March Into Action, Part II: Step Away from the Scales & March Into Your Life!
Posted on May 04, 2020 by Gina DeRosa, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Ladies, learn how to crush the scales that rule your lives and up your game in the self-advocacy department.
(Original blog post from 3/08/2020. See all posts on Sixth Gear Series’ site.)
“I want every girl to know that her voice can change the world.” – Malala
March is International Women’s Month, and today (March 8th) is International Women’s Day (IWD), which originated at the turn of the 20th century as societies became more industrialized and experienced exponential population growth. According to the official IWD website, this is “a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women [and] marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.”
The celebration of women’s achievements is one of the obvious points of International Women’s Month. The less obvious but perhaps more important purposes of this dedicated time of year are to reflect upon the unconscious biases you have that might be squashing women’s potential and then pledge to change your perspectives and resulting actions. If you’re a woman, or even a man who considers himself to be a loving father, husband, uncle, brother, son, etc., you might be reading this and wondering how it’s possible that you yourself could possess such negativity in your subconscious.
That’s what I thought, too…
Let’s do a quick review of my personal inventory before we dive in:
Woman? Check. Daughter, wife, granddaughter, niece, great-niece? Check. Friends with femmes? Check. Mentor and Coach of women? Check. Leader of professional women’s group? Check.
I’m a champion of human potential, which includes women, of course, but I don’t consider myself a feminist in the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar sense. I unintentionally champion women’s potential more frequently than men’s for the simple fact that I spend more time with women, such as at my Day Job company, in my circles of friends, and with clients who enroll in my coaching services, but I certainly appreciate and champion the men in my life and others whose paths I cross, too.
As I’ve prepared for this month on behalf of the professional women’s group, I’ve engaged in deeply insightful dialogue with others about what it means to be a woman, especially in the workforce: What it means to be women of color, women with mental health issues, women with unsupportive life partners, women who are retiring, women for whom English is a second or third language, women without children, and women who are caregivers for dependent loved ones.
There’s far more intersectionality across the women in those and other categories than you can see on this page or even across the room. These may be women who are not heard, who are not paid their worth, who are taken for granted, who sacrifice their own dreams, who self-medicate to appear strong, whose health suffers under the strain of responsibilities, and who privately question their faith.
It really wasn’t until I got around to making plans for International Women’s Month activities at my Day Job that I was able to personally reflect and uncover unconscious biases that I now realize have served only to reinforce some of the stereotypes and dynamics that I was once too ignorant to see or simply refused to believe in. For example, I’ve encouraged friends to end toxic, soul-sucking friendships and relationships while telling myself that I didn’t deserve a life partner better than the Mr. Wrong I was engaged to marry (this is not in reference to my current Mr. Right, btw!). I’ve advocated for others’ promotions but refused to believe that I should do the same for myself because my hard work would eventually speak for itself. I’ve been late to events and even work due to spending way too much time scrutinizing my weight in the mirror while believing that all other women are beautiful despite what their scales say.
Scales are intended to provide objective measurements, whether for the weight of an object or the weight of a law. Instead, there are many that yield only perplexing subjectivity that rules women’s lives – the scales we step on to measure our beauty, that dictate the pay someone thinks we are worth, that we forever chase to achieve work-life balance, that request our level of satisfaction with our male-led institutions, that tell us how diverse we must be, and that measure the luggage we overpack due to the lost battles with our confidence. These are the scales I encourage us all to step away from to then seek alternative means of measuring our worth and our potential.
Ladies, here’s MY “call to action for accelerating gender parity”:
Today, this month, and every day beyond, step away from the scales and march into your lives. As my personal examples served to demonstrate, achieving equity and being celebrated has to start within each of us. In other words, when we believe in and advocate for ourselves as much as we believe in and advocate for the women in our lives, the world will begin to shift in our favor. The sooner we cease to doubt our own abilities, put off our goals to help others with theirs, ignore our instincts, minimize our true beauty or value, or otherwise act in ways that squash our own potential, the sooner the rest of the people in our lives will treat us equitably and remove the obstacles on the paths to our achievements. Cheers to you, this month and always!
