Celebrating the meaning of International Women’s Day

Today, 8th March, is International Women’s Day and is a day to mark and celebrate the many social, economic and political achievements of women around the world.

Here at FOUR we celebrate our whole team and we are proud that our team is made up of a 50/50 split of men and women. It’s something that we think adds to our strength as an agency. Strong women supported by strong men, and all working together as one team. Our ethos has always been to do the best possible job for every client, based on our capabilities and expertise, and we all treat each other as equals.

The theme for International Women’s Day 2021 is Choose to Challenge. The official website for IWD says…

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.

So, today seems a good day to consider our actions as an agency and how we can contribute to supporting equality and raising women up. This is something we are very much committed to, but we can always be learning, always be changing and always be supporting, and it is important to be part of the conversation.

So, here’s our list of FOUR things we would like to commit to in 2021:

• Look to become mentors in our community and, when able, offer mentoring to local schools and run workshops as an agency. We want to inspire the next generation of designers, PRs, social media experts and marketeers to shoot for the stars and carry on developing this exciting and dynamic industry. It is a brilliant one to be in and we want to encourage more people to join and drive forward campaigns which utilise and promote the strength of women as both employees and as end-users. We’re challenging agencies to support their staff and challenging clients to seek out diversity and equality
• Improve our knowledge around inequality and the gaps that still stand in 2021 and how we can build a fairer society. We have seen a good recommendation for the following book, which seems like a good place to start – What Works: Gender Equality by Design – Iris Bohnet
• Support activists for change, such as ‘Mother Pukka’ and ‘Pregnant then screwed’, across our digital platforms, as they fight for reform and to protect women from pregnancy and maternity discrimination and trigger change
• Follow women across our digital channels in our industry and, not only engage with and support them, but actively highlight their work and achievements.

#ChooseToChallenge

#IWD2021