International Women’s Day particularly shines the spotlight on the need for leadership on gender equity. And Leadership Victoria proudly works in partnership with a range of organisations to support and deliver initiatives to raise the profile of gender equity; and to develop leadership capability to tackle gender issues.

Since International Women’s Day this time last year, hundreds of people have attended events we’ve run in partnership with Not In My Workplace and The 100Percent Project.

We’ve run the LV Women’s Leadership Program, and provided scholarships to enable multiple women from diverse backgrounds and life circumstances to participate.

We’ve partnered with the Islamic Council of Victoria in the Muslim Women’s Leadership Initiative, developing and empowering Muslim women to exercise leadership in their organisations and the community.  We’ve delivered leadership and governance programs to young and emerging women leaders from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds; and matched many of them with senior women leaders as  mentors from the LV network to help build their networks, role models and leadership capability to advance gender equity.

Building on the earlier work of Ruth McGowan and others, we’ve supported the Honour a Woman initiative and the Recognition Matters campaign which aim to increase gender equity in the Australian Honours.  A number of women LV alumni have been recognised in the Australian Honours List, including Bronwyn King AO and Stephanie Woollard OAM, and a number of LV alumni have been recognised as extraordinary women leaders and role models in the Victorian Women’s Honour Roll.

In addition, the majority of participants in LV’s senior flagship programs (the Williamson and Folio Community Leadership Programs) are women: a trend which has continued for many years and which – along with many other LV activities – is helping shape leadership by women in the world.

IWD 2019 is a time to both celebrate the progress that has been made on gender equity, while continuing to acknowledge that so much more needs to be done.

Let’s keep working hard together to show leadership and build a gender-balanced world. #BalanceforBetter