Institute.

So while employers say they’re putting the work in, there’s still a long way to go, according to Achievers’ chief workforce scientist Natalie Baumgartner.

“It's unfortunately not surprising,” she says. “But it was really pretty striking to see it in this context.”

Read More: This one critical benefit can keep women in the workforce

In order to build a diverse workplace, employers need to make underserved populations feel valued and heard But women aren’t comfortable sharing their feelings about a workplace that isn’t working for them, the report found.

Women were 25% less likely to say they felt comfortable sharing a dissenting opinion in the office — which may stem from the fact that they are 20% less likely than their male counterparts to say that their identity and background is valued at work.

“There is this big disparity between how the employees are feeling about how their employers are meeting their needs around DEI, versus what HR leaders think they are providing,” Baumgartner says.

This continued disparity is most likely driven by years of outdated views on womens’ roles at work and at home, according to Baumgartner. Historically, women were made to feel like household roles — such as parenting — were things to be kept separate from their life at the office and under wraps.In the wake of the pandemic, that same mentality is making that pressure significantly worse.

As of April, 2021, 4.5 million women were still out of work, compared to 3.7 million men, and another 165,000 women dropped out of the workforce altogether, according to Labor Department data. The reasons behind their departures and slow market re-entry include ongoing caregiving responsibilities, uneven school reopenings and unreliable access to affordable child care that has made economic recovery for women especially difficult.

Read More: Women need a voice in post-pandemic recovery

But if companies are publicly dedicating time and resources towards DEI efforts and acknowledging that there’s a gender disparity, why has the problem not been resolved? Because when DEI efforts are being made to tackle so many different facets — like race, ability and sexual orientation — it’s easy for one to fall through the cracks.

“I'm not making a comparison between the importance of gender versus other demographic variables like race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or ability,” she says. “But I would say that I think gender has probably taken a little bit of a backseat and conversations aren't happening as much as it perhaps was at one time.”

Employers don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to helping women in the workplace: instead of assuming female employees are satisfied with your efforts, just ask them.

“Ask, ‘What can I do now? Or tomorrow or next week,’” she says. “‘What do you need that we're not providing to close that gap?’ Pull down those barriers in terms of how you're communicating.”