We spoke with our colleagues here at Clear to understand why International Women’s Day is important to them, and how they’re going to #BreakTheBias this year:
“…For me, this day marks a celebration of what it is to be a woman - to possess such strong feminine wisdom - power! With a key focus in the direction of equality for sexes, which is what being a feminist means to me.”
“...The world is still heavily patriarchal, which affects everything. And it'll remain so for generations or more unless we all stand up and remind ourselves of this.”
“It's a day that focuses the attention and conversation on women's achievements, and it's also an opportunity to highlight gender inequality issues in the workplace.”
With an estimated 11% of Women in the UK working in technology in Oct-Dec 2021, (ONS - Feb 2022) it seems like we still have some way to go before we see more equal representation in the sector. There are so many brilliant women that are changing the landscape of tech, we also asked our colleagues for the women that inspire them today. Hopefully their stories can encourage more women and young girls to pursue a tech career and go on to #BreakTheBias this International Women’s Day.
Charlene Hunter MBE
Founder of Coding Black Females, Charlene Hunter received an MBE for her services to technology and Diversity in January 2022. Their non-profit organisation was created in 2017 and aims to provide opportunities for Black female developers to develop themselves, network & receive support.
Stephanie Eckles
Front-end focused software engineer & author of ModernCSS.dev (Modern CSS solutions for old CSS problems), Stephanie’s work has really inspired the team to shake up the way they look at simple CSS and websites.
Ruchi Sanghvi
Computer engineer Ruchi Sanghvi was the first female engineer hired by Facebook and was one of the main pioneers in creating the first News Feed product for the platform. Since then, she has gone on to found South Park Commons, a community of digital technologists and builders.
Howmet Aerospace
Clear’s client Howmet Aerospace, global leaders in engineered metal products, are listed as a prime employer for women by Where Women Work. For them, it’s the diversity of it’s people that powers its innovations. We spoke to Anna Rothwell, Marketing exec at Howmet Aerospace about what international Women’s Day means to them:
“Howmet Aerospace actually has a number of diversity and inclusion networks – with the Howmet Women’s Network being one of these. The Women’s Network are inviting us all to celebrate International Women's Day as a ‘global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.’
We are also celebrating Women’s History Month throughout the month of March – we are planning to release a number of social media posts (on LinkedIn) about some of the women who work for Howmet Aerospace.
I personally enjoy working for a company that has a strong ethic to promote inclusivity, while eradicating gender bias in our workplace. I feel privileged to belong to a workplace culture that gives equal opportunity to everyone.”
This year, at Clear offices, we’re going to be coming together to celebrate the awesome women on our team, as well as booking self defence courses so that we can empower ourselves. We’ll be taking the time to chat individually about how we can actively break unconscious bias in the workplace and what each of us can do to support equality. Remember, celebrating International Women’s Day shouldn’t come just once a year – we should always be striving towards a more inclusive and diverse world.
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