Beyond Pink Cupcakes: What International Women’s Day Should Really Ask Us

7 Apr

A reflection on belonging, allyship and the ecosystems we create.

I nearly didn’t write anything for International Women’s Day this year. Not because I don’t believe in its goals. I do. International Women’s Day exists to celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness of discrimination and encourage action towards gender equality. All of that matters.

But the older (and hopefully wiser) I get, the more I find myself thinking less about the symbolism of the day and more about what it means to me and my own complicated relationship with belonging.

My relationship with my own femininity and sometimes my relationships with other women can be… complicated. Some people will know a little of that story from a blog I wrote about my mum and what it’s like growing up without the kind of female support many people take for granted. You can read that piece here.

Growing up without that sense of safety in sisterhood affects you. It shapes how safe you feel with other women. It shapes how easily you step into certain spaces. It shapes what belonging feels like.

And if I’m honest, this year International Women’s Day reminded me that some of those patterns are still alive and well.

Alongside brilliant collaborations with women I respect enormously, I’ve also experienced moments where spaces intended to support women didn’t feel particularly welcoming or supportive.

That isn’t a comfortable thing to say on International Women’s Day. But systems don’t change if we only talk about the nice bits.

For a while I thought about sitting today out entirely.

But recently I wrote about heathland ecology and what it teaches us about complexity and resilience. What Heathland Ecology Taught Me About Complexity and Resilience.

If you’ve been reading my writing recently you’ll know I’ve become slightly obsessed with heathland and what it teaches us about systems. So forgive me for bringing it up again.

But it turns out the heath has something interesting to say about belonging too.

What Heathland Teaches Us About Systems

Heathland is what ecologists call a disturbance dependent landscape. Without active tending, dominant species take over and biodiversity collapses.

The heath only survives because humans repeatedly reopen space — cutting back growth, managing the land and allowing different species to coexist.

Human systems behave in remarkably similar ways. Left unattended, they also drift toward dominance and exclusion.

The Problem With Pink Cupcake Feminism

Every year around International Women’s Day the corporate world produces a familiar ritual.

Pink cupcakes. Hashtags. Panels about “empowerment”. Photos of leadership teams standing beside banners.

It often looks supportive. But if nothing structural changes afterwards, it’s not tending the ecosystem.

It’s decorating it.

Real systems work asks harder questions. Who actually feels comfortable in the room? Whose voices are consistently heard? Who quietly opts out of spaces that were supposedly created for them?

And perhaps most importantly, are we willing to look honestly at the complexity inside the category of “women”?

So perhaps the more interesting questions are these:

When we talk about supporting women, which women do we actually mean?
Who feels comfortable in the spaces we create… and who quietly opts out?
Where might well intentioned initiatives actually be replicating the same hierarchies they claim to challenge?
And if we’re honest, are we tending the ecosystem… or simply decorating it once a year?

What This Looks Like in Practice

If we want to move beyond symbolic gestures, it helps to be honest about the patterns that still show up in professional environments.

Events designed to support women where, despite good intentions, the same confident voices often end up dominating the conversation.

Networking spaces where people who don’t fit the dominant cultural mould quietly drift away.

Senior women who fought hard to succeed in male dominated environments unintentionally replicating the same toughness and gatekeeping they experienced.

Or initiatives intended to support women that overlook the additional barriers faced by people navigating race, neurodiversity, disability, gender identity, sexuality or socioeconomic background.

Most of these behaviours are not driven by bad intent. But ecosystems are shaped by patterns, not intentions.

Doing better might look like:

Noticing who speaks and who doesn’t and opening space for quieter voices
Designing environments where different communication styles are welcome
Recognising that leadership doesn’t have a single cultural template
Paying attention to who feels safe and who feels marginal

Because allyship is not something you declare. It’s something people experience from you.

The Complexity Inside the Category of Women

Women are not a monolith. Intersectionality matters.

Race. Neurodiversity. Disability. Sexuality. Gender identity. Culture. Socioeconomic background. All of these shape how people experience opportunity, safety and belonging.

Some women grow up surrounded by strong female networks. Some of us grow up without them. Some people find sisterhood easily. Some of us are still learning how to trust it.

And if we’re being honest about the ecosystem of gender conversations right now, another tension sits quietly underneath International Women’s Day.

Conversations about gender and belonging are becoming increasingly polarised. In that climate, it can become harder rather than easier to create spaces where everyone who identifies as a woman feels they belong.

But ecosystems don’t become healthier by shrinking who belongs inside them.

If we are serious about creating environments where people can thrive, the question cannot simply be who counts as a woman.

The more interesting question might be: What does belonging actually look like in practice?

The Paradox Inside International Women’s Day

There is also a paradox sitting inside International Women’s Day.

The day exists to support women in a world where gender still shapes opportunity, safety and voice. That work remains important. But systems thinking invites another truth alongside it.

Women are not only affected by inequality. We are also participants in the systems that shape others’ experiences.

Just as many men are now being asked to act as allies for women, women also need to practise allyship toward people whose experiences of the world are shaped by other forms of exclusion.

Supporting women cannot mean replicating the same patterns of exclusion within our own spaces.

Healthy ecosystems don’t work like that. They require awareness of how different pressures interact across the system.

Human systems are no different.

Allyship and Tending the Ecosystem

One word that appears frequently around International Women’s Day is allyship.

But like many ideas that travel through corporate language, it can become diluted.

Originally, allyship was never about identity. It was about behaviour.

An ally is someone who notices when systems exclude people and chooses to do something about it.

Sometimes that means opening space for voices that are not usually heard. Sometimes it means questioning norms that quietly advantage some groups over others. Sometimes it simply means paying attention to dynamics others in the room may not even notice.

In ecological terms, allyship is not about celebrating individual species.

It is about tending the conditions that allow a diverse ecosystem to exist.

If I Had One Piece of Advice

If I had one piece of advice for organisations reflecting on International Women’s Day, it would be this:

Focus less on the symbolism and more on the ecosystem.
Notice who feels comfortable in your spaces and who quietly withdraws.
Pay attention to whose voices dominate conversations and whose perspectives are missing.
Create environments where people with different experiences, communication styles and backgrounds can genuinely belong.

Because inclusion is not something you declare once a year.

It is something people experience in the everyday dynamics of the systems they work within.

Tending the Ecosystem

The heathland reminds us that diverse ecosystems require active tending.

Left alone, systems drift toward dominance and exclusion.

The same is true of the professional environments we are all part of.

So perhaps International Women’s Day is less about celebration posts and more about reflection.

Questions like:

Where do I experience genuine belonging and where do I still feel like an outsider?
Where might I be unintentionally excluding people who experience the world differently from me?
What conditions would allow more people to thrive in the systems I’m part of?
And what would it mean to actively tend the ecosystem of those spaces?

Because real change rarely looks like a celebration post.

It looks more like slow ecological restoration.

Messy. Imperfect. Ongoing work.

But absolutely worth doing.