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International Women’s Day still matters.​
Progress for women at work remains unfinished.
Yet many organisations are sensing that their usual International Women's Day activity is no longer landing as intended, people are tired of:
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a rehash of the same themes
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a focus on empowerment and allyship narratives
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not experiencing a meaningful shift once they return to work
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What if there was a different way to approach International Women's Day that reflects the complexity organisations are navigating now?
Why a different approach is needed...​
Much International Women's Day (IWD) activity still focuses on raising awareness and celebrating women.
None of that is wrong.
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The challenge is that awareness alone isn’t translating into sustained change and for some people, it’s starting to feel repetitive or disconnected from daily working life.
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At the same time:
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many women feel progress is slow or fragile
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many men feel unsure where they fit in the conversation
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gender-diverse people are often left navigating silence
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leaders are under pressure to engage without polarising
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Repeating the same IWD content year after year doesn’t address this reality.
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What’s needed now is a more mature approach, one that includes women’s experiences without framing gender progress as a zero-sum issue that requires other groups to sacrifice.
Gender Harmony:
a unifying approach to gender progress​
Much of the work on gender equality to date has, understandably, focused on women and girls.
That focus has been necessary and remains important.
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Gender Harmony builds on this work by widening the frame.
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Rather than concentrating progress efforts primarily on one group, Gender Harmony provides a unifying umbrella for gender representation, one that supports women’s advancement while also recognising the experiences, constraints and contributions of men and gender-diverse people.
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It recognises that:
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different gender groups experience the workplace differently
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progress is stronger when it is collaborative rather than competitive
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lasting change comes from whole-system approaches that reflect the lived reality of people at work and integrate into everyday business practice​
Gender Harmony offers a way to integrate gender representation into leadership and business in a manner that is more coherent, more inclusive and easier to sustain over time.​
​​Rather than asking how to advance one group in isolation, it asks:
What needs to change so people of all genders can thrive together?
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In the workplace, this is applied through a clear set of principles and a practical 3 × 3 model, which helps leaders and teams assess gender dynamics across different groups and organisational levers, and identify where change will have the greatest impact.
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What this IWD sessions delivers
Delivered as a keynote, workshop or panel, this session uses the Gender Harmony framework to integrate gender representation into leadership and business in a way that supports performance as well as inclusion.​​
​Together, this creates a more sustainable and commercially relevant approach to gender representation, one that leaders can integrate seamlessly into how they run the business.
It helps organisations to:
+ Re-engage people who have tuned out of traditional gender messaging. By moving beyond empowerment and allyship narratives that no longer land, to a truly inclusive approach.
+ Shift gender from a specialist issue to a core leadership capability. So responsibility for progress sits with leaders and decision-makers, not just DEI teams, ERGs or women themselves.
+ Reduce risk and protect organisational credibility. Through a mature, balanced way of leading on gender that lowers the likelihood of backlash, missteps or polarisation.
+ Create the conditions for higher retention, engagement and performance. By ensuring every gender group is sincerely and equitably supported, and given what they need to perform at their best at work.​​​
Learn more about Gender Harmony​
You can explore the thinking behind Gender Harmony in more depth in the TEDx talk "Gender equality is broken" or at the Gender Harmony website.
About Stephanie Aitken
Stephanie Aitken is a gender diversity consultant, speaker and coach working with large organisations to improve gender representation in the workplace in ways that are inclusive and sustainable.
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She works with leadership teams, L&D functions and employee networks across traditionally male-dominated sectors, supporting women’s progression while engaging men and addressing the wider systems that shape outcomes at work.
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Stephanie is a TEDx speaker on the future of gender progress and the creator of the Gender Harmony framework, which builds on her research, client work and experience in the field.
