Weapons of mass distraction? IWD themes like 'Break the Bias'

Weapons of mass distraction? IWD themes like ‘Break the Bias’

Break the Bias

I spent part of International Women’s Day knee-deep in floodwaters on the street outside our home. 

At some point, I recalled the corporate International Women’s Day event I had been due to attend over lunch that day but had canceled earlier, partly due to the weather warnings but also on account of the agenda failing to fairly acknowledge some of the urgent matters occurring in our world.

Astonished by the intensity of the flash flooding on top of the weeks of rainfall we’d experienced, and having seen the total devastation that had occurred in the Northern Rivers, the words “break the bias” (a so-called “official” IWD theme) were starting to sound a little off.

There are very good reasons to urgently break the bias, of course. But there are also good reasons for corporate events to resort to this simplistic sloganeering.

First, it’s easy. Google “International Women’s Day” and you’ll come across a very official-looking, we-own-all-this website, that claims to determine each year’s theme. There is little information on who is behind this website and how it’s funded, beyond a number of “IWD partners” listed, including some with very little female representation in leadership and at least one weapons supplier. 

But it’s not UN Women who created this IWD website and its latest business-friendly IWD mantra. UN Women instead set a more specific (albeit also more uncomfortable) theme this year, linking climate action to gender equality: Changing Climates: Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow. 

Sure, it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like “break the bias”, or like BTB’s cousins of former years, like ‘Each For Equal’, or ‘Push For Progress’.

What BTB does do is enable climate change, and other critical issues, to go to the bottom of an IWD event’s agenda, if not disappear altogether — despite UN Women specifically pushing for it to be addressed in 2022. 

The three-worded slogan enables corporate events that feature politicians in parties doing nothing on climate action to avoid being specifically questioned on the issue. It enables a simplistic mantra — with the hand gestures alongside it — to support social posts and press releases and hooks for employers and their staff to highlight their IWD presence.

It’s a tool for mass distraction. A few words to hide behind, an easy hashtag to highlight what you hope will be achieved, without actually articularly how it will happen. Perhaps it’s even worse? A weapon of distraction intentionally designed to enable big businesses and governments to avoid addressing more challenging and political matters on the 8th March every year? 

It’s not immediately clear who is behind the IWD website that comes up top of the list on a Google search and creates the yearly, three-worded themes — outranking the UN Women page on Google for many years now — and suggesting someone got savvy in securing a domain name early on and has very good SEO skills. The website shares a number of IWD “missions”, none of which include addressing climate change, despite UN Women clearly listing this as relevant to their 2022 theme. I had to scroll to the bottom of the website’s privacy page to find the name of the organisation behind it, listed as Aurora Ventures (Europe) Limited.

On the day after IWD this week, I moderated a session on equity in medical research with an organisation that told me they were boycotting the #BreaktheBias hashtag and avoiding any association with the unofficial-but-seems-official IWD platform.

Next year, those celebrating International Women’s Day should consider doing something similar. Rethink how themes are used — either stick with whatever is determined by UN Women, regardless of how un-marketing friendly it sounds, or determine a theme that has some meaning to your own area of work and an issue you hope to draw attention to.

No more themes of mass distraction. No matter how business-friendly they sound.

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