INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY™
It’s early March.
Which means the Canva templates are out. The empowerment quotes are pre-scheduled. Someone (probably the junior female EA) has been tasked with ordering cupcakes.
Pink, of course.
Because it’s International Women’s Day - brought to you by Corporate Communications.
Every year we run the same script.
A LinkedIn carousel about “strong women.”
A well-intentioned speech about confidence.
A luncheon celebrating resilience (without interrogating why resilience is required in the first place).
Feminism - but brand safe.
Empowerment - but apolitical.
Progress - but non-threatening.
We celebrate leadership while avoiding conversations about power.
We applaud “confidence” instead of discussing capital.
We fetishize “balance” instead of naming the patriarchy.
And then, on March 9, it quietly disappears.
To be clear, I don’t think most organisations are malicious. I think they’re risk-averse. And risk-averse systems will always sanitise anything that could destabilise them.
And do you know what destabilises? Feminism.
So it gets softened, and what began as a labour movement becomes a themed morning tea.
And yet dismissing International Women’s Day entirely feels too easy (although believe me, I’ve tried).
Because there is something that still works: rooms.
Rooms full of women are still powerful.
Not because of hashtags or branded media walls, but because proximity changes things.
Hearing someone articulate a truth you’ve been privately carrying changes you. Watching another woman speak plainly about money, ambition, motherhood, leadership, exhaustion, boundaries - that shifts something internal.
This week I’ll be sitting on a the annual QUEST Orange IWD Breakfast - and here’s the part that complicates my cynicism:
The women won’t be there for cupcakes.
Because in Orange, something different happens.
There’s a quiet density of female-led businesses here. Women running organisations. Sitting on boards. Leading campaigns. Employing people. Building culture. Backing each other. Holding the line. Settling new frontiers.
People outside the region notice it.
They comment on it.
They feel it when they visit.
When they ask what it’s like being part of this network, there’s genuine curiosity.
It isn’t perfect.
It isn’t polished.
But it isn’t performative either.
So…International Women’s Day as marketing season? I’ll maintain the eye roll.
But International Women’s Day as a reason to gather intelligent, ambitious, generous women in one room?
I’m in.
And yes - I do still love a (GF) cupcake.
This piece first appeared in Excessive Consumption - a weekly dispatch on culture, branding, politics and whatever other modern internet brain rot the algorithm has emotionally assigned me that week.
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