#3 International Women's Day 2024 -Event Suggestions

#3 Event Suggestions: From Willingness to Impact

From the most basic event, to complex, multi-agency conferences, wherever you are on the willingness, data, impact journey - here are some suggestions of activities that could take you from box-ticking to making a difference.

> Willingness

Level One: Evidence and research tell us that women experience all kinds of barriers to employment, charitable support, transport, wealth, housing and political representation that are different to their male peers. To understand this, we must first show a WILLINGNESS to understand the situation. Could IWD 2024 be your chance to do that?

EVENT SUGGESTION: Could you create a bold campaign that shows your new attitude towards your willingness to understand the experiences of the women and/or girls with whom you operate, employ, engage or support? Could you use your event to launch your campaign and use a hashtag in your socials that boldly sets you up to being open to whatever you find #PoshPaintsWhereWomenMatter

> Data

Level Two: If you don’t already have DATA to look at, information that tells you something, or gives you statistics to draw from, can you use IWD 2024 as a launch day to START COLLECTING it? This is one thing that could make a REAL difference to the women who interact with you.

EVENT SUGGESTION: Could you use your IWD event to ask your employees, followers, members or beneficiaries some pertinent questions? Could you run a workshop, do a survey, hold a poll or host a drop-in to speak to women about their experiences and whether there is anything they would recommend you change to improve their experiences of you?

Level Three: Have you found some potential BIAS in your data? – are you struggling to recruit young women? Are women not returning after maternity leave? Are your experienced women leaving around 50? Is your Board made up of more men than women? Is your workforce mostly men? Are your followers only women? Are your donors only women? Are the vocal people in your WhatsApp group only men?

Can you adjust your data collection to make sure you properly UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT the possible bias is having, if any? Can you use IWD 2024 to give you the confidence to look all women in the eye and say that the bias does or doesn’t matter?

EVENT SUGGESTION: Can you bring people together to ask them questions about whether bias is having an impact on your organisation’s success? Share your data findings and come clean that you simply DON’T KNOW whether the bias is causing a problem and that, in order to show allyship, you WANT to know. Could you use your event to start to co-produce solutions?

Level Four: Can you PUBLISH YOUR FINDINGS? Women CANNOT entirely win the war of bias simply with their brilliance when the societies they live in operate under unknown bias being perpetuated, unseen, unheard and un-spoken. If we are to see a real shift towards equality, businesses, organisations, communities and networks can show allyship by, sharing their data findings and how bias impacts their activities. If we can pool all this data, we can make REAL change.
 
EVENT SUGGESTION: Could you hold an information event ABOUT your findings. Can you market your event as a SOLUTION finding exercise. Be a role model for change, lead the way in being courageous? Could you collaborate with other organisations like yours? Can you create an industry-wide event, or multi-agency discussion about finding solutions or changing culture?

> Impact

Level Five: At the most basic of levels, can your event showcase the incredible female talents of your organisation, network or membership? Whether they are current people, or people from history, can you showcase women who have, or who are, changing and challenging the impact of inequality? 
 
EVENT SUGGESTION: Could you hold your event around a subject involving the impact of inequality and highlight the skills, talents and achievements of the women to whom the subject relates? ‘We can’t be who we can’t see’ - your event might inspire others to follow in the footstep of other brilliant women.

Level Six: Are you in a position to CREATE AN ALLYSHIP NETWORK that goes BEYOND traditional women’s networks and brings men into the forefront of the conversation about IMPACT, and levelling-up the experiences of women with whom you interact?

It is impossible (see Blogs on Power) for women to achieve real equality without the very specific and concerted allyship of men. Not because there’s anything inherently wrong with women, or because they need to be ‘saved’ by men (ahem), but simply because the odds are so strongly stacked against them. If you’ve looked at your data, understood the impact and recognised that men and women need to work together to solve the problem, then your event could launch an Allyship Network – or at least start to talk about the need for one.
 
EVENT SUGGESTION: Could you launch a men’s allyship network or a men’s allyship event on IWD 2024? It could be as simple as a social media poll or as big as a full scale conference. Anything on that spectrum gives the message that men MUST be part of the solution to women’s inequality and that you, and the organisation you represent are “in”.

Level Seven: Can you get involved in WIDER INITIATIVES beyond your organisation? Finding solutions within your organisation is fantastic and will improve women’s experiences with YOU. But the inequality women experience exists across wider society, in all aspects of women’s lives. So, can you extend your allyship to understanding the broader issues?

EVENT SUGGESTION: Could your event be a fundraising event for community groups who campaign for women or create grass-roots change? Or for organisations that support women who have experienced domestic abuse, poverty, refugee status? Could your event help in raising awareness of important issues? Could you host the event with a celebrity, a political leader or someone who can draw the attention of the masses?

Level Eight: If your network, organisation, business or agency is already all over this subject, could you use your influence to create a central hub around which different agencies come together to TAKE COLLECTIVE ACTION or campaign for change? Could you USE that influence for even greater good beyond your own impact? Could you show allyship by role-modelling what ‘good’ looks like?
 
EVENT SUGGESTION: Could you use the event to invite people who don’t usually get involved in this subject? Could you hold a panel event, a challenging debate? Or pose a problem to an interactive workshop of people from different industries, organisations or cultures? Do you have a ‘reach’ with an audience on one subject, and could you use that reach to raise awareness, ask people to pledge or take action, raise funds or collectively campaign?

Summary

Regardless of where we are on the willingness, data, impact journey, we all have a responsibility to make our International Women’s Day events part of the solution for women and step away from perpetuating the problems because we are simply ignorant of the facts.

There are many ways in which our IWD events can show Allyship. Because allyship is the central tenet of change for women.

What will YOU do?

Marianne Storey

www.storeyland.co.uk I @StoreylandCoaching

@DorsetWomenCICChair I @DorsetWomen I dorsetwomen.org.uk