To celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) Amazon is hosting a series of events, activities and programmes designed to promote and support this year’s theme #BreakTheBias. We are kicking off the month of celebrations with our annual IWD Festival.

The festival is led by our Women at Amazon affinity group and aims to raise awareness of the biases that women often face in the workplace and broader society, providing information and inspiration to help participants overcome challenges and obstacles.

Amazon’s celebrations include a wide range of programmes designed to inspire and empower women, including discussions with women leaders on topics ranging from enterprise building and STEM equality to artistic expression and the transgender experience.

John Boumphrey, UK Country Manager for Amazon, said: “We’ve created a fantastic International Women’s Day lineup of events and content for employees and customers designed to celebrate the inspirational women who break bias, challenge the status quo and empower others to do so too.

“Amazon has always celebrated the diversity of the entrepreneurs, small businesses owners and authors we empower, and this year we’ve created even more ways to discover and support them. We look forward to celebrating International Women’s Day with our employees, customers and women founders and creators across the UK.”

Read more to discover how we’re celebrating IWD this year – and how you can be part of it.

International Women’s Day Festival

This year’s virtual event will include a week-long celebration of women and their role in culture, business and society, as well as addressing a number of vital topics on the subject of breaking the bias. The month-long event will feature a series of engaging videos, spotlights on women creators, and curated content from Prime Video, books, and Amazon Music.

Topics will range from the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in fashion and breaking the bias in literature, to stories, and how transgender employees are breaking the bias.

We’ll also be spotlighting women owned businesses across Amazon Handmade, Launchpad and more, such as Drop Bear Beer, founded by LGBTQ+ couple Joelle Hammond and Sarah McNena.

“Taking a concept and creating a product that people enjoy is an incredible, surreal feeling. I enjoy having the power to use our business as a force for good,” said Joelle. “Yes, we make beer, but we also create a fulfilling workplace that gives back to the community and planet. As two female LGBT+ founders, we talk openly about diversity, equity and inclusion in our workplace and have policies and training in place to promote this in our culture.”

Customers can head to Amazon.co.uk/IWD from 7th March to access a range of events and curated content from small businesses, Prime Video, Audible, books and more.

Princes Trust’s “Change a Girls Life” campaign

Amazon is proudly supporting International Women’s Day 2022 through a charity partnership with The Prince’s Trust’s “Change a Girls Life” campaign. The scheme aims to help young women across the UK to receive support and guidance from The Prince’s Trust, enabling and empowering them to move forward with renewed confidence into a job, training, further education, or to start a business.

Amazon’s partnership with the Prince’s Trust includes several fund-raising programmes designed to support the campaign. During the week of the IWD (7th – 13th March 2022):

  • Continuing last year’s IWD contribution, Amazon will donate to the Prince’s Trust £5 from all sales on a select range of Amazon devices (including: Kindle Paperwhite, Echo Dot and Echo Show 5, Fire TV Stick, Ring Doorbells, Blink cameras and doorbells.)
  • Amazon will be promoting a selection of goods from around 40 women business owners, who will be featured on the IWD Festival page. Amazon will donate 15% of all the money raised through sales of these goods to the Prince’s Trust.
  • A new part of the programme this year is a contribution from our 17 Amazon Fresh physical stores in the UK. The campaign will encourage women to pick up a bunch of our beautiful flower bouquets from an Amazon Fresh physical store (just walk out) and tell us on our social handles which woman in their life they'd like to recognise with the gift of flowers and why. 100% of the sale proceeds of the will be donated to the Prince’s Trust.
  • The Prince’s Trust will also be highlighted as a spotlight charity by Amazon Smile in March, allowing customers to set them as a recipient of additional funding whenever they shop at Amazon, generating additional revenue for the programme throughout the coming months.

Amazon Small Business Accelerator Events

The Amazon Small Business Accelerator is a programme designed to help entrepreneurs grow and develop their business with access to e-learning seminars and bootcamp training sessions designed to help people start trading online quickly. The programme, developed by Enterprise Nation and Amazon, seeks to support every type of business, from start-ups to scale-ups and established small businesses looking for easy-to-access training and tools to help them succeed in the digital world.

To celebrate IWD, the Amazon Small Business Accelerator is hosting a series of programmes focused on helping women achieve business success. These include a bootcamp offering guidance on the issues that women face when founding a business and a fireside chat with a series of industry-leading women founders.

This half-day online event is open to all and offers guidance on some of the challenges women founders face. During the event, participants will benefit from sessions on how women-owned businesses can raise funds, build mindset resilience, access the support and mentorship they need, and much more. We will also be joined by women founders who are making waves in their industries for a panel talk where they can answer your questions.

Participants at this event will enjoy an evening of drinks and fire-side chats with women founders based in London, designed to help build ‘business resilience’ and help participants grow their business in 2022. The event will be led by three women founders who are making waves in their industry and will feature a casual fire-side chat as well as a Q&A for those interested in learning more.

“Alexa, who inspires you?”

During the week of IWD, March 7-13, inspiring women including Katie Piper, Jade Jones, Charlie Martin, Sophie Tea, Ravneet Gill, and Roxie Nafousi are lending their voices to Alexa to offer advice.

Amazon Echo and Fire TV customers can say “Alexa, who inspires you?” to hear words of wisdom from a diverse group of empowering women including:

  • Katie Piper OBE - best-selling international author, inspirational speaker, broadcaster and charity founder.
  • Jade Jones – Great Britain’s first ever Olympic gold medal Olympic Taekwondo athlete and women in sport advocate
  • Charlie Martin – a professional racing driver who advocates for diversity and inclusion in motorsport and aims to be the first transgender driver at the 24hrs of Le Mans
  • Sophie Tea – A game-changing viral artist who strives for inclusivity - both in her artwork itself and those buying her art. She is best known for her 'WOMEN' collection, which celebrates and champions body positivity and the female form
  • Ravneet Gill – pastry chef and author who campaigns for healthier, happier and more inclusive kitchen workplaces
  • Roxie Nafousi – self-development coach and author of MANFIEST
  • Masie Summers-Newton – Double Paralympic swimming Champion and disability advocate
  • Sasha Pallari – make-up artist and model whose campaign #filterdrop prompted the ASA to ban the use of social media filters used in beauty advertising
  • Natalie Alexis Lee – body positivity advocate and author of Feeling Myself

“International Women’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate incredible women,” said Lauren Kisser, Director, Alexa AI Information. “These accomplished women have lent their voices to Alexa to inspire others. In the forge for equality, we must continue to provide opportunities for all to discover who they are and build their skills and knowledge to become whoever they want to be.”

Prime Video

We asked @PrimeVideoUK Instagram followers to make recommendations for a watchlist spotlightlight women who disrupt the status quo as part of our IWD celebrations.

These films and TV shows have been collated and are all available on Amazon Prime Video throughout the week of IWD celebrations. Titles include:

  • Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
  • Savage X Fenty
  • Harlem
  • The Wheel of Time
  • The Wilds
  • Cinderella
  • The Marvellous Mrs Maisel
  • Fleabag
  • Erin Brockovich
  • Lioness: The Nicola Adams Story
  • Yearly Departed
  • Legally Blonde
  • I Care A Lot
  • Being The Ricardos
  • Kevin Can F*** Himself
  • Upload
  • Wolf Like Me
  • The Expanse
  • Mary J Blige's My Life
  • Hanna
  • Hustlers

Learn more about Amazon’s commitment to International Women’s Day at Amazon.co.uk/IWD