We’ve got more questions than answers about what and who is behind International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8. The MVH detectives do some digging into this and previous years’ IWD themes and discuss their annoyance and frustration about the lack of actionable purpose behind this and other DEI issues.

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International Women’s Day is March 8th 2023 and on the website that was created in 2001 to act as a hub for resources, event sharing, content around IWD this is what it says about the 2023 theme. 

The aim of the IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme is to get the world talking about Why equal opportunities aren't enough. People start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging require equitable action. The call to action to create viral or sharable moments is that you share a picture of you hugging yourself to show that you embrace equity.

In contract, the U.N.'s theme this year is:

"DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality." The topic highlights how technology is crucial to advancing rights but a growing digital gender gap is impacting everything from women's job opportunities to safety online. According to the U.N., 259 million fewer women have access to the internet than men, and women are largely underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers.

Do we think America is trying to “corporatize” this issue? Make it more marketable, digestible, “sharable”? Or is this a spin because of just how far behind America is in this conversation? 

Why are we dumbing down themes and conversations around this topic? 

What should we be doing instead?

Links and resources we reference in this episode:

Aubrey Blanche, the Global Head of Diversity & Belonging at Atlassian says, Representation without distribution does not count. “Corporate level aggregate reports don’t actually measure diversity — they measure representation. It doesn’t matter if 30% of your company is made up of women if they’re all in marketing or HR and the men are in engineering,” says Blanche.

UN Women website

https://internationalmensday.com/We also encourage people to post info about the day on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram using hashtags like #internationalmensday #celebratemen #menshealth #stopmalesuicide #thankamantoday.

https://www.un.org/en/observances/womens-day/background

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

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Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

Note before you listen… the audio quality on this episode is a little off, so we suggest turning your sound up once you get past the intro. We’ll do better next time, we promise.

Gender roles in marriage. How did we get here and how do we move forward? On this episode of MVH we dive into what it means to be a wife, a husband, should marriages have terms and conditions, advice we’d give our pre-married selves about marriage, plus much more.

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Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Do you consider your partner to be your best friend? Hear what Kelly, Devin and Courtney think about this (spoiler alert.. They say your partner should NOT be your best friend), what a best friend is and isn’t, and how they view friendship at this phase of their lives.

Kelly starts the conversation about the idea of partners being best friends. She questions the belief that your partner "needs" to be your best friend, especially for women in heterosexual relationships. She shares her personal experience and how the programming of this narrative has impacted her view of relationships.

Two studies are cited, one that found that 83% of adults in a romantic relationship consider their partner to be their best friend, and the other that listed having a partner as a best friend as the top reason for relationship success and longevity. However, she introduces an alternative narrative that suggests having multiple specialized relationships for personal growth and well-being.

Courtney and Devin share their perspectives as well as their husbands’ perspectives on friendship, along with stories of people who do and do not consider their partners as best friends.

The episode wraps up with a discussion about what it means to have a friend and what we expect from them. While the connection and intimacy with a partner are on a different level, it does not necessarily equate to friendship. Kelly challenges listeners to reflect on their beliefs about their relationships and the role of friendship in their lives.

LINKS

https://www.estherperel.com/

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/people-who-prioritize-friendship-over-romance/616779/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-psychology-relationships/202005/should-my-partner-be-my-best-friend

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Today’s topic is “Vagina Scaries!” Because why have a podcast called My Vagina Hurts if we don’t talk about things that LITERALLY made our vaginas hurt.

So here’s a quote from a friend who will remain nameless that got us started down the topic of things that physically make our vaginas hurt:

"Anything being inside my vagina gives me the heebie jeebies, including my husband’s penis because it could get me pregnant. That's my biggest fear in life." - Terrified New Mom

We want to hear from you! Share your anonymous Vagina Scaries with us and hear them read on our regular Patreon series, Vagina Scaries!

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Listen to Kelly, Courtney and Devin talk about how they define their own personal brands, what it means to be a professional woman in a man's world, and tips on how you can discover and create your own personal brand.

What we wear:

Courtney: I’ve started a new job this quarter and it’s a casual environment, but I love dressing up, so I continue to do so. It boosts my confidence and definitely adds to how I show up to our internal team and clients.

Kelly: I always wear black, in various degrees of comfortable aka yoga pants to professional blazers etc. I tend to wear a blazer when I need to step into my power a bit more, it’s an inside out thing, which I did this past Friday.

Devin:  I recently went to Vegas for a long weekend, and we tagged along with some friends on their existing group trip they take…so we made some new friends. I found myself unconsciously choosing looks or pieces of looks that were definitely different from the overall group. This was a casual, comfortable and fun Vegas trip, not club, dance, glittery trip but I still chose things like a heeled boot every night and a red or burgundy lip. As I prepped for this episode I realized that those two things I built into my personal brand more than 10 years ago and they have stuck.

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Working remote or working in a role where the majority of your interactions are virtual brings new challenges; like the ability to establish visibility with key stake holders, expand your audience, and an often overlooked challenge; managing stereotypes often being perpetuated due to misconstrued tone in our digital communications.

Even Jeff Bezos famously quipped that personal branding is "…what people say about you when you're not in the room."

In my opinion Jeff Bezos describes personal branding how I would define the term “reputation”. Although similar, they are actually two sides of a tether. They can either amplify or erode the other. Your reputation is made up of the opinions and beliefs people form about you based on your collective actions and behaviors. Your personal brand is how you WANT to be perceived so your actions are rooted in intention.

The lack of emotional equity in the workplace can perpetuate gender sterotypes. Meaning that women tend to be held to higher standards of emotional regulation than men. If we are direct with a request it can be perceived as abrasive or bitchy, if we get angry or frustrated in a meeting we are emotional or dramatic etc.

A study called; Reducing the Backlash effect by the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology…

tracked 132 female and male MBA graduates over an eight-year period. Some (but by no means all) of the women in this group were highly self-aware. Women with the ability to consciously manage their behavioral style received 1.5 times as many promotions as agentic men, 1.5 times as many promotions as communal women, 2 times as many promotions as communal men, and 3 times as many promotions as agentic women.

Links: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2022/09/18/personal-branding-and-the-new-world-of-work/?sh=5976a1b977b4

https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2044-8325.2010.02008.x

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At this moment in time, Kelly is choosing to be abstinent, except with herself :) But we’ll talk about masturbation in depth in another episode. For the sake of this conversation, we’re talking about sex with others, and in all of our cases, we’re talking about hetero sex with the fathers of our children.

On this episode, we are talking about our sex lives before, during and after we had our first babies.

A simple Google search says you can have sex after birth in as little as 2 weeks up to 6 weeks. Study: The estimated time to resume sexual relations after childbirth varies between 6 and 8 weeks, but only 32% of those surveyed took up sexual relations again in this period.

Although most women tend to return to sexual relations between the third and sixth month postpartum, some authors suggest that many women experience at least one sexual problem.

Nearly a third of millennials moms (31 percent) say they had postpartum sex with their partners before they felt ready.

Forty-five percent of moms are having sex at least once per week—and 87% of those moms report being “satisfied” or “extremely satisfied.” On the flip side, 77% of moms who have sex less than once per month report being “dissatisfied” or “extremely dissatisfied.”

Age plays a part in the frequency of sex as well, but it’s not the parents’ ages that matter—it’s their children’s age. Mothers of preschool-aged children reported having the least amount of sex with the lowest satisfaction, though these feelings improve (as does the frequency of sex) once kids are beyond preschool age.

Millennial and Gen Z moms with middle school-aged kids are in the “sweet spot” when it comes to sex frequency. However, that frequency drops off when kids reach high school.

SEXUAL SATISFACTION

And—now here’s where the “surprising” part comes in—the majority of today’s moms report satisfaction with their sex lives. Fifty-four percent of all millennial and Gen Z moms polled report being “satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with their sex lives. A majority (51%) of Gen X mothers also report being “satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with their sex lives.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

“As we commit to more and more responsibilities, women often value quality of sex over quantity. Most of us would much rather have a couple of highly satisfying and connected sessions over more frequent, lower quality ones,” says Lyndsey Harper, MD, FACOG, IFCEO, an OB-GYN and the CEO and founder of Rosy, a sexual wellness app.

TIME

Concept of being too “touched out”

The majority of moms (67%) also report having just one hour of time to themselves that wasn’t filled with work or family duties.

INTIMACY

Intimacy is a key to healthy sex life in a partnership, which recommendations sound something like…

But who actually has time for that shit? What do you do?

A recent Canadian study found that 90 percent of couples with babies between the ages of three months and 12 months reported at least 10 sexual concerns that they found moderately distressing. Another study found 33 percent of women still reported painful sexual intercourse at one year to 18 months postpartum.

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But there is one thing on social media that makes my vagina hurt, as a working mom. And that is, “the toxic mompreneur”.

The word mompreneur is in the dictionary. Here’s what Oxford has to say: Mompreneur is a woman who sets up and runs her own business in addition to caring for her young child or children.

There’s a lot to unpack there, but today we’re going to focus on how to not fall prey to the “toxic mompreneur” on social media and tips for actual real human moms who have businesses.

We’re not discounting moms who own businesses, the three of us have all done work for ourselves at some point in our careers. We get concerned when we see posts saying something like the following:

“Learn how I made $1M in my first year of business, all while staying home taking care of 5 children!”

This brand of business coaching preys upon a moms desire to bring home the bacon and fry it. But there are so many red flags. What year of business are you currently in? What is your business?  Your husband’s financial status? Ages of children, your race for that matter. Do you have nannies, day care, are your kids in school full time?

“Entrepreneurs Compare Their Success To A Fake Ideal”

Some entrepreneurs add friends to their staff page on their websites to give the illusion of size. One PR company I researched had multiple offices throughout the USA that turned out to be WeWork locations. White lies like this seem justifiable at first.

Entrepreneurs have a distorted reality. They see their peer’s insane social media engagement, another speaking at a big conference, and others going through successful acquisitions, hiring staff, and making lots of money, and create a single entrepreneurial amalgamation in their head. Then, they compare themselves to that ideal. An ideal, that doesn’t exist in whole.

Resources:

4 Hour Work Week

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A new take on the phrase, my head hurts.  Because let’s be honest, whatever is hard about being a professional, mother, partner, family member, friend, and woman doesn’t just make your head hurt. The big issues, the hard topics, the ones you were taught to NEVER talk about…those topics make your vagina hurt.

After years of being a part of the same social circle and going to different dinners and events, we (Kelly Cummins, Courtney Larvadain and Devin McNalley) realized we had way more to talk about but so many of our friends were so focused on maintaining some ideal “mom” “female” image that we were met with eye rolls, dirty looks or straight deflection.  But we wanted support, we wanted to be able to talk about the hard stuff, the funny stuff, the gross stuff, without needing to validate who we were as a person every time.

So, supper club was created and eventually we added a microphone. Come join us for the dinner conversation you have secretly always wanted to be a part of.  A place where we don’t apologize for being our authentic selves and we don’t pre-qualify statements around motherhood, marriage, business and sex. Because here, we know having the hard taboo conversations helps all women, past present and future.

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