international women’s day

While I personally think that everyday should be International Women’s Day(!) I am happy for today to sit in gratitude for the women that have gone before me. The women who raised me. And, the women who surround me today.

As we celebrate women near and far it has gotten me thinking about success and what it means. How do you decide what success is? What standard do you hold yourself to? Is it the pinnacle of your career? Or, is it the legacy you leave behind when your time on earth passes? How heavily are you influenced by others around you?

I can only speak from my own experience but, for me, defining “success” as a woman, has been a struggle. It feels a little nuts to say that, really. I come from a family of strong women. I went to an all-girls high school. I competed in an all-girls sport. You would think that being surrounded by amped-up feminine energy for so many years would have helped me figure this woman and success thing out. And yet, the message I grew up hearing especially at school, in sport, in the media and definitely once I entered the workforce was that to be a successful woman you had to learn how to succeed in a world where the definition of success was made by someone else. Fit in. Play the game. Hide parts of yourself.

In my teens and twenties I heard that women need to be strong, yet soft. Women need to be direct when communicating but not too direct because that makes you bitchy. Muscles are a good thing but make sure you are also thin with a thigh gap. Don’t show too much emotion at work because you will seem weak and less suited for leadership roles. The project you wanted to work on went to your male colleague "since you have so much on your plate at home already" (even though he also had young kids). Different expectations and standards created by men and reinforced by other women who either never questioned the status quo or went through it themselves and considered it a rite of passage for the next generation.

Over the years, various coaches and managers have been clear that I should keep my personal life separate from my work. "People won't take you seriously if they know what is going on at home", I've been told. When I started running my own business I felt that the only way to move forward is to be tough, take no shit and fight for everything. Except it never felt like me. I was ignoring my own intuition.

Success is something that is modelled. And if you only see success defined in one way it is hard to question why your version of success is different. Growing up, I used to devour the newspaper and read about the lives of various business leaders. Look at what they have achieved, I would think to myself. They are hard-ass negotiators, recognized as experts in their field. That is what success looks like, I would think to myself. In more recent years, my high school alumnae magazine profiled grads who were recognized in their respective fields but as I read the profiles I found I didn’t really relate. I shared my observation with the publisher of the magazine and she told me I was not the type of alum they were targeting. Message received: Not a worthy alumnae. Hmmm.

I now know I had been measuring my own success against someone else’s standard. I never stopped to think about what success meant to me. Today, I know that you can run a successful business built on relationships. You can care about people not only for the work they do but also for what is going on in their personal lives. It is possible to share more than just your professional self at work without fear of being negatively impacted. It is important to me that at the end of the day everyone walks away from a project with a sense of satisfaction and pride. Everyone wins. If we are collectively stronger we are all better.

Throughout pandemic-land we have witnessed women succeeding even as the odds are stacked against them. Today, on International Women's Day, I would like to stand up and celebrate women who are doing it their own way. Women who are proudly declaring what their version of success is. Women who don't hide their role as a mother but wear it as a badge of honour. And, women who encourage others around them, especially those who are not yet as confident or who have fallen on hard times, to proudly stand tall as the talented, fabulous women that they are.

A rising tide lifts all boats. This year, let's all rise together.

PS - if you would like to know when another story is posted be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything!