This Woman's Day, Let's Celebrating Women’s Relationship with Attention & Presence

Mindful Discussions
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Today is International Women’s Day, and it made me reflect on something that feels closely connected to what we often discuss here as a community.

At Mudita, we talk a lot about attention. Where we place it. How easily it gets pulled away. And how meaningful life can feel when we’re able to direct it intentionally.

However, attention is not just a personal habit. It also shapes the world around us.

Across societies, many long-term improvements, in areas like education, healthcare, community life, and social progress, didn’t come from short campaigns or quick wins. They came from years or decades of steady attention and care, often from women who chose to focus deeply on things that mattered and kept working on them over time.

In many ways, attention is also Mudita’s currency because our products exist to help people reclaim it and use it more intentionally.

So today, I wanted to ask the community a simple question:

What did a woman teach you to pay attention to?

Or another reflection:

Can you name a woman whose work changed your life, even though it never made headlines?

It could be a teacher, a family member, a colleague, or someone whose quiet influence shaped the way you think or live.

Sometimes the most meaningful impact comes not from the loudest voices, but from steady attention given to the right things over time.

I’d love to hear your stories.

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Thanks Ursula for a very good “thought-starter”. I’m a bit late but the exercise is interesting nonetheless !

My mother (who else, the first important woman in our lives !), taught me to pay attention to other people’s well-being. To be thoughtful and well-meaning when dealing with them.

Later, my then-girlfriend (and now one of my best friends), taught me to pay attention to the ways in which women are often treated as inferior.

One story she told struck me. It’s actually kind of funny, in retrospect, but of course for her it was a defining moment. Back in the days when she was a teen living with her parents, her brother was gifted a moped by them. When my friend turned 16, she of course expected to receive that moped (while her brother got a car). Instead, her parents sold it ! It’s interesting to me because her parents acted in what they thought was her best interest - protecting her against the big scary world and against herself. (Shortly after that she left their house and their town to go find her independence in the capital).

Taking evening lessons in art, we had an amazing teacher of History of Art. The kind of teacher that makes you excited to go to class. She introduced us to some wonderful female artists from the Baroque and Renaissance periods. Women who’s great talent is routinely ignored, for no good reason. I had been hearing about Raphael or Michelangelo my whole life, but how come I had never heard of Artemisia Gentileschi or Sofonisba Anguissola ?!

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