International Women's Day 2016

It's International Women’s Day today with events and campaigns underway around the globe.

The day itself is, amazingly, in its 102nd year first being celebrated in 1914. Its history can be found here in our latest blog  but interestingly it was a movement born out of socialist ideology, not in Russia, but in America. The movement spread throughout Europe which eventually resulted in a raft of major changes to women’s right, particularly around voting.

Although over a 100 years old, the movement has some way to go to reach parity between the sexes. The UN is hoping to reach that point in 14 years with their 2030 Agenda and other social media campaigns are asking us to #PledgeForParity  now by taking affirmative action.

We caught up with entrepreneur , speaker & Apprentice finalist, Bianca Miller  today who she believes ‘men and women are both responsible for creating and actively encouraging gender parity'. Bianca goes on to say ' I have worked with lots of women to assist them in gaining the confidence and personal branding know-how to encourage them to climb the career ladder and then to proactively mentor those in roles below them to help them to rise’. Bianca went on to suggest the following idea for achieving parity: ‘If every male in a senior decision-making role mentored one female rising star, quite quickly we might see a change in the current disparity’.

If International Women’s Day proves anything is that, despite the length of the campaign, and the growing discussion that very much includes men, it is something that both women and men have to fight for together.