You probably couldn’t have missed that Saturday was International Women’s Day. It really started on Friday as LinkedIn in particular transformed into a humble-bragging frenzy of posts saying how wonderful women are. My big question to my female colleagues is “Now, in the cold light of Monday morning, has anything changed?”

Because the world looks bleak. In the US, a convicted sex offender is busy ripping up anything with the word ‘diversity’ in it (there was a rumour a ‘biodiversity’ research project fell victim to the regressive revolution, but I’ve been unable to verify that) and insisting that any woman in his field of view is cosplaying Office Barbie. Formerly progressive tech bros have started talking about the need for “masculinity in business”. In Afghanistan, what women’s rights had been established after the fall of the Taliban have been chucked on a bonfire.

On Friday, I felt great peer pressure to celebrate womanhood by posting something upbeat on social media, but it all felt a bit naff. I’ve always lived on the principle that one practical step is worth 100 proclamations of intent. So, I’ve decided to reinstate my target of 50% female guests on the Net Zero Business Podcast.

Before you scream “is that it?” at me, let me explain. When I launched the podcast, I had an ambition to ensure gender parity, but it proved very difficult in practice. In my experience, men are about twice as likely as women to say ‘yes’ to a podcast invite, which is probably why podcasting has been male dominated – we like the sound of our own voices. When discussing this at the dinner table, one of my kids quipped:

When two women chat it’s called gossip; when two men chat it’s called a podcast.

When you are getting started, it’s a bit of a mad scrabble to find guests. As the pod gets more established, I’m finding it easier to attract people on, so it is easier to move towards gender parity. Six months ago, we were probably running around 33% female guests, but it has now risen to about 40%, and this month we will have three women in a row for the first time (I work to a four week cycle of three guest interviews then one episode of my thoughts).

One slightly depressing fact is that women make up few of the top 10 most popular episodes and over-represented in the bottom 10. This is nothing to do with quality – some of my favourite episodes lurk down there at the bottom, bursting with under-appreciated insights. So it’s not just a matter of transmitting; us men have got to get better at receiving as well.

To me it’s obvious that an awareness week, day or hour, whether on health, social or environmental issues, is completely useless unless it triggers at least an incremental positive change. So my challenge to everyone is: what are we going to do on the day after International Women’s Day?