It’s International Women’s Day and I’m mad. No not that sort of mad… I’m assertive, vexed, inquisitive, willing to put the elephant in the corner on to the top of the table and point at it in an annoying way. In a word, I’m being unashamedly Woman and I’m not asking permision or forgiveness.
Sadly, there are so many women in the world who do not have the strength, financial capacity or forum to fight for their rights safely. Australian women have so much of that and yet… two examples of it today of a sort of unspoken need to have men’s approval of our wants and needs: At an international women’s day breakfast, the (50:50 male female panel) discussed why women were ‘different’ how we can deliver a ‘softer’ side to the boardroom….! Am I in 1952? I heard a senior officer (male) from the Australian army talk on the radio about how he was going to Washington for IWD to talk about getting more women into the Australian armed forces. Was it only me who noticed the irony of the Australian Army NOT sending a women on this mission
“The strength of a woman is not measured by the impact that all her hardships in life have had on her; but by the extent of her refusal to allow those hardships to dictate her and who she becomes.”
― C. JoyBell C.
We’ve made huge strides forward; we’ve made change happen. But it is time – now more than ever – to take off the gloves and push in to spaces where we are not wanted, where we will be deliberately provacative by our mere presence and we stand and face what ever is thrown at us.
I wish all women a happy and inspiring International Women’s Day. Be proud of everything you and we have done and everything we will do. With or without permission.
Pamela Sutton-Legaud CFRE MBA 