International Women’s Day at Raised Eyebrow
Happy 8th March, by lucaNRT on Flickr
Today, as we do every year, we’re closing our doors on March 8 to celebrate International Women’s Day. It isn’t a stat holiday here in Canada, but we like to honour it as a pseudo-stat, for several reasons.
One, we’re proud to be a women-owned business, and in our industry I’m pretty certain that still puts us firmly in the minority. (When we started out 10 years ago, I’m pretty certain we were the only web development shop in town that was women-run, but these days the landscape has thankfully shifted pretty significantly.) Although women are making great strides in the tech arena, we still have a long way to go in terms of achieving equity either in terms of raw numbers or on an economic level. Honouring International Women’s Day is a way for us to bring some visibility to women’s issues.
Two, we’ve always tried to create a work environment at Raised Eyebrow that’s healthy & balanced, and a big part of how we achieve that is by ensuring everyone who works here has a generous amount of time off. March is often a holiday-free zone (except in those years when Easter comes early), so it’s a great time to throw in a long weekend.
And three, taking the day off gives us a chance to celebrate the amazing women in our lives. In Italy, it’s traditional for men to give mimosa branches to their favourite women – here in Vancouver, cherry blossoms are probably easier to find.
We’d love to see more people and businesses in Canada celebrate International Women’s Day in big, visible ways. What are you doing to celebrate? Let us know in the comments.