Celebrate Women and #EmbraceEquity

👊 HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY! 👊

While every day should be International Women's Day, I do think it’s important to have a day where we call out the collective power of women around the world. As women, we have a unique and needed perspective in this world, and every single person has been positively impacted by a strong woman – whether it’s a mother, sister, daughter, wife, leader or even colleague.

That said, this year's theme, #EmbraceEquity, is a reminder to not just celebrate women, but to also recognize that there is still much work to be done for women to have true equity in the work place, especially in tech.

While I see companies expanding #diversity by hiring more women (although not enough in VP and above positions) and spinning up ERGs to create an air of #inclusion, we still fall VERY short on giving women and minorities #equity of title and pay in our space.

#EmbraceEquity of Leadership

Often, companies will hire in men at VP positions, even if they've never held that title before, in good faith that they can accomplish the tasks at hand. Whereas, many women (equal in experience and capability) are asked to come in at a Director level (usually a lateral move, or even step back in title) and challenged to prove themselves to be worthy of the VP position. These women then find themselves sitting at the same table as their male VP peers who are now a step or half-step above them in title despite having the same scopes of responsibility and expectation to run their areas of the business. When it comes to equity of title (and thus pay), remember:

If you have the responsibility and accountability, then you deserve the authority.

I wrote about this in a previous article, but feel it deserves being brought back to the surface for #IWD. I encourage every female leader and ally to use their voice and platform to have discussions with their leadership teams around equity of women’s positions, opportunities, and salaries at their companies: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6986013334315700224/

Additionally, make sure to support women earlier in their careers at your organization.

The channel is great at celebrating our female leaders, but we often forget to celebrate and highlight the women just starting out - those who are looking for support and leadership to figure out their next steps and how to navigate in this male-dominated space. Reach out to those women, let them know that you see their impact and are their to be a guide, a peer, and a mentor. Ensure we keep these emerging women in our space and see even more women succeed.

TLDR: It is important to use #IWD to not only thank, highlight, and celebrate the women that have impacted your life, but to also raise discussions around the #equity of women at your organization.

🥳👏 That said, it's not ALL work on #IWD. Make sure to make time to celebrate yourself and the women around you! 🥳👏

• ✅ Reach out to the women that have impacted your life both professionally and personally: colleagues, mentors, friends, and family. Celebrate them for being strong, shining examples of the power of a determined woman. 🙌
• ✅ Don't forget to celebrate yourself! Take 30 minutes today to reflect back and brain dump a list of all that you have accomplished in the last year (big or small). We don’t reflect on our own victories and accomplishments nearly enough, and it’s incredibly fulfilling and empowering to put it all down on paper and see everything you have accomplished. 👏
• ✅ Make time for YOUR form of #selfcare. For me this year, it’s working outside, getting a massage, and watching the original #Mulan (don't judge, it's my favorite movie). 🍷

To all the powerful and determined women in my network, make time to celebrate YOU today. You deserve it more than you know.

As a resource, here are some of the groups that I am a part of that empower me to have important (and sometimes tough) conversations around topics and situations we have to deal with as women in a male-dominated space, have created a community of passionate, fun, and impressive women that teach and support me, and enabled me to feel that I can impact this space with my voice and platform.

• Cloud Girls (https://cloudgirls.org/): Cloud Girls is a Think Tank of the Alliance of Channel Women (created by the formidable and fun Jo Peterson) focused on learning, empowering, inspiring and giving back. Most important to me has been that Cloud Girls is a smaller organization (sub-100 members) that focuses on getting to know one another and creating a tight-knit community of women that learns from one another but also has a a great time together and never loses sight on the core values of celebrating success and giving back.
• Alliance of Channel Women (https://allianceofchannelwomen.org/): While this group is large, they work hard to provide us with so many resources including a job board, monthly recognitions of women in the space, and events to bring us together. Engage with your regional chapter to get to know a smaller and more intimate group of women in your area!
• CRN WOTC Leadership Network (https://thechannelcocommunities.com/), and more specifically, their Women's Senior Leadership Forum: I wasn't sure what to expect when I enrolled in the Senior Leadership Forum, but I can't recommend it enough. You are placed into a cohort of ~10 women who meets each month to learn an applicable leadership tool from the amazing 🇬🇧Val Wright. However, even more valuable than those lessons and tools is the time Val gives us each week to open up to the small group about issues, changes, decisions, and questions we have currently going on in our lives, so we are able to get real-time feedback from a group of trusted peers. It was eye-opening to see how we had often faced similar issues and decisions.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!!

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/