Women in drinks 2017 International Women's Day Event a Sell-Out Success

the drinks association and Women in drinks group has enjoyed another successful year with the annual International Women’s Day Network Event and Lunch. A total of 450 industry people turned out for the day, with tickets selling out three months in advance.

The event aims to drive empowerment of women in the drinks industry, with the gap on gender equality still needing to be closed. This year the focus was on ‘Bringing diversity and inclusion to life.’

Mia Freedman, a journalist, author, activist and the co-founder of Mamamia - the largest independent women’s website in Australia – was the keynote speaker, and shone light onto the realness of being in the public eye and balancing life between a family and business.

Freedman was named one of Australia’s 100 Most Influential Women by the Financial Review and is a former chair of the federal government’s Body Image Advisory Board.

She is a passionate campaigner for more diversity in the way the media portrays women and has made strong grounds on the issue in her time as Editor of Cosmopolitan, Editor in Chief of Cleo, Cosmopolitan and Dolly and now with Mamamia.

Today, Mia is a mother of three and shares her successful business with her husband. Yet through her career, she has faced resistance to what she advocates, scrutiny from the media, upheaval and uncertainty through several job changes, anxiety and family challenges.

This, however, is what Mia calls “The stories of real women” and has not put a stop to her fight for better representation of women in the media.

From her start in publishing, Mia recognised that women’s magazines often made her feel insecure about her body image.

Mia said, “As a woman, I felt bad about myself because I never saw anyone that looked like me. And as a business woman I didn’t understand why I would want to alienate all my readers by making them feel bad about themselves when they experienced my product.

“Magazine editors have a responsibility to represent women better than they do. And when I was at Cosmo that meant using women of all shapes, sizes and skin colours in the magazine, every single month, not just in a token body shape’s issue. And so I did, and our readers loved it.”

Mamamia has millions of readers each month and its purpose is to make the world a better place for women and girls. Key to this has been moving away from the traditional coverage of topics such as fashion and gossip, instead reporting on a diverse range of subjects from politics and finance to parenting and sexual health.

Mia explained, “We have an office of 100 women and make content by women, for women every single day. We empower, empathise and entertain women and we collect information and we share it. And that’s why having women in your audience and talking to women as a brand or as an organisation is so important; women are biologically made to communicate, we share things, we amplify things, it’s what we do.

The speech was followed by a panel discussion that put a focus back on the drinks industry in terms of where the responsibility lies for promoting greater gender diversity in leadership roles, cultural barriers and how companies can empower women to lead.

Find out the panel’s thoughts here.

Women in drinks’ charity partner is The Australia New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group, the national peak organisation for gynaecological cancer clinical trials in Australia and New Zealand. Through a donation of $15 from each ticket and a raffle, the industry raised $16,000 on the day for the cause.