#beyondcupcakes

In 2019 the Australian Women in STEM Decadal Plan was released, counting just 8% of women as CEOs and Heads of Business in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. 

Last year on 6 March Kylie Ahern and I hosted a lunch in Sydney for 40 women working across the STEM sector. We had just finished meeting (over lunch!) with over 300 women from around Australia in the preceding 18 months, witnessing connections and networks flourish. Advice extolled and accepted, amplification of initiatives that were discovered and resonated, pay rises achieved, board memberships found - an amazing period of action. 

And then the world changed for us all.

But it changed more for women. I won’t recount the evidence for that - it’s well documented - but change it did. Men and women alike felt the change and worried about what it would mean for women, and for diversity and inclusion more broadly. 

What might get ‘undone’? Would all that work on diversity, equality, equity and inclusion - so central to strategy and organisational culture - now be considered ‘nice to have’.

As we have learnt, uncertainty from a global pandemic can do that - it can recast priorities such that important pillars just weeks before get moved down the hierarchy of needs because we are in survival mode. 

But importantly, those pillars did not get lost or disappear. The efforts that had gone into them for decades prior had strong enough foundations that there were enough voices and hands going up to say - 'Hey, don't forget this in the uncertainty'. 

This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is "Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world". This is the right theme. It speaks to the reality of the shifts brought about by the pandemic. It speaks to an objective. It speaks to future. Read further than the slogan and there’s a timeframe attached to this.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #5 is for gender equality by 2030, yet according to the World Economic Forum, we will not reach equality for another 99.5 years. UN Women Australia is seeking to push women’s equality to the top of the agenda, accelerating efforts s to do 100 year’s of work in 10. 

That’s a lot of work, a lot of action, and not work that one gender gets to put the shoulder to alone.

#IWD is about action.

#IWD is beyond flowers and cupcakes.

#IWD is beyond lunch!

This campaign is decades old - officially recognised by the United Nations in 1977, with a history that is traced back to over 100 years ago. Action by people for people. If cupcakes are the way to get people together, fantastic, but use that vehicle to make something happen.

Yesterday - almost a year to the day from our last in-person event we gathered again, and we did what we always do. We asked the people present to do - at minimum - one thing as a result of sharing stories - for someone they met at lunch. A follow up meeting, another lunch, help with a CV, connecting someone to a helpful network.

At minimum, just one thing.

In 10 years that’s a lot of ‘just one things’ - we suggest you start writing yours down.

Then, just do them.

#beyondcupcakes - thanks to Lisa Harvey-Smith, Australia's Women in STEM Ambassador