More than a day please
In honour of INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY this week, I’m going to have to have a rant about INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY.
First and foremost, we need a lot more than a day please. If we’re ever going to see gender equality in the world, we need to work on it with intention and commitment all day, every day of the year.
Second, it’s not a bad thing to have a day that celebrates women but it is a problem to make International Women’s Day the day we focus on gender equality ‘for our women’. Gender equality is not just a women’s issue. Everyone loses from gender inequality and everyone, all genders, win from equality and diversity. We shouldn’t be doing Women’s Network events that men either don’t join or join because they feel they should, if we don’t have a highly engaged 50% male audience we have got it wrong: we should be doing events intended and designed and delivered for the whole organization.
Speaking of events, the number of people who have told me they have been asked to give International Women’s Day speeches or participate in panels for no fee tells us everything about how most organizations just don’t get it. I’m talking about big, profitable businesses that believe an expert speaker should give their valuable time for free to educate and motivate (and often pacify) their organization. When will these companies finally understand that this isn’t charity, it’s business. Gender equality and diversity drive team performance and business growth and if I were a CEO this would be one of my key business strategies - not a nice to do, one day a year charity event that I don’t want to pay for.
And as for the annual International Women’s Day theme… please make it stop. Why the hell do we need an annual theme?! Surely the theme is clear and simple: Gender Equality. We don’t have it. We’re nowhere near it. We stick with this theme until we change that. We don’t stop til Equality.
If you had an International Women’s Day event for your whole organization, all genders - and paid for it - then a gold star for you (and extras for my amazing clients who did). Now see this day as a great start, get going on making gender equality a business strategy - and let the year round work begin.