IWD 2026: What I Delivered and What I Heard
International Women’s Day 2026 was, for me, a fortnight, not a day, and the conversation and action needs to continue throughout the year. I ran workshops and attended four events. One thread ran through all of it: the gap between acknowledging inequality and genuinely closing it remains wide, and in the age of AI it risks widening further.
The United Nations theme for 2026 is Rights. Justice. Action. It is framed around human rights, legal equality and systemic change. A commercial theme circulated in parallel, ‘Give to Gain’ and is problematic for a number of reasons. As Dr Hilary Williams ChPP put it in an excellent piece which I would encourage everyone to read: “Rights. Justice. Action. points outward at systems: laws, institutions, employers, courts, regulators. ‘Give to Gain’ points inward at individuals. That is a comfortable place for power to hide.” I do not think women need to be told to give more. Even if the intention was not to ask women to give more, the call to action is unclear. The distinction matters: when a commercial theme is mistaken for the official one, it does not merely coexist with the real thing. It displaces it. For a number of years we have been offered themes that ask women to perform optimism rather than demand systemic change. That is not neutral. It is a distraction.
The Work: Masterclasses and Workshops
I delivered a two-day masterclass, Showing Up with Intentional Leadership, in collaboration with Sustainable HRM Skillnet and Positive2Work Skillnet on March 4th and 5th. Then, in collaboration with Dervla Gallen, I had the pleasure of delivering a gender allyship session for Women in Wholesale UK and FWD Academy, Advancing Progress Together: Gender Allyship in Wholesale.
A central theme in my masterclass was sponsorship, a step beyond mentorship: active advocacy by someone with power and the willingness to use it. The research is clear: women are over-mentored and under-sponsored, and it is the sponsorship gap, not a confidence gap, that tracks most closely with the progression gap. Mentoring offers guidance; sponsorship opens doors.
The programme I delivered is designed for women who are ready to stop absorbing the system and start navigating it strategically. Across the two days, participants explored the real barriers to progression (systemic, structural and largely invisible), how workplace progression actually works, how to build authentic visibility, and how to manage energy and effort in a way that protects long-term performance and wellbeing. Everyone left with a clear action plan grounded in what they can control, influence and accept. If that sounds relevant to your organisation or team, I would love to have a conversation.
The allyship session for Women in Wholesale surfaced something I see across every sector: the barriers holding women back are structural, not individual. Second-generation bias, flexibility stigma, invisible work and cognitive labour, and what the research calls the ‘broken rung’ (for every 100 men promoted into their first management role, only 93 women make that same first step, and for women of colour that drops to 74) are not problems that individual effort alone will fix. Naming them is the first step. Acting on them is everyone’s responsibility, not just women’s.
Scale Ireland IWD Event: Stephen’s Green Club, Dublin
Scale Ireland must have some sort of deal with the weather. After what felt like relentless rain, the sun came out for their IWD event at the Stephen’s Green Club, just as it had for their Regional Summit in Cork a few weeks prior. A brilliant panel, led by Martina Fitzgerald and Brian Caulfield, featured Celine Keegan, Dorothy Creaven, Lucy O’Keeffe, Jenny Melia, Ita Langton, Andrea Reynolds and Eileen Finnegan.
A few points that resonated. The number one issue founders cite for slow progress on gender representation is the visibility of female founders: events like this matter. When you invest in female leaders, you are not just investing in an individual; you are investing in the whole organisation. Sponsorship came up here too, which felt apt given it was so central to my masterclass the two following days.
The panel also shared some great insights on growth: know your cash position every day; do not write the script too small; do not focus only on the destination, take the journey for the right reason and be mindful of who you take it with. On the women they admire: Kate O’Connor in sport, CMAT (a resounding yes from me – have been a fan for a few years. Got to see her in her local pub in Dunboyne recently. What a privilege!), Stephanie ‘Steve’ Shirley, whose story I found so compelling I wrote about her last year after she passed away, Christine Lagarde and Jessie Buckley.
An Intimate Event at The View, Malahide
Organised by Niamh Berry, this was a smaller, more personal event. I attended with Lindsay Brady and we heard from Niamh Berry, Gillian McKenna, Catherine Crean and Emily Heslop.
A key insight from the morning was one that impacts across every sector: we are asking women to push so relentlessly to be seen and valued that burnout becomes almost inevitable. And then, we expect them to have caught it sooner. This is not a resilience failure. It is a systemic one.
AI and Gender Equality: (Un)equal Futures?
This online event, co-organised by Prof Maja Korick and Gouri Mohan for IÉSEG School of Management, brought together two researchers whose work I found both compelling and sobering. This was the second year Maja and Gouri have run an IWD event of this quality, and having joined live last year too, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the intersection of gender and technology.
Prof Maja Korick opened with a figure that is thought-provoking and concerning: in the current workplace, AI is three times more likely to displace a woman’s job than a man’s. Rem Koning from Harvard Business School shared research on who is using AI and who is building it, with significant gaps on both fronts: men considerably more active in each. If the majority of AI users are male, training data will increasingly reflect male preferences and behaviours, which in turn reduces the value of the tools for female users: a vicious reinforcing loop. In AI-native startups, now around 60% of Y Combinator cohorts, the proportion of female employees is already lower than in non-AI firms. These are the companies generating the most value per employee with the potential to launch careers. The opportunity is concentrating in exactly the places where women are least represented.
Ekaterina Hertog from Oxford’s Internet Institute and Institute for Ethics in AI added a dimension that is easy to overlook. Society cannot function without unpaid domestic labour, and everywhere in the world, women carry more of it. Tech was once expected to reduce that burden. The reality is more complicated: the work is not gone; it has changed. The benefits include convenience and connectivity, but tech automation can intensify rather than relieve domestic load. When women have to deal with a high level of domestic labour, this compresses the time and energy available for paid work. Her conclusion: technology interacts with existing inequalities rather than resolving them. AI should not be guided solely by productivity. Its development must be shaped by our values. We can use it to do more of the work we want to do less, but we should be deliberate about not automating the work that builds human connection.
CTO Craft Bytes IWD event
I’d like to give a shout out here to CTO Craft, where I am a committee member. In partnership with She Bytes Back, they hosted a live IWD event featuring Amber Shand, Georgie Steele, Ceri Newton-Sargunar and Andy Skipper. The panel explored mentorship, sponsorship and how women can support one another in engineering and CTO leadership.
One theme that landed for me was the research on unconscious bias training: it does not work unless participants are also equipped with specific intervention skills, practical language for the moment something happens. Awareness without action changes very little. That insight connects directly to what was built into the IWD masterclasses and also the allyship session for Women in Wholesale: not just naming the patterns, but practising exactly what to say and do when you see them.
A Call to Action: Men, This Is for You Too
IWD 2026 left me energised but also more impatient. The research is clear. We know what works: sponsorship, active allyship, visibility, equitable design, flexibility for all, values-led leadership. What we need is the collective will to act on it at every level.
AI is not a neutral technology arriving into a neutral world. It will reflect the values and priorities of those who build it. That is both the risk and the opportunity, and it is exactly why emotional intelligence, ethical awareness and inclusive leadership matter so much right now.
But here’s something I want to call out. Very few men attended the IWD events I attended or delivered (a big thank you to the men who did). I suspect that is less about indifference and more about assumption that events with these names are not meant for them. Gender equity is not a women’s issue. It creates a better world for everyone, including men. And real progress happens when men are actively in the conversation.
If you are a man who cares about this but was not sure you were welcome in these spaces, you are. If you are not sure where to start, or what would make these conversations feel relevant and useful, I would genuinely love to hear from you. Get in touch. Let’s work it out together.
I am grateful to every organisation and individual I worked alongside or learned from over the past couple of weeks. The conversations will continue. I hope you will join them.
Useful links:
• FT: Women are lagging behind on AI but they can catch up (Isabel Berwick)
• HBR Working Paper: Global Evidence on Gender Gaps and Generative AI (Rem Koning)
• Gouri Mohan’s post about the IÉSEG event
• Dr Hilary Williams ChPP: It’s Time We Had an Honest Conversation About International Women’s Day
• Amy Kean’s open letter campaign on the IWD URL
• Championing Change Report: FWD / Women in Wholesale
• My LinkedIn post: IWD 2026 theme (Rights. Justice. Action.)
• My LinkedIn post: Give to Gain
• Allison Daminger’s work on cognitive labour: Instagram reel
• Allison Daminger’s work on cognitive labour: Podcast (Spotify)
