It’s International Women’s Day on 8th March and the theme this year is Inspire Inclusion.

Over the last few weeks I’ve seen people asking what their plans are and what they want to put in place to support it. One of the calls to action is to get more men involved in #IWD, and, with just under three weeks to go, I’d expect you to have your plans in place.

You haven’t?

You might want to speedily arrange something. The thing you arrange will demonstrate that this is an important topic and you did something. The problem with this is it falls under the equality theatre umbrella. Equality theatre is where we point at a ‘thing’ you did, how everyone enjoyed the thing, how everyone was engaged with the thing, how people remember the things for days, weeks, and months afterwards, yet the thing doesn’t prompt any organisational change.

The theme for #IWD2023 was Embrace Equity. If that happened throughout the year, where has that equity been demonstrated? It’s entirely reasonable to ask what effects were created as a result of hashtag#IWD2023. We know we saw thousands of photos of people hugging each other but what REAL change happened?

The theme for #IWD2024 is #InspireInclusion and a heart shaped hands gesture. More than just counting hundreds of photos, post impressions and like, what are your measures for inspiring inclusion for International Women’s Day. Don’t do a ‘thing’ on IWD; agree a plan of action which will change inclusion in the workplace, and agree associated measures.

And when people ask what you did for #IWD you’ll have real results.