Monday 8th March 2021 marks International Women’s Day (IWD), providing the perfect opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women from across the globe, past and present, in challenging gender equality.
This global celebration acknowledges the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women; highlighting positive changes that have happened, while committing ourselves more fully to the necessary structural and social changes needed to make gender equality possible.
Why is IWD important?
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on women which has meant the UK gender pay gap has widened. According to the UN and WEF, they have estimated that this pay gap now ranges from 18 to 45% and at at the current rate of change, the gender pay gap will take 257+ years to close – an additional half a century as a result of coronavirus.
It has also been widely reported that:
Women have been 1.8x more vulnerable to job loss than men – with 47% of mothers more likely to lose their jobs
As three quarters of the part-time labour force, women were hit hard when part-time jobs fell by 70% in the first 11 weeks
Mothers have been far more likely to be furloughed and have their hours cut by 50%
Mothers are putting in four more hours a day than fathers are in caring for children and home.
International Women’s Day 2021 provides us with a great opportunity to raise much needed awareness for these issues, and to begin to encourage and drive change to make a fairer and more equal society.
This year’s theme – Choose to Challenge
This year’s theme #ChooseToChallenge – a challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day.
We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.
From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge.
How can you get involved?
Despite the pandemic putting a stop to many things, there are still many ways to celebrate International Women’s Day this year.
Firstly, to tie in with this year’s theme, IWD organisers are asking people to strike the #ChooseToChallenge pose - with your hands held high and then to share it on social media to encourage a commitment to helping forge a more inclusive world.
Here are our #ChooseToChallenge poses, showing our commitment.
There are also so many great online events to attend this year. These events are your chance to show your support, and celebrate all the amazing things women are doing across the world. We’ve picked out a few of our favourite events here.
What we are doing at Major Players
Here at Major Players, we are proud to report that over 70% of our employees are female, of which 63% make up our senior management team.
We have recently launched our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion statement and commitments, recognising what we have to do to continue to build an inclusive culture that encourages, supports and celebrates the diverse voices of our employees.
This statement also outlines how we can work with our clients to create recruitment processes that will improve DE&I helping them to create impactful, positive change within their organisations. As part of this commitment, we continue to nurture our relationships with pioneering organisations including She Says and Creative Equals, who are dedicated to a world of fairness and equality.
In 2018 we partnered with Campaign to launch our Earn Your Worth initiative, which is our pledge to no longer request salaries in order to help close the gender pay gap. Our salary survey found that women were earning 23% less than men across the creative industries.
In a bid to help close that gap, we refused to divulge any of our candidates’ pay level when putting them forward for jobs. We believe it’s unnecessary to judge someone’s ability or worth based on their last salary or rate, and this initiative will help women reach pay parity with their male counterparts.
You can get involved by pledging your support here. When we reach 100,000 signatures, we will lobby the government to make Earn Your Worth mandatory.
As the UK’s leading talent agency, our responsibility to help positively affect gender equality is paramount and we are committed more than ever to help drive this.
