Empowering Girls for a Brighter Tomorrow
International Day of the Girl recognises girls’ rights and the particular challenges that girls face all over the world. A quarter of young people around the globe are neither employed, in education or receive any form of training, and the majority of these young people are female.
The day aims to provide insight into why, as a global society, we must address the challenges, bias, and dangers that many young girls deal with around the world.
The theme for International Day of the Girl 2019 is ‘Empowering Girls for a Brighter Tomorrow’. A total of 31 million girls across the world are not at school; research shows that when girls are educated and empowered to know their rights and understand their impact on this ever-changing world, they are twice as likely to send their own children to school, helping to educate the next generation in many developing countries.
The UK Automotive 30% Club’s outreach work creates opportunities for young girls in the UK to meet and be inspired by both male and female professionals from the sector. It is our hope that these girls will also work to challenge the status quo, redefine girlhood and contribute to changing the female personal and professional experience for themselves and generations to come.
The key purpose of the UK Automotive 30% Club is to achieve a better gender balance within the automotive industry with the aim of filling at least 30% of leadership positions with women by 2030, through a “30 by 30” strategy. This includes ‘Reaching Out’ to attract more women, ‘Welcoming In’ to remove bias in recruitment, ‘Pulling Through’ to pull women through the promotional pipeline and ‘Holding On’, to retain talented women.
Research has proven that people are happier in a working environment where there is a gender balance. In conjunction with the theme of ‘Empowering Women for a Brighter Tomorrow’ and the ‘Welcome In’ phase of our ‘30 by 30’ strategy, we will focus on empowering girls by breaking down bias which suggests females cannot access jobs within male dominated sectors.
As we embark upon our outreach programme we will continue to ‘lift others as we rise’ as we contribute to creating a brighter tomorrow for girls and women all around the globe.
Article by Sophie Oak