International Women’s Day 2016 and Gender Parity

International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has been observed since in the early 1900’s - a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

International Women’s Day is a collective day of global celebration and a call for gender parity. No one government, NGO, charity, corporation, academic institution, women’s network or media hub is solely responsible for International Women’s Day. Many organizations declare an annual IWD theme that supports their specific agenda or cause, and some of these are adopted more widely with relevance than others.

“The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights,” says world-renowned feminist, journalist and social and political activist Gloria Steinem.

International Women’s Day is all about celebration, reflection, advocacy, and action - whatever that looks like globally at a local level. But one thing is for sure, International Women’s Day has been occurring for over a century - and is growing annually from strength to strength.

Women in Industry
Gender diversity amid disruption - the great disconnect

Women in Power and Utilities Index 2016
EY’s 2016 Women in Power and Utilities Index tracks the number of women in the boardrooms of the world’s largest utilities in revenue. This year, there are 16% women on P&U boards, with progress a painfully slow rise of only 1% over three years.

EY’s Women in P&U Index analyzes the boards and leadership teams of the top 200 utilities by revenue across the globe. The Index provides a baseline for measuring how much - or how little - the sector progresses each year.

The figure below shows that P&U numbers are creeping upwards, but progress is slow. The trend in the 2015 Index was negative for both non-executive directors and total board members. At the current rate of a 1% rise every three years, it would take as long as 42 years to reach 30% women on boards, and 72 years to reach 40%. That’s too long.