The International Day of Women
Yesterday, Monday the 8th of March was International Women’s Day. It is a global day of celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality. IWD has occurred for well over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people. Today, IWD collectively belongs to all women everywhere. Although women have come a long way since, as professionals they continue to face biased expectations at work and at home.
For IWD, ABC news published a piece on How much ‘invisible work’ are you doing each week? Imagine if you were to outsource all the hours you spend working in the home. What is your time “off the clock” really worth? Fill out the short form and this article will show you how your contributions to the household compare to the Australian average and who is doing the most unpaid labour. It is another reminder that women who stay home to look after the family lose on superannuation contributions, or usually select to take a lower paid position that offers flexibility, and how both these things contribute to lower financial stability later in life for women.
McKinsey and Company’s 2020 report on Women in the Workplace covers how COVID-19 has disrupted the workplace in ways we’ve never seen before and its effects on women’s employment prospects. It highlights how companies need to address the challenges women face, and especially support Black women. It also offers solutions for companies to build a more equal workplace, to prevent millions of women from leaving their jobs. The report suggests six key areas companies should focus to make a change, for example: make work more sustainable, reset norms around flexibility, reconsider performance reviews, take steps to minimise gender bias, adjust policies to better support women, and strengthen employee communication. More locally, the excellent Project F tweeted their three preferred actions under the hashtag: #ChooseToChallenge: https://twitter.com/ProjectF_au/status/1368752381148557313?s=20, which in short are: train your managers to manage people based on outcomes, introduce pay transparency, and take responsibility for creating a safe environment.
There is a lot of work to do before we can be satisfied with the beginnings of gender parity in our industry, but with the rapid changes in economics, politics, environment and digital space, there are many opportunities for women to excel their careers in STEM and we are seeing more global companies embracing women in technology.
We mentioned GirlGeekAcademy in last month’s newsletter whose mission is to teach one million women technology skills by 2025. The five female founders ran the first #SheHacks for International Women’s Day in 2014 and have now taught over 1,000 teachers to code, inspired 12,000 kids to learn STEM, and sold 32,000 books in Australia. Our own Sarah (who leads sales and marketing) has been inspired to start her own geek journey by learning how to code in her spare time. Yippee!
Be sure to put your purple on this week to show your support for women around the world and for those close to your heart 💜.