This International Women’s Day (IWD), April Hicke wants women in tech to take a break.
Hicke’s company, Toast, is encouraging women to take a step back from corporate IWD activities and instead let men do the planning this year. Hicke says it’s necessary in an environment where women are often tasked with the unpaid labour of advocating for themselves.
“Mothers don’t plan their own Mother’s Day,” Hicke said in an interview with BetaKit. “So why the fuck are we planning all of the International Women’s Day things?”
Through its #WithoutHer social media campaign, Toast is calling on Canadian tech to alleviate this burden: by providing fair compensation for women’s speaking engagements and having men take on more responsibility for observing IWD. It’s also encouraging companies to give women the day off.
“We need someone to raise our hand for us in a room that we’re not in.”
April Hicke
Nora Jenkins Townson, founder of human resources consultancy Bright + Early, echoed the sentiment in a LinkedIn post.
“Being voluntold to plan an event, be on a panel or make a deck about why women at work should be appreciated” are all things women do not want on their plates, Jenkins Townson wrote.
Launched in 2023, Toast is a talent organization for women in tech, jointly based in Calgary and Toronto. It operates a professional development platform that serves more than 1,500 women in the tech sector. Its offerings include coaching opportunities and an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered job-matching tool for members.
Celebrated since the suffrage movement in the early 20th century, IWD is a global day to promote women’s rights and gender equality, from tackling wage gaps to ending gender-based violence. The United Nations theme for 2025 is “For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.” Hicke said Toast sees IWD as an opportunity to zero in on the barriers women face to success in the tech world.
When Hicke and co-founder Marissa McNeelands did a slew of IWD speaking engagements during March last year, she said it ate up half of Toast’s travel budget and led to the co-founders experiencing burnout and illness.
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This led them to a realization: the return on investment of unpaid speaking engagements meant to empower women did not feel adequate. So this year, Toast decided to forgo speaking events and focus on encouraging men to improve their allyship.
Male allies need to speak up for women in tech spaces where, so often, there are no women to be found, Hicke argued. “We need someone to raise our hand for us in a room that we’re not in,” she said. “If the people in the system are not helping pull us into the system, we’re never going to see any of that change.”
Toast wants men to join its Champions Program, which puts male mentors through training sessions and connects them with women looking to advance their professional development. Hicke said the goal is to use men as mentors to take the burden off of women to dedicate additional effort to coaching.
Women in the Canadian tech ecosystem are not on equal footing, in terms of representation or wages. A 2024 report from the Dais at Toronto Metropolitan University found that men working in tech made $20,000 more on average than women in 2021. The numbers indicated a step backwards from 2016, when men made $7,200 more than their female counterparts. For women in venture capital (VC), some are earning more than their male counterparts—but only at the executive levels, which fewer women reach, according to a 2024 Canadian Venture Compensation Report.
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Racialized workers were also paid nearly $15,000 lower annually on average, with Black, Indigenous, and Filipino workers earning the least. The report does not provide data on racialized women specifically.
This year’s IWD comes amid a broader backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the corporate and tech world. This month, three Canadian women founders penned an open letter calling the DEI rollback “the wrong direction for Canada.” It referenced e-commerce giant Shopify’s recent dismantling of its equitable commerce division.
Hicke was one of nearly 1,000 signatories to the open letter. Despite the national conversation, however, she said that Toast hasn’t seen a slowdown in signups for its initiatives. Toast’s recruitment tool, which hides name, gender, and other identifying information from prospective employers, now has over 20,000 women in its candidate pool.
“If you are not leaning into diversity, you’re not going to get innovation,” Hicke said. “You need different backgrounds, you need different voices, you need ways to solve problems differently to drive innovation.”
Feature image courtesy Toast.
The post Toast wants women to take a radical step this International Women’s Day: rest first appeared on BetaKit.
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#WithoutHer campaign asks men to assume more responsibility for uplifting women in tech.
The post Toast wants women to take a radical step this International Women’s Day: rest first appeared on BetaKit.
