Please help me make my company's International Women's Day not crap

[KeyserSophie]

I'm working on International Women's Day at my work place. I have managed to get the committee away from a Hallmark vom fest of "appreciating" women while keeping them firmly in their assigned roles (paper flower making anyone?), but the downside is that I now have to basically organise an alternative.

There will be one actual hour long event, which will probably be some sort of (short- 10 mins) film clip followed by a facilitated discussion (whole company invited so not just women) and then we're also planning to have some stuff up on screens around the office/ screensavers etc. over the week. Maybe also something around "He for She".

However, i really need some ideas of good video shorts, quotes, infographics etc that make people think about their own biases - one of my ideas was using some quotes from The Man Who has it All, and I like those things (dont know what they're called- sorry) where you see the person drawing in real time and it tells a story. Outside the main event we wont have sound so it needs to be quotes, pictures or infographics.

Another possibility is a showing of a longer documentary as an early evening event so any suggestions of feature length feminist documentaries would be great- not the body one though as I dont think we can show vaginas in the office

I'm not in the UK so stuff that is broadly applicable rather than being too UK centric would be ideal.

Any help appreciated.

CMOT has some great ideas.

Nothing gets my back up more than when I hear people at work say "we need more part time roles/flexible working/jobshares so that women and mothers can progress here" arrrrgggghhh.

My concern about the NGO and focus on children is that it shys away from acknowledging that equality is an issue for these women, yes, the ones you are looking at here. From those casual comments of 'well, I wouldn't like my wife to do the travelling you do' or 'who's looking after your dc while you're away' or not thinking about roles as to whether they can work from home/in another location/ be a jobshare as default and ensuring all jobs are advertised with the real needs.

Thanks all for your thoughts again

• We wouldn't do something with the NGO for this initiative as the foundation is entirely separate from this, but I just mentioned it as it's a positive that people were very engaged with it.

• Vestal- yes, I see diversity about how well the company reflects the community it is in - so basically if your top layers of management / decision makers are all white straight men, you have an issue unless the company is located in a weird, locked down commune populated entirely by those people. It's about representation. Women are still massively underrepresented.

• CMOT- Yes, agree we're trying to get a local focus- otherwise people can leave with the message of "Things are terrible in India/ China etc, but here everything is fine." And yes, casual sexism/racism/sexualoreientationism (is that a word) and stereotyping is what we're trying to work at addressing. It's helped that we've had some senior management admit mistakes and make changes.

29 Flexible working- yes that used to do my head in. Here, it's still seen as an initiative to increase females in senior roles BUT it's increasingly positioned as the fact that in order for women to advance, men need to parent equally and therefore they need flexibility as well. It's kind of tricky to sell because unless both parents work at the same firm, the flexible working giver doesn't always directly benefit, but.. you know...

I also don't think that women, who make up half of humanity, are a special interest group within a diversity policy.

OK so no one should have campaigned to end apartheid because white people were in the minority and therefore they were/are the special interest group.