This year we celebrated the Centenarian for women’s rights to vote and honoured the Suffragettes. Today being International Women’s Day we are proud to say ‘thank you’ for everything but we are also looking at everything we still need to achieve in the 21st Century.
2018’s UN theme is #PressforProgress. This is very poignant as even after 100 years we are still fighting, still working towards progress of some sort to make equal rights actually equal. This is from the gender pay gap to breaking the glass ceiling. Women across the world are standing together to push the boundaries and fight for their rights for being a woman.
The idea of us having a uterus detriments us to progressing within the workplace, this organ somehow still shocks the corporate world into not trusting women to go higher in the workplace. The idea of falling pregnant and becoming a mother suddenly makes a woman unvaluable to the world of work, they are seen as unfocused and unambitious. The big thing the corporates are forgetting is that the complete opposite occurs when a woman becomes a mother. She puts herself second but in actual fact will work harder and juggle more for success so that her children will get the best future possible. Due to so many corporates failing to see this, many women are turning to self-employment otherwise known as Mumpreneurs. Instead of fighting the bigger people by working for them, they are going head on and joining them in the world of business and showing them that something they believe women could not do due to becoming mums is instead happening. They are becoming their own bosses, owning their lives, running their businesses whilst their children are at school or asleep in bed. These women are fighting every day but are loving it at the same time. Proving to the world it can be done.
By pushing the boundaries we are standing together, we are showing the world that we are not to be walked over. An underground revolution has been happening over the last few years with social media being the biggest tool available. #MeToo and #TimesUp have set trends with women from all walks of life coming up and telling their stories of how they have either been penalized through the pay gap, have been victims of some sort of sexual abuse or have been discriminated by just becoming a mum. Social media has helped the 21st century woman take control, you can make a difference by just posting a picture which will end up speaking to someone on the other side of the world. The effect can become contagious and as word travels instantaneously online, your movement or saying will create an enormous effect.
Campaigns like ‘She Can’ have helped to push and support women and girls into showing their true selves. They can be who they want to be, without the fear of being told ‘no’. They can keep on succeeding and find ways of pushing further into fields they wouldn’t be able to go into previously. The ‘She Can’ campaign is uniting women from different fields and has helped to provide a base for female empowerment from a young age.
Pressing for progress is important, the Suffragettes did it for us and we are now doing it for future generations. Small steps equal to big changes and with some of our male counterparts standing alongside us, especially within the workplace, women are starting to get a helping hand in areas like the gender pay gap. However there is still a lot of work to be done.
Breaking the glass ceiling, standing up for ourselves, proving our worth and showing we are equal and always have been is what 2018 is all about. We together will push the boundaries so future generations won’t need to.
We are one, we will #PressforProgress and we will achieve it.
Happy International Women’s Day
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