International Women's Day
IWD is the 8th March. This year's theme is Accelerate Action
International Women’s Day is the 8th March.
My guess is that your social media feeds will be filled with posts focused on IWD. You may have also had some IWD focused talks or workshops at work.
There’s usually alot of energy around the day, but what happens after?
This year’s theme, Accelerate Action, asks that we make a committment to making faster and more effective steps to gender equality and equity.
On the IWD website they identify 7 areas that show why accelerating action is the focus for this year:
Progress is too slow
Addressing global setbacks
Inspiring momentum for change
Tackling structural inequalities
Focus on impactful solutions
Inclusivity and intersectionality
A timely call for accountability
Accelerating action recognises that despite decades of work there is still huge gender inequality. It also acknowledges that the Covid-19 pandemic disproportionately affected women.
This year’s focus also focuses on activism across all the levels of society including: grassroots, political, corporate, individuals, governments and organisations.
I would like to see more long term committments being made and followed through. Here are some of my suggestions of actions you can take within yourself, your team or your club to help accelerate action:
Develop senior leadership at your club
How diverse is the committee at your club? How many women are there on the committee? Not just in roles that are focused on women’s and girls’ rugby, but across the committee.
Try developing a mentor/shadowing programme that enables a female club member to shadow a senior committee member.
This would create a pathway for progression through the club and develop senior leadership confidence and experience within club members.
Create a club social media plan
Too often a club’s main social media page will become a voice for just the men’s 1XV. I see lots of pages set up for the women’s and girls’ section, which is great.
It gives those sections and teams a seperate identity. However, the club’s main social media pages should be showcasing all of the club’s teams and work.
It helps club members feel connected to what the wider club is doing, beyond the men’s 1XV. This includes the women’s and girls’ section, men’s teams, mini and junior rugby, touch rugby, walking rugby and more.
Create a plan to share exsiting content and create new content that shows off the club’s teams.
This could be a commitment to post something from each team once a week. You could also create an new series of posts that gives the change to post new content from each team or section.
Having a social media calendar will help keep this committment.
Continue learning
I know this might seem obvious. As a coach, player, referee or volunteer it’s important to keep learning.
Around IWD, there are always opportunities for learning (webinars, talks etc). However, this commitment to developing your practice, including awareness of female-specific topics, is something that needs to happen all year-round.
Having a development plan, including targeting opportunities for CPD, helps keep this commitment. Identify areas of learning you might want to embark on or gaps in your knowledge that you’d like to fill.
This aids the players you’re coaching but also your own development and confidence.
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