#BreakTheBias: How International Women’s Day 2022 lit up on Twitter

For more than a century, the 8th of March has been marked as the day to celebrate women across the globe. Some women are well known around the world for their work, some are influential in their community, and some are quiet achievers — but all are trailblazers.

Of course, in the world we live in, International Women’s Day isn’t just a celebration. It’s also a day to reflect and take action. 

Across many aspects of life, both professional and personal, women continue to face bias, stereotypes, and inequality. We’ve come a long way in forging a seat at the table, but there’s more to do before it’s a gender equal world. That’s why the hashtag #BreakTheBias was popular this year. 

And Twitter was the place where women were championed, where biases were challenged, and where people talked about change.

Around the world, more than 4 million accounts sent over 8 million Tweets about International Women’s Day 2022, notching up an astounding 2.1 billion impressions. 

Here in Australia, more than 38,000 authors sent nearly 90,000 Tweets about International Women’s Day, which were seen over 25 million times in total.

This year, the #BreakTheBias hashtag was well embraced by Aussies. After the general International Women’s Day hashtags (#iwd2022, #internationalwomensday, and #iwd), it was the most popular one for the day, with more than 4,700 Aussies posting over 7,300 Tweets using the hashtag. 

One of the big areas where biases still need to be shattered is the glass ceiling of gender pay equality. One cheeky account, @paygapapp, outed some of the UK companies that Tweeted about International Women’s Day but still have a pay gap. It was the most mentioned account on IWD, notching up over 2,000 mentions from more than 1,100 accounts.

As a day of celebrating amazing women’s achievements, it only makes sense that the words “women”, “celebrate”, and “amazing” were among the top search terms on Twitter. Along with these popular terms were “support”, “equality”, and “proud”. 

And of course, emojis are entrenched in our culture, allowing us to add a bit of personal expression to our message. Some of the top ones used on Twitter this International Women’s Day were:

Meanwhile, given how sports mad Aussies are, it should come as little surprise that two of our most liked Tweets celebrated the ways women are breaking down barriers in the world of sport.

The most liked came from Former Miss World Australia and Channel Seven cricket commentator Erin Holland @erinvholland, who gave a much-deserved shoutout to the women of the Pakistan Super League T20 cricket competition (@thePSLt20). 

On a similar note, sports broadcaster and podcaster Neroli Meadows (@Neroli_Meadows) celebrated female friendship by giving a shout out to the great work being done by her mate Zainab Abbas (@ZAbbasOfficial).