Another International Women’s Day
IWD is always a time for reflection—on progress made, on challenges that persist, and on the role we can each play in shaping a more equitable industry. At ETB, we’re proud to be a female-founded, majority-female team where respect, opportunity, and support aren’t ideals—they’re just how we operate every day.
Sarah Coates, our brilliant Senior Creative Producer, captured this sentiment beautifully in her article.
Another International Women’s Day has rolled around. A lot of the same issues are up for debate (even if they shouldn’t be debatable). A lot of progress. A lot of platitudes. This is only the second IWD I’ve spent as part of the team at Eric Tom and Bruce. The first and only female owned and run company I’ve been a part of, and the only time I’ve been a part of a majority female team.
As we discussed in our weekly social media meeting what we would be posting for the upcoming month, we noted this day approaching, and as always felt like we wanted to participate and contribute to this discussion. All the members of our team feel strongly about using this day as an opportunity to continue pushing for progress on all fronts for women in our industry.
But when we talked about what it looks like for us on International Women’s Day we realised that it really just feels like…any other day. And that’s great. We use the day to carry on with our work, creating great experiences and results for our clients. We collaborate with each other. We assign and delegate tasks. We make decisions about the way we want to operate, and how well we’re aligning to our company values.
The thing that surfaces on this day, is really an overwhelming sense of relief and awareness that this is the exception and not the rule. The challenges that women face are still very much applicable to us in the wider industry, and certainly some of us have first-hand examples of being directly affected. But we know that in our team, we simply do not have to deal with outdated, antiquated, ingrained and subconscious bias. We are compensated commensurate with our roles and experience and we all have equal access to flexibility.
What does this mean and why am I writing this article? Well for one thing, it means we have to think about how we can extend our reach outside our organisation to uplift other women, by extending opportunities on set and with our freelance partners. And secondly I guess I’m writing this to let people know that workplaces like this do exist. Support, consideration and respect should be the norm for everyone. Not the exception. And they can be.