Happy International Women’s Day. Today, March the 8th is the day to celebrate all the brave women out there in the world. All women. Everyone at their level.
Mankind is half men and half women. And we can’t survive without each other. Can we? We need both men and women, but it’s such a sad fact that girls don’t count as much as the men and they don’t get the education they deserve.
Of the world’s 750 million illiterates most of them are girls and women. It’s a sad fact and I myself, I’m a privileged person. I was born soon after the Second World War ended in Europe and in a country that was really thriving, or starting to thrive right after the war, we had not been into the war for real. I had parents who said to me that I could do anything, and my sister and my brothers could do anything. It was possible for anybody to do anything and it didn’t have to do with the sex of the person. This was the time of the youth-led liberation movement of 1968, and there was a very thriving women’s liberation movement going on. We could study and we could work just like the men, at least on the surface.
So now 50 years later it should be very equal shouldn’t it? That would be perfect right? But no. The #metoo movement that happened last fall really showed that we have still a long way to go even in such an emancipated country as Sweden. So the work must go on.
Fortunately, we have a few really, really brave women out there who have led the way for all of us. I’m not talking about Sweden I’m talking about globally. We have of course Oprah who is from my generation. She is a black woman who did not only fight the poverty that she grew up in, but she has also had to fight the racial war and also the women’s war. After her very tough childhood, she has become one of the biggest celebrities ever in the world. She is a really, really good influencer and gives hope to many with her way of approaching everything with grace and kindness.
On the other end of the lifespan, we have this little young girl Malala who was born in Pakistan, and that’s a country where girls don’t really count. They’re not supposed to study! At an early age of 11, or around 12, she started to fight against the Taliban, who were ruling a lot at that time, because she thought they took away her right to study and had taken away the right for all girls to study. She had great support from her family and ok she was not really brought up in poverty, but it was in hard conditions. Eventually, because of her fight against the Taliban, she got shot by them and in the brain actually. And I don’t know how it could happen, but she was so lucky because she survived and she has continued her work, and done it in such a good way that she even got the Nobel Prize for Peace a couple of years ago, and she is still fighting.
There are of course a lot of other brave ladies out there who have stood up for womankind and women’s rights. You have the likes of Madonna and Emma Watson just to mention a couple. There are many, many more of course. What does all this have to do with you as a business leader?
Can you guess? It has everything to do with it.
None of these women was born into to the role that they have played. They have come this far because they saw a need and they didn’t stand back for the difficulties they faced. They saw the need and they wanted to do something, and they did.
When I see what these people have in common as role models for women’s rights, and for the rights of other inequalities that they have been fighting, I can see that the common things are continuity, persistence and a positive mindset. It is possible and when they see a block in their way, they find another way. They also cooperate a lot with other people. They ask and they just don’t stop because there is a block. They don’t stop. They find another way.
These are all very simple and easy to apply principles that you can use in your everyday leadership as a woman leader.
You can use the consistency that they use to see that you never stop. You can use the persistence and have a positive attitude and mindset. And you can help, you can ask for help and you can help others. Co-operation and collaborations do really benefit everyone if you do it in the right way. Most of us are never going to be celebrities like Oprah or Malala but everyone can contribute in this small way for a good and much better world for everybody, both men and women because we still need each other.
It’s not a fight against men, this is the fight for women and for women’s rights to an equal world, to equal rights.
So Happy International Women’s Day. Do go and find groups where you can work together with other women. You can find mastermind’s in most areas of work. There are groups where you can mastermind one way or the other and you can go to retreats where you meet other women with the same search for knowledge that you have, and you can learn from each other and you can help each other.
There are a lot of possibilities and we have to keep working until we find the equal society.
If you need help to get started with this and you want someone to discuss it with, you can just click this link and we will have a short chat for free, where I can help you see what your needs are.
Also if you have friends or colleagues that you think would need this kind of information feel free to share the link to this video with them.
Happy international women’s day. Once again.
