sistr had the honour of being joined by some truly inspirational women during International Women’s Week. They all choose to challenge in their own ways and we’ve taken some snippets from each of our webinars to offer some advice and motivational tips from women who are tackling life from all sorts of different angles!
Tonia, Antigoni & Sophia Buxton
With multiple experiences between them ranging from singing to finance to teaching to nutrition here are some powerful quotes from this formidable trio to help you when you choose to challenge.
“You need to choose to challenge in order to feel fulfilled”.
“Sometimes in life you reach a point that you’re so challenged that the fear kicks in in a way that could stop you. That’s when you’ve got to take the jump and stand on your own two feet”.
“Sometimes leaning on someone keeps you in a comfort zone and you’ve got to branch out. Win or lose it’s then on me”
“You’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right tribe of women around you to take on the world”.
“As women a lot of the time our energy as women is going out to nurturing others. Sometimes we need to be selfish and nurture ourselves”.
Farah Kabir & Sarah Welsh, Founders of HANX
HANX is a sexual and intimate wellness brand designed with women in mind. The brand covers products from your first time to your first child. Farah and Sarah felt that condoms were promoting a man’s conquest, they weren’t discreet. They set out to challenge the status quo and create condoms for women and to change the rhetoric around sex and the terminology.
Women have never felt empowered to take control of their sexual health and HANX’s mission is to allow women to approach sexual health and sex products from a position of power and normalisation. Their belief is that you should feel good about protecting yourself against STDs and feel proud about wanting to champion your own sexual health.
Times have changed since HANX raised investment. It felt like a male dominated industry but this is changing. People’s mindset towards sexual wellness is widening and becoming more accepting. People realise they can take control over other aspects of their health such as vaginal health. HANX look to create a platform for women to be able to amplify their voice.
“Take the risk. You’ll regret not trying. Take the leap because you’ll never fully know what you’re letting yourself in for!”
Harriet Minter, Host of Badass Woman’s Show on TalkRadio. Author of WFH, How to Build a Career You Love When You’re Not in the Office.
Harriet has spent lockdown writing a book about working from home (amongst other things!) and challenging the stigma around productivity and the idea that we ‘should’ be in the office.
Her advice around working from home is that firstly, it’s more than achievable to be as productive at home – if not more productive – as you are in the office.
Ask yourself when do you work best? Set some clear boundaries around that. Stick to the time you work best and be rigid. Understand why it’s important – when you regularly work more than 40hrs a week you crash your productivity. If you work more than that you aren’t necessarily getting more done.
When you regularly work those hours productivity decreases over time. This can lead to stress and a toll on your body. Take a step back and say the most important person in my working world is me and I need to look after me.
Harriet’s advice for this year is pick a belief and actively pursue it. Choose to challenge yourself with your belief. Let yourself be open to being wrong but allow yourself to try.
“When you see the women in your life looking like it’s become too much, choose to challenge the thing that’s making it look too much for them. Be the person that says, this isn’t cool, we’re going to change it.”
Molly Kingsely – Children’s campaigner and Founder of UsForThem.
UsForThem was established in response to a concern for children’s welfare during the pandemic. Molly felt strongly that children had not been considered in the Government’s response to COVID-19.
Molly maintains that lockdown was never the issue, it was purely child welfare. She saw a photo in the news of children in France sitting in chalk-marked boxes in the playground, wrote a blog about how wrong it was and hasn’t looked back since.
What keeps Molly going in the face of adversity?
We can tell you Molly absolutely faces adversity! Children at school is a hugely topical discussion area.. Molly’s drive has always been that the voice of children and subsequently their welfare was sidelined and with that always at the forefront of her mind, she’s been able to dig deep, rise above the criticism and keep focused. When you believe in something strongly, when it matches your values so closely that it’s all consuming it becomes bigger than you and that energy sustains you even when the challenge feels like it’s too big.
Philippa Roberts & Jane Cunningham, Author of Brandsplaining & Founders of PLH
Philippa and Jane wrote their first book 15 years ago where, both working in Marketing, they noticed the treatment of female brands was very different to the treatment of male brands. The duo decided there had to be a better way of dealing with female clients and chose to challenge the entire industry
Over the course of 15 years there’s been a massive change in the female audience such as MeToo. Philippa and Jane felt there was an opportunity to look at marketing and see if it’s moved on over the last 15 years and if it hasn’t, why hasn’t it? Their goal is to address how marketing could be moved on and get rid of the diminishing behaviour we still see in marketing.
“When you remove the male gaze on a brand it’ll come out a lot more relevant and a lot more interesting”.
“Men are taught to show that they know, not show that they don’t know. Which is seen in the way they do business. It’s easy to talk down to a woman”.
“Ask, listen and hear women when they’re talking about their aspirations.”
If you’d like to watch any of our chats again then head over to our sistr YouTube Channel!
