I have seen various arguments for and against International Women’s Day for a long time. The big problem is most of them on both sides are actually right.
It can be viewed as mere tokenism and an opportunity for virtue signalling. It can be true that it actually plays little part in raising the profile of women in industry or importantly helping to gain more freedom for women some countries.
Clearly for some sticking out a post on International Women’s Day simply ticks a box, they feel good about themselves that they have demonstrated to the world that they care, without doing anything positive to drive change.
However, while we would like everyone to treat women with respect and equity the world over all the time, this is simply not happening.
Take the cyber security industry as an example. Women are still woefully underrepresented, particularly in technical roles. And despite lots of really good efforts to change things, women working in the industry still come across occasions where it feels like an ‘old boys club’ that they are by virtue of their gender only, excluded from.
I remember once being told by a colleague to remove reference to the ‘old boys club’ in a document because in his opinion it was not at all like that. It was in fact a very inclusive industry. Thankfully I was able to quickly persuade him that as part of the club himself it was hard for him to see the issues and the reference remained.
So, when it comes to initiatives like IWD, I tend to sit on the side of the fence that says it is still important to find this time to highlight the issues, push people into thinking about them, identify the problems still exist, see great role models speaking out, see women and advocates of diversity and inclusion being promoted at events and in publications and so on.
Of course, this should just be happening all the time and there are some amazing examples of best practice, but the simple fact is it isn’t. For me it is worth giving some people who don’t do the right thing all the time an opportunity for virtue signalling, on the off chance that even a single person, or entity, will change the way it thinks and does.
