Visit JCPCInternational Women's Day:
On International Women's Day, our Chief Executive, Vicky Fox, & Non-Executive Directors, Jane Furniss & Julie Nerney, share their thoughts on the theme of Accelerate Action.
International Women’s Day (IWD) serves as a useful reminder that we should all be taking action every day of every year to make our world diverse, equitable, and inclusive. It’s astonishing to think that IWD has been marked for over 100 years and, that whilst there has been huge progress in that time, there’s still so much more that needs to be done. And that’s why this year’s IWD theme #AccelerateAction is so important.
One of the things that the coronavirus pandemic taught me is that all change is possible, given a sufficiently compelling reason. When I think back to nearly 5 years ago when the UK lockdown started, we all changed the way we lived and worked dramatically, almost overnight. Because we knew we had to. So, I’ve become increasingly unsympathetic to hand wringing and inertia in other areas where change is needed. When people say that change can’t happen, what I think they are actually saying is that they don’t want change to happen, or that they don’t consider the reason for change to be sufficiently compelling.
According to data from the World Economic Forum, at the current rate of progress, it will take until 2158, which is roughly five generations from now, to reach full gender parity. We know too, that societies that are more diverse and equitable make better economic progress and produce better results across all industries. These are our compelling reasons to take urgent action now to bring about change faster, removing the barriers and inequalities that women face in education, in work, in healthcare and at home. Now is the time for us all to act, individually and together, to shape our future for the better.