Happy International Women’s Day 2023! #EmbraceEquity.

This year’s theme is all about embracing equality and equity. While progress has been made in recent years, there is still a long way to go in achieving true gender equality, and this year’s theme highlights the need to embrace equity to achieve this goal.

Embracing equity means recognising that different groups of people face different barriers and challenges, and taking action to ensure that everyone has the same opportunities to succeed. When it comes to gender equality, this means acknowledging the unique challenges that women face and taking steps to address them.

One of the important ways to embrace equity is to address the gender pay gap. Women still earn less than men on average, and this gap is even wider for women of colour. To address this issue, companies can conduct regular pay audits to identify any discrepancies and take action to close the gap. HR can help with this. ?Additionally, companies can provide more flexible work arrangements, parental support and wellbeing policies to engage women and develop their workplace culture, whilst still managing outcomes and performance driven results.

Another way to embrace equity is to address the lack of women in leadership positions, including the board room and providing encouragement for women to set up their own business. Some positive statistics, women entrepreneurs, create a record number of UK Companies in 2022, finds the Rose Review. Female-led Companies represent one-fifth of all businesses in the UK in 2022, up from 16% in 2018. However, women are still vastly underrepresented in executive and board positions, whilst the number of women in power has grown slowly, with the fastest growth coming in the past 15 years. At the beginning of 2023, there were 15 countries led by women. However, there have never been more than 17 women in these positions of power in a single year, which is less than 10% of the number of men who have held these positions (as of today, there are 193 UN member states) (source Statista 2023). This lack of representation can perpetuate gender bias, discrimination and limit innovation. Companies can work to address this by implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives, such as mentoring/coaching programmes, leadership and bias training.

It's important to recognise the unique challenges faced by women in different parts of the world. Women in developing countries may face even greater barriers to education, healthcare and employment. International women’s day is a time for reflection and action.

International Women’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate the progress, that has been made in achieving gender equality, but it’s also a reminder that there is still much work to be done. Embracing equity means taking tangible actions to address the unique challenges that women face and working to create a country and world where everyone has opportunities to succeed.

How will I spend International Women’s Day? I’ve found the time to attend a private event this afternoon, with other inspiring women to celebrate all our achievements.

So, let’s #embraceequity and work together to achieve equality and support other women.

Samantha Hulson, Birch-HR

Contact Birch HR if you wish to discuss any training, coaching and wellbeing initiatives.

#iwd2023?#womeninbusiness?#womeninleadership?#supportingwomen?