5 January 2020 posted by Kelly Brown

International Women’s Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. International Women’s Day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

Last year at Recovery Partners we celebrated International Women’s Day by nominating 50 women to celebrate. We sent them a gorgeous candle from a local small business. The response to this initiative was greater than anything else we have done in the past 14 years. That signalled to us that this is a big issue for our organisation and our society.

The theme for 2019, #balanceforbetter and runs all year.

What can we do?

We are serious about gender equality at Recovery Partners. We have introduced paid paternity leave program which entitles primary carers to receive 3 months full pay to support their new families.

We have developed individual talent management plans for every employee to ensure we develop the careers of men and women equally.

We measure and report monthly on our gender pay equality promise. At Recovery Partners you get paid for the job you do, not your gender.

What can you do?

I encourage you to consider nominating you female colleagues, peers and subordinates in the Telstra Business Women’s Awards 2020. I am delighted to a finalist for 2019. The process had been inspiring and I would love to see more women from our industry publicly acknowledged. You can read about my experience here. 

We can all take steps to educate and understand these issues in greater depth. Here are my top 3 resources on Gender Equality:

1. TED Talk Why Gender Equality Is Good for Everyone –  Men Included Michael Kimmel.

Yes, we all know it’s the right thing to do. But Michael Kimmel makes the surprising, funny, practical case for treating men and women equally in the workplace and at home. It’s not a zero-sum game, but a win-win that will result in more opportunity and more happiness for everybody.

2. Unconscious Bias @ Work – Dr. Brian Welle (Google’s).

With leadership support, the Google People Operations team began building a workshop for employees – Unconscious Bias @ Work – to introduce the concept of unconscious bias and its impact. The workshop leaned heavily on external research and internal examples. Thousands of Googlers have participated in the 60-90 minute workshop, making it one of the largest voluntary learning programs at Google.

3. Research: When Gender Diversity Makes Firms More Productive – Harvard Business Review

Happy International Women’s Day.

#IWD2019 #InternationalWomensDay #BalanceforBetter #genderparity

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