Peta Slocombe | Do we need to reconsider International Women's Day?

I'm a female leader, psychologist and coach of numerous female executives.

I have three sisters, and three daughters and my professional life is spent speaking and maximising potential.

But at the risk of having to join the witness protection program until the festivities pass, my discomfort won't abate.

Celebrating possibility, inspiring, and showcasing achievement will always have value, whatever or whoever it is for. International Women's Day was first held in 1911 as a protest for change and has since morphed into a showcase for success for women in all walks of life.

Change always demands ritual and structure initially, and I appreciate that a formalised awareness day is a developmental moment in time while we re-educate, convert trail blazer's trails into bitumen highways, and change people's thinking.

I'm in awe of numerous women who have inspired generations and helped give visibility to what is possible.

But the challenge for me is three-fold.

Firstly, while we are adorning function rooms and raising cupcakes all over the country celebrating women's achievements, we should remember that 53 per cent of women still experience a lack of physical or psychological safety in their workplaces, and of those who do, statistically many are not being paid equally for it.

Secondly, I prefer to think that women are not simply late to the party of science, tech, trades and resources but that the party has changed.

Historically, work was labour intensive, from which the view evolved that males were superior in strength and value. Then the information era also positioned men as holders of knowledge, as women left the workforce to care for children. Fast forward to the digital age and knowledge is universal and labour is rarely manual.

The most critical skills of our time for results and success are empathy, emotional intelligence, self and other awareness, attracting and leading diverse teams for innovation, competence before confidence, and the humility to change one's mind in the presence of constant, unprecedented streams of new data every day.

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Research is unequivocal that these are traits more commonly found in women. It is simply women's time.

Thirdly, my discomfort is in service of males with traditionally feminine qualities and females with traditionally masculine qualities, and all those who don't identify as gender types that once were binary.

For me, IWD would be better served to focus on removing the unhelpful assumptions we so often cling to, and recognise that it's time we let individuals shine for who they are, not for their gender.

Boards and senior leadership teams, for example, are notorious for designing for diversity and then watching a creep toward the mean as people dilute their views to fit in, thereby negating the value of difference in order to stay comfortable.

So even when boards and leadership teams have gender diversity, they are almost immediately encouraged to lose it.

Women's growing achievement in leadership, science, the economy, technology and trades are exceptional and days that celebrate women, or celebrate anyone, are not bad. They never will be.

But it is a developmental moment in time, and I for one will be happy when the need for this one passes.