Today, 8^th March, we encourage everyone here at Bauer Media UK to join us in celebrating International Women’s Day 2021.

The entire month of March encapsulates Women’s History Month, a celebration of the contributions of women to society. International Women’s Day is a particularly important date within the month which looks towards women globally, highlighting the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.

This year, we #ChoosetoChallenge – the theme of IWD 2021. We #ChooseToChallengegender bias and inequality, particularly in the workplace. Hold your hand up high with us to show solidarity this International Women’s Day. Check out Bauer Academy’s collage of the theme on their socials here and below!

Bauer Academy have also today announced that they will be launching new Women in Programming courses, including evening sessions and a KISS Summer School for 16-20-year-old women to get their break in radio!

What are our brands doing?

Across Bauer Media UK, many of our brands and departments are showing support for women’s rights and highlighting inequality.

Over in Audio, Magic Radio did a call out asking for young women who are looking to develop their careers in radio for IWD 2021 and Hits Radio have announced that it will be playing female artists all day for 24 hours. Jazz FM are celebrating International Women’s Day with a week of programmes and content, including specially themed shows, a Jazz FM documentary ‘Women in Music’ and featuring charities that champion and support women.  Last month, Scala Radio also launched new programming to celebrate some of the greatest living female songwriters and composers. Across Scotland, there will be six interviews on Women in Business, Sport, Health and more, going out across all stations on HRN Scotland and Greatest Hits. All the full interviews will be available on the relevant websites and will include features from Jamie Genevieve, Judy Murray, Eilidh Barbour, Dr Punham Krishan, Talat Yaqoob, Dr Marie Macklin CBE and Dr Katy Stewart.

In Publishing, Grazia has continued be an instrumental force in ensuring gender equality and transparency. Its petition to get the Government to require businesses to report on their gender pay gap gained over 9,000 signatures and played a key part in the reintroduction of gender pay gap reporting. To find out more about the news and the six-month delay, see here. As well as this, we saw a feature in last year’s Grazia on how the Prime Minister was marking International Women’s Day.

Elsewhere, Group Commercial Director, Nicky Holt has written a piece for the IAB focused on International Women’s Day and KISS FM’s Content Director Rebecca Frank will be contributing to the Maple Street Creative’s International Women’s Day podcast alongside other inspirational women such as Sara Cox and Steph Hirst. Both the podcast and IAB article should be published soon, so keep an eye out on our Bauer Media social channels.

Eloise Wilson, Senior Communications Executive, Bauer Media