IWD 2023 and the Battle for Equity: How Women Are Coming Together to Drive Change

The theme of International Women’s Day 2023 is ‘embrace equity.’ This reflects on what equity means for women in the workforce and future generations of female leaders. However, the key to embracing equity is by breaking down a critical conjecture between equity and equality, two interchangeable terms with broadly different impacts. Simply put, it is not enough to have female participation, there needs to be a level playing field.

In the world of work, access is not enough. There needs to be an understanding and a mechanism in place to ensure that individual circumstances, resources, and opportunities are aligned to reach an equal outcome. 

In looking at the data, the need for a new outcome-based reality is clear. At the Global Forum for Women Leaders in November, Shelley Zalis, CEO and founder of The Female Quotient highlighted the scale of challenges faced by women by comparing it with future societal predictions. “By 2040, the global auto industry will produce only electric cars. By 2050, the world is expected to fully eradicate Malaria. By 2069, every person on earth will have internet access.” However, it is estimated to take 132 years to close the gender gap. This is due to a quagmire of multigenerational, multifaceted, and systemic social and cultural bias which takes time and a huge commitment to resolve.

However, the public intention has never been stronger for women. There is growing rhetoric and hardened realization that female leadership has a positive impact on a business’s bottom line. Concurrently is a broad realization that intention is not enough, what is needed is action.

Change in the shape of a unicorn:

For many female leaders, this has created a new intersection in what has been a muddled battle for gender equality. The response has been inspiring. For perhaps the first time, women are looking not to organizations and institutions for answers, but to each other. Women at all levels and across industries are coming together in understanding the vital role the female community and networks play in bringing about change.

The fast rise of women’s professional networks and forums are a testament to this. For example, the rapid rise of ‘chief’ to unicorn status in 2022 marks the fastest growth of a female-founded, venture-backed U.S. tech start-up from launch date to a billion-dollar valuation in history. This is a perfect example of women coming together in the spirit of empowerment, allyship and centering perspectives to create change. In the fight for equality and the glaring discrepancy of equity, women are realizing the most crucial step is to build their own foundation, by coming together. 

Breaking down boundaries:

Research from Harvard Business Review found that women who build a well-connected network of female peers are more likely to land higher-paid positions with greater authority. However, for women, networking has never been in the form of golf outings and breaking into the ‘boys club’ per se. 

In forming close connections with other women outside their core colleagues and organization, women can gain a broader perspective, break down any organizational bias and discuss unique problems. This is crucial for women who share a mutual understanding of problems attributable to gender and lived experience. In finding a way to channel that shared perspective into action, regardless of an organization or industry, women can create a circle of support to shape their own outcomes.

Making it personal:

Mentorship and coaching have long been celebrated as a successful approach to career advancement. However, these programs are often executed within a formal organizational structure. Whilst these remain hugely important, women are creating deeper, unrefined support structures in the way of personal advisory boards. For members of women’s private network chief with 12,000 members across 8500 companies, the assignment of each member to a ‘core’ group forms the backbone of membership. 

These are hyper-curated peer groups, facilitated by an executive coach, which allow women to discuss challenges and goals in a raw setting and have a group of peers provide a mixture of advisory, coaching and moral support. The benefit of this is that it can be as personal, and candid, as required and allows women to share in a non-judgemental setting that will have no impact whatsoever on their professional persona and conversations are had in a setting completely removed from their role and organization.

The battle for gender equality and equity is entering a new realm. There has been a wave of advocacy for gender equality at work. From publicized data on the gender pay gap and public commitments by governments and corporations to a swell of media coverage around the benefits of female leadership. There is a growing body of evidence showing that companies with a balance of female executives perform better.

However, the importance of tangible equitable based outcomes is key to success. Empowering women and breaking down barriers is a team effort. Through mentorship, coaching, allyship and peer support women can create spaces to curate a circle of support, and, in essence, create a foundation for women leaders to stand on.