A Celebration of International Women’s Day 2020

A Celebration of International Women’s Day 2020 from Sam Kaberry

With International Women’s day approaching on 8th March I remembered our MD’s comments last year:

“Women bring a different perspective and extremely valuable skill set to business and at PMD they’re key to our business success. I’d like to acknowledge PMD ‘s women today both in our team and the many successful women entrepreneurs we support with funding.”

I am exceptionally lucky to work for a company who treat men and women equally. We recruit for attitude and ability to do a job well and it doesn’t matter what gender that person is. It’s not down to my employer or indeed the industry, that I am in a very small minority of women in my role. It’s simply that there are very few women who choose to do the job!

Considering I am in a minority, I don’t think about the gender gap, probably because I don’t feel any personal effects of it. I do appreciate that not everyone is so fortunate.

A Facebook contact of mine recently took a business trip overseas. He posted an image of a female airline captain with a comment “unusual”. This was not meant in any way offensively; he was stating a fact. It is unusual. Again though, I put it down to individual choice. I doubt it’s the airline choosing not to recruit females (or there would be no women at all including this one) it just doesn’t seem to be a job that women tend to choose. I understand there is a much bigger picture here. Women have historically been discouraged from considering these roles, but things are changing, and a new generation of young women are becoming empowered. They have the choice to do exactly what they want to do, and they are doing it!

I had a great day recently; surrounded by other successful women. Women who were delivering amazing presentations for the first time. Confident, knowledgeable women, speaking honestly and informatively about their enterprises. Women growing their own businesses from scratch. Women showing amazing entrepreneurial and organisational skills. Women juggling their lives and careers to be successful. Women I admire and who simply inspire me.

I follow a lady on LinkedIn, who is incredibly funny, and very real. She has her own accountancy practice and describes herself as “Girl Boss”. I love this! She has a huge LinkedIn following as well as a very successful business. Her recent post about how she quit her job 4 years ago and set herself up doing a few accounts generated 240 comments in one day, and yet she still had the kind courtesy to connect and respond to my message about this piece! How amazing is that? Thank you Jeri Williams.

Whilst I feel exceptionally proud to be among these successful women, and to be one of them, I also equally admire amazing mums who choose not to pursue a career and, of course, those who miraculously do both!

Which brings me to one of my favourite quotes:

“Behind every successful woman is a tribe of other successful women who have her back.”

To my tribe – thank you! Happy International Women’s Day 2020!

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