Another year, another International Women’s Day. Cue the LinkedIn posts, the panel discussions, and the brands slapping a hashtag on their marketing campaigns while continuing to pay women less than men.
So, is International Women’s Day (IWD) still worth our time – or, to put it bluntly, has it lost its edge?
On the surface, you might think we’ve come far enough. Women make up the majority of university students. We’ve got female CEOs, prime ministers, and sports pundits. The gender pay gap is narrowing (slowly).
And a recent survey from the King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership and Ipsos found that almost half of Brits now believe efforts to promote women’s equality have gone far enough. Back in 2019, it was just a third.
So, we’re done right? Time to retire the placards and let IWD become another date in the corporate diversity calendar? Absolutely not.
Because despite the progress, the barriers remain – they’ve just become more subtle, more insidious, and, in some cases, more dangerous than ever.
A day born from protest
International Women’s Day didn’t start as a networking event for corporate executives. It wasn’t a vague celebration of women’s ‘achievements’. It was born out of protest.
In 1908, 15,000 women – most of them factory workers – marched through the streets of New York, demanding shorter hours, better pay, and the right to vote. The following year, the first National Women’s Day was observed in the United States, followed by Europe in 1911.
The fight was – and still is – about power: who holds it, who is denied it, and who is forced to work harder for less of it. And that’s the problem with asking if IWD is still worth it – without the fight, nothing changes.
Every right we have today – from voting to maternity leave to the right to have our own bank accounts – had to be fought for. If those women had stopped pushing because things were “better than before,” we wouldn’t be here.
And we certainly wouldn’t be talking about closing the global gender gap – which is still 132 years away, according to the World Economic Forum.
To give this context, 132 years ago children as young as five worked in factories and Queen Victoria was on the throne. If you caught tuberculosis, whooping cough, or measles, the chances of survival were slim.
In the industrialised system, women have always worked for less – in many cases, for free. But they have also remained the primary caregivers, balancing paid labour with unpaid work, bending around the structures built for and by men.
You need only look at our NHS, where more than 75% of the workforce is female, or our care support services, where the percentage is even higher. These industries run on women’s labour, mostly because women are expected to work in these structures by default.
Known as ‘The Caring Economy’ we are often still the glue that binds communities together. Yet, despite the fact that their labour benefits society as a whole, it remains undervalued, underpaid, and often completely invisible.
Power still looks like a man
Following the Trump-Zelensky exchange last week, world leaders gathered in London, offering yet another reminder of the gender disparity in leadership. Out of 19 heads of state present, only three were women.
This isn’t just about optics. The latest WEF Global Gender Gap Report highlights that female political representation is still an exception rather than the norm.
And it is the same in our boardrooms. Despite all the talk of diversity, just 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, and when you look at the intersection of race and gender, the figures are even more damning.
Leadership is still overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly white – and overwhelmingly resistant to change.
When inequality turns to violence
Economic inequality isn’t just about money – it has real, life-altering consequences. Financial dependence traps women in abusive relationships. The lack of women’s political representation means the policies that could protect them don’t get prioritised.
And let’s not pretend that violence against women and girls is something happening “somewhere else.” One in three women globally experience physical or sexual violence, most often at the hands of a partner.
In the UK, Baroness Louise Casey’s damning review of the Met Police exposed rampant institutional sexism, racism, and homophobia. These are the things we know about. What about the stories we never hear, the statistics we never collect?
So do we still need IWD?
We won’t be around in 2158, so we could leave it all to chance for our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s to pick up the pieces. Or we could decide we don’t want to wait another 132 years to achieve parity. So, this IWD, let’s not pat ourselves on the back.
Let’s use this moment to push for real, tangible change. Because until women from all backgrounds have real equality – in politics, in work, in safety, in life – meaning our work here isn’t done.
Join Bristol Women in Business Charter for a panel discussion on IWD, March 8, at Bristol City Hall as part of the annual Bristol Women’s Voice IWD event. Registration is via Eventbrite.