We're nearly to the end of March, wrapping up this year's Women's History Month.
I've been thinking about how this and other periods designated to honor the history and contributions of certain groups of people have just become PR opportunities. What happens is that the the real history gets buried, and that's where we learn.
Women's History Month has been pinkwashed and buried beneath sassy #girlboss PR efforts. This is the time of year when companies and brands of all sizes roll out their women's panels, their women's honorifics, their performative messages of commitment, often accompanied by feminine script fonts and infantile naming portmanteaux that incorporate words like "she" or "her."
It's tiring. And most groups leave the "history" part out of it completely.
Here's some history: I've been a professional in the workforce for a long time at this point, and not much is better now versus how it was 20 years ago.
Of course I had my share of bad experiences with gender discrimination and even sexual harassment when I started my career. And guess what? It still happens. I still notice it. People who live as women experience this every day, still.
Now the slights and overlooks are by tiny cuts, not big machete whacks.
Not great for impatient people like me. When I want change, I want change now!
Here's more history: I talked about this recently with my mom, who started her career in the 1960s. She had the audacity to want to go to college and only managed to make the case by paying for it herself and agreeing with her father that she would be a teacher. Nurse or teacher were her options. Of course, ten years into her career she had to quit once she became pregnant (even though she was married) because, horrors, how on earth could she Work While Pregnant? Since she had to take forced time off to have children, she couldn't re-enter the workforce again until her 40s. That made her miss out on a lot of cumulative salary gains.
Multiply that by millions of women of her generation, and in different ways for the women of every generation since then, even mine, which by all accounts should be fully equal. And yet we're not.
I asked her how she got through this and how she made change. She said she did it — and does it still — by showing up as herself, and recognizing that it's a marathon, not a sprint.
The hotel industry at large is getting better at closing the gap. Every year I meet more women in high leadership positions. And yep, every year, I see companies continue to grow their leadership teams with more men who look exactly the same.
You'll notice I didn't spend any time in this column trying to prove or support with data how women are just as competent as men, have just as much leadership effectiveness, blah blah blah. No way. I don't have to do that and I'm not going to. Same with any minority group that happens to present a little differently than white or male.
What I'm doing here is small. I'm talking about it. I hope you'll talk about it more too, not just in commiseration with other women, but with everyone. The more I normalize talking about these topics, the more I notice so many more people who listen now. I'm encouraged by that. Speak your history and talk about your experience — especially when it's not pretty.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
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