Trish's Blog

International Women’s Day is approaching, and with it the calendar invites: breakfasts before work, long lunches, panel conversations, purple cupcakes, social tiles ready to post. And while those moments of gathering matter, I think it’s worth pausing to ask a slightly uncomfortable question.

What happens on March 9?

International Women’s Day has its roots in activism and labour movements and is now formally recognised by the United Nations, which sets a global theme each year focused on systemic change. Alongside that, the broader International Women’s Day campaign sets its own theme, often centred on awareness and advocacy.

Both are important. Both shine a light on inequity. Both provide a rallying point. But neither was designed as a celebration in the way we sometimes treat it. They are calls to action.
Calls to examine who gets opportunities and who doesn’t.
Calls to look at pay gaps, promotion rates, parental leave policies and leadership representation.
Calls to notice who speaks in meetings and who gets interrupted.
Calls to ask who we recommend, mentor, sponsor and advocate for when decisions are being made behind closed doors.

Attending an event can be energising. Listening to women share their stories can be powerful. Applauding progress is important. But if we leave inspired and then slip back into everyday habits that quietly reinforce the very dynamics we just discussed, we’ve missed something.

It’s easy to champion women in public and compete with them in private.
It’s easy to post about empowerment and still question another woman’s ambition, tone or leadership style.
It’s easy to talk about lifting others up and yet participate in the subtle undermining that has been normalised in many workplaces for generations.

Real solidarity is less visible than a photo at a breakfast.
It looks like giving credit especially when you could have taken it.
It looks like shutting down dismissive commentary in the moment.
It looks like mentoring without keeping score.
It looks like advocating for a woman who isn’t in the room.
It looks like choosing not to participate in gossip that chips away at someone’s credibility.

And it also looks like doing our own internal work. Because many of us have navigated systems where scarcity was real, where there felt like there was only room for one woman at the table. That conditioning doesn’t disappear just because we attend an event once a year.

International Women’s Day asks more of us.
It asks leaders to examine structures, not just sentiments.
It asks organisations to measure progress, not just host panels.
It asks all of us to consider how our daily behaviours either reinforce or dismantle the barriers we say we care about.

So by all means, book the breakfast. Attend the lunch. Join the conversation. But let’s treat those moments as the starting line, not the finish. If we are serious about equity, the real work happens in the ordinary days that follow; in performance reviews, hiring decisions, succession planning, pay conversations, and everyday interactions.

International Women’s Day isn’t about feeling good for a few hours. It’s about building workplaces and communities where equity isn’t an annual theme but a lived reality.

That’s not always comfortable. But it is necessary. And that’s something worth showing up for long after the hashtags fade.