The aim of this year’s International Women’s Day #EmbraceEquity campaign is to get the world talking about why equal opportunities are not enough to achieve real and complete inclusion. Employees from across Amazon.com.au, Amazon Web Services and Alexa Devices met up last week to discuss these themes in panel discussion hosted by entrepreneur, presenter, and media personality Sally Obermeder.
They included Amazon Australia Director of Operations, Mindy Espidio-Garcia; Rianne van Veldhuizen, Managing Director of AWS, Iain Rouse, Director and Country Leader, Worldwide Public Sector AWS; Kellie Allender, Account Executive AWS and Co-President of Women@ Affinity Group ANZ; Keira Daley, Senior Program Manager, Alexa and Lima Visser, Pack Associate from Amazon’s fulfilment centre in Kemps Creek.
International Women’s Day, is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women – and this year organisers are calling for action to accelerate women’s equity.
Amazon Australia’s panel discussion saw participants sharing their own stories and experiences with equity and equality, and revealing why they all think equity needs to be addressed to deliver equality and a “fair go” to all.
Equality and equity are often used interchangeably, but mean completely different things. The International Women’s Day’s official site says “equality” means each individual or group of people is given the same resources, where-as “equity” recognises that each person has different circumstances, and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.
