As you see organisations around the world prepare for International Women's Day (March 8th), you might find two themes fighting for prominence in 2024.
One is "Invest in women: Accelerate Progress"
The other is #InspireInclusion.
One is set by UN Women, the other by... well, we can get into that a little later. But first, let's examine what they mean just a little more critically.
Team Zee Feed
Zee Feed (above) has a list of themes over the last few years, which I'll use here:
2023
- UN Women: DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality
- IWD.com: #EmbraceEquity
2022
- UN Women: Changing Climates: Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow
- IWD.com: #BreakTheBias
2021
- UN Women: Women in Leadership: Achieving Equality in a COVID-19 World
- IWD.com:#ChooseToChallenge
2020
- UN Women: I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights
- IWD.com: #EachForEqual
2019
- UN Women: Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change
- IWD.com: #BalanceforBetter
Overall, the UN Women themes are more specific, they encourage discussion and questions along a certain theme. The IWD.com themes are... look, they're definitely more catchy, there's no denying that. But what are the possible outcomes?
Let's look at this year's themes.
Invest in women: Accelerate Progress
From the UN Women Australia site:
While important progress has been made, women face significant obstacles to achieving equal participation in the economy.
Without equal access to education, employment pathways, financial services and literacy, how can we ever hope to reach gender equality?
What are some of the discussions and outcomes that we might want to see come out of this? I'll go first:
- Are men and women given equal opportunity and access to career paths? To education? To mentorship and sponsorship, and promotions?
- What does our organisation do to help women and men have equitable access to career development? What does this look like? Do we provide equal access to parental leave, so that we're not (by design) removing women from the workplace for longer than men?
- Are we paying superannuation (or retirement contributions, in other countries) to women while they're on parental leave? What about unpaid parental leave?
#InspireInclusion
Here's what the IWD.com site has to say:
The aim of the IWD 2024 #InspireInclusion campaign is to collectively forge a more inclusive world for women.
When women aren't present, we must ask: "If not, why not?"
When women are discriminated against, we must call out poor practice.
When the treatment of women is not equitable, we must take action.
And we must do this each time, every time.
I don't want to come off as cynical, but I think I'm going to; here's why: This elevator pitch, these few sentences sound great, but they leave too much wiggle room for people and organisations to do nothing.
When women aren't present, we must ask: "If not, why not?"
Well yeah, no one invited Sarah to this project meeting because she's not on the project, duh. Or the meeting of Heads of Finance? Well, all the Heads are men, so of course women aren't present.
When women are discriminated against, we must call out poor practice.
Yes. Obviously, yes. But also, what does it mean when you put a job out to market and end up selecting a man? It's not discrimination, because you're just selecting the best candidate for the job, right?
When the treatment of women is not equitable, we must take action.
Who's deciding it's not equitable? The very nature of bias means that we are unlikely to notice things unless they're pointed out to us. Often, we confuse equal treatment with equitable treatment.
And, if you scroll down on that page, you'll come to a list of ways that organisations and groups can #InspireInclusion:
- forging women's economic empowerment
- recruiting, retaining and developing female talent
- supporting women and girls into leadership, decision-making, business and STEM
- designing and building infrastructure meeting the needs of women and girls
- helping women and girls make informed decisions about their health
- involving women and girls in sustainable agriculture and food security
- providing women and girls with access to quality education and training
- elevating women and girl's participation and achievement in sport
- promoting creative and artistic talent of women and girls
- addressing further areas supporting the advancement of women and girls
You know what these things look like to me? A way for every organisation to give themselves a pat on the back, because any organisation that's paying attention to International Women's Day is almost certainly doing one or more of these already.
I'm not saying that these are bad; to the contrary, these things are good things, and important. Organisations should be proud of achievements in these areas. But they're not enough, alone.
The UN Women site doesn't list things that specific corporations could do. And that's different - most corporations can't end poverty, or change world economic systems, or implement gender-responsive financing (though some can).
But that's sort of the point. The UN Women site is both broader and more specific at the same time. It points at issues, and wants to inspire us to solve it. There's a problem with inequality in investments, financing, and economies - let's fix it.
The IWD site is, in my opinion, the much safer option for organisations. You don't run the risk of looking like you're doing nothing, because the very broad and varied list of things you can do is almost the bare minimum you can be doing while also claiming to support gender equality.
The bottom line
I'm not saying that every organisation has to use the UN Women theme or they don't care about gender equality. That's not it. But I'd like for more organisations - really, every organisation - to be aware that, when they're using the IWD.com theme, that the UN Women theme exists. I'd like for the IWD.com theme to bolster and advance the UN Women theme, rather than give organisations an easy out, a nice big box to check.
