IWD

From Ritual to Reckoning: What Women's Day Reveals About Organizational Culture
The Deep Fig Women's Day Study
International Women's Day has become a near-universal feature of corporate calendars: a day of panels, emails, campaigns, and celebrations designed to signal commitment to gender equity. Yet when we move beyond the official scripts and into the everyday language of employees, a more ambivalent story emerges. Women participate, they show up, they smile, but many no longer believe that March 8th will change anything fundamental about their working lives.
For the full study click here 
Understanding the Dissonance
The Deep Fig Women's Day Study analyzed over 1,200 text units drawn from internal communications, anonymous reflections, exit interviews, LinkedIn posts, and conversational transcripts across mid-sized and large organizations in India, Southeast Asia, and the UK. Using psycholinguistic patterning rather than sentiment scoring, the study examined not only what people say about Women's Day, but how they say it—their repetitions, hesitations, metaphors, and silences.
The question was not whether employees 'like' Women's Day, but what the day reveals about organizational culture, power dynamics, and the gap between symbolic recognition and structural change.
The Numbers Tell a Story
72%
"Necessary but Insufficient"
Women describing Women's Day in terms of obligated participation with limited expectations
63%
"Performance Tax"
Women reporting they perform a safer, more agreeable version of themselves
41%
"Stalled Progression"
Explicitly linking Women's Day to phrases like "same place" and "no movement"
Necessary but Insufficient: The Dominant Emotional Signature
Across the corpus, 72 percent of women used language that clustered into the category we term 'necessary but insufficient.' Women did not describe Women's Day as irrelevant or hostile; instead, they framed it as something they feel obligated to participate in, while expecting very little from it.
This pattern reflects a shift from hopeful engagement to managed resignation. Women continue to show up for panels, attend talks, and appear in communication campaigns, but they do so with a sharply reduced belief that these rituals will translate into tangible change.
As one senior leader put it: 'I don't hate Women's Day. I just don't expect anything from it anymore.'
"I don't hate Women's Day. I just don't expect anything from it anymore." — Senior leader
The Performance Tax: Performing Safety
63 percent of women reported that, on Women's Day, they perform a version of themselves that feels safer, more agreeable, and less candid than their actual perspectives. This pattern was especially pronounced among women in mid-management, where visibility is high, but formal authority and psychological safety remain constrained.
The phrase 'that woman' appears repeatedly across the dataset, rarely defined, yet universally understood. To be 'that woman' is to be marked as difficult, ungrateful, or divisive—particularly in a moment that the organization frames as celebratory and benevolent.
This invisible burden is what we call the performance tax of Women's Day—paid in energy, authenticity, and voice.
"I didn't feel like translating my life into something palatable this year." — Mid-level manager
Visibility Without Power: The Contrast Effect
41 percent of women explicitly linked Women's Day to stalled progression, using phrases such as 'same place,' 'no movement,' and 'still waiting.' For these respondents, the day functions less as a celebration and more as an annual reminder of how little has shifted in their actual career trajectories.
This disconnect produces what we call the contrast effect: the brighter the spotlight on Women's Day, the starker the shadows around unchanged structures.
Women describe frequent visibility in panels, newsletters, and town halls, while promotion data shows that men continued to outpace women in progression to senior roles. The day thus becomes a mirror that magnifies contradiction.
"It reminds me how far I've come. And how far I haven't." — Analyst, Financial Services
The Allyship Paradox: Facilitators, Not Participants
Male colleagues' language around Women's Day clustered very differently from women's. 58 percent framed the day as an opportunity to 'support' women or 'show allyship,' while only 19 percent used language that placed themselves inside the problem—for example, talking about unlearning, relearning, or changing their own behavior.
This creates an allyship paradox. Men often appear prominently in Women's Day communication—as introducers, moderators, champions—but most do so from the position of facilitators rather than participants in gendered systems.
One recurrent phrase encapsulates this paradox: 'It's important to create space for women to speak.' Yet embedded within it are powerful assumptions: that space naturally belongs to men and must be consciously 'created' for women.
58%
Support-Focused Language
19%
Self-Implicating Language
23%
No Engagement
'Give to Gain': When Empowerment Becomes Burden
The theme 'Give to Gain' generated one of the strongest dissonance signals in the dataset. Organizations framed it as a message of empowerment and reciprocity, with 52 percent of institutional communications positioning 'giving' as a pathway to growth.
In contrast, 48 percent of women who referenced this framing interpreted it as an additional moral burden—another expectation layered onto already heavy emotional and organizational labor.
For many women, the word 'give' activated associations with mentoring, holding space, supporting others, and patience—often uncompensated and unrecognized. The study shows that 75 percent of 'Give to Gain' activities were experienced as uncompensated labor, while only 30 percent of women felt these activities meaningfully factored into promotion decisions.
"I'm already giving. Every day. So when I hear 'give to gain,' I wonder who exactly is gaining." — NGO professional
The Memory Problem: Forgettable by Design
When respondents were asked to recall past Women's Day initiatives, only 14 percent could clearly remember a specific program or intervention. Most events were described as 'pleasant but forgettable'—nice in the moment, but leaving little trace in memory or in organizational behavior.
One participant summarized this gap with painful clarity: 'I remember the cupcakes. I don't remember the conversation.'
This low recall is not a trivial issue of branding; it is a proxy for impact. If Women's Day initiatives are not memorable, they are unlikely to be meaningful. The few Women's Day initiatives that respondents did remember clearly shared a common feature: they were linked to some form of behavioral or structural shift.
14%
Clear Memory
Respondents who could recall a specific Women's Day program
86%
Forgettable
Events described as pleasant but leaving little lasting impression
"I remember the cupcakes. I don't remember the conversation." — Survey respondent
Organizational Archetypes
Four Maturity Levels: From Ritual to Reckoning
Using the linguistic and behavioral patterns surfaced in the study, we can locate organizations along a maturity continuum of how they engage with Women's Day. These archetypes are not fixed labels but mirrors—diagnostic profiles that help leaders recognize dominant tendencies in their own systems.
Archetype 1: The Ritual Compliance Organization
Minimum effort to signal alignment with inclusion norms
Women's Day is treated as a compliance moment—something 'we have to do' to signal minimal alignment with inclusion norms. Communications are polished but highly scripted, recycling the same five verbs—celebrate, honor, recognize, empower, support—year after year.
Typical Behaviors:
Reliance on email blasts and generic events (panels, inspirational talks) with little variation over time
Heavy focus on aesthetics: banners, hashtags, social media posts, symbolic gestures (flowers, cupcakes, gifts)
No clear link between Women's Day and policy, progression, or practice
Linguistic Signals:
Repetition of the same phrases; employees describe it as 'the same email every year. Different font, same feeling.' Absence of verbs of change—no 'restructure, redistribute, rethink, repair.'
Experience for Women:
Emotional signature of 'necessary but insufficient,' sliding into resignation. Women show up but no longer invest hope; Women's Day becomes background noise.
Archetype 2: The Anxious Listener Organization
Experimenting with listening but fearful of consequence
These organizations want to move beyond ritual and experiment with listening formats—story-sharing, panels with Q&A, internal surveys—but are anxious about what they might hear.
Typical Behaviors:
Piloting listening circles or reflective spaces, often framed as 'safe spaces,' but without robust follow-through
Leadership concern about 'emotional spillover' or 'unpredictability' in open forums
Hesitation to invite critique unless the response is already known or easily managed
Linguistic Signals:
Questions like 'What if people say things we're not ready to act on?' appear in leadership conversations. Communications acknowledge 'the need to listen' but remain vague on commitments.
Experience for Women:
Women are cautiously willing to engage, but repeated experiences of 'conversations that go nowhere' lead to fatigue. Memory is weak unless a clear behavioral shift follows; otherwise, events blend into a pattern of extraction without consequence.
"What if people say things we're not ready to act on?" — Recurring question revealing organizational anxiety
Archetype 3: The Emerging Reckoner Organization
Treating Women's Day as diagnostic and linking to change
These organizations begin to treat Women's Day as a diagnostic, not a performance. They accept that discomfort is part of truth-telling and start to link what is heard to concrete changes.
Typical Behaviors:
Using Women's Day to surface specific system issues—promotion patterns, flexibility norms, meeting dynamics, invisible labor
Making public commitments (e.g., pay audits, progression reviews, no-interruption norms) and reporting back on progress
Experimenting with new language beyond the standard verbs—introducing terms like 'redistribute,' 'repair,' 'rethink,' 'rebuild'
Key Shift: From performance to diagnosis. Women's Day becomes a checkpoint that triggers visible, traceable action.
Linguistic Signals:
Leaders explicitly name gaps and contradictions (e.g., visibility vs promotion rates, performance tax, 'give to gain' burden). Internal communication invites employees to treat Women's Day as a moment to confront stasis, not just to celebrate progress.
Experience for Women:
Emotional tone shifts from pure resignation to guarded curiosity: 'Let's see if they actually do this.' Women begin to recall specific Women's Day moments because they led to visible follow-through.
"Let's see if they actually do this." — Emerging tone of guarded curiosity
Archetype 4: The Structural Shifter Organization
Year-round architecture with Women's Day as checkpoint
Here, Women's Day is integrated into a wider, year-round architecture of gender equity. The day serves as a checkpoint and accelerator, not the primary site of action.
Core Characteristics:
Clear Equity Goals: Published equity goals (e.g., promotion ratios, pay equity, representation targets) that are revisited annually around March 8th
Governance Integration: Women's Day programming directly feeds into governance—board updates, talent review cycles, policy changes
Invisible Labor Recognized: Mentoring, culture work, and DEI contributions formally recognized in evaluation and progression frameworks
Linguistic Signals:
Communications speak in terms of accountability, redistribution, and consequence, not just appreciation. Male leaders describe themselves as participants in the problem and solution, not merely supporters or facilitators.
Experience for Women:
Emotional signature moves towards engaged realism: women still see gaps, but also see evidence that what they say can change structures. Women's Day is memorable for decisions taken, not just events held.
"Women's Day is memorable for decisions taken, not just events held."
Design Principles for Change
From Ritual to Reckoning
The study does not call for the abolition of Women's Day; it calls for its transformation. Moving from ritual to reckoning means treating March 8th not as a performance of care, but as a lever for structural change.
Five Design Principles
01
Diagnostic Infrastructure
Treat Women's Day as revealing systemic patterns
02
Listening with Consequence
Anchor every listening format in action
03
Recognition Plus Power
Link visibility to actual influence and opportunity
04
Shared Accountability
Reframe allyship as participation in change
05
Redistribute the Load
De-moralize giving and share responsibility
Principle 1: Treat Women's Day as Diagnostic Infrastructure
The Shift: From 'How do we celebrate women?' to 'What does Women's Day reveal about our systems?'
Practices:
Use Women's Day as the formal start of an annual equity cycle: diagnose, commit, act, report
Explicitly name it in governance documents as a diagnostic checkpoint
Track recurring themes—performance tax, visibility without power, 'give to gain'—and map them to system levers
Women's Day should function as an organizational stress test: how much truth can the organization tolerate, and what will it do with what it hears?
Principle 2: Anchor Listening in Consequence
The Shift: From 'safe spaces to share' to 'responsible spaces that trigger action'
Practices:
For every listening format, define in advance: what will be in scope to act on, who is accountable for responding, when and how the organization will report back
Publicly acknowledge limits: 'We may not fix everything this year, but here are the 2–3 commitments we will act on'
Make a habit of naming what changed the following year
Without consequence, listening becomes extraction. Women share their stories, emotions are surfaced, and then nothing happens. Over time, this breeds skepticism and withdrawal.
Principle 3: Redesign Recognition to Include Power
The Shift: From visibility as the endpoint to visibility as a gateway to influence
Practices:
Link Women's Day visibility to sponsorship and opportunity: every woman featured is invited into at least one decision-making space in the following year
Review promotion and succession pipelines around March 8th with an explicit lens on who is visible vs who is advancing
Recode invisible labor—mentoring, culture work, DEI efforts—as formally recognized contribution with weight in evaluations
Recognition without power creates the contrast effect: women are celebrated on March 8th while their career trajectories remain unchanged. True recognition includes redistribution of opportunity and influence.
Principle 4: Reframe Allyship as Shared Accountability
The Shift: From men as supportive facilitators to men as accountable participants in change
Practices:
Ask male leaders to publish specific behavior commitments (e.g., 'no all-male panels,' 'track who I sponsor,' 'ask who is not in the room and why')
Evaluate leaders, regardless of gender, on objective equity metrics (promotion patterns, pay decisions, feedback sentiment), not just on Women's Day visibility
Avoid narratives that celebrate men for basic fairness; instead, focus on sustained patterns of equitable decision-making
The allyship paradox emerges when men stand at the edge of the problem, offering support, without acknowledging that they are also shaped and advantaged by the very structures under discussion. True allyship requires participation, not facilitation.
Principle 5: De-Moralize 'Giving' and Redistribute the Load
The Shift: From 'Give to Gain' as a moral expectation on women to 'We must redistribute effort and gain across the system'
Practices:
Map all 'giving' activities (mentoring, listening, DEI work, emotional labor roles) and identify who is doing them today
Build these activities into role definitions, workload allocations, and reward systems so that they are not invisible extras
Ensure that responsibility for 'giving' is distributed across genders and seniority, not defaulted to women
The 'Give to Gain' framing subtly shifts responsibility for change from organizational obligation to individual virtue. It suggests that women's advancement depends on their willingness to give even more, while the system that extracts this labor remains unchanged.
From Performance to Power
The Deep Fig Women's Day Study makes one thing unmistakably clear: the problem is not that Women's Day exists, but that it has too often been decoupled from consequence.
When 72 percent of women describe the day as 'necessary but insufficient,' and 63 percent report performing a safer version of themselves to avoid being 'that woman,' they are not rejecting recognition; they are signaling that recognition without power, listening without follow-through, and visibility without leverage have reached their limit.
The women in this study are not asking for cupcakes or another panel. They are asking for consequence. They are asking for conversations that continue past March 8th, for truths that do not have to be translated into palatable stories to be heard, and for systems that respond to their experience with something more than a different font on the same message.
Whether Women's Day remains a ritual or becomes a reckoning will depend on whether organizations are willing to let what is said on that day rearrange what is possible on every other.
"The choice is not between celebrating women or changing systems—it is between performing care and demonstrating it through consequence."