International Women’s Day: Choosing to Challenge

Year after year, March 8th is celebrated as International Women’s Day all over the world. It marks the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women while highlighting the problems they face in day-to-day life and the professional environment. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

This year’s campaign theme is ‘Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world’. A social media campaign will be held to encourage women to #ChooseToChallenge and call out gender bias and inequality. On this IWD and every day, FunCorp is committed to celebrating women’s social, economic, and cultural achievements. Our commitment to advancing gender parity and celebrating women goes beyond IWD. We embrace every employee’s diversity through an inclusive and accountable culture embedded in our values and is a critical component of our success. We are proud to celebrate and support the people that make FunCorp, well, FunCorp.

This year the mission for IWD: Women in Tech is to celebrate digital advancement and champion women forging innovation through technology. A challenging world is an alert world. Each one of us is responsible for our thoughts and actions — all day, every day. Therefore we put forth our participation and celebrate to help create an inclusive world.

What is International Women’s Day?

Proposed initially during one of the first International Socialist Women’s Conferences in 1910, International Women’s Day was first celebrated on March 19th, 1911. Later moved to be celebrated on March 8th, International Women’s day “is a global day celebrating women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. . . . [and] belongs to all groups collectively everywhere.”

Building opportunity and access for all through technology

Diversity is critical in tech, as it enables companies to create better and safer products that consider everyone, not just one section of society. Over the past five years, we have seen a sharp increase in the number of women developers, coders, innovators, and entrepreneurs in the tech sector. The technology industry helps organizations empower their employees, optimize their operations, connect with their customers and transform their products. It’s also a critical factor in building an inclusive economy, an economy that harnesses the power of diversity to create opportunities and positive business outcomes for all. At FunCorp, we understand that a diverse workforce inspires diverse solutions, ultimately helping drive innovations that benefit everyone.

What are we doing?

At FunCorp, we have an unwavering focus on diversity and inclusion. Led from the top, one of our strategic priorities is to provide an equal playing ground for all and across our community. While we know diversity is a broad concept, gender diversity is a priority for us, and we are passionate about getting more women into tech and ensuring that once onboard, they can thrive.

Photo by Dai KE on Unsplash

Currently, we have around 40% women at FunCorp, and most of them are in senior leadership roles. However, there’s more work to do to ensure we continue to track in the right direction. To help us do this, we have concentrated our efforts to:

• Work-Life Balance: Striking a work-life balance can be an insurmountable challenge for many. It’s imperative to provide flexible working measures to help employees find a balance between their family and work-life balance.
• Career Development: Build programs to train and grow female associates that leverage their technical and innovative skill sets. Give them opportunities to grow and thrive.
• Recognition: Appreciate contributions and make a point to highlight the accomplishments of women as much as men. These are just a few of the tasks we’ve already had in place because, for us, equality is key to building a positive work environment.

What does the future hold?

We will continue to commit to contributing to equality by doing what we can to bridge the gender gap. No doubt that there is plenty of work to be done on the road to equality. There is so much we can all do to help in moving the movement forward. Here’s to the women across sectors, industries, nations, ages, and cultures, who persist tirelessly to take charge together — paving the way for future generations to come.

Happy International Women’s Day 2021! #ChoosetoChallenge