International Women’s Day Panel

Yesterday, I attended an International Women’s Day panel discussion on the topic of progress for women in the workplace. The two panelists were senior female executives from well-known firms. They were both well-spoken, and they addressed the topic in an engaging and informative way. The event flew by quickly; I was amazed when I turned my phone back on and discovered that a full hour had passed.

The wild card on the panel was the moderator, a high-ranking person at the National Organization for Women. She wasn’t what I expected as a representative of NOW. - I’m about to confess that I my thinking may have been influenced by stereotypes.

Here was this petite, perky, attractive lady in a red dress and black fishnet stockings telling us how much she always armired Barbie. The context was that a new collection of “Inspiring Women” Barbie dolls was announced to coincide with International Women’s Day. Still, I was a bit shocked to hear a high-ranking member of a feminist organization heap praises on Barbie for “being good at changing careers.”

The event was enjoyable and thought-provoking. I learned, for instance, that one of the first issues that NOW tackled when it was formed in 1966, was the segregation of jobs by sex in the want ads of the New York Times. The panelists both stressed the need for excellence and the willingness to take risks to go after the position that you want. The one from an IT background stressed the need to get girls interested in STEM careers at an earlier age. She remarked that it’s unrealistic to expect that half of the workforce in a technological future will be female when only 15 percent of university degrees in the STEM fields are earned by women.

Happy Belated International Women’s Day! And watch out for those sneaky stereotypes.