It's International women’s day on March 8.
This year the theme for International Women’s Day is #BalanceforBetter. It’s a call-to-action for driving gender balance across the world.
In NZ the pay gap sits at around 12%. This means men on average earn 12% more than women in the same or a similar position. Another way to look at it is that women effectively work for free from the 18th of November till the end of the year, compared to a man in the same job. It’s small consolation to know we’re doing better than in the UK, where women worked for free for an extra week, from November 10.
Women are too valuable to work for less in this way. Which got the Pinnacle team thinking not only about what we could do for #balanceforbetter, but also about why we think women are so awesome. Here’s what the team said*:
- Women are great at multi-tasking
- We know how to be nurturing, kind and loving
- Are beautiful in a million different ways
- Are all different from each other
- We carry babies for 9 months and get them out in the big wide world with some not-to-be-taken-lightly effort
- Can make lasagne and lots of other meals, without using a recipe
- Can walk in heels
- Can fit a lot of stuff into a seemingly tiny handbag
- Can cry in movies without losing our cool even if we have mascara all down our face
- We live longer
- Have excellent communication skills
- Usually know where everything is – like the car keys
- We take more sick days, which you could say means we know when to stop and look after ourselves
- We are resilient
- We smell nice
- Women are generally smaller than men, requiring less food and smaller clothes, and therefore using up fewer of the world’s limited natural resources.
- We don’t sweat, we glow
- We’re good at balancing how much cake we eat with exercise.
- Women speak approximately 20,000 words per day compared to men who speak closer to 7000, i.e. we’re good communicators
- We soldier on and look after the family when we are feeling sick
- We can do grocery shopping and meal planning on a budget
- We have an incredible ability to make dinner out of whatever’s left in the fridge
- We are prepared to go without so others don’t have to
- We put others feelings before our own
And we usually do all of this with a smile on our face! Except for when it’s a REALLY bad day.
What do you think makes the women in your life awesome?
This year when you’re celebrating being awesome, as you should do, take a minute to think about how you will help make a difference to the gender gap so that no women is working for free doing the same job as someone else. Do it for yourself, your colleagues, your sisters and your daughters.
*Disclaimer – we don’t pretend to think that ALL women do ALL of these ALL the time, but generally we think women are pretty great. We also really like men, and think they’re great too but that’s another day and another blog.
PHOTO: Amy Cavanaugh - General Manager Operations, Pinnacle Life
