How do women really feel about IWD?

In existence since 1911 and designed to tackle the issues that challenge women’s advancement and equality, International Women’s Day 2025 is all about accelerating action to ensure gender parity. A desperately needed theme, seeing as, according to the World Economic Forum, at the current rate of progress we’re not going to reach full gender parity until 2158. That’s five generations from now.

Individuals and companies mark it differently. Most go unnoticed but a few really leave their mark. Such as Labour MP Jess Phillips, who for the last seven years has read out in Parliament the list of women killed in the past year by a man to highlight the need for better victim support or mental health services in order to save women’s lives. Always a sobering and impactful moment.

But what does IWD mean to UK women? Topline is half of them engage, with 52% marking it in some way, be that through events, social engagement, discussing issues with friends or supporting female owned businesses. The same number agree that IWD is a useful and important moment but out of the 45% who say their employers acknowledge it in some way, 11% feel it is purely performative.

 So is this all the noises of advocacy with very little action? Only 13% of women feel that the government is trying to actively solve the problem they face, while only 19% think brands are trying to help them. This leaves huge opportunity for brands to step up and be more explicit in their allyship during all months and not just March.  

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