International Women’s Day is often wrapped in celebration. On March 8th, social media feeds fill with empowering quotes and the word progress is used generously. Some of it is deserved—much of it is oversimplified.
Yes, women today occupy spaces that were once almost entirely closed to us. We lead governments, shape industries, build movements, and control cultural conversations in ways that would have been unthinkable a century ago. Conversations around harassment, reproductive autonomy, mental health, and unpaid labour are no longer niche. There is more language, more visibility, more collective awareness.
But visibility does not automatically equal security and awareness does not guarantee protection.
Progress, but not security
In the current socio-political climate, women’s rights feel increasingly fragile. Across different parts of the world, access to reproductive healthcare is being restricted. Violence against women continues at devastating rates. Economic instability disproportionately impacts women, particularly single mothers and marginalised communities. Online misogyny is louder, more organised, and often rewarded with platforms and profit.
Progress exists—but so does regression. Both are happening at the same time. That tension sits at the heart of what International Women’s Day now represents: not a victory lap, but a checkpoint.
A workplace built by women
I am acutely aware of my own position within this landscape. I work in lifestyle journalism, a female-dominated industry that, at its best, proves what happens when women are allowed to shape narratives. Most days, I am surrounded by women who are smart, sharp, opinionated, funny, and deeply committed to their work. Women who pitch ambitious ideas, push for nuance, and insist that stories about women be treated with seriousness rather than novelty.
There is power in seeing women occupy decision-making roles as a matter of course, not exception. There is power in watching female leaders back other women and power in collaborating with creatives who refuse to dilute their perspective to make it more palatable. It has undoubtedly made me more confident and more willing to take up space.
But I’m also conscious that this environment is not the norm everywhere. Many industries remain hostile to women, particularly women of colour, disabled women, trans women, and those from working-class backgrounds. Harassment, discrimination, and pay inequality are still structural features of working life, not isolated glitches.
Where systems are still failing us
Globally, millions of girls are still denied education. Women continue to carry the majority of unpaid care work. Maternal mortality rates remain shockingly high in large parts of the world. Gender-based violence cuts across borders, cultures, and income brackets. These are not “women’s issues” in the abstract—they are political issues, economic issues, and human rights issues.
What still needs fixing is not mysterious. We need enforceable equal pay laws, not pledges. We need affordable childcare and paid parental leave so that motherhood does not function as a career penalty. And we need reproductive healthcare treated as essential, not negotiable. We also need to stop framing resilience as a solution. Women are already resilient—what we lack are systems that do not require constant endurance.
Culturally, there is work to do too. The way society continues to devalue care, softness, and emotional labour is inseparable from how it devalues women. Until we rethink what we define as “important” work, inequality will keep reproducing itself in new forms.
International Women’s Day is not the finish line
My peers give me cautious optimism, though. Gen Z is more fluent than ever in the language of boundaries, consent, and intersectionality. We are quicker to call out hypocrisy, less willing to tolerate outdated hierarchies, and far less impressed by symbolic gestures. We are also asking better questions.
International Women’s Day, at its most useful, is not about feel-good messaging. It is about sustained pressure, and about refusing to confuse momentum with completion.
I am grateful to work alongside women who remind me, daily, what collective power can look like. But I don’t want a world where a supportive, equitable workplace feels like a lucky exception. Progress matters, but comfort is the enemy.
