Simple, But Never Easy

In case you were in total media blackout last week, it was International Women’s Day last Thursday. I feel awkward when people say “happy women’s day” – I mean, do I reply, “thanks for acknowledging my gender identity?” Regardless of the semantics, my week was filled with some badass women offering real, practical, do-able ways to fight for Diversity and Inclusion. The best solutions are always strikingly simple, but never easy to come by or execute.

1. Frances McDormand – her Oscar acceptance speech wasn’t soaring political rhetoric. It was simple. Talk to women. Take the meeting. Fund the idea. Respect the work. We don’t need a holiday. We need funding and respect.

2. My dear friend Katie Martell is changing the world. She thinks she’s a marketer (and she IS a damn good one) but she’s really a liberator of change. She’s been speaking a lot lately on femvertising, and her takedown of corporate pandering for IWD included her brilliant “Femvertising Litmus Test”. I think it’s also a brilliant answer to the question, “but what can I do to support Diversity?”

3. Laurie Ruettimann is a very practical woman. I like practical women. Practical means you assess your reality and respond in whatever way necessary to complete the mission as efficiently as possible. She’s on a mission to fix work. Not whine or theorize or strategize. Fix it. And part of her reality is an invisible illness (something I know a little about). But she’s decided letting it get in her way would compromise the mission – so she won’t. (Neither should you.)

Now, in addition to being badass, all of these women stand up and share their ideas. There’s been a lot of talk of under-representation of women on conference agendas lately. To this I offer my own simple idea.

That one is even easy.