London—Dentons' Women's Network hosted their annual International Women's Day event on Tuesday, 8 March 2016 in London. The event was based around this years' International Women's Day theme, #PledgeForParity. International Women's Day is a day of celebration as women worldwide continue to play an active role in social, economic, cultural and political society but it is also a day to raise awareness. This year, International Women's Day is raising awareness of gender parity and how it has slowed down in many areas of society.

Our guest speakers, Jo Carver, General Counsel, Commercial Banking at Lloyds Banking Group, Jo Gilbey, Partner at BDO, Aminta Hall, Legal Counsel at Total and Loraine Martins MBE, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Network Rail, spoke about the importance of gender parity and joined millions across the world raising awareness around this issue. This view is shared by Jeremy Cohen, Dentons UKMEA CEO and a member of the 30% Club, who acknowledges that Dentons must address gender parity "to attract and retain the best talent".

In 2014, the World Economic Forum predicted that global gender parity would not be achieved until 2095 and in 2015, they predicted that the gender pay gap would still exist until 2133. Our guest speakers discussed what gender parity means to them and the challenges and experiences they have encountered in their working and everyday life.

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