#ChooseToChallenge100: Meet our 100 incredible women choosing to challenge gender bias & inequality this International Women’s Day

Meet WeAreTheCity & WeAreTechWomen’s 100 incredible women, choosing to challenge gender bias and inequality this International Women’s Day.

This year will see the celebration of the 110th International Women’s Day.

IWD was first celebrated as an official international day on 19 March 1911. Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland were among the first countries outside of the US to mark the day. In 1975, during the International Women’s Year, the United Nations began celebrating 8 March as International Women’s Day. Since 1996, International Women’s Day has focused on annual themes that enables supporters to unite for gender equality. This year’s theme is Choose to Challenge.

As part of our #ChooseToChallenge100 campaign, WeAreTheCity and WeAreTechWomen asked 100 women to share their stories as to how and why they choose to challenge. Our campaign includes stories of challenge from CEO’s, Founders, Campaigners, Politicians, Charities and thought leaders, including June Sarpong OBE; Andrea McLean, Helen Pankhurst CBE; Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu; Jess Phillips; Sophie Walker, Rosie Nixon; June Angelides CBE; and Deborah James.

We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. Never has there been a more important year for us to choose to challenge. The impact of Covid has been incredibly hard on women, bearing the brunt of extra childcare, losing jobs in greater numbers than men, being on the short end of governments support, especially for new mothers. The list goes on!

We also saw all gender pay gap reporting suspended in 2020, which was one of the only measurements of success that we had. A recent article in The Guardian cites that the impact of the pandemic could mean that we are at risk of putting 50 years of progress into reverse. Our voices need to be heard, and what better day to start to raise our collective voices than International Women’s Day.

Each day we will share the stories of three incredible women on our social media channels, culminating in one every hour on the 8th March.

We will also feature a number of these incredible women at our IWD event on 5th March – You can book your place here.

More details here to see our campaign and to see the videos and messages of support, visit here