Worldwide Girls’s Day (IWD) is an annual occasion on March 8 that recognises ladies’s social, financial, cultural, and political achievements worldwide.
It’s also a day to name consideration to the continued struggles and challenges confronted by ladies and to advocate for gender equality. IWD has its roots within the early twentieth century when ladies’s rights grassroots activists organised protests and strikes to demand equal rights and remedy.
Un Girls’s position in advancing ladies’s rights
Within the many years that adopted, IWD turned an more and more world occasion, with an increasing number of international locations taking part every year. In 1975, the United Nations formally recognised IWD and designated it as a day to advertise gender equality and ladies’s empowerment. UN Girls, a UN entity that was created in 2010, now leads the worldwide IWD marketing campaign and works to advance ladies’s rights and gender equality year-round.
IWD has been celebrated in Australia for the reason that early twentieth century, with the primary IWD occasion held in Sydney in 1928. UN Girls Australia hosts IWD occasions in a number of cities throughout the nation, together with Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, and Perth, which carry collectively hundreds of individuals to rejoice world achievements, agitate for change, and lift funds to assist ladies and ladies.
However lately, the occasion has been hijacked by company entities in search of to revenue from the IWD model and promote their enterprise pursuits.
The company co-opting of Worldwide Girls’s Day
Immediately, in the event you put ‘Worldwide Lady’s Day’ into your most popular search engine, the highest end result is probably not the official UN Women landing page. As an alternative, you’re more likely to see www.internationalwomensday.com, a web site run by a privately held industrial enterprise referred to as IWD Help Ltd, previously buying and selling as Aurora Ventures (Europe) Ltd. It’s essential to notice that this web site has no affiliation with the UN Girls’s IWD.
In 2025, Aurora Ventures (Europe) Ltd rebranded to IWD Help Ltd, shortly after a Guardian investigation uncovered how and why the United Nations was actively distancing itself from the London-based industrial entity behind InternationalWomensDay.com.
Read the Guardian article here.
The bulk proprietor of IWD Help Ltd is advertising and marketing govt Glenda Slingsby, who based Aurora Ventures in 2000, initially registered as Busygirl Ltd.
Regardless of positioning itself publicly as a “not-for-profit” service, IWD Help Ltd just isn’t a registered non-profit or charity. It stays a personal, for-profit advertising and marketing and promoting firm. Its enterprise mannequin contains promoting merchandise, internet hosting high-cost company lunches and offering advertising and marketing companies designed to boost the reputations of its company shoppers as socially accountable, women-friendly employers. The corporate has labored with main firms together with Sainsbury’s, Barclays, Lockheed Martin and BP.
Just like Australia’s Work180, IWD Help additionally operates the web site The place Girls Work, a jobs platform the place employers pay to promote vacancies and recruit feminine professionals.
The 2026 UN Girls’s theme is ‘Stability The Scales’
It’s a promise that each girl and lady – no matter background or identification – must be secure, heard, and free to form her personal future.
This theme is restricted, inclusive, and sophisticated. It highlights the position that daring, transformative concepts, inclusive applied sciences, and accessible justice can play in combatting discrimination and the marginalisation of girls globally.
The chance of pinkwashing and exploitation
While there are not any clear ‘house owners’ of IWD and having extra entities concerned in selling the marketing campaign might be seen as optimistic, there are a number of explanation why the company takeover of Worldwide Girls’s Day (IWD) might (and will) be seen as unfavorable.
First, when firms co-opt IWD and use it as a possibility to advertise their model or merchandise, it undermines the unique function and that means of the day. Through the use of IWD as a advertising and marketing alternative, corporations could also be seen as exploiting or commodifying the ladies’s rights motion for their very own acquire, slightly than actually committing to gender equality and the empowerment of girls.
Second, the involvement of firms in IWD can even increase issues concerning the authenticity and sincerity of their efforts. Some firms might use IWD as a method to enhance their picture and seem extra socially accountable, even when their precise insurance policies and practices don’t align with their said values and targets in relation to gender equality. This observe, often known as “pinkwashing,” might be seen as a type of company greenwashing, the place corporations current a false or deceptive picture of their environmental sustainability efforts.
Lastly, the company takeover of IWD might also divert consideration and assets away from extra significant and impactful efforts to advertise gender equality. As an alternative of specializing in actual and tangible modifications that may assist deal with gender-based inequalities, the emphasis might shift to superficial or symbolic gestures that don’t deal with the foundation causes of those points.
- Help UN Girls Australia’s IWD by attending an occasion, changing into a sponsor or internet hosting your individual IWD@work occasion. Discover out extra about how your organization might be concerned here.
- Make sure you allocate an satisfactory finances for audio system you invite to take part in your occasion and pay them pretty for his or her time and experience.
- Use IWD as a possibility to amplify the voices and views of girls: Firms can use IWD as a platform to showcase the contributions and achievements of girls throughout the firm and within the broader group. This might embrace that includes the tales and experiences of girls in advertising and marketing supplies, social media posts, or different communications.
- Implement insurance policies and practices that promote gender equality throughout the firm: Firms can evaluation and replace their insurance policies and practices to make sure that they’re inclusive and supportive of girls and gender variety. This might embrace implementing insurance policies round equal pay, versatile work preparations, and addressing harassment and discrimination.
- Educate workers and stakeholders about gender equality: Firms can use IWD as a possibility to coach workers and stakeholders about gender equality and the significance of selling ladies’s rights. This might embrace internet hosting workshops, webinars, or different occasions to boost consciousness and encourage dialogue round these points.
- Take into account the influence of selling efforts: Firms must be conscious of how they market themselves and their merchandise on IWD, and be certain that their efforts don’t exploit or commodify the ladies’s rights motion. This might contain avoiding the usage of pink branding or cause-related advertising and marketing, and as a substitute specializing in tangible actions that show the corporate’s dedication to gender equality.
- And at last, whereas IWD is a day to rejoice the achievements and contributions of girls, males have an essential position to play on this effort, as they’re typically the beneficiaries of methods and constructions that perpetuate gender inequality. By taking part in IWD and supporting gender equality, males might help create a extra inclusive and equitable society for all. Involving males in IWD might help to shift cultural attitudes and behaviours that contribute to gender inequality. This could embrace difficult poisonous masculinity, figuring out biases and selling extra inclusive and respectful conduct in the direction of ladies. Lasting cultural change is just doable by partaking males in these discussions and inspiring them to be allies and advocates for gender equality.
The Final (F) Phrase
As we rejoice Worldwide Girls’s Day and the achievements and contributions of girls world wide, it’s essential to keep in mind that the combat for gender equality is much from over. Whereas progress has been made, ladies proceed to face quite a few challenges and inequalities, from the gender pay hole to discrimination and violence. It’s an unlucky undeniable fact that some corporations have been recognized to hijack IWD for their very own industrial acquire, utilizing it as a possibility to advertise their model or merchandise with out genuinely committing to gender equality and the empowerment of girls. This undermines the aim and that means of IWD and exploits the ladies’s rights motion for revenue.
So it’s essential that all of us play a task in advocating for change and dealing in the direction of a extra equal and inclusive society, and do our due diligence in making certain we’re listening to the fitting voices and utilizing our assets in one of the simplest ways to have an effect on significant change
And males, don’t suppose you’re off the hook – gender equality advantages everybody, and we’d like your assist and allyship to make actual progress. So let’s all increase our voices, stand collectively, and work in the direction of a world the place each individual, no matter gender or gender identification, can thrive.
Study extra about IWD from the official UN Women Australia website here..
- Emma Jones is founder and CEO of Project F Australia, a social enterprise targeted on closing the gender hole in know-how. They accomplice with know-how organisations to show good intentions into measurable progress on gender fairness, security and inclusion, together with by way of the T-EDI Requirements.
