International Women’s Day was first marked in 1911, the year that my maternal grandmother was born. Grandma had a rough life. She had a dozen siblings and her family was very poor. Dirt poor. Hard graft defined most of her life, but it never got in the way of pouring out unbridled love onto her children and grandchildren. She was a hard woman and she was a soft woman. I loved that dichotomy about her. She didn’t wallow in the pain of her upbringing and she was certainly no pushover. To me she was the perfect balance of tough enough and soft enough.
I think I ought to give some credit to my Grandmother for my ability to stand up to a fair bit of nonsense in the workplace over the years whilst totally enjoying (and dare I say leveraging) the fact that I was a woman working in male-dominated industries for most of my career.
That’s the sort of #BalanceForBetter I celebrate.
