I’m so excited to announce that The New Feminist is back. Firstly, I’d like to say thank you so much to my team because I couldn’t have done it without you.
It’s been a while right? I’m sure you were wondering where we went, after all, it was quite sudden. Unfortunately, I was suffering from a little thing called burnout which had a sort of knock-on effect to my physical health.
The problem with running a small business, especially one that is so fast-paced, is that when you stop, your business does as well. So when my health took a turn last year I panicked because I knew what would happen if I stopped. I ignored it and slowly my workload built up and became impossible to manage. I realised that it’s better to have no business than a bad one and I had to stop.
For a moment I thought that was the end of something that I worked so hard at the past few years. Except I decided not to give up and to give it one more go. And so that is what I’m doing.
If you are a small business owner please never ignore your health for the sake of your business, it’s just not worth it. Look after yourself first so that you can look after your business.
Especially my fellow women entrepreneurs. As women, we have to work so much harder at our careers than men, so I think failure hits us much harder. This International Women’s Day let us uplift each other and celebrate our victories but let’s also remember to be selfish and look after ourselves, because damn…fighting the patriarchy is tiring.
However, I’ve beaten the odds – they say that businesses fail within two years and this one hasn’t! We have a bunch of exciting projects for you to look forward to but for now let me tell you about what we have in-store today. Firstly, we, of course, have the website back, secondly, we have some incredible new articles, I especially want to shout out our IWD article as today it is more relevant than ever. Finally, we have one more very exciting thing in store for you…drumroll please…a podcast! That’s right, The New Feminist presents High Value Women, hosted by myself and my good friend and fellow TNF editor Adam Saraswati Rawlings. The first episode is available right now on Spotify, go check it out!
As much as I’d love to talk about all our plans for the future with you I do think it’s important that we talk about this year’s theme for International Women’s Day: DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.
It will come as no surprise that I love that the UN has decided to focus on women in the digital space this year. I may not be in STEM but I am well immersed in the digital space and what I have noticed is that there is a rather large digital gender gap. What do I mean by that?
Today, so much of our lives revolve around technology: from keeping in contact with family and friends, to booking an appointment, and even to being able to do your digital learning, everything is reliant on technology.
The statistics regarding women and the internet are shocking. 37% of women do not use the internet. 259 million fewer women have access to the Internet compared to men. If women are excluded from online spaces then they are unable to develop the digital skills required. This has a knock-on effect regarding the pursuit of careers in STEM-related fields.
With the rise of violent misogynists like Andrew Tate and events like the reversal of Roe v. Wade, this year’s IWD is of more importance than ever. The violence against women is drastically increasing. Wednesday 8th March is a day where we can raise awareness and support for all women everywhere.
At the same time, we need to focus on the success women have had in the digital field. Digital technology is opening opportunities for the empowerment of women. The digital age represents a chance to eliminate inequality, an opportunity that we must seize.
