Image credit: THC design
Image description: An illustrated image of women from different ethnicities, and the phrase Happy International Women's Day 8th March 2023
"Gender equity is in everyone’s interest. Rigid gender stereotypes about our roles at home and the workplace... can have a devastating effect on men as well. This isn’t just a moral case or undermining men’s own needs and outcomes. It’s about including people of all genders in the workplace that will benefit all of us, both at a micro and macro level.”
~Laura Bates, The Everyday Sexism Project
Hi all!
Welcome to a bumper newsletter for International Women's Day! Today we are exploring the meaning of equity, celebrating Carly Ashdown's art and sharing our findings on gender from our MIW research. Read on to find out more...
Embrace Equity
The theme for this year is 'Embrace Equity'. There is some disquiet in the background about the origins of this theme, however, after some discussion here at THC, we've decided to be pragmatic. In our ten years of DEI training, the vast majority of people we work with do not understand the word Equity. As such we think it is a positive step to raise awareness of this term, no matter the origins of the theme.
Equality means giving all individuals and groups the same resources or opportunities. While equity acknowledges that individuals have different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome (Milken Institute School of Public Health, 2022)
Image credit: https://www.pdsw.org.uk/news/equality-equity-the-definition-and-difference/
Image description: An illustrated image of people looking at a stadium divided into two parts, one explaining equality and the other explaining equity.
Women Creatives
One of the sub-themes is Women Creatives, which is about embracing women in the creative field. Carly Ashdown, one of THC's facilitators who is an artist and disabled woman, had some valuable insight into her journey with embracing equity in the creative field:
"My intention as an artist is to explore the fragility and beauty of life through creative expression. We all have a shared core experience of being human, which unites us all.
It’s clear to me that one of the most primal needs we have as human beings is to feel safe. This need for safety can interrupt our very openness to the experience of being. In the process, we can lose our connection to the magic of life and the abundance of power within us all. The art I create points towards this, with a desire to support the resuscitation of that connection to life.
I let go of safety when I decided to leave a successful career in television to paint full-time. Paralleling my early years as an artist I also studied psychoanalytical psychotherapy at the Tavistock to better inform, develop and nurture the bedrock of my creative practice.
As a female artist with Cerebral Palsy, I have had to navigate a line between expressing my needs as a disabled person, and advocating for the fact that whilst I have a disability there is also so much more to who I am.
The corralling nature of society has made this at times a challenging line to walk, and I have in the past, dismissed my needs to prove I can do and be more, that I can be equal to my able-bodied peers.
To effectively communicate to others that living with a disability is woven into every aspect of my life, and yet it does not define me, has been a challenge.
A core aspect of my motivation as an artist is a deeper desire to understand the world in which we find ourselves, and fundamentally I wish to explore what it is to be human. This desire to make sense of the human experience includes and transcends my experience as a disabled person.
Whilst I have had many careers, the space of being an artist and a public speaker has been my first consistent experience of having room to acknowledge the very real impact of living with a disability alongside being able to equally communicate my desire to understand the magic and wonder of life. And more to the point, I intend to support others on that journey through my practice. It is the creative process and the completed works that shine a light on the deeper questions of life that I wish to explore.
I see my art as an invitation to explore a new way of being in the world. And in the process I intend to create a space where a person can step into the unknown and be held there, opening a whole new landscape of possibilities for that person's life.
Being an artist has been my gateway into living more wholeheartedly in the present moment, where full creativity is accessible. This is where magic is waiting, and my message is that this space of magic which I experience as an artist, is waiting and available to us all.
Finding equity as a disabled artist has been a journey, it has taken time, patience and a little bit of bravery, and is never fully resolved. What supports me is reminding myself that we are in truth, all in this thing we call life together, to quote Ram Dass “We are all walking each other home.""
Engaging more men and fostering a culture of allyship
We are also releasing our MIW research today. There are loads of interesting insights in it but for today we're focusing on allyship.
When it comes to changing belief systems and building real change in the workplace, more needs to be done. Overall just 31% of men are ‘over the fence’ when it comes to being fully engaged in I&D initiatives. This means that over half (54%) are still not engaged or not at all engaged with any form of I&D in their workplace. There is also evidence of a culture of fear - 41% believe they will be looked over for promotion due to diversity targets, whilst some men claim engagement only because they have to. As Laura Bates said, "we shouldn't frame women's issues at men's expense, it can be very polarising".
Click here to view and download the report.
Love,
Team THC x