1. Introduce a Mentoring Program
Despite all the efforts women make, more men hold top-level positions. Until May 2018, Fortune 500 companies had only 24 female CEOs, comprising only 5 percent of the total posts.
Keeping this in mind, we believe guidance helps make a difference and encourages female workers to strive for success. All you need is a mentorship program where workers connect with their higher authorities and discuss career goals, networking, education, and other scopes to success. Women should see other women as being mentors. It will make them feel more empowered about their abilities. Representation matters a lot!
Women’s involvement in leadership is essential for business growth in 2021. For that, it’s vital that great leaders support, empower, and listen to the women in our workplaces.
2. Encourage Girl Power
It is high time, as a manager or a leader, you must think about uplifting the lives of young women in the community. This August, you can show your support for women’s rights by encouraging more and more opportunities for women. Here are some ways to promote girl power:
- Set up a women-specific internship program
- Invite middle school and high school girls for job shadowing/side-barging
- Vocalize STEM careers to a Girl Scout troop
- Offer a college scholarship to your best female employees who want to pursue higher studies.
Doing so helps enhance diversity and inclusion in your company—fostering workplace equity and enhanced company culture.
3. Organize a Collection Drive
According to the National Women’s Law Center, in 2016, more than one in eight women in the United States lived below poverty. They were dependent on the supplemental source to run their families.
No matter how good the economy is, many women still live in unsuitable environments. To support such underprivileged women, you can hold a collection drive in the office.
The drive must include sanitary pads, underwear, diapers, food supplies, socks, clothes, etc.
If you’re working from the office, consider giving an early log-out to your staff on Friday. This way, they can gather the required stuff they wish to donate, and on Monday, you’ll go together for the drive. Or, if you’re working from home due to the pandemic, ask your employees to courier their goods to one single location and then parcel it away at once.
4. Do some Charity
If you’re financially equipped as a company or a business, please donate to the cause!
You, along with your staff, can organize a fundraiser or a donation booth where everyone can donate any amount. You can choose a window for the lowest and highest amount. Or, if you’re financially suitable, consider donating all by yourself, representing the whole organization.
To help you out, here are some resources where you can rightfully vote your dollars:
- Center for Health and Gender Equity
- Global Fund for Women
- Equal Rights Advocates
- Gender Justice
- International Center for Research on Women
- League of Women Voters
- National Women’s Law Center
- Institute for Women’s Policy Research
- Equality Now
- National Organization for Women
5. Aid a Cause
In this post-modern world, women’s suffrage is limited to social media only, but many modern causes need compassionate supporters.
This Women’s Equality Day, volunteer as a team and make this a team-building activity. Come up with a project and discuss its execution. Make the project women-centric—an excellent initiative to promote awareness and team bonding.
Here are a few projects to ideate and work as a team:
- You can visit schools or join students in their online classes and do a reading session on gender studies.
- Organize a blood donation camp
- Consider doing some charity for the homeless women
- Organize lunch and learn sessions with some women leaders of your region
6. Listen to Women
Are you wondering how to improve work conditions for the female staff at your company? Well, all you need to do is, ask!
Many complaints about harassment, workplace discrimination, subjugation, go unnoticed or they don’t get lodged even. This is because of the social stigmas and humiliation attached. To solve such uncomfortable situations for women and call out predators at work, you must listen to them. And you can do that innovatively and confidentially. Here are some possible ways:
- Set up a suggestion box
- Set up a designated complaint box for sexual harassment
- Carry out employee surveys
- Take individual inputs on ways to improve job satisfaction and women’s safety at work.
7. Update the Book Shelf
Education and awareness is the best way to celebrate equal rights! And nothing beats reading some great feminist authors on Women’s Equality Day to help everyone reset their patriarchal worldview.
Reading is a mindful and relaxing activity that helps you connect with the outside world. So, to help you get associated with feminism and women’s rights, we would like to recommend some fantastic books that will give you insights on gender equality.
- We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Broad Influence by Jay Newton-Small
- Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis
- Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Women and Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard
- Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez
- The Women’s Suffrage Movement edited by Sally Roesch Wagner
8. Give a Shout Out
Finally, to mark Women’s Equality Day, you can simply spread the word and announce the occasion to garner the needed attention.
Take it to social media and your internal portals. Change your logo to support the event and ask your design team to come up with exciting ideas.
Also, you can run a fun quiz amongst the team members. For example, ask them to guess the year when women got voting rights in the U.S. Only a few will get it right, we bet!
- Vantage Circle Blog
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