Whose IWD is it, anyway?
The hostile takeover of International Women's Day.
Note: There are more images than usual in today’s essay so you may prefer to switch to your browser for easier reading.
Happy International Women's Day!
A day to celebrate all that women do and have done for us, and to campaign for more advancements in opportunities for women and girls everywhere.
Or… at least that's what I thought it was about, anyway.
Because all I've managed to see so far from my desk today is the International Women's Day corporate machine as it staggers into view, lugging another loaded, ill-fitting campaign theme into my news feed for the day.
Last year we were told that hugging ourselves was going to solve gender inequality and I thought my eyes were going to roll themselves right out of my head.1
This year - well, I think it may actually be worse.
In 2024 we are asked by the ‘official’ IWD website to:
#InspireInclusion
By… and I can’t believe I’m actually typing out these words
Making a heart with our hands.
MAKING A HEART.
WITH OUR HANDS.
A HEART.
WITH OUR HANDS!?
I can’t be the only one to scroll through this terrible stock imagery and think…
Are the IWD team trolling us?
Who are these campaigns actually for?
After all the - let’s call it, constructive - feedback the ‘hug yourself’ campaign received last year, I was hoping that the team behind www.internationalwomensday.com might rethink this focus on trite, meaningless gestures which do nothing to create real positive change for women and girls.
Heck, I was even holding out the hope that the team would go ahead and steal my own IWD campaign idea: ‘Flip the bird for the birds’.
But no, instead we appear to see time, money, and resource spent on glossy, glorified stock images, search engine optimisation efforts, slick advertising, and countless agency fees for a campaign that so woefully underestimates its female audience.
Repeatedly.
And as a woman working in marketing and communications, this disconnect struck me as curious.
Multiple people would have to sign the brief off on this type of initiative, let alone the proposed work, before it launched
There must be a decent quantity of money required to produce, disseminate and then PR the hell out of this campaign
And the crucial one: No agency or marketing team in their right mind would continue to throw money and time at a campaign that wasn’t performing.
So on some level this campaign must be working.
But for whom?
#InclusionIllusion?
When creating any marketing campaign the three most important questions you always ask yourself before beginning are:
What is our objective?
Who is our target audience?
I’ll get to the third…
Applying these first two questions to the last few IWD.com campaigns and working backwards, the only conclusion I can come to is that campaigns like this are not driving meaningful change because meaningful change was never the end goal.
In fact, I have a horrible feeling that these ‘official’ International Women’s Day campaigns may not be for women at all.
I think they might be for men called John.
And more specifically, the Johns (and Peters, and Simons, and the odd Julie)2 running the multinational corporations in the FTSE100 or S&P500, along with their merry band of Corporate Social Responsibility and Investor Relations teams.
After all, it’s easy to see why Boards of these million-and-billion-dollar companies just LOVE these palatable, cheap and easy backslaps of a Women’s Day campaign:
They’re cheap and easy to disseminate internally
Their message is never ‘too divisive’
And - best of all - they tend to use words that sound vaguely weighty but on closer inspiration don’t require you to actually do anything different.
You’ll see it today on LinkedIn. 8 March rolls to a close and businesses everywhere congratulate themselves all on a ‘job well done’.
The CSR team is thrilled at three hundred likes on a LinkedIn picture of Peter making a heart with his hands. The Investor Relations rep duly notes the success for its next shareholder update, absolving themselves of too much responsibility for another 364 days.
Meanwhile the gender pay gap in that business goes unaddressed.3
The corporate buyout of International Women’s Day
You may have noticed my liberal use of quotation marks around the ‘official’ website of the International Women’s Day website and campaign.
That’s because, whilst countless HR teams lean on the annual campaign of this website and its resources every year, it’s not affiliated with the United Nations International Women’s Day campaign and programme (this year’s theme: Invest in Women).
It’s easy to see why people get confused. This other website comes up first when you search ‘IWD’ or ‘International Women’s Day’, it owns the domain www.internationalwomensday.com, and if you navigate to the website you’ll see a professional, inviting website full of slogans and call-to-actions.
All well and good, until you ponder: why do we need this programme? Why does it seem intent on taking the spotlight from the United Nations campaign? And why is there no information about who is running the website?
If you follow my newsletter regularly you’ll know I love a good detective story, so after my suspicions were raised about the motives for these nonsensical IWD campaigns I decided to do a little digging.
First of all I looked at the ‘About us’ page of the IWD site. So far, not much to go on.
The page shares the definition of International Women’s Day as a day to mark and celebrate. It talks in vague terms about ‘supporting the supporters’ and ‘providing an events hub. And it answers a LOT of commonly searched questions like ‘what’s the history of international women’s day?’ and ‘what colours symbolise international women’s day’ to help it dominate the Google rankings.
Reading through the bullet points, it all feels like much of a muchness. It’s not that these aren’t useful tools and resources listed - they are. But who benefits from doing all this? And why are they bothering to provide such resources in the first place? The fact these questions are not answered is telling.
I then stumbled across this article by the Sydney Morning Herald from 2020, which revealed that the company behind International Women’s Day is a management consultancy called Aurora Ventures. Heading to their own website I was left none the wiser. Though both their website and LinkedIn profile talk of their connection to the IWD ‘platform’, they barely promote their campaign work, and their LinkedIn page has just 132 followers.
Even more head-scratchingly, they still don’t say who their clients are. That’s bizarre for most consultancies, but especially one who says in the first line of their ‘about us’ page:
“Our work isn't about us. It's about our clients. And it's about helping forge women's equality worldwide.”
If these clients are so committed to women’s issues, why are they staying so silent? And why are they knowingly hijacking other prominent, global and policy-driven International Women’s Day efforts, like the official United Nations Day?
Now that I knew the company name, I carried on digging, which led me to this brilliantly helpful and well-researched article by Christine McNab on ‘Who owns International Women’s Day’.
Bingo…
Though this image certainly serves to make a point, BP are not the only ones behind Aurora Ventures. As Christine’s research shows4, the firm is run by at least ten multibillion corporate partners, including Aecom, Caterpillar, PepsiCo, the EBRD, F5, Vodafone, MetLife, and Western Union. ‘A consortium of stakeholders’.
So this is who the heart-shaped hands are really for.
Dear John
I’m not against businesses investing in Women’s Day initiatives, nor in campaigns aimed at men. We need both real financial commitment and male allies if we’re to make changes which are proven to benefit the whole of society, as well as women and girls.5
But if these Boards are feeling the heat from shareholders to invest money into inclusivity and diversity schemes then isn’t it better that John, Peter, Simon and Julie invest that money into programmes that actually have an impact?
Donate to domestic violence shelters
Set up a business fund for female founders (and reap the benefits!)
Close your own internal pay gaps, for god’s sakes!
I’d rather Boards spent money here, than spend precious resource on a meaningless campaign that dilutes the vital attention women’s issues get on this one day of the year.
Because the third most important question when creating an effective campaign is: What do we want the audience to do next?
And women deserve better than: “Not very much.”
Take action that matters this International Women’s Day
I know what I'll be doing with my hands this International Women's Day, and it won't be a heart sign.
If like me you want change for women and girls to be real, lasting, and positive, I recommend the following. If you have other ideas, or causes to connect me to, please let me know in the comments:
Follow the official UN International Women’s Day campaign. This year the theme is Invest in Women. The ironic thing is that this campaign is far more finance driven than the commercialised version - do John, Peter and Simon know that ‘closing gender gaps in employment could boost GDP per capita by 20 per cent’?*
If you have an HR, People, CSR, DEI team or similar, please ensure they’re aware of the UN campaign and understand the difference to the IWD campaign. Send them this essay if you like! Let’s not be giving multibillion companies more airtime - they have enough, and not least for this flimsy stock-image messaging.
Join an IWD protest
If you hear a great idea from a woman in a meeting, vocally support it. And please for God’s sake don’t repeat it five minutes later as if it was yours, we do realise and remember.
Mentor or advocate for a woman you admire at work. Connect them with others who will help them on their career journey.
Donate to a non-profit supporting critical women’s issues such as Planned Parenthood or Refuge.
❤️ If this article spoke to you, please hit the heart to let me and others know about it
🖕 And if this REALLY spoke to you, drop me a middle finger in the comments.
See my 2023 article: ‘I don’t want to hug myself, I just want equal pay’).
In recent years there have been more male CEOs with the same name in the FTSE100 and S&P500 than female CEOs put together. In the UK this was at one point known as the Peter Problem and the John Problem. By April 2023’s count both our Peter and John problems had thankfully disappeared, though last year Simon came close. Before you celebrate, the gender balance is still dire: of the FTSE100 CEOS, only 10 are women (as of April 2023).
Sharon O’Dea does great work amplifying corporate hypocrisy via the gender paygap every year.
Since finding Christine McNab’s article, I’ve found a few others written by women who have done similar digging on Aurora Ventures - you can find them in the resources underneath for further reading.
It must also be noted that I have nothing against men called John either (“some of my dearest family and friends are Johns…”)
Further reading
‘Who owns International Women’s Day?’ - Christine McNab
After writing this essay I remembered a LinkedIn post by Advita Patel I’d commented on which may have inspired this post more than I realised when I was writing it! It’s a great example of sounding the alarm on corporate campaign mischief like this, which I hope my essay reinforces.
‘The Corporate Problem with International Women's Day’ - Ebony Breen
‘Don’t ‘Inspire Inclusion’ and get duped again on International Women’s Day’ - Angela Priestley
Great article! This really explains and articulates my recent misgivings about IWD - thank you for the detective work you've put in!
🖕