Women’s Day Wish: Stop talking, start doing!

Another women’s day is around the corner. We have already started to see company roadshows, women execs talking from different industries, fifty shades of inequality discussions, new women’s day advertising assets, email marketing messages, new hashtags, giving away flowers, and so on. Unless I missed it, I did not see a single manifesto from the private nor public sector that clearly states “how” they plan to achieve gender equality.

As much as I believe there is a good intention in women’s day celebrations and conversations, I find them action deficient; surface level; ad-hoc. An ideal women’s day would start with announcements that clearly state how governments and companies aim to tackle gender inequality, what they plan to achieve this year, and the next three to five years, factoring different underlying reasons.

In this context, I think it’s important to address “underlying reasons” because having equal rights does not translate as equal experience. There are many subtle moments where gender inequality manifests itself and there is no protocol to follow in those occasions. Just to explain those subtle moments, if you as a woman are saying yes to more than two questions below, you have been exposed to subtle gender inequality at some point in your career.

· Have you ever been excluded from meetings and/or conversations by men?

· Have you ever realized decisions — that will affect you — were made at the pub last night when you were not around?

· Have you ever felt like you cannot use your voice because the man in the room is very dominating?

· Have you ever been told what to do by men without asking your opinion despite your full competency on the subject?

· Have you experienced a longer wait for your promotion compared to male counterparts?

· Have you ever been given unrealistic goals considering you have family responsibilities?

· Have you ever witnessed male counterparts get more appreciation and credit by a male leader while working on the same project?

· Have you ever found intel that men in same positions are paid more than you (and HR potentially could not do anything about it)?

· Have you ever been told what to wear, how to look outside of company’s dress codes?

While the list of questions can go on and on, these are probably sufficient to make the point.

Funny enough, the main issue is not even having “yes” answers but rather, not finding any guidance or solution when you address those issues. Your direct report or HR departments see those issues as conflict, not gender inequality; lawyers find those cases weak as you were not explicitly told “you cannot join this meeting because you are a woman”. The bottom line, most women are alone when dealing with this subtle gender inequality and unconscious gender bias. Over time, they develop a way to handle it based on their personality, background, experience (or they just leave) but there is no public or private sector initiative that aims to diminish underlying reasons and/or suggest protocols to protect women who are exposed to them.

Saying all of this, I’m aware of the fact that diminishing a behavior, retraining the human brain, and redefining rules, regulations and law is a generation-long process. For that reason, I think we should stop talking and start creating roadmaps that clearly define what / how / when.

Earlier we hit the road, sooner we arrive to true gender equality.