A wish for Women's Day
On March 8th 2012, my family and I were living in Italy for my short term work assignment. That’s where I experienced my first Women’s Day or?la festa?della donna. When I found out that there was?la festa?della donna, I called one of my important role models, a Senior Vice President of Technology named Donna, to let her know about her day!
It had been a tough transition to move to Italy, with our daughter who was just 10 months. Learning to navigate motherhood, a developing career and a new country was a lot. As a new mom I felt uncomfortable admitting to peers and managers that I had less bandwidth than before, coupled with massive pangs of guilt for being away from my little girl.??I no longer could count on putting a few extra hours in on an assignment after dinner.?A teething baby sometimes meant that taking on extra assignments could turn an evening into all-nighter.
I am incredibly grateful for women and men mentors that supported me in managing my career as a new parent.??It was among the most challenging experiences of my career and one for which I am grateful. It made me prioritize, learn self-care and focus like never before on what mattered the most for my team.?Since that time, I have thought a lot about the kind of world I want to help build for my daughter.
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I now recognize that one of the greatest challenges to women reaching parity levels in senior positions is what some researchers call “a gender penalty for bearing children” or others have referenced as the “Nappy Valley Plateau” that cause women to “miss out on opportunities for promotion and leadership roles.?There is a lot that can be done in some countries and corporations to minimize this child bearing penalty.??It is a tremendous loss of human capital, if we cannot find ways to remove this penalty.??I am committed to finding ways to address these challenges in the corporate world, with the hope that such challenges will no longer exist, if and when?our daughter decides to be a mom.
After being in Italy for my first women’s day, I will always associate Women's Day with men from my office in Florence?rushing to buy their colleagues, wives, mothers and sisters yellow mimosa flowers to celebrate them. I was?awe struck that day at the strength and meaningfulness?of those networks and bonds. We have lots of allies that want to build a more equitable future for their families and colleagues. Buona festa della donna! #EveryWoman #IWD2020
Passionate about driving business outcomes for big data and AI. Ex-AWS. Ex-Snowflake. Account Executive at Qumulo.
9 个月Susan, thanks for sharing!
Managing Director | Technical Presales, New Business Development
10 个月Susan, thanks for sharing!
DEI Advisor | Writing a book | Ex Vice President at leap.club | Co-founder, The Window Project | Ex Global Marketing, Honeywell
5 年Thank you for sharing your story. I am now in the same place you were professionally in 2012 and your story motivates me to keep pushing forward. I wish more women show the strength to talk about such struggles so we can all come together and genuinely help each other through these phases.
Leveraging technology for a sustainable impact | Board Member
5 年Dear Susan P., until i left Algeria, i never thought that celebrating Women's day might be considered? demeaning and offending to women- as i heard it from some women since then- . Different views, that i have to repect, and i can somehow understand from where they are coming from, yet, the numbers speak the truth ( most ofthe time )-? ?From the world economic forum : 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 are at a critical time, we have the power to reach the gender parity faster and on? global scale- what we only need is to stop thinking about ourselves? as individuals or as part of a specific country- if it is better where we are then it is ok-? what about the rest of the Women ! girls who still can not go to school, moms who are working night and day and still not able to provide for their family... - Our duty is toward all Women in the world? NOW and the generations to come-?