Have you ever had a friend tell you that they went to the doctor and you reply with, “What did he say?” – even though your friend didn’t say anything about her doctor being male? Did you know that a study published in the American Economic Review in 2000 found that after the five top US orchestras changed their hiring practices, including using screens so that judges could not see the gender of the person auditioning, the percentage of female players increased from 6 percent in 1970 to 21 percent in 1993? Did you know that in 2020, the United Nations Development Program released the Gender Social Norms Index, which revealed that half of the world’s men and women think that men make better political leaders than women?
These are all examples of gender bias. And regardless of whether it’s conscious or unconscious, this bias impacts opportunities for women in the workplace and society. It’s a root cause of discrimination.
The good news is that each of us can consciously stop thinking and acting in ways that explicitly or implicitly favor one gender over the other. And collectively, we can take action to remove bias from our communities, our workplaces, our schools, and our governments. That’s why this year, the theme of International Women’s Day is #BreakTheBias.
With a #BreakTheBias pose people all around the world can join together and consciously make an effort to break biases in their communities, at their workplace, in schools, etc. To hear from some of our amazing Payoneer women about what #BreakTheBias means to them, check out the video below.
We embrace this theme here at Payoneer, where 50% of our staff and 52% of our C-levels are women, and encourage all of us to take a pause during International Women’s Day on March 8 to think about how we can be more conscious about the language we use, the assumptions we make, and the way that we treat women, regardless of our own gender.
Happy International Women’s Day to us all!
Learn more about International Women’s Day
Since 1911, when over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland held the first official International Women’s Day (IWD) by rallying for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, and hold public office, IWD has become a truly global event for raising awareness and more important, taking action.
Check out the IWD website to learn more about how we can celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness about women’s equality and take action to accelerate gender parity.