Happy International Women’s Day!

I’d like to take a minute to appreciate the progress society has made with/for women and recognize the journey ahead.?

The expectations and possibilities for women has evolved quickly in just two generations within my own family from my mother (b. 1935) to me (b. 1970) to my two daughters (b. early 2000s).?It still amazes me that my mother didn’t have the rights to having her own credit card until 1974 - and now Taylor Swift or Beyoncé could be their own bank! And it is remarkable that from the 1950s to 1990s to now, the percent of women in business school was 0%, ~30% and now ~50%.?

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate this evolution and can see women role models in leadership positions across academics, politics and business. But I think an equally exciting development is the recognition that being a woman is not one expectation with a singular destination. Looking ahead, progress will move beyond the obvious rights to financial freedom or career choices to recognition of inclusion and diversity as the goal.

First, progress for women will continue to be a team sport.?My sense of belonging and inclusion started with a dad who didn’t express any limits for me and all my male professors who had the same expectations for me as the rest of the majority male engineering majors.?To my husband who said to me the week before our wedding, “if it were me, I wouldn’t want to change my last name” (even though I had already changed my gmail account name).?And because my career has been in manufacturing, all of my bosses and mentors have been men and the majority of my colleagues and team members have been and are men.? So recognizing women is also recognizing to all the men in women’s lives.?In other words, International Women’s Day is not International Anti-Men’s Day.

Second, women are not all the same.?I like to think of the differences between the genders like two overlapping bell curves which have different averages but similar distributions. So on average, “women are more … (name a female stereotype)“ and on average, “men are more … (name a male stereotype) “ but there are plenty of people on either side of the P25 and P75 marks. As an example, on my team, the ladies spend more time getting ready in the morning and the guys generally don’t worry about what they wear; but the person on my team with the highest EQ is a man and the person who has the most competitive personality is a woman.? So in celebrating women today, we can celebrate diversity itself – first and foremost, all individuals are unique and we don’t need to make assumptions about a person based on gender or other dimensions.?? Women have freedom of expression personally in their choice of partner, marital status, whether to have a family, how much to lean into their career or not, which sports to play, etc. – and for every choice, the correct reaction is “you go, girl!”

So why celebrate International Women’s Day if there has been a lot of progress and the goal is individuality not stereotypes? Because the progress and lack of bias/assumptions is not the experience for all woman, not here in North America and especially not globally.?There are whole societies that don’t let women drive or go to school as just two examples.?So please do celebrate International Women’s Day loudly as a beacon for all people towards continued progress in inclusion and diversity.

All the best,

Ann O'Hara, President Huhtamaki North America

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