Just One Male’s View on International Women’s Day

As I noticed all of the International Women’s Day LinkedIn posts fading away, it got me thinking. 

Let me start by saying I’m a big supporter of International Women’s Day. It’s a great occasion to celebrate women’s empowerment/accomplishments and the progress being made toward gender equality worldwide, and for highlighting where there is work still to be done.    

But I do have some concerns. 

Before I highlight these concerns I should make my disclaimer - I’m a middle-aged male. A colleague highlighted that this could be a barrier to how my thoughts here might be interpreted. I hope that’s not the case and you continue to read on. 

These thoughts and feelings are built on 25+ years’ experience in the mental health and workplace wellbeing industry. Perhaps more relevant, having worked in a professional capacity with many women over the years who are experiencing burnout and a sense of lost identity, and helping them navigate through that.       

I’m also a family man.  I’m surrounded by phenomenal women.   

I’ve watched my mother work hard all of her life, sacrificing a lot for the people she cares about. My wife, who is a business owner herself, is someone who inspires me, and who I learn from each and every day. My daughter, who is currently studying health and wellbeing herself, is a young woman of whom I’m immensely proud.  And my two stepdaughters (miss 3 and miss 7) who keep reminding me of the importance of free-spirited play (‘Play’ being one of our Healthy Habits).  

Back to my concerns.  

As part of the women’s empowerment movement, I see a lot of celebration of women achieving great things. We role model women that seem to be able to do it all. A business owner, inspirational leader, mother, life coach, taxi driver, and chef. In addition to this, some feel the need to maintain the perfect Facebook and Instagram pages.  Women who are, to climb on recent cliché bandwagons, everything, everywhere, all at once.

But are we setting the bar too high, in what it means to be a ‘successful’ woman? 

Renowned relationship therapist, Esther Perel, notes the modern phenomenon of expecting our partners to fulfil roles that were, historically, fulfilled by multiple people in our societies. Applying this to modern women, are we creating an expectation that to be successful, it isn’t enough to be, for example, a successful businesswoman? Instead, a woman has to be the businesswoman AND the partner AND the mother AND be fit and healthy AND be active in the community.

What I don’t often see is the reinforcement and encouragement of women to simply seek fulfilment, joy, and happiness, achieved by getting clarity on what is uniquely important to them as individuals. Then, based upon this understanding, encourage them to proactively create an environment that promotes these things.

I recently delivered a webinar to a senior leadership team within a bank. Immediately after the webinar, I received a call from one of the participants and she told me she had cried through a large part of my presentation. She had come to the realisation that she was living a life helping others at the expense of her own happiness. What was upsetting for her was that she had completely lost touch with who she actually was.

Unfortunately, this is something I see all too often.

In my experience, getting clarity about what is uniquely important to us means we are less likely to compare ourselves to others. We are less likely to compare ourselves to our ‘friends’ on social media and, as a result, less likely to set ourselves up for the sense of failure which often comes with such comparisons.

For women, I believe the best gift they can receive is an understanding of themselves as individuals and empowering them to create environments that directly promote what is uniquely important to them – whatever this looks like. Collectively, let’s encourage and empower our women to prioritise this.

Less about ‘doing and achieving more’ and more about achieving fulfilment and happiness.  

To finish off, this may just be the blog post I use for ‘International Men’s Day’ too.