As women celebrate Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day this year, it’s important to talk about how challenging this year has been for women. Many women took on over 20 extra hours of work each week. Between stress from increased work, unstable jobs, and the gender pay gap, millions of women made the difficult decision to drop out of the workforce.
In fact, just as women overtook men as the majority of the US workforce in 2019, the 2021 numbers are so dismal that women’s participation in the labor force dropped to 1980s levels and we backslid 22 years on closing the wage gap.
With vaccine rollouts in full effect, we’re starting to see hope for a post-pandemic life. And alongside that is the opportunity to not only heal physically, but economically and financially.
As companies begin to rehire and scale for 2021 business needs, hiring women will be an important part of “healing.” And, with women outranking men in leadership, sales, and even financial capabilities (sources and stats below!), it seems like a no brainer to adjust workplace cultures, policies, benefits, and hiring practices to create more women-friendly and focused workplaces. This will not only support business growth and economic growth on a micro level, S&P Global reports that Increased participation in the workforce and equal pay for women leads to significant – almost $6 trillion – increases in global GDP.
- HBR finds women outscore men on 17 of 19 key leadership capabilities.
- Women-managed hedge funds outperform men-management funds.
- Gong finds that women in sales close 11% more deals than male sales reps.
With that said, I’m excited to announce March 2021’s #HRforAll Twitter chat: Supporting Women at Work on International Women’s Day 2021. Women, men, and all genders – please join us on March 9th from 1 to 2pm EST for #HRforAll and to hear from special guest, Madison Butler!
International Women’s Day 2021 Twitter Chat Questions
- Let’s start of the chat with something fun. Tell us / tag a woman who supports other women who inspires you!
- 2020 was a rough year for women, with many taking on 20 extra hours of (unpaid, family care) work every single week. Knowing that many are struggling, what can we do alleviate our workloads – whether at work or at home?
- In order to create real change, women cannot be the only ones to support equality for women. How can men get involved to support women either at work or at home?
- There are many different versions of feminism. What is your personal definition of feminism?
- While most employers were built by men and for men, many are starting to role out changes to support and retain women. What, if anything, has your company done to support women?
- If there was one thing you could change today that would make women’s lives easier and better, what would you change?
- How are you celebrating Women’s History Month? (Or how did you celebrate International Women’s Day?)
The Rules of a Twitter Chat
A Twitter chat is a LIVE chat that takes place on Twitter. People “gather” at a certain day and time to talk about a certain topic. There is usually one or two people who moderate or host the chat, who post questions to guide the conversation.
Questions are all marked with a Q and labeled with numbers to help everyone keep track of the flow of the conversation. People responding to questions should mark their answers with an A and the corresponding number.
For example, the moderators/ hosts will post “Q1” and everyone will answer with tweets marked “A1.”Additionally, all Tweets – both questions and answers – will use the hashtag #HRforAll. That’s how we’ll all stay connected on Twitter during the chat.
Your Hosts
Cory Kapner
Cory is the Vice President of Global Sales for Recruitics – a recruitment marketing analytics and optimization platform. Over the past 8 years Cory has helped major Job Boards, Staffing firms and Fortune 100 companies with their talent acquisition and retention strategy. Cory brings a data driven, subject matter expert approach to all situations and has proven to be a strategic partner for clients in both, North America and Europe. His past experience includes Michael Page International, Indeed.com, and is a founding member of Recruitics. Learn more here and connect with Cory on Twitter at @ckapner123.
Micole Garatti
Micole Garatti is the CEO of SocialMicole, Director of B2B Marketing at Fairygodboss, and Author of The Most Inclusive HR Influencer List™. She’s passionate about improving HR and work tech by diversifying voices of influence. She’s been quoted of featured as a Marketing and HR expert in Inc., Workology, SHRM, Drive Thru HR, #HRSocialHour, and more.
Her background is in communications at the University of Florida and she received her MBA from The College of William and Mary. Learn more about Micole here, and follower her on Twitter at @socialmicole.
Guest Host
Madison Butler
Madison Butler is a New Englander at heart but moved to Austin in 2017. Her work is focused around creating equitable spaces and creating scalable strategies to achieve psychological safety. She is an outspoken advocate for mental health, destigmatizing trauma, DEI and the ability to be “human at work”. She is passionate about facilitating hard conversations through storytelling, data and tough empathy.
Madison is committed to deconstructing the status quo and rebuilding corporate America, one organization at a time. Her mission is to ensure that no one ever feels like corporate spaces were not made for them, and they can live, work, and exist out loud.
She is a start-up enthusiast and is passionate about building inclusive teams from the ground up with early stage companies. Madison is committed to helping change the narrative around what it looks like to be “human at work”, and hoping to help alleviate unconscious bias in corporate America.
Find her on Twitter at @corprteUnicorn.
See you at next week’s chat! If you’re an HR vendor and want to sponsor the chat, please contact me here. Talk soon!