Celebrating women for more than 1 day

“Imagine a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination,” reads the International Women’s Day (IWD) website.

And yet it’s clear we haven’t achieved a world free of bias despite the UN’s efforts to highlight the day internationally since 1975.

So, if we haven’t achieved gender equity after almost 50 years later, is one day really enough? No, says most of the organisations across Asia, where there’s a general trend of extending the day to a month and even beyond in an effort to create genuine and lasting change for gender equity.

“International Women’s Day in TCS is celebrated not just on the 8th, but throughout March. And in November, we celebrate International Men’s Day for the whole month too,” said Dwen Hwee, head of HR at Tata Consultancy Services. “We also continue the conversation throughout the year inside and outside the company.”

AT TCS, they use the ‘TCS Ethos’ to actively promote conversations around the various life stages and what that means for the workplace throughout the year. Everything from becoming a parent and returning to work, to menopause and tips for taking families on international assignments is discussed openly.

“This allows us to create a pipeline of women, who are connected, engaged and supported through the life stages of their career,” said Hwee.

At Publicis Groupe and Publicis Sapient, they #embraceequity all year round too through an employee resource group called VivaWomen! The group supports female employees through tailored training and connection opportunities focusing on work that empowers gender equality.

The IWD events at Publicis aim to build on what the company already does to support its female employees. Discussions around how the business can play its part to create genuine change in key societal and workplace issues are used to build a greater understanding of passion and pain points within the organisation, and are then taken into account for future strategies and core policy work.

Education is key

At Publicis Sapient they’ve set up a page on their intranet to promote the resources available to employees for female development and allyship, and it will also host learning and training for people to educate themselves.

At New Relic in Singapore, Liz Moran, director, APJ HR, will facilitate a discussion on ‘Embracing Equity’. The discussion will be livestreamed so employees across the region can participate and join the conversation.

Moran will be joined by managing director of the Sourced Group, Mimi Giraud, and Priyadarshini Sharma who co-authored the book Redefining the Rules, which she describes as “a book written from a desire that equity becomes part of the worlds DNA.” It explores the perspectives of 17 women from around the world as they talk about equity in everything from relationships and sex education, to career advancement and science.

Priscilla Chand, founder of global female-only employment platform, HIRE HER agrees that organisations need to extend the work beyond just one day.

“You genuinely have to build a culture where women and mothers and all human beings feel included, feel heard, feel valued.”

“It's an opportunity to bring women together. And ideally, if you can bring women together and you can genuinely empower and inspire women to take action and be more courageous, in one day, that's awesome but if you’re going to do these days, you really have to think about what you’re trying to gain out of it and make sure you do an amazing job if you’re actually going to do it.”