International Women’s Day and a serious case of FOMO

Every year at this time I feel the panic rising. So much to do and so many brilliant events celebrating International Women’s Day.  It’s like Christmas as I want to go and see everything on offer but only have time for a precious few because of our own busy events programme. I’m suffering from a serious case of FOMO.

Funny Women first celebrated International Women’s Day in 2005 at the (now sadly closed) Café de Paris in London.  Our show featured a stellar line up including Zoe Lyons, Gina Yashere, Jo Caulfield, Pam Ann, Lucy Porter, Sarah Kendall, Shazia Mirza, Barbara Nice (pictured), Sandi Toksvig and Ayesha Hazarika.

16 years on and we’re still celebrating. It’s important for the women in our community to be visible as part of the whole Women’s Day movement, but it’s now too big a pool for us all to synchronise swim in!  There are so many events and initiatives that there’s not enough of me, or you, to go around! 

I personally want to support all the amazing women we work with throughout our Funny Women year as well as the incredible networks, communities, organisations and clients who collaborate with us.  I can’t of course, there’s too much going on. Instead, we all get a little piece of each other and maybe that’s enough?

The point is, after all, that we take part in some way. The theme is #choosetochallenge this year and we can all take part by acknowledging this. Not that it hasn’t been challenging enough for us since COVID changed our lives a year ago.  This time last year we were busy running events in Brighton, Manchester and staging a show at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the WOW Festival in London.

On the upside, the opportunity presented by the virtual world has now got us all firmly in its grasp and we’ve all become more global and accessible to meet the International Women’s Day challenge. Honestly, if I had the time and attention span, I could be online 24/7 celebrating for the next few weeks!

So, I am making a pact with myself, and with you, that we will all do our best and check in when and where we can with time permitting. I want to meet as many of you as possible since the opportunity to do this virtually is great and bountiful in all its diversity, creativity and digital ingenuity.

Thanks to everybody who has supported Funny Women over the last difficult year and I think you will enjoy what we have in store for you tomorrow. Beyond this, please let’s continue to collaborate and make sure that women have a strong voice and we are all visible wherever in the world we are.

My FOMO is nothing compared to the suffering of some women in this world and, as our incredible Funny Women community takes you on a virtual trip Around the World tomorrow, Saturday 6^th March, we will be supporting Plan International UK’s ‘Because I am a girl’ campaign – please sign up to and donate.

Funny Women Around the World is streaming live on Twitch from 10.00am to 10.00pm GMT tomorrow, Saturday 6th March, so please drop in and see us.

Happy International Women’s Day!