Celebrating International Women’s Day 2016

I always get very excited every year at the onset of International Women’s Day. Seriously. I really do. I love the fact that this day belongs to us. It is our day – globally. That thought makes me smile. I love the fact that my brother, no matter where he happens to be in the world on that day never fails to send a message celebrating me and his female siblings and recognising and appreciating the joys and the simple pleasure that we continue to bring into his life.

Yes I know that it might seem unfair that there is no International Men’s Day, a day that I could also perhaps call and send a message to my brother to appreciate him for all of his love and kindness. I know. It is unfair. It really is. But let me go some way in explaining – maybe even justifying – why in my own world we need International Women’s Day.

You see, whenever anybody achieves remarkably, all over the world we yearn to celebrate them. We all love pioneers. We love those that, despite tremendous difficulties and threats, g0 on to be the first or to be the best. But when that pioneer happens to be a woman, we do love it all the more – well many of us do.

Men have always been at the helm of affairs of life – whether in the sporting arena, the political arena or in the business arena. Men were the first politicians. The first in Space. The first this, the first that. See how long it took for women to be accepted at the All England Tennis Club. How hard the Suffragettes had to fight for women to be given the vote. How hard some women in the Middle East are having to fight to be allowed to drive. Yes, to drive.

So we celebrate these women who have fought on all of our behalf because they despised the shame and dishonour of every form of marginalisation to fight and overcome on an issue and an ideology that they personally deemed wrong, and in fighting against that, they overcame for the rest of us women. For me, that is what International Women’s Day represents.

I am particularly excited about International Women’s Day for women in business. Men have always been in the Boardroom. They have always led in the business sphere. But in societies where predominantly women are making most of the day to day financial decisions for the household, aren’t women therefore already in the marketsphere? Shouldn’t we therefore embrace them in business leadership positions? Wouldn’t their voice add value to the conversations and decisions made in our Boardrooms? Would there, could there, be more profit in the P&L if women were part of the business dialogue?

As an Executive and Business Coach to female CEOs and entrepreneurs, I work with some amazing women, women who I have no doubt that when tomorrow comes they will be on the business frontline, emerging as leaders, ready to inspire and transform. Notwithstanding this though, I also wonder if, with all its cultural and institutional biases, the market place would be ready to receive these women as rightful business leaders, and if business and workplace ecosystems would be more responsive to the particular needs of these women – from workspace nursing mother rooms, to �She-Leads leadership seminars’ to better equip women for leadership and the visibility that comes with it. Diversity and inclusion in the business sector is not, absolutely not, a catchphrase. Seriously, it is not. Through diversity, we can all realise and gain from women’s immense capabilities if we can only embrace them as co-partners in shaping tomorrow’s business sectors, and ultimately, our societies.

But we also need to understand, appreciate, and more importantly respond to, the fact that women also have more peculiar needs and considerations. Men and women are shaped differently. Period. Men and women think differently. Period. Men and women do business differently. Period. As such, as our co-pilots in the business sector, men may have to display a little patience with, and an appreciation for, our let me say different approaches and mindset in Board room and meeting rooms.

That may mean deploying more lateral thinking and better listening skills so that when we make a point in the Boardroom, a point made from a perspective that you may not have been privy to hitherto because the Boardroom has been filled with the Alpha male thinking approach, please do well to receive it and ponder on it respectfully, and not to shut it down immediately.

For many of us women, our desires to be active contributors to the economic sectors is not born out of a desire to prove a point. The majority of us are not trying to prove that what a man can do, a woman can do better. Seriously, we are not. Most of us seriously just have an innate desire to excel at a particular thing, and that really drives us. It really, really drives us. It’s about us – and nobody else.