Next International Women's Day make a difference
International Women's day, 8th of March, has come and gone and its, in my opinion, been a massive missed opportunity:
- There wasn't action taken!
- There wasn't enough difference made
- And little credit, through action, was paid to the success of great people.
In the majority of cases, all I saw we did was take note of the day!
This isn’t going to be a long post or one padded with learnings, it is purely aimed at trying to state a case for a change in behaviour and generate noise. I fully expect readers to disagree with parts of or all of the content, potentially be bruised by statements, I don't care, please just do something different next year.
International Women's Day was an excellent opportunity to use the spotlight on the day to make a change for a Fair, Reasonable and Equitable workplace. Although companies seemed to favour having cups of tea, breakfasts, putting on lunches, putting on panels of women talking to happily employed people regarding their success, they wrote articles on their successful women, one Melbourne organisation asked women to bake cakes at home and bring them into work? - So what did those actions achieve? They didn't help the world, they just patted ourselves on the back, made ourselves feel good and marketed companies brand!
However, women still don’t hold a fair share of senior roles, they still struggle to build careers, they work in restricted environments, they continue to be paid less than their male colleagues, still appear to be retiring with low superannuation funds, are treated as objects and the list goes on! So how did the actions of the day help solve any of those issues? In the majority of actions I saw, all we did was patted ourselves on the back for being unsuccessful!
Next year on International Women's day do something that makes or forces a change, even if its small. Favour action over celebration! Seize the day, change peoples perceptions, highlight issues, put programs in place and then market that!
- If you are going to put a panel of people together then don't have it at your company, take it to a school, go to a university, go somewhere where that panel will inspire people who need to be encouraged/supported/inspired.
- Mark the day with a company hack to solve a Diversity issue.
- Take the money you would spend on Tea, Cakes, heart starting breakfasts or a company celebration and use that money to sponsor a woman in a career. How about put the money to women's salaries in your company!
- Use the day to announce a company initiative which makes a change.
- How about you ask the men in the company to bake some cakes - although that could be a disaster!
So please next year use the day to make a change, don't pat yourselves on the back for failing to solve the gender equality/equity issues which are prevalent in today's world.