International Women's Day: Stop pretending, start acting!

Gender parity has increasingly become a buzzword in the last few years and has started a good debate on the realities in the 21st century. At the same time, it has been used by companies, individuals and of course the media for marketing and PR reasons. In my LinkedIn Feed I am seeing posts like this every day. It can be something like “I am hiring 80% women” posted by a male founder or “We included gender equality in our company values” by a large corporation, the reality in those companies often looks very different. Another amazing phenomenon are headlines like “XYZ Inc. just named a female CEO”. Oh my God, groundbreaking. Every time I see posts like this, my stomach is flipping. Why? Because it depicts women as “really” being the weaker gender. While it is true that a small percentage of women fill CEO-positions or enjoy equal salaries, I still think that stigmatizing women as some kind of charity case is not helping. The level where gender equality is at today when looking at the world, is terrifying. The World Economic Forum just released a new report on the subject with the following result: None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children. That’s the sobering finding of the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which reveals that gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years.

We have a come a very long way, but we are still so far away from true equality. My plea for this years’ Women’s Day to PR and comms departments, founders, women in executive positions and women employees that are used as poster children: Please do not hijack Women’s day for fem-washing. Use it to reflect on how to incorporate the right culture and mindset that empowers EVERYONE (all genders, all nationalities and cultures, all ages). We need to create a culture that values and respects and idealizes women as much as men. Let’s work towards a future in which we will not need a day like this anymore.