A belated note on International Women’s Day

I couldn’t help but ask myself on International Women’s Day the question is there an International Men’s Day?  The answer is, yes.  It was conceived in Trinidad and Tobago around unifying the country for qualifying in soccer’s world cup.  It has evolved since then.  International Women’s Day began in 1909 with the idea of promoting equal rights for women.  We are still marching for equal rights more than 100 years later.

There are many women communities sprouting up across the globe.  It is clear that the issues women have to deal with are global issues from wanting equal pay, to having to care for their children, to having to care for their parents, to celebrating holidays, to passing on traditions, to having big aspirations and more.  We are all hoping to be the last generation where sexual harassment ceases to exist and the starting now there is equal pay for the same job and we get the same amount of equity as our male peers, and a place where we can be anything we want to be without prejudice.

I went to a female event on International Women’s Day.  The speaker grew up in Romania and was quite funny about the different expectations between women here and there.  She was wearing a sleeveless fitted black leather dress.  She told us that she was thinking about what she was going to wear that night and realized that she shouldn’t wear pants but wear something that made her feel like the woman she is.  We all wear what we feel comfortable in but she noted that she wished that if we could all go back in time, she wished that Hillary Clinton never wore a pants suit but wore a dress every single day because we have been taught that we need to be like a man to succeed.  We don’t and I would add we shouldn’t.  Women should have their own path and behave like the person they are, period.

She pushed the audience to write down what we were afraid of?  What were our fears?  What are you afraid of fulfilling noting that dreams without action are the worst.  Life doesn’t come with a handbook.  She suggested that you should drop goals if you aren’t going to fulfill them.

While I was sitting there listening to her speak with authority and bravado around women just getting out there to build empires, be fulfilled and find their own identities, I wondered about the men that I know and would they sit through something like this with the need to be empowered.  I am not sure they would.  Women are different beings and it is time that we are all embrace each other for what makes us different in the work world.

I am wildly enthusiastic about the women founders that I have financially supported and even the many that I have not.  They are all forging out with their own handbooks, their own strength, and their own agenda….and many of them wear dresses….and pants