Do we still need an International Women’s Day?

Cat Prestipino

International Women’s Day has never sat well with me.

I grew up in a house of boys. I never wanted special treatment because I was the only girl. I was mortified if I was told I couldn’t do something they could do and then proceeded to do it - better than my brothers most of the time.

I am part of a leadership team made up of a majority of women and I have never been discriminated against because of my sex, so why should there be a day to specifically recognise that I am different?

In short ... because I was lucky. My experience is not representative of many of the women out there, particularly those in tech.

This year, International Women’s Day comes shortly after the shocking revelations about the culture at Uber and the treatment of one of its female engineers. While Susan Fowler’s story has sent ripples through Silicon Valley and its international outposts, it’s not uncommon.

Whitney Wolfe, former VP of marketing at Tinder, filed a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit against her fellow co-founders. Ellen Pao sued her former employer, VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers for being passed over for promotion and excluded from meetings because of her gender. Engineer Tina Huang sued Twitter for their promotion process being sexist.

In an effort to combat this “brogramming culture” tech companies started reporting on their employee demographics. But instead of improving the situation, things actually went backwards. Female representation at VC firms dropped from 10% in 1999 to 6% in 2016. There was only 1% growth in female representation in technology companies.

So how do we change this?

It starts right at the beginning. We need more women to chose engineering and technology at school so when they enter the workforce they are the norm, not the unicorn. In Australia, only 16% of people qualified in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are women. We need to encourage more young girls to take up coding, stick with maths through high school and chose engineering at university to ensure there are strong numbers of women entering into this currently male dominated field.

As employers, we need to think about how we make workplaces more flexible for our employees as a whole. One of the reasons often cited that women leave agency or start-up life after having kids is the hours and those that do stay on and work flexibly feel judged. 

See:  AdNews' Melinda Gates on the ‘glaring hole’ in gender diversity

Only when everyone feels their personal lives are valuable will we stop the discrimination against those who have families and especially women who tend to shoulder the lion’s share of child caring and rearing responsibilities.

According to a joint report from Bain & Company and Executive Women, men are twice as likely to have their requests for flexible working rejected - sending the message that men have neither the right or responsibility to be primary carers for their families. But the same time, workplaces which offered flexible work conditions across the board had more productive and happier employees.

Finally, we need events like International Women’s Day to shine a light on where inequality still exists. Too often we do get caught up in our own day-to-day and fail to recognise the failings around us. This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is #beboldforchange and we will need to be bold if we are going to create a world where International Women’s Day is no longer needed.

I have been lucky but until it’s a case of I’m not lucky, I’m the norm, we will still need International Women’s Day.