March 8^th is International Women’s Day (IWD). On this day, we celebrate women all over the world. The theme this year for IWD is #EmbraceEquity

Yes, embrace equity. But what is equity? Isn’t it the same as equality?

Well, equality is a word that we hear a lot of and I think many of us are able to understand what it means. Very often, we hear the words gender and equality together – Gender Equality. Whereby, genders are treated equally. In other words, there is no bias towards one gender over the other. And, of course, in an ideal world this would be happening already.

 

Now, equity is different to equality. Equity refers to recognizing that everyone’s situation and circumstances are different, so depending on the individuals circumstances extra support or help may be needed in order to create a situation where equality is possible.

 

So, in order to reach gender equality, we need to have a conversation about equity. Here in Japan, we need to have conversations about why women must be the ones who take child-care leave. We need to have conversations about why more women are not becoming politicians. We need to have conversations that recognize that while equality is important, equity is even more important for women in Japan. We need to have conversations which highlight the systemic and structural barriers that stop women from thriving in Japan.

 

Consider the following example, a young woman takes maternity leave in Japan but when she returns to the company after her maternity leave she discovers that her male colleague has been promoted. When she asks her superior why she wasn’t considered for the promotion she was told that he had been at the company longer than she was. Equity would mean that her maternity leave would not be treated as ‘a break’ from the company. Equity  means that such systemic and structural barriers can be broken down. Equity is so important!

 

Check out the IWD homepage: https://www.internationalwomensday.com