Culture is shaped by the decisions we make, especially in how we show up for one another.

Each year, International Women’s Day brings important conversations to the surface: representation, safety, opportunity and structural equity. These issues matter. Changes in law, policy and leadership representation have led to real progress in many countries. That progress should be recognised.

But structure alone doesn’t determine culture. Culture is felt in everyday behaviour, in how we speak to one another, how we include one another, and how we respond in moments that might seem small but rarely are.

There is one part of gender equity that receives less attention: how women and girls relate to one another. This doesn’t replace the need for systemic change. It sits alongside it. Because the way we treat one another shapes whether a space feels competitive and isolating, or supportive and generous.

The power of small choices

When we look closely, this shows up in the spaces between the big milestones. It isn’t written in a handbook. It often begins much earlier; in schoolyards, friendship groups and classrooms and follows us quietly into adulthood and professional life. It’s visible in simple, everyday decisions.

Amplifying in the room
It’s saying, “I want to go back to what Sarah said earlier, that was an important point.” Not out of politeness, but to ensure someone’s contribution isn’t overlooked or restated without credit.

Sharing what we know

It can begin in primary school.  choosing inclusion over exclusion, explaining the rules of a game so everyone can participate, standing beside someone who might otherwise be left out. It continues through adolescence, being honest about friendships, pressures and expectations rather than allowing silence to isolate.

And in our professional life, it may look like explaining how decisions are made, how to prepare for an interview, or what to expect in a performance conversation. It can also be as simple as acknowledging what someone has shared before moving on, recognising the effort behind an idea, rather than speaking past it or reshaping it without credit. Sometimes respect is shown in the pause.

Across generations, the principle is the same. When we share what we know and acknowledge one another’s contributions, we shape environments where people feel seen, heard and not sidelined..

Moving beyond scarcity
Many environments,  including school environments, quietly teach comparison and competition. Culture shifts when we decide that another woman’s success does not diminish our own. There is room for more than one. There always has been.

From Policy to Practice

Policy can open the door, but it is our relational habits that determine who feels welcome enough to stay. This “sideways” support, peer-to-peer and generation-to-generation, is the connective tissue of true equity. It turns a playground, the workplace or a community from a collection of individuals into a resilient network.

As we mark International Women’s Day, we must continue to push for the structural changes that provide the framework for equality. But we must also look at the person standing next to us.

Culture is not just something that happens to us from the top down; it is something we create in the way we speak to, listen with the intention to understand, show up for and advocate for one another. This year, let’s recognise that our most powerful tool for change might just be the way we relate.

A Generational Observation

I write this not as a commentator from a distance, but as a 57-year-old woman, a mother, and a grandmother.

Across decades, I have watched similar social dynamics appear in schools, workplaces, and communities. Friendship and genuine solidarity often sit alongside comparison, exclusion, and informal hierarchy. Not always. Not everywhere. But often enough to notice.

When I was at school, I experienced periods of isolation myself. As the daughter of parents who had migrated to Australia from Greece, I stood out in my appearance, in the food I brought to school, in the cultural references I carried. Difference, in those years, could quickly become a social marker.

I later saw similar dynamics when my daughter was at school. She experienced exclusion, as did many of her peers. Differences in background, appearance, or perceived status shaped informal groupings in ways that were rarely spoken about openly but were felt by everyone involved.

Now, as a grandmother, I see echoes of comparable patterns in my granddaughter’s school environment. Three generations. The same dynamics.

These dynamics do not disappear at the school gate. Versions of them surface in social media, entertainment and professional environments,  where exclusion or reputational commentary can be normalised rather than recognised as harm.

Developmental psychology has language for what I observed across these decades: relational conflict, social exclusion, shifting alliances, reputational positioning. Less visible than overt confrontation, but no less felt.

These patterns are not exclusive to girls, nor universal among them. But they appear frequently enough during formative years to warrant honest attention.

What young girls are socialised to do with difference matters. Whether they are encouraged to speak or taught to soften. Whether assertiveness is welcomed or penalised. Whether belonging feels secure or conditional. These experiences shape the adults we become.

What Carries Into Adult Life

When comparison, conditional approval or informal hierarchy are normalised early, those responses do not simply disappear. They can resurface in professional life as gatekeeping, subtle exclusion or reluctance to champion high-performing peers.

Achievement may be met with competition rather than endorsement. Direct communication can be interpreted as threat. Ambition can be labelled differently depending on who displays it. These experiences are not universal. But they are familiar enough across industries to warrant examination rather than dismissal.

Structural progress can advance while relational habits lag behind. That tension is precisely why International Women’s Day must remain more than symbolic. Its value lies not only in celebration, but in examination.

Behaviour is Learned and Can Be Relearned

Many social environments reward comparison: appearance, popularity, conformity, approval. When status feels limited, competition increases. When belonging feels uncertain, exclusion can become leverage. These responses are not inherent traits. They are learned. And what is learned can be relearned, but only if it is first acknowledged.

When these behaviours are carried unexamined into adulthood and leadership, their impact expands. Research consistently shows that psychological safety is built through consistent modelling, not policy statements. Values can be written. Conduct and how we show up confirms them.

Solidarity is not automatic. It is demonstrated repeatedly and often in small moments.

A Governance Perspective 

Culture is visible in patterns of decision-making and in how people are treated between formal processes.

Boards and executive teams carry responsibility not only for performance and financial oversight, but for conduct and tone. Culture is reinforced in small decisions: who is invited into discussions, whose ideas are amplified, whose concerns are quietly set aside, how disagreement is handled, what behaviour is rewarded and what conduct is tolerated.

If informal hierarchy or exclusion are normalised early, they do not remain in the past. They can shape leadership decades later.

International Women’s Day offers a timely moment to examine not only systemic barriers, but the behavioural patterns that either reinforce or erode them.

The EveryDay Decisions That Compound

Culture forms through repetition, and the decisions that build it are rarely dramatic. In schools, it is as simple as who gets included and who gets spoken about rather than spoken with. In workplaces, it shows up in who receives opportunity, who receives credit, and how conflict is handled when it surfaces. In communities, it lives in whether disagreement is treated as a threat or a contribution.

None of these feel significant in the moment. Accumulated over time, they define the environment entirely. Before reacting, it can be useful to pause, even briefly. What assumption am I making? What outcome am I trying to protect? What consequence might this behaviour create over time? That brief reset can interrupt a pattern before it becomes part of the culture.

A practical reflection for the coming week:

Who did I include? Whose contribution did I acknowledge? Did I address tension directly rather than around it? How did I speak about others when they were absent? Did my behaviour strengthen trust? Where endorsement or acknowledgement could have been offered, was it?

These questions are not comfortable. That is rather the point.

Leadership and What Young People Observe

Leadership requires emotional regulation, self-awareness, and fairness. Young people observe behaviour closely; not formal statements, but informal interaction. How a leader responds under pressure. Whether they take credit or share it. Whether they welcome challenge or deflect it.

If collaboration and principled disagreement are visible, they become the norm. If rivalry or quiet undermining are visible, they can become templates, for the next generation, and the one after that.

Women do not carry sole responsibility for cultural reform. Gender equity is shaped by legislation, economic opportunity, institutional design, and collective effort. But peer dynamics among women are one part of that broader system, and they deserve reflection alongside structural reform. Not instead of it, alongside it.

Why International Women’s Day Still Matters

In countries where women hold senior leadership roles, the relevance of International Women’s Day is sometimes questioned. That questioning is understandable. But its value remains, not as a single day of recognition, but as a structured pause for three things: reflection on behaviour alongside progress; accountability in aligning conduct with stated values; and intergenerational responsibility, recognising that cultural habits are inherited as much as policy gains.

Equality is both structural and relational. Structural reform without behavioural integrity limits its own long-term impact.

The Ongoing Work

Gender equity advances through policy, representation and economic participation. It also advances through consistent behaviour; in how we speak about one another, make room for one another, challenge one another and support one another.

International Women’s Day offers a pause. The responsibility continues beyond it. It lives in small decisions: to include, to amplify, to disagree respectfully, to challenge without diminishing, to model composure under pressure.

Culture is not what we say we value. It is what we repeatedly reinforce. And the patterns that shape it; both those that carry us forward and those that quietly hold us back,  are formed in the decisions we make, including with one another.