International Women's Day 2022
By Liz Afolabi, People Director
Mar 9th 2022Another IWD and another opportunity to celebrate female achievements. I still find it strange that we need IWD. You’d think in this day and age we’d have moved past needing a day dedicated to women, but I’d argue that we need it more than ever.
At the time of writing this, we’re two years into a pandemic that has seen many women’s social, economic and professional positions decline in unprecedented ways. We’ve seen seismic shifts which have widened the gender pay gap*, more women out of work, alongside a growing movement to hold public and private organisations more accountable for keeping women safe on our streets.
Despite all of this, I’m feeling hopeful. I’ve seen the benefits of supporting and championing women — for those women and society as a whole. It’s not only the right thing to do (as you know, and as in our numbers, we occupy 50% of the planet) but numerous studies cited over the years have shown that improving female education contributes to the productivity and health of countries. That’s right, we can literally make the world better!
Break the Bias
This year’s IWD theme is ‘Break the Bias’ and explores the daily challenges still faced by women in society and the workplace.
Here at TotallyMoney, we understand that fintech isn’t always typically representative of the communities it serves, and we’re keen to address that both for our customers and our team. To this end, we’re proud supporters of the government’s Women in Finance Charter and are committed to supporting IWD, alongside those in our company who identify as female.
Supporting Women at TotallyMoney
To mark International Women’s Day, we brought together the women of TotallyMoney for a workshop with the Step Up Club, to help us take the pain out of self-promotion, something that sadly, many women traditionally find challenging.
We also spent time celebrating our achievements and each other and thinking about how we can do this going forward.
To this end, I’m delighted to share that we’ll be launching a pilot female mentoring scheme at TotallyMoney, with female members of our Management Team partnering with our female employees to support their growth, and share the benefit of their experience.
For the first time ever in TotallyMoney’s history, we have a gender-balanced Management Team, with 55% of roles taken by women. This is something we’re incredibly proud of and are keen to leverage. We know that it can only make us better, and we know that it will go some way towards helping us do the work to #BreakTheBias.
