International Women’s Day 2023

Wednesday 8th March is International Women’s Day! A global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

Why do we celebrate International Women’s Day?

The first International Women’s Day was honoured in 1911 – at this time a woman couldn’t apply for a loan in her own name, couldn’t work in a legal profession or civil service and couldn’t claim equal pay for doing the same work as men. Despite having made positive progress towards gender equality and laws in place to prevent discrimination in the UK, we still have a way to go before we can claim complete gender equality and parity worldwide:

• In the UK, men still earn, on average, 9% more than women.
• Only 23% of the world’s politicians are women and only 16% of people on FTSE 350 executives are women.
• Women make up 64% of the world’s illiterate population.

It’s expected to take another 100 years for the gender gap to be balanced out. This is why we still celebrate International Women’s Day and why it’s important to keep fighting for gender equality and balance.

The day belongs to all groups collectively everywhere – not just women. It’s the responsibility of all of us to support women and their quest for equality.

How we celebrated at Carpenter Box

Our team marked International Women’s Day with a lunchtime event in the breakout space in our Worthing office. All staff were invited to come along for some food and themed games including questions on Women’s history and a ‘Who said it’ quiz.

Thank you to all staff that came along and congratulations to the winners of our quizzes:

• Claire, Lisa and Mike from our Tax team
• Robert from our Business Services team
• Miriam from our Practice Support team

Over on our Instagram page we also shared some stories of inspirational women in the business world including:

• Mo Abudu: a Nigerian media mogul, philanthropist and former human resources consultant.
• Cher Wang: widely recognised for her outstanding contributions to the tech industry.
• Susan Wojcicki: former CEO of YouTube who oversaw its growth into a media giant.
• Karren Brady: who has held several high-profile positions, is a bestselling author as well as a regular columnist and speaker.
• Rihanna: an icon in the music industry who is the founder and CEO of successful brands Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty.
• Melanie Perkins: Co-founder and CEO of Canva who transformed the platform into a billion-dollar company.

Happy International Women’s Day!