Don’t Let Your Employer Get Duped Into Using The Wrong Theme For IWD2025

There are few things that get me more ranty in the ‘professional’ world than the marketing agency that takes over International Women’s Day. And this year it has done it again.

The problem is: it’s a marketing agency. And the United Nations - which runs #IWD - isn’t.

So if you google #IWD2025 you’ll find purple logos and masses of hype with yet another inane alliterative hashtag as the fake theme. This year the marketing agency has chosen to promote:

#AccelerateAction

Social media will be filled with women (and a sprinkling of men) looking awkward as they do this year’s 'official' selfie-pose: a one-armed bicep curl with a clenched fist, face-to-camera, one might guess symbolising strength and fighting?

And extra bonus points if your employer buys the £230 promotions kit from the marketing company, to make your #IWD events more ‘authentic’.

But they’re not. They’re a fake.

Because #AccelerateAction is NOT the United Nations’ theme this year.

And thank goodness it isn’t:

• What does ‘accelerate action’ even mean?

• How do you do that?

• How do we measure progress and figure out when we’ve got there?

• Something this vague and meaningless lets employers - and society - off the hook, again, on women's rights, empowerment and equality.

Maybe it’s better than last year’s #InspireInclusion, or the marketing agency's previous attempts with #BreakTheBias and #EmbraceEquity. But it's still a meaningless word-salad that is highly unlikely to inspire or accelerate change.

#AccelerateAction is yet another cutesie fake-theme that distracts from the real issues and drowns out the UN’s work on women's rights and equality.

The marketing company's sole right to dictate IWD themes comes from the fact that they bought the .com version of the domain name.

The agency could choose to put its obvious expertise behind supporting the UN Women’s theme, and to raise funds to support that vital work, but chooses not to. 

Instead, it promotes a meaningless hashtag, positioning itself as the authority on IWD when it isn’t, splitting attention, and making the UN’s mission so invisible in search engine results that even major news organisations even fall for the ruse that the marketing agency site is somehow official.

This year’s UN Women's #IWD2025 theme is actually:

Rights. Equality. Empowerment. For ALL women and girls.

Source Here.

That’s something I can get behind. It means something. Each of us can imagine how we could make progress towards that, in our own lives and in our organisations.

So as we start the count-down to this year’s International Women’s Day - it’s 2 months today on 8th March - here are three things you can suggest to your employer, so they don’t accidentally embarrass themselves this year - and we make meaningful progress.

#1 Go with the correct theme.

If your IWD events organisers won’t believe you and are convinced the theme is #AccelerateAction, send them this article.

Please don’t make your women do the naff ‘strong man’ selfies. Please don’t give out purple cupcakes and wrist bands.

Please make sure your employer doesn’t accidentally embarrass itself by buying the £230 fake-IWD-branded event pack from the marketing company. Give a donation to the UN Women's organisation, instead.

In case a bit of motivation is needed, here's how cross women got last year at discovering their employers had been duped into using the wrong theme.

#2 Go beyond the cupcakes.

With the Fawcett Society reporting that the UK’s #GenderPayGap GREW last year, we’re not just failing to make progress, we’re going backwards. (Here’s a research white paper I published recently on this).

Flashy events and purple cupcakes on March 8th don’t create change.

What could you do in your organisation to make a real difference to rights, equality and empowerment?

What funding is needed? Which culture changes? What support?

Proactive leadership programmes and mentoring for women? A gender pay equality action plan that actually changes things? Flexible working - without judgement - so that women don’t have to choose between their caring responsibilities and their career?

One bite of a cup cake and it’s already on its way to becoming... well, you know. Don’t let that be the only after-effect for your employer’s #IWD events this year.

Here's a post I did last year for #IWD2024 about how cupcakes won't close the gender pay gap and what we need instead.

#3 Deal with the root causes

Stop focusing on the surface-level symptoms and address the root causes of inequality and unconscious bias in your organisation. Really hold up a mirror to the myriad of ways that decisions, culture, and working practices can disproportionately disadvantage women.

Ask women what’s broken (anonymously, so there’s no fear of backlash) and take massive action on fixing those problems.

Get help with that research, if you need it.

Look at the impact of things like return-to-office policies and out-of-hours events and travel on those with carer responsibilities.

And think about the less tangible stuff, as well, such as the hidden role of men’s Imposter Syndrome in women’s Gender Pay Gap (research white paper here).

I’m curious: what would you add to the list? What would you love to see being done, as a result of this year’s International Women’s Day?

Free #IWD2025 Masterclass

If you’ve hung around with me for a while, you’ll know I run a free workshop each year, to celebrate #IWD, inspiring and empowering women.

This year it will be:

How to share your ideas with courage, confidence and passion.

I’m going to be teaching my 7 Cs framework from my book Dare to Dream Bigger, as well as how to stop Imposter Syndrome from deciding how much impact you get to have.

And everyone who registers is also going to get a copy of the Ditching Imposter Syndrome book, as my gift.