"At the current rate of progress, we will have to wait 100 years for gender parity”. With this bleak statement, so begins the film produced by communications and branding agency, The Team.

“When I was a kid at school, I wanted to become a doctor”, the film continues, in words spoken by Mahnaz Javid, founder of the Mona Foundation, and senior vice president of global business technology service Avande. “But then my father said to me, but Manhaz, then you’re going to have children – and then what are you going to do?”

“Then when I went to university, I wanted to become a computer scientist – and in fact, I was very good at it. And my professor told me, ‘you’ll never make it’. At each turn, I said to myself, wait and see.”

Javid’s experience was several decades ago, and she since went on to prove her doubters wrong. Yet this year, as every year, 8 March will mark International Women’s Day (IWD), an annual event which aims to recognise achievements of women across the world, while breaking down the barriers still inhibiting women from achieving their full potential – the same barriers once faced by Javid.

According to the political and humanitarian precedents set by the United Nations, IWD 2016 is united around the theme of ‘Pledge For Parity’. But what does gender parity mean for businesses, and for the workplace? Where does it start? And how can the barriers to it be overcome?

It is these questions which were addressed at the Covent Garden Hotel on 7 March, venue of the Team Talk event, and in a film on gender parity featuring senior leaders from several large organisations. However, these are questions to be addressed by businesses, big and small, if the prediction that gender parity in the workplace will only be achieved by 2116 is to be forgone in favour of a date in the much nearer future.

As Javid highlights, all too frequently women have faced obstacles in their pursuit of careers, whether through the expectation of family commitments, a lack of faith in their abilities; or simply the absence of infrastructure to support them in the pursuit of an education, and therefore aspiration.

However, with diversity and equality surely integral to the successful functioning of any workplace, achieving gender parity is, for business, the next major hurdle.

If organisations are to continue to innovate, create and develop in ways different to previous decades, the value of women and the potential for relationships built through achieving gender parity is tantamount to financial success, as well as a happy and successful workforce.

Indeed, the gender disparity presenting itself past middle management positions in businesses is perhaps the most obvious target for forward-thinking initiatives, and attitudinal change. While certain consideration will always be given to women choosing to leave a job and start a family, or change career at an early stage, these two life paths are not mutually exclusive – becoming pregnant should not be a cause for discrimination.

A term met with enthusiasm during the Team Talk event, ‘flexible working’ is one such example of how women can pursue both a career and family life, without compromising their principles. Indeed, data suggests that 51% of women and men from middle management to director level identify stereotyping as the major hurdle facing women at work.

Yet Pamela Coles, company secretary for Rolls-Royce, disagrees with this sentiment. “To get on in the 80s as a women,” she says, “You had to be like a man. Now, women don’t have to be like a man – they have to be themselves.”

With increasing numbers of strong women in these leadership positions, we can be hopeful that the gender disparity which has for so long defined employment patterns of history are broken down, well before 2116.