Beyond International Women’s Day: How businesses can implement equality measures

Every International Women’s Day (IWD), workplaces around the world present female employees with cupcakes, a tokenistic campaign, and a plethora of social media posts on gender equality. Whilst the key message behind the United Nations day of observance, which promotes awareness of gender issues and human rights is extremely important, corporate hijacking muddies the waters. 

This year’s theme ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress’ tackles gender equity across all areas including the alarming $360 billion annual deficit in gender-equality measures by 2030.

Despite its importance, there is a generalised feeling of fatigue amongst women when it comes to IWD, predominantly due to the fact that corporate efforts seem disingenuous and fail to extend beyond one day.

Of course, it doesn’t help that there is widespread confusion surrounding the legitimate website for IWD, with a UK agency masquerading as the official site under the URL ‘internationalwomensday.com’,