INTERNET — International Women’s Day arrived Sunday to the warmest corporate reception in recent memory, with brands, organizations, government agencies, and elected officials across the political spectrum pausing their normal activities to post purple-tinted graphics, inspirational quotes from historical figures who would have found the medium baffling, and variations on the phrase “celebrating the incredible women in our lives” in a show of solidarity that women’s rights advocates describe as “nice” and “not sufficient” and that a senior communications director at a Fortune 500 company, speaking anonymously, described as “we have a template for this, it goes out every year, Karen in marketing handles it.”
Karen, it should be noted, makes 83 cents for every dollar her male colleagues make. This is not in the graphic.
By 10 a.m., the International Women’s Day hashtag had been used by: seventeen U.S. senators, four of whom voted against the Equal Pay Act in the most recent legislative session; a major oil company whose board is 12% female; a fast food franchise whose tipped workers are 67% women earning a median wage of $14.20 an hour; a financial institution currently facing a class action gender discrimination lawsuit that it describes in its legal filings as “without merit” and in its Instagram caption as “proud to stand with women everywhere”; and a yogurt brand that makes a pink-lidded product specifically marketed to women at a price point 11% higher than the identically formulated non-pink version, a phenomenon that economists call “the pink tax” and that the yogurt brand’s social media team calls “empowerment.”
The yogurt post received 14,000 likes. The comments are mostly positive. Several women have tagged friends. It is a very good graphic.
What International Women’s Day Is, For Reference
International Women’s Day has been observed since 1911, when it emerged from the labor movement as a day to advocate for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, and an end to discrimination — a political occasion with specific demands and a history of protest, marches, strikes, and confrontation with the systems that produced the conditions being protested.
It is now also the day the yogurt posts the graphic.
Both things are true simultaneously. The holiday contains multitudes. The multitudes include a century of genuine advocacy and a considerable volume of brand content that has, over the years, achieved the aesthetic of advocacy while occasionally declining its substance.
“We don’t hate the posts,” said Dr. Maya Solomon, executive director of the Center for Women’s Policy Research, with measured precision. “Some of the posts come from organizations genuinely doing the work. Some of them come from organizations that are performing the work while opposing the policies that would advance it. The challenge is that from a graphic design standpoint, they look identical.”
The Numbers, Because The Numbers Are The Point
On this International Women’s Day, the gender pay gap in the United States stands at approximately 17 cents on the dollar, a figure that has improved by roughly half a cent per year for the past decade, a rate of progress that mathematicians note will produce full pay equity in approximately thirty-four years, at which point International Women’s Day will have been observed for 149 consecutive years.
Women hold approximately 29% of seats in the U.S. Congress, a record high that is simultaneously an achievement and a description of a legislative body that is 71% something else in a country that is 51% women. Women constitute 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs, a figure that has tripled since 2015 and that remains, tripling and all, 10%. The maternal mortality rate in the United States is the highest of any wealthy nation, having increased 40% between 2018 and 2023. The childcare system, described by economists across the ideological spectrum as “broken” and by parents as something considerably less printable, has not been federally addressed in any meaningful way during any of the International Women’s Days on which it was discussed.
These numbers are available. They are published. They are cited in academic research, congressional testimony, and the reports of the very organizations that share the purple graphics. They coexist with the graphics. They are not in the graphics.
The Posts That Are Good, Acknowledged
Supposedly News would like to note, in the interest of fairness, that some International Women’s Day posts are good. Some organizations posting today are posting because they are run by people who care and who are doing the work every other day of the year too. Some elected officials posting today are posting because they have spent their careers advancing legislation that backs up the sentiment. Some companies posting today have genuine pay equity programs, transparent promotion processes, and parental leave policies that were designed by people who intended them to be used.
These organizations exist. They are harder to identify in the feed than they should be, because the feed is a medium that rewards the quality of the graphic rather than the quality of the underlying practice. This is a problem with the medium. The medium is not going to fix itself today.
What Agnes Unnamed Would Like, For The Record
Agnes Unnamed, Anonymous, would like — on this International Women’s Day, as on the previous ones — the following: equal pay. Affordable childcare. A functioning maternal healthcare system. Paid family leave. Elected representation proportional to the population. The end of the pink tax on yogurt, specifically, because it is yogurt and there is no reason.
Agnes would also like, and acknowledges this is secondary, for at least one of the brands posting today to turn the comments off on their post so she doesn’t have to see the replies.
The yogurt is still $1.89. The regular yogurt is $1.69. They are the same yogurt.
Happy International Women’s Day. The work continues tomorrow, which is Monday, which is a regular day, which is when the work has always actually happened.
This column was written by Agnes Unnamed, Anonymous, who is a woman, who wrote it on International Women’s Day, who will write something else tomorrow when it is no longer International Women’s Day, because the work does not take the other 364 days off and neither does she.