This Women's Day Effort Wants to Spam Your Boss for Equality

LONDON—A lot of brands and agencies, fearful of missing out, will join conversations about equality this International Women's Day. But how many businesses will commit to—and, importantly, actually achieve—lasting change? The glacial pace of change in society, and inside the advertising industry itself, would suggest not enough. SheSays, the industry campaigning group and women's network founded in London in 2007 by Laura Jordan Bambach and Alessandra Lariu, is putting CEOs in the spotlight this International Women's Day by having staff spam them with calls for equality, anonymously, via a specially crafted form online here. Equal parental leave would be a major step towards eradicating gender bias in the workplace—Joyce Kremer, U.K. president of SheSays The organization is focusing on parental leave this International Women's Day and is calling on agencies to offer the option of shared parental leave for men and women, and also for same-sex parents. Women too often face a career penalty for becoming mothers—from being overlooked for promotions to being outright sidelined on return from maternity leave. SheSays says parental leave policies should be made equal for men and women so that women are not penalized for taking on the bulk of childcare. In the U.K. women are entitled to take 52 weeks' maternity leave and men are entitled to take just two weeks. And while parents can request to share maternity leave, the reality is most companies don't make it easy, or financially viable (they have to share the parental leave pay). According to SheSays, same-sex couples face the same problem and have to choose who will take the maternity leave package, with just 2% of families taking up shared parental leave overall. Men and women should both have the right to raise their children SheSays is calling on ad agencies to step up and offer "equalized" parental leave by next year to benefit women as well as men—who should have the right to spend more time with their children without (as women do) facing the consequences. Joyce Kremer, U.K. president of SheSays and creative at Ogilvy, said equal parental leave would be a "major step towards eradicating gender bias in the workplace" and had already proved to have a positive impact on mental health and productivity in companies where it had been introduced.It's not about taking any parental leave away from women, she said, but about encouraging employers to offer generous parental leave packages for all parents, regardless of gender. "How can we say our companies are diversity champions when we keep reinforcing outdated gender roles through our policies? It’s 2021. Shouldn’t parents have the right to choose how they parent?" she added."Companies need to get with the times, or risk losing talent to rivals whose policies reflect the growing trend for more flexible policies. ... Equality and inclusion aren’t just buzzwords anymore; they are the future, and the quicker companies adopt them the less likely they are to be left behind.” You can read the email in full below: This campaign was created by Joyce Kremer, Ruby Norman-Curran, Katja Alissa Mueller, Melissa Wong, Jennifer Vobis, Patrick Steele, Lorenzo Spadoni and Eva Münnich.

International Women's Day

This International Women's Day, One Group Wants You to Secretly Spam Your Boss for Equality

Industry group SheSays in London calls for lasting policy change

Sara Spary

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Sara Spary