Women all across the world are striking a pose — and striking a balance.
As part of its 2019 campaign #BalanceforBetter, the International Women's Day organization is asking women from all backgrounds and all countries to post photos of themselves with their hands raised to represent the scales of justice. The social media campaign launches the annual celebration observed on March 8, which is focused on women's rights and gender empowerment.
"Everyone has a part to play — all the time, everywhere," the International Women's Day website read. "From grassroots activism to worldwide action, we are entering an exciting period of history where the world expects balance. We notice its absence and celebrate its presence. Balance drives a better working world."
At USC, a number of women's organizations are spearheading initiatives to increase female empowerment and equal representation in fields such as engineering, arts and entertainment, and business, among others. Annenberg Media spoke with a leaders from these organizations to gain a better understanding of what balance looks like for these organizations.
The president for Graduate Women in Business (GWIB), Jessica Schleder, said she is proud of the strides being made in the Marshall School of Business towards gender equality in the classroom.
"This year USC Marshall was the first top business school to ever achieve gender parity, so we are really looking at this from a lens where there is literal gender balance in the classroom," Schleder said. "My class, class of 2019, was 32 percent women. And this year's class is 52 percent women."
Schleder, a second year student in Marshall's Masters of Business Administration program, said this newly achieved balance in the classroom has fundamentally changed the University's culture.
"[There are] more conversations about diversity and microaggressions, and more women are speaking up in class." Schleder said.
GWIB administered a 2018 survey asking the Marshall student body how satisfied they were with Marshall's gender breakdown. Schleder said the results from respondents indicated that only 10 percent of students were satisfied. This year, however, GWIB reported that 83 percent of students were satisfied.
As part of this year's International Women's Day celebration, the campaign is emphasizing the importance of gender balance in business, leadership and entrepreneurship roles.
"Balance is not a women's issue, it's a business issue." the International Women's Day website said. "The race is on for the gender-balanced boardroom, a gender-balanced government, gender-balanced media coverage, a gender-balance of employees, more gender-balance in wealth, gender-balanced sports coverage … Gender balance is essential for economies and communities to thrive."
According to Pew Research Center, 22 percent of Fortune 500 company board members are women — this number shrinks to 4.8 percent for Fortune 500 company Chief Executive Officers. Pew indicates that the underrepresentation of women in the boardroom is a global issue.
Schleder said GWIB hosted the first-ever global case study competition, that invited international teams from Hong Kong, Spain and Canada, among others, compete for scholarship money for the respective University's incoming class of women.
"This was so attractive that we were able to get the support of the Marshall administration and some other clubs on campus to take [the competition] global," Schleder said. "[We] all competed on solving problems of women in business globally."
International Women's Day, however, transcends the business world. In the field of arts and entertainment, ART/EMIS, a USC organization focused on creating an "intersectional creative community that develops a space for students … to explore and express intersectional feminism through creative work," according to the organization's website.
Aria Shuler, ART/EMIS' public relations director, said she noticed that many of USC's improv troupes and sketch comedy groups were predominantly male. Shuler, a freshman majoring in theatre, said the organization spearheads performing arts initiatives to create a space for female students on campus.
"Giving women and nonbinary people a platform to voice their own form of art and normalize and legitimize it is really important — it's our overall goal," Shuler said.
Shuler said many students at the School of Dramatic Arts feel the theatre programming is not as diverse in stories and characters as many students hoped.
"Last semester's productions didn't do … the best job of promoting stories that included woman or included them in the best light," Shuler said. "There were a lot of male-centric plays and a lot of antiquated views expressed in those plays. And while that is just theatre and you can acknowledge it, I think it is important that SDA, and every other school, takes into account that they are promoting stories for everyone."
ART/EMIS' main goal and platform is to promote intersectional feminism. Shuler emphasized the importance of including the voices of all women, and supporting individuals who identify as nonbinary, as well.
The term and concept of "intersectionality," which was first coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, a critical race theorist, lawyer and civil rights activist, refers to the notion of understanding the various ways different identities interact and overlap. Various world-wide movements such as the annual Women's March and International Women's Day have been criticized for their lack of inclusion of women from all backgrounds.
Shuler said, however, that ART/EMIS' commitment to intersectional inclusion makes the organization unique.
"If you on't have a range of black women, Asian women, non binary women, transwomen, and queer women, you create this very set definition of what a woman is," Shuler said. "Then it's very exclusive and problematic because then … people feel like equality, in terms of gender, isn't for them.
Though these USC organizations are not holding any specific events or programming for International Women's Day in particular, their initiatives and projects throughout the year aim to promote a constant message of inclusion and empowerment.
“The 2019 #BalanceforBetter campaign runs all year long,” the International Women’s Day website reads. “It doesn’t end on International Women’s Day.”