Happy International Women’s Day!

This time of year I often hear people say "but why do you need to celebrate international women's day?" and "why don't we celebrate international men's day?"

The simple answer to both questions is that - WE DO! International Men's day is celebrated annually on 19th November.

Google & Twitter Trends shows that on and around March 8th (International Women's Day) is the most popular time people talk about...... International Men’s Day. Almost twice as many people 'Google' or search for it today compared to November 19th – the actual date it’s celebrated.

This for me implies that rather than IWD coming from a place of education and openness, as it’s intended, it comes from a place of bitterness and contempt. We need to make sure we treat this day as a good opportunity to reflect on progress, discuss key challenges and highlight opportunities to make further improvements.

To foster real change and to achieve complete equality between male and female employees I suggest the following actions:

Embrace the reality of the situation.

Despite decades of progress, there’s still a great deal of inequality in workplaces across the country. Whilst we have the legislation in place with the Equality Act (2010), statistic still indicates there are still issues of inequality at work;

• Gender Pay Gap - 17.3% (Women paid less than men)

• Leadership - 23.7% (Women Chief Executives and Senior Officials)

• Part-Time - 40% (Women working part-time, compared to 13% of Men working part-time)

• Harassment - 37% (Women how have experienced harassment at work in the last 12 months)

This data shows that there is still a gap. The finding of the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, reveals that gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years meaning None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children.

If we embrace this reality, we might actually be able to make significant changes and leave a positive legacy behind for our children to benefit from!

Avoid being part of the problem

Highlighting the gender gap data is not enough, the figures only tell us if there’s a problem. The real solution is the interpretation of the data, the identification of the causes of the gap, and the action taken to address those.

Reasons for non-engagement could be;

1. Lack of interest - feeling like gender equality isn’t business-critical

2. Ignorance - a perception that gender bias doesn’t exist in the workplace

3. Fear - saying the wrong thing or losing out

If we all strive to create an environment free of conscious and unconscious bias, we can as a collective get to the ideal sooner rather than later.

Take action

There is a danger that IWD is becoming more of a corporate day for promotional activity rather than an occasion to promote women's equality. Companies need to take action to help close the gap further by shifting individual behavior, committing to inclusive policies, and using their influence to shape new social norms.

To really drive meaningful change I believe we should take the following three actions to close the gap;

Improve family-friendly policies such as enhanced maternity/parental leave and increased child care funding.

Increase the number of women in high-level decision-making positions.

Make it a legal requirement to pay men and women the same for jobs of equal value.

Making a more equal world is down to us all - every. single. individual.

So, what can YOU do to promote equality, and make this a more equal world?