Celebrating International Women's Day
March 8 is International Women’s Day and provides the opportunity to celebrate women at work, whether that be as entrepreneuers or employees. There are a number of events lined up in the UK.
One that is promoting women as entpreneurs is the Women Unlimited conference at the British Library.
The aim is to celebrate the success of women who have started their own businesses and to look to the future. The theme of this year’s second annal conference is Stepping into Success. Speakers include Emma Wimhurst, author of Boom! Seven Steps to Success and founder of Diva Cosmetics. She created bespoke cosmetic packages for big name brands like BHS, Asda and Claires Accessories after she saw a gap in the market. Emma has now written the book BOOM! which outlines how to build a successful business.
Also speaking are Camila Batmanghelidjh of The Kids Company who works with ome of the most traumatised young people living in London and Rebecca Harding, Founder and MD of Delta Economics and independent economist. Rebecca’s reports on female entrepreneurship include Women and access to finance and the Greater Return on Women’s Enterprise Report (GROWE). Rebecca will be discussing the state of women’s enteprise in the UK and what can be done to help.
The event also includes a series of mini-workshops on subjects ranging from getting your PR right to how to successfully launch a new idea, headed by Cally Robson, Founder of She’s Ingenious!.
There will also be panel discussions so that attendees can ask questions of successful entpreneurs and advisers, such as Antonia Chitty of ACPR and author of Family Friendly Working.
Flexible working
Workingmums.co.uk welcomes the opportunity to highlight the rising number of women entrepreneurs in the UK, both those who have started their own businesses and those who have become franchisees. As more and more women opt for working for themselves as a way round the work life balance issue and as technology enables working from home in ways that were previously unthought of, we are highlighting some of the success stories we have drawn attention to in past months:
Lysette Parbhu
International Women’s Day is also an opportunity to highlight once again the issues that are important to women in the world of work. Every annual survey that workingmums.co.uk has held shows the availability of flexible working as the key issue for working mums going back into the workplace. Last year’s survey showed that women regarded it as much more important than the two other traditional barriers to return to work: affordable childcare and confidence issues. Those women polled said it was flexi-hours, not part-time work, which they most wanted.
As we head into a General Election, it is to be hoped that the political parties, who have all pledged support for flexible working, will do their utmost to see that their words translate into action. This includes allowing employees to request flexible working from day one of a new job [rather than six months later] and more promotion of the benefits of flexible working to companies struggling in the current economic climate. Too often flexible working is only presented as of benefit to workers when there is clear evidence that companies can benefit hugely from a properly implemented flexible work strategy. Companies which www.workingmums.co.uk have highlighted which show this include BT and SME Hireserve.
Body image
Other events for International Women’s Day include a debate at the Houses of Parliament on 8 March hosted by Jo Swinson and Lynne Featherstone MPs. Real Women: The Body Image Debate, brings together leading academics, politicians and members of the media and fashion industries who will debate the way forward to combat body image pressure on women and girls imposed by idealised images in the modern media.
The meeting will include a panel discussion with, among others, model Erin O’Connor, Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue and Bodies: Big Ideas and convenor of the AnyBody campaign and Dr. Helga Dittmar, author of Consumer culture, identity, and well-being: The search for the ‘good life’ and ‘body perfect’.
Women at board level
The Government has launched proposals to require companies to report on their progress to get more women into the boardroom.
The proposals come as new research shows that sixty per cent of people think there are not enough women directors in big businesses. The survey which has been commissioned by the Government Equalities Office for International Women’s Day shows that half believe there will be equal number of men and women directors within the next 20 years. However, the reality is that it will take 60 years for women to gain equal representation on the boards of the top 100 companies at the current rate of progress.
The Government has asked the Financial Reporting Council to consider including a new principle in its code of conduct to require firms to report on what they’re doing to increase the number of women in senior management positions. This builds on the Equality Bill which will allow companies to choose to use positive action to appoint more women to senior roles. Read more
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