Gerald Edelman #ChooseToChallenge

The day isn’t just about celebrating the achievements of pioneering women across the world; it also stands as a day of reflection on what we, as a society, can do and need to do better.

This year’s International Women’s Day’s theme, #ChooseToChallenge calls us all to confront and address gender inequality. And we, at Gerald Edelman, are doing just that.

Equality for all is a core value at Gerald Edelman, and we’re taking on this year’s International Women’s Day challenge head-on. We invited our team to join #ChooseToChallenge and discuss gender-bias labels, gender stereotypes and how we as individuals choose to challenge them each day. Here, we take just three examples from our campaign to highlight our commitment as a firm to changing the conversation on International Women’s Day, to celebrate the women on our team but also our male colleagues who choose to challenge gender based labels and stereotypes.

“I choose to involve everyone in the conversation, no matter their gender”.

For GE and VAT manager, Jo Reed, men are as important in the International Women’s Day conversations as women. Gender-based bias/stereotypes movements should not be limited to one day but pushed in our everyday as that’s the only way we will see long term change.

“I choose to encourage women reaching high positions of power and influence.”

GE partner, Deval Patel, ensures that he encourages those in his team to reach for positions of power and influence. As part of the GE mentoring programme, Deval was mentor to another GE partner and one of the first female partners of the firm, Joanna Loizidou.

“I choose to empower parents, so no one has to choose between a family and a career.”

Lauren Kelly, GE’s Head of Marketing, believes that parents and those with family commitments should never feel left behind or guilty for balancing their career and time at home. A major step in changing attitudes towards working parents is to remove strict corporate boundaries on working hours and daily expectations. For many, the Covid-19 pandemic has enabled them to show how they can effectively balance their time when working remotely.

Conclusion

From our discussion with the Gerald Edelman team, we have seen the different layers to workplace gender-bias and stereotypes and how important it is for all genders to be part of the movement. This International Women’s Day and every day afterwards, we challenge ourselves to address workplace gender-bias. Our CEO, Richard Kleiner, also commented:

“I am an enormous believer in diversity in all its forms and including, of course, gender diversity. It would be a real triumph if at some point in the future, the IWD campaign was no longer necessary although I suspect it will have to remain for some years to come until gender diversity is something that is embedded into the foundation of everything that we, as human beings do – whether it is in business or indeed through any other activity.”