International Women's Day

[MadameKali]

Just been sent an invitation for a corporate event to celebrate IWD (to support "gender equality") The entertainment is drag acts. I'm beyond radge at this.

Look forward to the invite to the Black History Month event featuring a black and white minstrel show.

The profits will go towards making a positive difference in the lives of young people. Very admirable, but should it not go to support schemes for young women?

Argh. Can we just give up on international women's day? Please? It's become spit in the face of women day.

We're running a whole month of activity with IWD as our anchor. We'll be profiling our women and our accomplishments and involving men (encouraging them to be allies, etc.). I am heavily influential in shaping what we're doing because I want it to be bloody good for women. I'm sorry it's not going to be like that at your workplace @MadameKali. I am one of the most senior women in the business though - and if it was left to more junior women it would be a woke-tastic extravaganza. Not on my watch.

@DuchessAndThePea I suspect our in-house stuff will be more along the lines of cupcakes with shoes and handbags on them. Maybe somebody will bring in a whole load of kittens! Because that's what ladies like.

Actually I wouldn't be averse to the kitten thing as long as I got to keep them in my office and nobody else was allowed to see them (especially not men because they only like pitbulls)

Is IWD meant to be celebratory?? Does your work place have a non existent pay gap? Is there a reasonable split between the sexes across all levels? Have they had minimal/no incidents of sexual harassment in the workplace? If not then maybe they could actually address things like that rather than pay drag performers to perform at a "celebratory" event.

I do hope you have a chance to give some feedback, anonymous if necessary.

@RoseslnTheHospital is spot on. We don't have a gender pay gap and are addressing other inequalities in other ways so we can be slightly 'fluffy' (@MadameKali no down side to fluffy kittens or puppies as far as I can see) but I'm using IWD to raise the profile of important issues too.

Argh. Can we just give up on international women's day? Please? It's become spit in the face of women day.

It really has.

@RoseslnTheHospital we are too small an organisation to have to report our sex gender pay gap. Only a fifth our directors are women but we do have more female managers than male. Thankfully the bloke who used to act like like a creepy fucker to our young female staff on nights out left. No one ever said anything to him though 🤬 (including me but in my defence, I was out of the workforce for over 10 years and was pretty unsure of myself at that stage)

I'm about to start a new role which has a lot of HR involvement, so I'll have input into stuff behind the scenes. They can have their cupcakes as long as I know that, should the time come, our policies in terms of certain aspects of the EA are watertight.

To be fair, the drag queen stuff is one of our clients it's not actually organised by our firm. I have a very supportive (male) GC director who would understand that this wasn't appropriate.

My old employer once got a bunch of male personal trainers to come and talk to women about how they can get in shape

They can have their cupcakes as long as I know that, should the time come, our policies in terms of certain aspects of the EA are watertight.

Thank you. Worth choosing one's battles, although I fully understand how infuriating this must be. All I could suggest is trying to balance it out with some good quality feminism.

As you know It’s international womans day on Tuesday. Our workplace are doing a newsletter twhich promotes #Breakthebias. Do you have any good quotes I could add along the lines of:

Why do men get to use all the power tools?

Quirky fun stuff.

Thanks in advance

Quirky fun stuff?

So not pointing out the seriousness of sexist discrimination at all. Because why?

So a day set up to highlight sexist discrimination against being female is too uncomfortable until treated with humour or lightness in some workplaces , and in some other workplaces with drag queens.

Yeah? Nah! They wonder why some women just ignore the day altogether.

I've been asked to go into the office on IWD, I think mainly so that we can have a group picture taken to show how amazing our employer is -but let's not mention its gender pay gap- Also to wear blue and yellow to support Ukraine. Double win for the virtue signalling!