Give To Gain: Honoring Women on International Women’s Day
In this International Women’s Day 2026 episode, Dr. Jennifer McManus reflects on this year’s theme, Give to Gain, through the lens of women’s mental health and emotional well-being. She honors not only public women whose achievements are widely recognized, but also the quieter, more delicate accomplishments that may never make headlines. The episode explores what women gain when they give themselves stress relief, self-care, and self-compassion.
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Give To Gain: Honoring Women on International Women’s Day
Hello and welcome! You’re listening to the PsycHope Self-Help Podcast, a space for ambitious women when hearts get heavy. I’m Dr. Jennifer McManus and with nearly two decades of experience in professional psychology, I’ll be your host. This is where science embraces spirit. Each episode, we’ll explore science-informed, and often spiritually rooted, ways to support emotional wellness and reclaim your peace. Hope you enjoy the show!
Keep scrolling for the full transcript in case you want to dive into the details!
Hey everyone, it’s episode 57. Today’s show is a special one because we’re pausing to honor International Women’s Day 2026.
Here at PsycHope, where so much of what we explore centers on women’s emotional wellness, this day carries great meaning. It gives us an opportunity to pause and recognize women, to reflect on the challenges women continue to navigate, and to consider how we might contribute to positive change.
This year’s International Women’s Day theme is Give to Gain, and I think there’s such richness in that theme, in that invitation. It asks us to reflect on what happens when we give in ways that help women gain. What changes when women are given support, encouragement, advocacy, opportunity, resources, respect, and room to rise. And what changes in all of us regardless of gender, and in our communities, when that kind of giving becomes ordinary and normal in the best possible ways.
International Women’s Day is one of the most important global days focused on women. It’s a day to celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness about gender equality, call for positive change, reinforce commitment to gender parity, and support women-focused causes. If you would like a fuller history of International Women’s Day and some of the themes from previous years, I invite you to have a listen to earlier International Women’s Day episodes here on the podcast. For example, we published an International Women’s Day show in 2023 when the theme was “embrace equity” (that’s episode 24) and last year when the theme was “accelerate action” (that’s episode 50).
But for today, I want to stay close to the heart of this year’s theme and what it means through the lens of our PsycHope values.
When people think about celebrating the achievements of women, many of us first think of public, famous women. Leaders. Artists. Athletes. Activists. Women whose names are well known, whose achievements are visible, and whose impact is easy to point to. And yes, absolutely, those women matter and we celebrate them all.
I also want to honor women whose achievements likely never make the news, go viral, or receive a standing ovation, and may not even be recognized by the people around them.
I want to honor the women who made careful career decisions and resigned from jobs where they were mistreated because they were women. The women who finally said, enough. The woman who stopped trying to prove herself in a place that kept dimming her shine. Walking away from something harmful is not failure. Sometimes it’s wisdom. Sometimes it’s self-respect. Sometimes it’s stepping into your success, new career opportunities.
A brief note before I continue, I’m about to mention abusive relationships. So, little trigger warning. I want to honor the women who left abusive relationships. Leaving can involve fear, grief, confusion, financial stress, safety planning, and heartbreak. But still, these women chose to move toward safety. A decision to protect one’s peace, even when the road ahead felt uncertain.
I also want to honor the women who were first in their family to go to college. The women who showed up carrying responsibility, fatigue, and maybe even self-doubt if she belonged there. And still, she kept going. That matters. That is achievement.
I want to honor the women moving through burnout. The woman who asked for help. The woman who began again after something painful. The woman who stayed with the healing process when it would have been easier to numb out or shut down. The woman who made one hard decision that quietly changed the trajectory of her life.
Because achievement is not only public success.
Sometimes achievement is leaving, beginning again, or asking for help.
Sometimes achievement is staying with the healing process and protecting your peace.
These are pieces of what I want to honor today. And these sorts of achievements tie right in with this year’s International Women’s Day theme, Give to Gain.
At first glance, or listen, it is a simple phrase. I’ll admit I thought it was just about fundraising at first, which of course is important. But the more I reflected on it, the depth of this year’s theme became clear. Because Give to Gain is not just about money, though financial giving certainly can be part of it. It is broader than that. It is about the many ways we can give that create real gains for women and girls.
We can give knowledge.
We can give visibility.
We can give advocacy, resources, education, mentoring.
We can give time, encouragement, and genuine listening.
We can give opportunities.
We can give women-focused nonprofits our support.
And when that kind of giving happens, it is not a loss. It is multiplication. Support widens opportunity. Advocacy opens doors. Encouragement can strengthen confidence. Mentorship can shift a future. When women gain, communities gain too.
Sometimes it helps to make a theme tangible, so let’s do that for a moment.
When we give encouragement, women gain confidence.
When we give mentorship, women gain opportunity.
When we give advocacy, women gain protection and visibility.
When we give education, women gain choice.
When we give room to speak, women gain voice and agency.
When we give support to women-focused nonprofits, communities gain stronger foundations.
Ok now let’s consider the give to gain concept, the theme, through three practices held very dear here at PsycHope: stress relief, self-care, and self-compassion.
When women give themselves stress relief, they gain more than just a moment of calm. They gain space to breathe, think more clearly, and respond with greater intention instead of running on pure overwhelm. They may gain better emotional balance, improved focus, more patience, and a nervous system that is less stuck in survival mode.
When women tend to their stress levels, that often ripples outward into healthier choices, more grounded relationships, and a greater capacity to move through life with care rather than constant depletion.
When women give themselves self-care, they gain more than a brief moment of comfort. They gain a way to protect their peace and their capacity in a world that can feel relentlessly heavy. Self-care can help women show up with more clarity, intention, and emotional grounding instead of running on pure overwhelm or adrenaline. It can interrupt stress spirals, support healthier boundaries, and make it easier to respond in alignment with their values rather than just react. And the benefits do not stop there. When women care for themselves well, they are often better able to stay present for their lives, their loved ones, their work, and the causes that matter most to them.
When women give themselves self-compassion, they gain emotional safety. When they respond to themselves with compassion instead of criticism, they often become more resilient after setbacks. And when they offer themselves kindness, they do not lose motivation, they gain a healthier, more sustainable kind of it, one that is not rooted in shame. The beautiful thing is that the gains of self-compassion rarely stop with that one individual woman. They often ripple outward into her relationships, her choices, and the wider communities of which she is a part.
This discussion of the theme Give to Gain matters so much because women’s emotional well-being doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is shaped not only by what is happening inside a woman’s mind and heart, but by the conditions around that woman. Relationships. Systems. Stressors. Support. Safety. Access. Dignity. Opportunity.
So, when we talk about what women are given, or denied, we are also talking about mental health.
When women are given safety, dignity, and respect, they can gain a greater sense of stability. They may experience less hypervigilance. More emotional room to breathe. More trust in themselves and others.
When women are given access, advocacy, and opportunity, they can gain more choice. More agency. Less chronic stress from having to fight unnecessary barriers alone.
Psychologically, this all makes sense. Social support protects mental health. Compassion can reduce shame and isolation. Validation supports emotional healing. Belonging matters. Empowerment and access affect well-being.
That is part of why this theme, Give to Gain, speaks to me so deeply. It reflects something many of us know deep down already. People do better when they are supported. Women do not thrive simply because someone tells them to be more resilient. Women thrive more fully when support, dignity, access, and encouragement are actually present.
And the reality is, many women are still navigating environments that make emotional well-being harder than it needs to be.
The International Women’s Day toolkit points to findings showing that women are still being passed over for jobs and promotions, that nearly 60 percent of women regularly experience microaggressions at work, and that about 20 percent say they are often the only woman in the room at work.
And the pay gap remains with us, too. According to the American Association of University Women, or the AAUW, the All Women’s Equal Pay Day in 2026 falls on March 26th, meaning women working full-time, year-round are paid about 81 cents for every dollar paid to men. In practical terms, that means women had to work all through 2025 and then nearly three months into 2026, until March 26th, to make what men made the previous year.
These are not just career or professional challenges. They also become part of the emotional burden many women carry.
These are a few more reminders that self-care is not shallow. Rest is not frivolous. Self-compassion is not weakness. Support is not an extra. These things matter because women are often carrying chronic overload, emotional labor, and systems-level strain. So now we have even more context for the necessity of stress relief, self-care, and self-compassion for women’s well-being.
As we start to wind this episode down, I want to continue a tradition we began last year, by ending our International Women’s Day episode with poetry.
Sometimes poetry helps us feel what a theme means, by bringing that emotional understanding to our intellectual understanding. Poetry has a way of taking us to a place that definitions, explanations, and statistics cannot quite reach.
This year, I want to share a collective poem by Sharena Lee Satti and members of her poetry community including: Lauren Kara, Fiona Goddard, Asma, Jodie, Javaira, Leslie Clifford, Eniola Omorinkoba, and Jamie Lowbridge.
This poem is called, When We Give to Gain.
When we all Give we Gain
We are all one heart of the same
I will give you a breath to breathe
So our breaths can gather a breath for others in need
I will give you the gift of my senses for you to speak your existence into
So your universe feels heard
I will be the possible to your impossible
The hope you can believe
Because of you, I believe,
My power is multiplied by the love that I give
and in turn receive,
Love in abundance through our communities,
Women to women,
A language that only we can truly speak,
I hear you, I see you and I feel you,
And together, anything and everything is possible if you just believe.
And if we come together
To share our stories and our dreams
Then we inspire and strengthen each other for all to see
I will give you my ear,
But not just to listen,
But to actually hear.
If you feel like the world has turned away,
I will always listen to the words you have to say.
Help you give a voice to the stories that have formed you,
Shaped and carved every unique piece of you.
So tell them direct and straight from the heart,
Together we can shape them into beauty and art.
When you give me permission to share your journey
I cradle your words in my presence
Creating respect and honour placing them into your feelings
A caring kindness with a smile meaning to heal your hearts' tiredness
I give my soul as a resting place
A listening board to help you put things into place
It holds prayers and sincere intentions for you
A silent understanding
A powerful connection
Making the way for the almighty’s protection.
If I, if I was to Give to Gain sometimes I think I would go insane.
I'd cross the ocean to others just to give and make them sane. Because giving is receiving and if I can't receive to give, then what is the purpose of my love?
Love is given and giving is to receive.
If only all of us could find love within
We'd be free of inner disease.
If we Give to Gain you would see being a good person, doesn't depend on your religion, status, skin colour. It depends on how we treat others.
If we Give to Gain, we could find harmony and peace.
I give my breath where silence stays,
You give your time in quiet ways.
I lift my voice so hers can rise,
A shared horizon, widened skies.
Nothing is lost when hearts align,
We grow together yours and mine.
When we join hands, we are one body
When we share our light, we illuminate the dark
One Garden, Multiple blooms
One Chorus with one voice
Different bodies, one heart
When we give, we receive the world.
When we Give we Gain
A droplet of rain becomes the ocean.
That was When We Give to Gain.
There are times when poetry says in a few lines what it might take the rest of us pages to explain. This poem reminds us that support, listening, generosity, and shared humanity are not at all small things. They are part of how change happens. The ripple effects. In the show notes, I will link a YouTube video of Sharena Lee Satti and her sisters in poetry reciting this collective poem they did for International Women’s Day, in collaboration with the initiative, because I believe their shared voices further enhance the depth of their meaningful words.
Now as we wrap up, if you would like more support after today’s episode, please remember you can always visit psychope.com. PsycHope offers podcast conversations like this one. We also have meditations, insight quizzes, worksheets, workbooks, and other complimentary supportive resources designed to encourage women’s emotional well-being in everyday life. A very practical way that PsycHope gives, so we all can gain.
And as we close, I want to leave you with this.
Honoring women is not only about recognition. It’s also about action. It is about how we show up, what we offer, what we amplify, what we protect, and what we choose to support.
When we give in ways that truly support women, everyone gains.
Some of the most meaningful acts of change are relational, practical, and everyday.
So today, I invite you to choose one small Give to Gain action.
Here are some ideas for you to consider: maybe encourage a woman. Listen more deeply. Mentor someone. Amplify a woman’s work. Challenge gender bias. Support a women-focused nonprofit.
Or, very much in the spirit of PsycHope, offer yourself compassion. The ripple effects there can be profound.
Thank you for spending this International Women’s Day with us.
Much Peace Until Next Time.
The information shared on the PsycHope Self-Help Podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional help. If you think you might benefit from more than self-help, resources are listed in the show notes.
Show Notes
Episode 57, originally published on March 7, 2026.
Disclaimer
The information shared on the PsycHope Self-Help podcast does not constitute professional help nor is it a substitute for professional help. If you think you might benefit from more than self-help, here are some helpful resources:
Find a therapist:
Psychology Today, directory for locating a psychotherapist. More details here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/
Mental health crisis resources:
Crisis text line: text HOME to 741741 to connect with a Crisis Counselor for any emotional crisis
