On Worldwide Ladies’s Day, it’s tempting to publish a message of help on what you are promoting socials shortly. As an alternative, why not think about more practical, longer-term motion?
Take to social media on March 8, and also you’ll see companies posting about the identical factor: girls. Welcome to the annual phenomenon that’s Worldwide Ladies’s Day.
What’s Worldwide Ladies’s Day?
Worldwide Ladies’s Day [IWD] does what it says on the tin. It’s an annual acknowledgement of ladies’s achievements and promotion of their rights. Every year has a theme, and 2026’s is #GiveToGain, with a deal with driving gender equality by means of collective motion.
In 2024, UK authorities analysis discovered that 14% of SMEs with workers had been female-led, which was down by 1% from 2023.
The concept for Worldwide Ladies’s Day was coined in 1910 by German girls’s rights activist Clara Zetkin, and the primary official IWD came about a 12 months later in 1911. It has been sponsored by the United Nations since 1975.
Within the UK, quite a bit has modified for girls for the higher for the reason that first Worldwide Ladies’s Day, however inequalities stay, just like the gender pay hole, lack of management positions and office discrimination.
Trendy inequalities for girls at work
Whereas the gender pay hole is closing within the UK, figures from the Workplace for Nationwide Statistics (ONS) present there’s nonetheless some option to go. In 2025, the ONS discovered the median gender pay hole for full-time workers was 6.9%, a lower of 0.1% from 2024.
Nonetheless, when the ONS examine included each full and part-time workers, it discovered the hole to be a lot bigger at 12.8%, reflecting the big variety of girls in lower-paid, part-time roles, usually on account of their caregiving tasks.
Administration guide big McKinsey has lengthy pointed to a correlation between gender fairness in corporations and organisational success.
Ladies aren’t solely paid lower than males, however they’re additionally holding fewer management positions. In 2024, UK authorities analysis discovered that 14% of SMEs with workers had been female-led, which was down by 1% from 2023.
One other inequality is office discrimination. In 2025, HR Options supplier Ciphr carried out a office discrimination survey, which discovered girls had been practically twice as probably as males to report feeling discriminated in opposition to on account of their gender; this was 15% of ladies within the survey in comparison with 8.5% of males.
The statistics present that girls nonetheless face actual obstacles to development and inclusion at work, that means that Worldwide Ladies’s Day nonetheless carries nice significance.
However supporting girls doesn’t simply look good for companies; research present it truly helps them carry out higher.
Good for girls, good for enterprise
Administration guide big McKinsey has lengthy pointed to a correlation between gender fairness in corporations and organisational success. The Worldwide Financial Fund backs this view up, too. It states that closing the gender labour hole will enhance GDP in creating and developed economies.
One other perk of supporting girls at work is extra progressive considering, which can be good for enterprise. A various crew making choices reduces the possibilities of ‘groupthink’. Any enterprise promoting services or products to a various market ought to keep away from groupthink, which is when groups make choices that conform to a dominant concept. The formulation is straightforward: totally different voices, extra progressive concepts.
So, earlier than you’re about to publish that IWD message on March 8, take into consideration what your organization is definitely doing to help its girls. Keep in mind, if there may be nothing behind your IWD publish that backs you up as a pro-women enterprise, more and more purpose-driven job-seekers and clients will see by means of the facade, and your model’s repute might be at stake.
The proof is within the analysis on the market. Function and social influence are more and more defining buyer preferences, in addition to expertise on the hunt for brand new job roles. In response to 2025 analysis from Co-operatives UK, 61% of youthful employees take employer values and social duty significantly. With youthful employees, together with Gen Z, half of the present and future workforce, employers needs to be listening.
For each agency that posts about IWD on social media and does little else, there are many companies on the market utilizing March 8 to make a stand for girls all 12 months spherical. Simply have a look at what these women-led SMEs are doing…
The feminine founders taking IWD additional
Judit Mora, [pictured below], CEO and co-founder of Nuumad, a digital session platform for UK pharmacies and clinics, makes use of IWD as a place to begin for actual change. “We method IWD as a immediate for motion and dialog moderately than a one-day celebration,” she explains.
“This 12 months, it contains sponsoring two women-focused occasions happening across the similar time; one centred on peer connection inside healthcare, and one other centered on schooling {and professional} growth, delivered solely for feminine neighborhood pharmacy house owners, run by the Feminine Pharmacy Leaders Community. Supporting areas like this issues to us as a result of it helps create alternatives for studying, visibility and shared expertise past inside conversations.”
For Frances Li, [pictured below], founding father of boutique recruitment company Biscuit Recruitment, IWD is about shining a light-weight on her girls workers, candidates and shoppers. “We usually encourage girls to place themselves ahead for extra senior roles after they’re hesitant, help them to barter wage with confidence, and act as profession sounding boards moderately than simply transactional recruiters,” she explains. “We select to work carefully with shoppers who genuinely worth versatile working, development and wholesome office cultures, as a result of these issues make an actual distinction to girls’s careers in follow.”
Becky Simms, CEO and founding father of Human First Collective, a collective of specialist, people-first companies, makes use of her private well being experiences to make girls’s well being and related changes a subject of dialog inside and past her organisation. “By my very own experiences with endometriosis, adenomyosis, and now medical menopause, we’ve labored laborious to make girls’s well being a traditional, open subject within the office, together with turning into an endometriosis-friendly employer. I’ve additionally hung out advocating for a greater understanding of ladies’s well being at work by means of wider trade and authorities conversations,” she says.
“Alongside versatile working and personal healthcare, we actively help different enterprise leaders by sharing what we’ve realized, serving to them perceive why these conversations belong within the boardroom, and the way small, sensible changes could make an enormous distinction,” she provides.
For Elena Davidson, [pictured below], CEO of public relations agency Liberty Comms, IWD is an opportunity to show their help for girls at giant. “We’re proud supporters of the Working for Change programme, which sees us actively contribute hours of help and experience to women-led companies and NGOs which can be driving gender equality, turning the spirit of IWD into actual influence lengthy after March eighth. This provides the entire firm a tangible option to see how collective effort – even only some hours – can result in optimistic change and empowerment.”
At digital advertising company First Web, Co-owner and Advertising Director Julaine Speight acknowledges that her enterprise operates in a nonetheless male-dominated tech-based sector. As such, she helps her feminine employees enhance their soft-skills capabilities, which transcend the technical calls for of their day job.
“We actively deal with mentorship, flexibility and creating softer abilities alongside technical experience, as a result of confidence, communication and perception in your individual worth are simply as important to long-term success,” she states.
Zamiha Desai MBE, [pictured below] Founding father of RecommendAsian and ProfessionalAsian, which helps practically 200,000 girls, professionals, SME house owners and customers throughout the UK, has a two-pronged method to IWD, which incorporates occasions across the day and longer-term help for girls. “Yearly, a few weeks earlier than IWD, RecommendAsian hosts a breakfast and photoshoot. Our superb photographer, Sheena Sabharwal, takes skilled portraits of our enterprise members within the IWD pose for that 12 months. We eat along with these fantastic girls, and so they have the time to community with one another. This reinforces our sense of neighborhood, the place we are able to share concepts, collaborate and construct relationships,” she says.
“Our neighborhood contains 75,000 girls; all of them assist one another day-after-day. Be it recommendation, sympathy, ideas, help – it’s all about them and the way we can assist one another in our day-to-day lives. Particularly with workers, we’ve got some superb legal professionals in our community who give nice recommendation to these struggling of their office, in addition to anecdotes from individuals who have been in comparable positions and may supply views. We work together with loads of self-employed girls, and we’re there to champion them, their services, and to assist with technique and options after they have enterprise struggles. By way of the staff and those who we outsource to, we’re versatile, which I believe is what folks want. Whether or not it’s round homelife, youngsters, holidays, we perceive and are as accommodating as doable.”
For IWD this 12 months and the years forward, employers have two decisions: to pay lip service to supporting girls for at some point or to observe the examples of those feminine founders and take motion, irrespective of how small, to make IWD a year-round effort.
Your actions will probably be good for womankind, however you may enhance your model repute and organisational efficiency too.
Keep in mind, what is sweet for girls is sweet for enterprise.
