The UK’s news brands used editorial and commercial opportunities to celebrate the day and spark conversations around important issues
The Sun’s Fabulous magazine used more than 2,000 billboards across the country to smash sexist stereotypes, taking aim at commonly held assumptions around topics such as leadership, driving and women’s sport.
Elsewhere, The Sun also hosted a Breaking The Bias panel and masterclass featuring high-profile women in media, discussing obstacles they had faced during their careers and how issues such as race continue to make journalism a difficult career to enter for some. Among the audience were members of the Girls’ Network, a mentoring programme for teenage girls, and students from a London secondary school.
Speaking at the event, The Sun editor-in-chief Victoria Newton said: “Journalism is…increasingly a better workplace for women, making up 42% of national newspaper editors including here at The Sun, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Guardian.
I can’t tell you how much that has changed since I started 20 years ago. More women in more leadership positions makes it easier for younger journalists to feel supported in the newsroom and it also means our female readers are better represented in the stories that we tell.
Of course there’s still work to be done to make our newsrooms even more diverse and representative.”
Meanwhile, among other content, the Telegraph’s Women’s Sport team released three investigations to mark the day, highlight issues of female footballers’ pay gaps compared to men, how sports weigh-ins fail to take sportswomen’s menstrual cycles into account and Google’s bias towards male stars when users search for ‘best tennis players’.
Also using editorial to mark the day, the Evening Standard celebrated 22 female Londoners changing the world in 2022, from student climate activists to retired Holocaust survivors.
Metro put female-focussed editorial first, changing their masthead slightly to reflect the day. In addition, the news brand featured Scottish Windows’ gender pension gap campaign on its cover wrap, raising awareness of the issue and encouraging readers to find out more on their website.
The Independent also marked the day with a mixture of editorial and commercial initiatives, including social media and website takeovers from leading women inside and outside the newsroom.
Alongside this, The Independent featured an ad stock competition for campaigns celebrating women, won by the team behind the musical Hamilton. The team has won £10,000 worth of ad stock to promote their campaign on the news brand’s channels.
Marking the day in a different way, Reach took to LinkedIn to spotlight the career experiences of some of the publisher’s female senior leaders, as well as how they are supported and what else needs to be done in the future.
