Not a Typical Women’s Day

Every start of the year, my inbox starts getting busy with emails on ideas to celebrate International Women’s Day. Options range from the usual flower, chocolate, and decorations to the occasional sessions on wellbeing (health or financial) or self-defense. Most women leaders complain about busy calendars because of the number of talks/webinars and the interest to hear their journey and story in the month of March.

I have also gone through a range of women’s reactions on what they expect on Women’s Day. Vote seems to be still split of wanting to be made to feel special on this day to the conscious demand to be treated with equity all year round and not just one day. Some still want the flowers and chocolates and some feel the day is not required anymore.  

Women’s day today has more emotions attached to it than when I started working. So, then the question remains – how do we celebrate women’s day? Does it hold the same relevance it held back in the days?

This day has always served as a reminder of the women’s movement with a history that has led to the progress we have made today. We stand on the shoulders of our generations before who made it possible for me to have a job today and dream of being economically independent – a woman free to make her life choices and contribute to her family's. A woman who is also free to participate socially and be heard as an equal in the societal or political context.

There is a need to move the dialogue beyond tokenism. Yes, we all know you are grateful for the women in your lives but how are you empowering them is what we need to work on. Can we spend that money on pay parity exercises or running study on reasons why women continue to move out of the system despite support on leave or flexibility, daycare, supportive workplace policies etc.

If I had to do one thing all year along to add to this movement, it will be:

Talk Aspiration – Sounds simple? Maybe it isn’t.  We work with a lot of first-generation working women whose aspiration might be to start with economic independence. Not everyone aspires to break that glass ceiling or get to the CXO level title. There is a huge limiting belief that prohibits us from dreaming audaciously. One of the toughest exercises with women is to get them to write down their aspiration. Plenty of research point towards the power of writing down your dreams and aspirations as a commitment to what you want achieve. Despite that we are unsure if we want to write it down, are worried of getting judged for thinking audaciously, or that inner critic kicks in big time asking us to be practical of what we can really be.

Talking about aspirations trust me is one of the toughest conversations. To make them believe there is more to it and they can do more and be more is one of the most fruitful conversation you will have with your women. Each leader/manager needs to do this and go till the last mile if we really need to inspire women to dream more.

In fact, not just women in our offices, but at home – our sisters, moms, in laws, I feel aspiration needs to be spoken about everywhere because these conversations might surprise you on what the women may want to do. Potential is everywhere. It is so good to see so many women entrepreneurs on Instagram and social media platforms who are contributing to the economy by building their own home-grown businesses.  

There is an intrinsic dream that I feel all women harbor but tend to forget trying to play the societal roles that they are expected to perform.

So this women’s day let’s ask the woman next to us on what is her dream? Is that dream big enough? Is she limiting herself? Or is the dream for someone else and not even her own?

Let’s work to first own our aspirations and figure out how to help someone else own theirs.  We can #inspireinclusion only when we can teach our women to write down their audacious aspirations and not feel apologetic. Whether it takes a day, a month, or an year!