IWD 2026: Give to Gain - The Importance of Community

This year’s International Women’s Day theme “give to gain” is all about reciprocity - we invest in our community comes back to benefit us all. When women thrive, we don’t just uplift individuals - we create stronger teams, healthier cultures and community with greater opportunities for everyone.

As someone who runs for both my mental and physical health, I know too well the additional barriers that exist for women. In winter, the evenings are dark before I log out of my laptop. I don’t always feel safe enough to run alone on the streets in Manchester. When I don’t run, it creates a ripple effect. I lose the clarity and reset that fuels the energy I bring into my work, my relationships and my community. I want to see a world where women have the same opportunities to feel safe and supported to bring the best of themselves - whether that’s on the street or in the workplace.

That connection - between feeling comfortable and being able to excel - shows up every day in my role as a Delivery Lead at Robiquity. My job is to create the right conditions for teams to deliver brilliant outcomes for our clients: bringing together consultants, engineers, designers and analysts; setting up the right cadence and guardrails; and clearing the path so people can do their best work. Give to gain is baked into that. When we give time to support each other, to share knowledge, to listen well and to create space for different voices, we gain quality, velocity and trust.

I’m a strong believer in collaboration over competition. A scarcity mindset can creep into any profession, especially in male-dominated environments - the belief that someone else’s success somehow diminishes your own. That’s not how true progress works. At Robiquity we pair people on complex deliveries, put rising talent forward to lead demos and design shadowing opportunities so knowledge flows across the team rather than bottlenecking with one person.

I’ve also learned that reciprocity is a loop you must keep alive. When someone takes the time to review a document, coach you through a tricky stakeholder conversation or share a useful template, close the loop: say thank you, pass it on and look for your next give. The culture you walk past is the culture you accept, and the culture you reinforce is the one you get more of.

International Women’s Day is a moment to celebrate progress and be honest about the work still to do. There are still too many rooms where women are underrepresented, too many times when ideas are interrupted or relabelled, and too many career moments that depend on being in the “right” informal networks. Changing that isn’t about grand gestures - it’s about daily habits:

• Make introductions that open doors
• Share credit publicly and feedback privately
• Offer to be a sounding board before the big client meeting
• Notice who hasn’t spoken yet - and make space for them
• Say the quiet part out loud when someone is overlooked: “I think Alice made that point earlier - let’s build on it.”

Give to gain doesn’t mean giving until you’re empty. It means building systems where support is mutual and sustainable, so more of us can bring our best more of the time. When women are supported and given equal opportunity, teams become more collaborative, organisations become more resilient and communities become stronger. That’s not a ‘nice to have’, it’s a proven driver of better outcomes for our clients and for our business.

This International Women’s Day, I’m celebrating the women I work with who lift, encourage and make space for each other – and the allies who stand up alongside us. When we choose to be generous with our time, our platform and our knowledge, we don’t lose anything. We all gain.

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