International Women’s Day (IWD) prompts a heady mix of empowerment and issue raising headlines, but does it really help to achieve equity at work? We argue that achieving equity will take more than a warm embrace.
IWD brings mixed feelings at Breaking Binaries HQ. We recognise the importance of acknowledging (the lack of) progress in relation to wider women-focused equality and equity agendas. Women (and we refer to women in the broadest and most inclusive sense) continue to face different forms of oppression and discrimination; we also recognise the need for these issues to remain firmly in the public discourse. Yet what happens when the clock strikes midnight and the IWD party ends?
In the lead up to the 8th of March each year, predictably organisations roll out their IWD toolkits and select willing – normally senior – women to do a talk about their career. Emails are primed and sent out to declare support for IWD, often listing a stream of events organised and involving women. All this extra work – which ultimately benefits the organisation – is rarely rewarded at the individual level. We should not ignore the irony of asking women to do extra uncompensated work in the name of equity.
The Invisible Toll of Painting The Office Purple
We’ve spoken previously about our challenges with slogans and lukewarm hashtags and the messages they send particular identities – especially in relation to work. IWD provides a neat way for organisations to outwardly show the world that they are doing good stuff and meeting their diversity strategy objectives. Genderwashing, pinkwashing, market feminism, glass-ceiling feminism are just some terms used to describe the appropriation of equity and equality ‘branded events’ as useful organisational marketing exercises. These tags are commonly used to describe the cynical promotion of particular (often non-conforming) bodies as a representation of progress.
These events – i.e., celebration days – often mean extra work for employees and reinforce unhelpful identity binaries. Sometimes they continually reinforce messages that suggest particular identities need to ‘be more’ or ‘do more’ to be considered accepted or part of an organisational norm. More significantly, this ‘work’ is not exclusive to just one form of identity (i.e., being a woman), but is compounded by other intersecting identities that are subject to systematic marginalisation within organisations. Increasingly research recognises the toll this takes on employees, especially those with intersecting marginalised identities. It is quite the catch-22 situation: to create more fairness at work requires those being treated unfairly to engage in working practices that are…unfair. Quite the conundrum to embrace.
A warm self-embrace in the name of equity turns the lens onto individuals rather than structures and systems that perpetuate inequitable practices. It is vital that organisations are called out for their unequal and inequitable practices – @PayGapApp does just this.
As the clock strikes midnight tonight, a collective sigh of relief will be followed by a cautious glance at what’s next on the diversity calendar. Meanwhile, the gender and ethnicity pay-gaps reviews remain quietly gathering dust under a crumpled purple pamphlet. So for us, it’s not what happens on IWD that really matters, it’s what happens to those who are treated unfairly just for being who they are; currently, every day is inequitable for them and it will take more than one day to change that.
For now, the clock keeps ticking.
Breaking Binaries Research 