Take the cringe out of International Women’s Day... equal pay. Now!

Come Friday, you’re about to be inundated with nods to stereotyped notions of femininity, empty gestures, and a whole lot of Maya Angelou poem-sharing (this isn’t her fault remotely; may she RIP).

Copy/pasted platitudes aplenty, with mealymouthed performative feminism rampant. We don’t need a day to acknowledge biology. We need equality. Physical safety. And (I can’t believe I have to say this) the right to govern our bodies.

Nothing says “minority” like an identity-based day of observance. Wait, hold up, how is half the world’s population still regarded as a minority when numerically and mathematically, it’s a draw? Forgive my literal 'girl math'.

Companies highlight smarmy photos of employees wearing pink or purple, hashtag #women. This isn’t helping anyone progress in the workplace- or in the 1950s. It’s social optics and content, solely. And those are difficult colors to pull off, adding insult to injury.

Twitter [editor’s note: It’s X, Twitter is gone forever] has a Gender Pay Gap Bot warning: “Employers if you tweet about International Women’s Day, I’ll retweet your gender pay gap.” Putting businesses on blast makes them pause for thought.

Anyway, we don’t judge here. We learn. So, in that spirit, here are some tragic corporate initiatives I’ve been “gifted”:

• Beauty product baskets. Cool. Nothing says “strong and competent,” like reminders of appearance and how it could be more pleasing.

• Discounts for Botox, cellulite treatments, and lipo. Golly. Wouldn’t that just make a better world for humanity? (Separate ‘female’ from anything involving appearance, please. Emphasizing looks rather than character, heart, nerve and/or intellect is wearying.)

• Discounts to Weight Watchers. – Ser.i.ous.ly. Doesn’t the media tell us all we’re fat slobs already? Body-shaming at the office, too: unnecessary.

• Pink and purple donuts. Gross. Unhealthy. I don’t need a donut. I need to be able to take the motherfucking subway safely.

• Manicures. Grab those donuts!–er, ladder climb.

• Makeovers. The beauty SWAT team was sent to ‘treat’ us for half a day. Plus side: I guess they didn’t think it would take the whole day.

• Female employee “art” displayed. Are we in kindergarten? Keep that shit off the kitchen fridge.

• Heating pads. Newsflash budding biology majors, we don’t endlessly menstruate. Period references also limit women to childbearing age, assuming children are wanted/possible. We are more than our uteri.

• Flowers. Are great. But f’real. Just pay me. I would still rather have an equal salary.

• Trivia. We knew already. Amelia Earhart was female? Wow, I did not know that, thanks for telling us a woman flew a plane!

• Emails extolling perceived virtues, “bringing softness, sensitivity, vulnerability to the workplace.” Women can be tough as nails; men can lead with empathy. EQ isn’t gendered.

• Heralding overly minor things: Clapping the basics is for infancy. Perhaps you don’t expect us to do something laudatory, but lowered standards are soft sexism. Entitlement prevails unwittingly.

So here are my ideas.

• Invite women in your office to tell you how they want to be celebrated, rather than presume, then corporatesplain the day.

• Share pay stats internally, then fix the problem. No one needs banal emails about being valued at x company because of inequity. Show us the money.

• Ensure we aren’t walking alone to cars/ trains at night. Provide security or travel aid when working late.

• Donate to organizations that protect and defend reproductive freedom.

• Support anyone taking a day off to march for women’s rights by not making it a “sick” day.

• Arrange mentorship opportunities

• Start SIGs for Women In ____, if nonexistent.

• Healthcare: End treatment inequities. This is not Freud’s Vienna, yet women seeking care for basically anything gets treated for hysteria and prescribed antidepressants habitually. Men also have hormones, yet aren’t deemed “hormonal.”

• Research: There are tests for anything with testes. There isn’t a test for uterine cancer. Contribute to Sally Ride Science, Women In STEM, or something.

• Tech. Support Girls Who Code. Obviously.

• Call out anyone interrupting talking over women in meetings.

• Doing better is not that hard. We got this. Do all of the above more than one day a week. Easy peasy.

Check out The Drum’s International Women's Day coverage here.