It ought to be troubling that only one of the 365 days in any given year is dedicated to celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. International Women’s Day, which is marked in two weeks’ time on March 8, is also a clarion call every year for accelerating women’s equality.
Human history is one long story of women’s erasure from the story of our species, either stifled and blocked, or retrospectively removed. International Women’s Day – now going strong for more than a century, and gathering more traction every year – is, no doubt, an important corrective. It creates space for women’s voices, opinions and stories. Social media platforms, businesses, brands, NGOs, governments (the list is very long) fall over themselves to secure female speakers and female takeovers of social media feeds, to curate all female panels and to apply a female lens on the biggest topics of the day.
Since these are all woefully lacking in our normal day to day social discourse, the occasion does assume importance. For it clears space for women who aren’t normally heard. It forces discussion of significant issues that are too often ignored. It highlights female experts normally un-sought and unheard.
But what about the rest of the year? Those times when women are actually working, training, building their expertise, doing the legwork? The times that they are routinely excluded, doors shut, contracts rejected, old boys’ networks shut out of, and their ideas and work diminished? What are we doing about all those other days?
Which is why I’m writing this piece two weeks ahead of International Women’s Day and not on the day itself: precisely to challenge the fact that these important things gain attention mostly on that one day. This article is your friendly reminder that women experts, speakers, thinkers, consultants, leaders, creatives, journalists, activists, trailblazers (again, the list is long) are available the other 364 days of the year as well. Women aren’t supposed to be wheeled out one day of the year as a tokenistic exercise, given gold stickers and then packed away again until the following year.
We can see the consequences of this all around us.
At the Munich Security Conference last week, chief executives gathered together for a lunch event. A photo emerged of the occasion. Seated around a long table, the line of participants on either side stretched into the far horizon. The entire room was populated by middle-aged white men. There’s obviously nothing wrong with middle-aged white men. But what is wrong is that this room full of influential people who hold power and decision-making in their hands was a telling moment of homogeneity. That’s not what the actual world looks like. That’s not where the world’s full talent and potential lies.
Homogeneity has been shown over and over again to lead to poor decision-making and poor outcomes. Statistically – unless one wants to argue that there is something inherently superior about middle-aged white men – if we were to have a room full of a cross section of talents, it would be a much richer mix of people. And that would include a room half of which will be occupied by women.
It became rather fashionable in the earlier part of this century to tell women to "lean in" to the table. But what if you’re not at the table. "Pull up a chair" is the usual trite answer. Well, what if you can’t even get in the room? The chief executives' lunch photo taken in Munich is the perfect depiction of this problem.
While it’s an easy occasion to single out, it’s not a singular example. This happens all day, every day in board rooms, meeting rooms, corridors, Zoom calls and Teams meetings. From living rooms, to village elder gatherings, to the highest courts in the land.
The excuses often given for not having more women involved is that they are hard to find, or hard to persuade. Well, the fact that International Women’s Day is bursting with talented women just goes to show it simply isn’t true. But why wait for a special day to do it, and one – if we’re honest – that sometimes feels performative rather than genuine? If it can be done on March 8, it can be done any day of the year.
What the flourishing of women in our public space on that day also shows is something even more deep-rooted that needs to be addressed. Not simply that women’s expertise and presence need to be integrated, but that the expertise and time need to be properly compensated. Too often women are expected to turn up on the day and offer their time and expertise for free, or for a token amount. That’s no different to the rest of the year when women face the gender pay gap, or are expected to work for free.
As International Women’s Day looms ahead of us, it absolutely is important to get more women onto centre stage. But it should be not just one day, but the first day of another 364. We’ve got two weeks to start making it happen.
