Written by Bojana NinkovInternational Women’s Day is a day dedicated to celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women globally. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women’s achievements and campaign for women’s equality.

This year, we decided at INSHUR that we were going to honor the occasion by organizing a few smaller events throughout the month of March rather than just celebrating the one big day (March 8th).

Flick West, our awesome People Experience Coordinator, pulled together a timeline filled with significant events which have taken place throughout history and have shaped the journey of women that came before us. We recognize that there is still a long way to go, but the timeline allows us to reflect on some of the most powerful and life changing moments throughout history! The timeline was published to our company wiki, Slab, where team members can refer back to it at any time.

On the subject of publishing, our talented Content Specialist, Catherine Pearson, wrote a blog to celebrate the March 8th. She spoke to several members of our @INSHUR team and asked them their thoughts on what it means to be a woman, self-talk, female role models and how INSHUR challenges gender bias – check it out here.

We decided that this month was also the perfect time to launch our first ever @INSHUR book club. In keeping with our month’s theme, the book that was chosen was ‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men’ by Caroline Perez, which the team could purchase using their Learning & Development budget. We encouraged everyone to buy the book through Giving Assistant (US) or The Giving Machine (UK) because that allows the purchaser to donate to a charity of their choice in the process (we wrote a list of some great charities created for women).

There are some very interesting stats in this book that highlight the ways in which women are misunderstood on the basis that data is often based on men and the male experience. For example: “Many people are familiar with the classic symptoms of a heart attack: chest pain and shortness of breath. But what they might not realize is that about two-thirds of women exhibit less-typical symptoms, such as subtle pressure or tightness in the chest, rather than the male presentation of full-blown chest pain. A British cardiology study showed that women experience 50% higher rates of heart attack misdiagnosis, with comparatively fewer women surviving the first attack.”

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The INSHUR book club is scheduled for next week and will be hosted by our very own Catherine Perez. She has prepared some thought-provoking questions and I’m very excited to attend my very first book club and participate in the discussion.

And last but not least, our fearless leader, the VP of People, Talent & Culture, Tina Phillips, will be hosting an Always Learning session (our version of the Lunch & Learn) on Inclusive Language. I’m really looking forward to this one, because it’s been designed in workshop style so rather than telling people what not to say, we will all get to participate in a few different activities and experiments.

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How do you all honor this special day/month with your teams? I would love to learn more about what other companies are doing.