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8th March - International Women's Day

 Today is International Women's Day and the firm was doing various events related to that.  

To be honest, I don't really approve of the corporate (mis)appropriation of IWD.  For one thing, it seems somewhat hypocritical when the rest of the year many organisations do nothing and the gender pay gap and glass ceilings remain intact.  Moreso though, whilst these are problems, they are very much first-world problems. I think the corporatisation of IWD ignores the international part, which is surely the point of the event, to highlight to appalling ways in which women and girls have to live in some parts of the world.  I didn't see any corporate events talking about that.  

I had two meetings today which showed IWD in contrast.  The first was with a female leader of a business, runs a female entrepreneurship network.  One of the things we touched on was how little private equity investment goes to female founders (depending on your source, it's between 1-3% which is shockingly low).  Later on, I went to an event, coincidentally on venture capital, business angels and early-stage investment.  Not a single woman in the room.         

It is of course a difficult day for the secret trans woman.  I want to stand with women and campaign for their rights and to do so as one of them.  But they think I'm a man, so the best I can be is a well-meaning ally who can't really understand the issues anyway due to his male privilege. 


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