It’s all these awkward photos of groups of women suddenly brought together by someone who just realized its Women’s Day (“Oh s***, we need to post something on social!”).

I imagine the scramble, let’s quickly gather all “our women” and take a photo – go on, say cheese ladies! All ladies are used to such duties, so they stand nicely together and smile. Like that, the company can show that in this company, we have women. Real, live ones. Just look at this photo! And they are all smiling! Afterwards all ladies nod politely to each other and return to the task they were busy with before they were called in for smile to the camera duty. Someone quickly puts together a few lame lines about how great that company think women are and how they make everything go around bla bla bla.

I mean, honestly.

Would anyone on International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination gather all their brown employees for a photo and make a posting writing how great brown people are? I think and hope not. Not that brown people aren’t great, but I assume you get my point.

So why is it happening on Women’s Day? And why are women agreeing to take part in such nonsense? (I have done it myself, even holding a red rose as if we were on some sort of weird social democratic-feminist photo-op. Madness!)

In my view, most companies or leaders really don’t take the issue of women and equality seriously at all. Someone might have formulated a nice value statement about it, but actually living those values takes more than printing a few words on the “our values” page in the employee handbook. And more than posting a photo of a group of women working at the company.

I have spent almost 20 years in senior leadership roles in the hotel technology business and I must say: in all that time, there might have been about five occasions where I met another female on the same seniority level as me. Isn’t that strange, considering that there have been studies made that actually prove that companies where women participate in the leadership are more profitable? And I have not worked for discriminatory, horrible companies – on the contrary. Most of them had great sentences on the “our values” page in the employee handbook.  Truth is, the one company that didn’t even have that page in the handbook was the most inclusive company of them all.

It is only in the recent years that I have come to realize that I myself have not participated enough in the public debate on gender equality in our industry. I have many reasons for this, but never mind those. One may only change the future and not the past. I owe thanks to all the amazing ladies who repeatedly have called me a role model and an inspiration. You have opened my eyes and given me courage. Thank you.  

For now, it is my great wish, that for next Women’s Day – please don’t prop up “your women” for a group photo. But what should you do then? Well, you can do any wonderful thing you like, but if you feel paralyzed in the desert of ideas then I can gift you a very simple and cheap, yet powerful, suggestion. Here it is:

Share with us the answer you got, when you sat down with a female colleague for ten minutes and simply asked her: how can I be a better ally for women in the workplace?