The sameness of IWD each year shows that little is changing. So what does it take to survive?

There’s a lot of noise out there today celebrating women but companies that don’t both incentivise and penalize executive pay tied to DEI goals are unlikely to be driving systemic change. That’s why I want to focus on what individuals with female bodies can do for themselves to survive and thrive inside the system that wasn’t built for us and isn’t changing fast enough. (My definition of a female body includes anyone who identifies as female even though some of the below relates to biological factors.)

I have felt at odds with my body throughout my career. My body has been objectified, which has dehumanized me and distracted from my skills and abilities. I have been told to, ‘wear a nice dress to meetings’, I’ve walked into a room to have a man in a position of power look me up and down and say ‘legs’, and as I’ve disclosed before, I was both sexually and violently assaulted at work. (Statistically both women of color and trans women suffer from these kinds of issues at a far higher rate than white women.)

Because of this, I intuitively felt that my body gave me a disadvantage every day and even more when I was menstruating. But I also lied to myself - I tried to believe it didn’t affect me, my prospects, my pay… Yet, my body told a different story. Having suffered from trauma in my teens, I had a string of abusive relationships in my 20s that set the backdrop for the first decade of my career. Abuse was normalized at home, so it also became normalized at work. I developed chronic health issues, suffered pain in most of my waking moments and yet put on a brave face - dragging my body through 18 hour working days on top of what she was going through, not looking after her, punishing her for the ways I felt she was letting me down. This story is all too common.

My relationship with my body finally changed when I became pregnant, following a bumpy fertility journey. After nearly losing my baby, me and my body could no longer afford to be at odds with one another. Since then I’ve made it a very intentional part of my professional development to embrace her and learn what we both need to thrive. I wish that I had had this realization earlier in my career.?

So today I’d like to share my main takeaways and reading sources from my own journey to wholeness. If you identify as female, I hope you can take some pragmatic tips for yourself from this list. If you identify as male and want to become a better ally, this reading list is for you too.?

1. Until you overcome your own trauma (which disproportionately impacts those who identify as female), you risk re-enacting it in your life including your work life and accidentally seeking out toxic comfort zones. By learning new ways to understand and regulate trauma, you can break the cycle and set yourself free - Read The Body Knows the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
2. Being an ally is a lifelong pursuit of learning. Once you’ve understood intersectional racial and gender trauma, it falls on you to go deeper to not perpetuate by expressing this awareness as outrage. White/cis outrage perpetuates trauma and creates unsafe work spaces for other people and their bodies - read Why I No Longer Talk to White People about Race by Renni Eddo Lodge, The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye and Nice Racism by Robin DiAngelo
3. Code-switching takes time and energy away from your brilliance. When a job / opportunity is right you will feel it in your body not just in your head - read Burn Out: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski. - (The Body Knows The Score is also helpful for tapping into how you truly feel if this has become disconnected for you.)
4. Women are socialized to not express anger or frustration and even when we don’t, if we challenge the status quo, our actions are more likely to be read as unprofessional or to be tone-policed which is where the tone in which someone speaks is what’s commented on rather than the subject matter. This issue also disproportionately affects Women of Color. Read Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chomali
5. For menstruating women, our cycle can be harnessed as a superpower, not something to cover up, mask or shame. There are times in our cycle when we can have powerfully direct conversations, times when our energy peaks and times when it wanes. Embracing rather than denying this unlocks a new synergy with yourself - Read Period Power by Maisie Hill

Wishing you and your bodies a healthy International Women’s Day.?