Every IWD, HR asks marketing to post something. Marketing obliges. Nobody asks the obvious question.
A wave of branded graphics rolls across LinkedIn. Purple. Polished. Pointless.
A logo. A slogan. Maybe a stock photo of women laughing in a meeting room that looks nothing like any meeting room any of us have ever actually sat in.
And then, on the 9th of March, it's over. Back to normal.
I find this quietly infuriating. Not because I think the companies doing it are evil. But because it's so easy.
Posting today doesn't celebrate women. It celebrates your marketing team's ability to follow a content calendar.
And easy is exactly the wrong response to a problem that, in 2026, still doesn't have a solution.
So, if you're a business leader who actually wants to do something, here is where I'd start.
Look at your numbers honestly
Pay gap reporting exists. Promotion rates by gender are trackable. The ratio of men to women in your senior leadership team is not a mystery. Most companies know exactly what their numbers look like. They just hope nobody forces them to publish them.
And here is the thing. Publishing them is not the solution. But it is the start. Because the moment numbers are visible, the conversation changes. Stop hiding behind the fact that nobody has made it mandatory yet. Pull up the spreadsheet. Share it with your leadership team. Then decide what you are actually going to do about it.
Understand the difference between mentorship and sponsorship
Here is a question worth sitting with. When did you last put your own reputation on the line for someone who didn't look or sound like you?
Mentorship is telling someone what they could do better. Sponsorship is walking into a room and saying "this person should be here" when they are not in the room to advocate for themselves. One costs you nothing. The other costs you something. That difference is exactly why sponsorship is rare and exactly why it matters.
That, incidentally, is what Give to Gain actually means. Not a slogan. A transaction with real stakes.
Fix your meeting culture
This one is personal to me. I wrote a song about it (its really not that bad but you be the judge).
It's called "Let Me Just Stop You There" and it came out of years of coaching marketers who had experienced exactly this dynamic. The interrupted pitch. The stolen idea. The meeting where someone repeated what you said, louder, two minutes later, and got the credit.
Give it a listen in the Marketing Mixtape section of our site and tell me how strongly you feel I shouldn't give up my day job.
'Let me just stop you there' a song Rich Fitzmaurice wrote for IWD. B2B Marketing United @ b2bmarketing.com
In the song there's a guy called Jonas. Jonas pulls up a chair and spreads his legs like he owns the whole room. Before you've even started, he's decided he's the main character and will walk you all through your area of expertise.
Jonas is not one person. Jonas is a pattern.
Watch who gets interrupted in your next meeting. Watch whose idea comes back around wearing someone else's name. Watch who fills every silence and who has quietly learned it's safer to say nothing at all.
This is where workplace culture actually lives. Not in the values on the wall. Not in the IWD graphic. In the room. In the meeting. In the moment where someone decides whether to speak or not.
Audit how you hire and promote
"Culture fit" is one of the most reliable ways to keep hiring people who look, sound and think like the people already there. And it is women, disproportionately, who get filtered out by that particular phrase.
The leaders who rely on it most are usually the ones with the most to lose from a genuinely diverse room. They do not ask "is this person excellent?" They ask "will this person fit?" And fitting, too often, means not challenging, not disrupting and not threatening the existing order.
Structured interviews, blind CV screening and explicit promotion criteria are not radical ideas. They are just uncomfortable ones for the people who benefit most from the current system. Which is probably why most companies haven't bothered.
Think about who gets the stretch assignments
The high-visibility projects. The big pitches. The roles that build careers and reputations. Who gets nominated? And who gets quietly assumed to not want the travel, the pressure or the step up, without ever being asked?
That assumption has ended more careers than any deliberate act of discrimination.
And if you work in marketing, this one is aimed directly at you
You are the first line of defence.
You control the brief. You control the content calendar. You decide what goes out under your company's name. Which means when a hollow branded graphic gets posted on International Women's Day with nothing behind it, that is partly on you.
I know how it goes. HR sends a message. "Make sure we post something for IWD." The path of least resistance is a purple graphic and a caption. Job done. Box ticked.
But here is the thing about HR. They are often the same people sitting on the pay gap data, the promotion ratios and the gender breakdown of your senior leadership team. They know exactly what the numbers look like. And they will insist that data cannot be shared publicly.
So they want the post. They just don't want the substance.
That is not celebrating women. That is reputation management dressed up as progress.
Next time HR asks you to post for IWD, ask them one question before you open Canva.
"If we're proud of our commitment to women, what are the numbers we can share to prove it?"
If they can't answer that, you have your answer. And so does everyone watching.
If you must post today, here are the only things worth posting
Your actual numbers. Pay gap, promotion ratio, percentage of women in senior leadership. No spin, no context dressing it up. Just the number and one sentence on what you are doing about it.
A specific commitment. Not "we celebrate women." Something measurable, on the record, that you will report back on in twelve months. One thing. Concrete. Signed off.
Specific people. Not "we're so proud of our amazing female colleagues." Named individuals, specific achievements, genuine reasons why people should pay attention to their great work. Use your platform to expand theirs.
Or say nothing. If you have nothing real to offer today, silence is more respectful than a hollow graphic.
And if you see a branded graphic today with nothing behind it, ask them a question publicly
"What is your current gender pay gap?"
"What percentage of your senior leadership team are women?"
"What specific commitment are you making today that we can hold you to next year?"
Not aggressively. Just genuinely. Because sunlight is the best disinfectant and companies that post without substance should be gently, publicly, reminded of that.
Do something. Or say nothing.
