Episode 56 – IWD

International Women’s Day (IWD) is a worldwide day celebrating women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. To mark this year, VistaTalks host Priscillia Charles discussed IWD with Dominika D’Agostino, Strategic Account Director, Paula Manzur, Machine Translation Specialist,  and Monika Bugiel, Language Services Manager. 

IWD has occurred for over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people. Today, IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. The International Women’s Day website conveys that ‘A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change.’ In addition to asking people to ‘Choose to challenge. How will you help forge a gender-equal world?’ 

Vistatec is proud to celebrate women’s achievements and raise awareness against bias, taking action for equality. 

In this episode of VistaTalks, Priscillia Charles discussed the theme of ‘Choose to Challenge’; Dominika D’Agostino shares how the raised hand pose ‘is a power pose because it means that, first of all, you choose not to be silent, you choose to speak up. You choose to call out certain things or biases that you see around yourself. 

Monika Bugiel discusses how language is one of the most powerful tools, and the discussion turns to the male and female aspects of words/language and the impact of biased data. Monika shares how, as a woman, it can be highly offensive if someone is trying to advertise something or sell something, and they use the male form. 

Paula Manzur shares thoughts on the importance of mentoring. She discusses how ‘Mentorship is a very good idea. It’s a way of supporting each other, supporting women that have a potential and that can really make an impact.’ 

International Women’s Day is one of the most important days of the year to: 

• Celebrate women’s achievements 
• Raise awareness about women’s equality 
• Lobby for accelerated gender parity 
• Fundraise for female-focused charities 

The IWD website asks the question, ‘Do we still need an International Women’s Day?’ and goes on to answer this question with a resounding ‘Yes!’. IWD share how, according to the World Economic Forum, none of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, nor likely will many of our children. We will not attain gender parity for almost a century. 

As the IWD clearly states, ‘There’s urgent work to do – and we can all play a part.

You can listen to Episode 56 ‘International Women’s Day’ of VistaTalks on Spotify.