March is upon us and so that means it’s time to mark International Women’s Day. What’s the big deal? Why exactly do we mark this occasion? Well, it has a dual purpose. One of these is to highlight the amazing achievements of women from across the globe, and celebrate our individual and joint successes. The other is as a call to action to truly recognise women and to establish processes and procedures that truly support this. While things have definitely come a long way since this day was first observed in 1911, there’s still more to be done. The fact that things like the gender pay gap (currently at 14.9% according to TUC) are still prevalent demonstrate that focused proactivity towards gender equality is necessary. International Women’s Day, therefore, acts as an annual reminder that we need to continue striving towards a more inclusive, equitable, and fair world.
This year’s theme is #EmbraceEquity. You may be asking why ‘equity’ and not ‘equality’? Let’s take a quick look at the definitions to see why the former is so important. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, equality refers to “the right of different groups of people to have a similar social position and receive the same treatment”. On the other hand, equity is “the situation in which everyone is treated fairly according to their needs and no group of people is given special treatment”. Equality is great and creates a level playing field, however, is this always the right or appropriate approach? Sometimes, we need to go beyond the level playing field and provide equitable opportunities to facilitate equality; this sentiment is captured perfectly by #EmbraceEquity.
At Ancoris, we take International Women’s Day and what it stands for seriously – 365 days a year. We’re really proud to have a truly gender-diverse workforce with women represented across all of our teams – from data and software engineers, to sales and marketing, to finance, and across all levels of the business. Hopefully this sort of representation will go some way to inspiring more girls and women to explore careers in STEM (if they wish to).
Although what we do is ultimately one drop in the ocean, we are still keen to do what we can. After all, several drops come together to form an ocean. The contributions of both our female colleagues and other women around the world are amazing and we want to shout about them. We are privileged to be in a position where we can more easily raise our voices about things that need to be addressed, and so we will do just that. Hopefully along the way, we can contribute to empowering others who don't feel they can speak out about issues that women still face today.
In the meantime, let’s continue to push towards the gender-equal world-to-be and embrace some of that equity – happy International Women’s Day!