Words by Susan Horsburgh
Hungry for concrete action, a new generation of women in the sector is finding next month’s International Women’s Day fatiguing and frustrating - and have some thoughts on what they’d like to see instead.
Maggie Zhou hasn’t had much to do with International Women’s Day, maybe because she left an IWD event a few years ago feeling icky: all the speakers were white corporate women, the language seemed exclusionary, and there was no acknowledgement of Country. “It didn’t feel intersectional, it wasn’t representative of all women – it left a sour taste in my mouth,” says the 26-year-old Melbourne freelance writer and Culture Club podcaster.
“Working in women’s magazines, it’s always a yearly discussion, how we’re going to cover the day – or if we are at all. I think it represents something important, but in its current form, it doesn’t do much. I just feel like it’s not very relevant.”
It may seem churlish to criticise a day that honours women’s achievements and calls for gender equality, but IWD increasingly seems to inspire little more than fatigue and frustration. Some argue that a theoretically worthwhile event has been hijacked by corporate virtue-signalling and turned into a box-ticking exercise; others say it only celebrates select women.
This year’s theme is “March Forward”, but women’s rights, at least in the US, are facing backlash and even going backwards, while diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are being abolished. For young women who have grown up in the shadow of these struggles, IWD can feel less like a celebration and more like a reminder of the work that remains to be done. “Heading into the Australian federal election, it’s going to be tough to hold hands and sing, ‘Man, I feel like a woman’ on the eighth of March, when we’re staring down the barrel of a similar situation here,” says writer Hannah Ferguson.
The 26-year-old feminist has taken part in her fair share of IWD events – she spoke on a panel at the All About Women festival last year at the Sydney Opera House – but Hannah questions whether these gatherings translate into tangible change. “The same people come to the same events every year and talk about the same things, and I’m not sure we’re moving the needle, because it’s not really men who are coming, and it’s not women who haven’t previously been interested in feminism coming either,” says Hannah, the CEO of Cheek Media. “It’s one big echo chamber.”
The commercialisation of March 8 has also diluted the day’s impact, obscuring its meaning amid a flurry of morning teas and performative LinkedIn posts.
“IWD is a fantastic, powerful concept … but the corporate culture has killed it,”
says Hannah, who recently released her second book, Taboo. “The idea that we spend a day celebrating each other is beautiful, but the way that corporations and brands have taken hold of it and used it as a DEI move means it’s just lost all weight, and participating makes you feel a bit fraudulent.”
Still, Hannah and Maggie aren’t ready to write off IWD just yet. Instead, they call for a reimagining of the day – one that prioritises action over optics. “You know what would be lovely? Giving women in your workplace a paid day off,” says Hannah, adding that policies such as flexible hours, parental and menstruation leave, and pay equality would be more helpful than IWD lip service. “Instead of paying – or not paying – someone to come and speak for an hour about their traumatising experience, just ask the women in your workplace what they’d like to do on IWD. Maybe they just want men to run the lunch.”
Hannah and Maggie agree that privileged white women are generally at the forefront of IWD events, and more diverse voices need to be amplified. The daughter of Chinese immigrants who moved to Australia in the 1980s, Maggie says women of colour often find themselves doubly marginalised in a media landscape that still lags behind in representation and inclusivity. She has felt the sting of racism, especially when she was trying to break into the industry five years ago and felt compelled to commodify her ethnicity for content.
“I felt I had to mine my experience of being an Asian woman to be published, for people to care about my words,” says Maggie, who has struggled with feeling tokenised. “I grew up in Australia and I’m light-skinned, so in lots of ways I’m very palatable … I felt like sometimes people were only allowing me to write for them because I was providing that box tick. It’s a hard one to navigate because who knows what’s true and what’s not. A lot of this can be from external factors, but it’s also internalised racism.”
For IWD to be meaningful, says Maggie, it has to spark open conversations about pay parity and the obstacles women of colour face in the workplace. As Hannah says, “The question is, instead of a morning tea, what next?” In an era when women’s rights are under threat around the world, IWD is still relevant – but only if it evolves. For women in media, that means demanding better representation, fair compensation and male participation. It’s crucial that the discussions we have on March 8 lead to real change every other day of the year.