International Women's Day: The truth behind the claims made on socials

For more than a century, people all around the world have recognised 8 March as an important day to mark the fight for women’s rights.

International Women’s Day recognises women’s social, political, economic and cultural achievements.

It’s such a big event in the calendar that it leads to a lot of posts and claims on social media - not just about the day itself but also about the women who fought for their rights.

So how do you know what you’re seeing online is true or false? BBC Bitesize Other Side of the Story took a closer look.

Claim #1 – Yorkie chocolate bars once said they were “not for girls” - TRUE

Yorkie bars were once advertised as only being for men, with an advertising campaign that started at Easter time in 2002. A slogan said “Yorkie, it’s not for girls”, with the words also appearing on the chocolate bar wrappers.

Andrew Harrison, marketing director for the Nestle, the company behind the Yorkie bar, told The Guardian at the time: “We felt that we needed to take a stand for the British bloke and reclaim some things in his life, starting with his chocolate.”

The slogan was removed in around 2011 but it went viral in 2023 after a new generation of social media users discovered old Yorkie adverts, saying they found it hard to believe. However some women who remembered it said it had the effect of making them want to buy Yorkies in defiance. One X user said as part of a post: “…my defiant 8-year-old self used to buy it anyway, even though I am a girl.”

Claim #2 – Apple removed International Women’s Day from its calendar - FALSE

In March 2025, some people online claimed that Apple had “quietly removed” International Women’s Day from its calendar.

International Women’s Day is always on 8 March - but users said that, suddenly, it wasn’t showing up on their calendars anymore.

A Threads user posted a message asking Apple: “Why did you take International Women’s Day off the calendar?”. From there, the rumour spread across many platforms.

However, Apple hadn’t ‘removed’ the day as it wasn’t on its calendar in the first place, as research from the fact-checking website Snopes proved. Apple usually keeps its calendar simple, only showing major national events and official public holidays.

Apple told PolitiFact (a US-based, non-profit fact‑checking organisation) that it was a misunderstanding because neither International Women’s Day, nor Women’s History Month, were ever featured in Apple calendars.

Claim #3 - McDonald's turned their golden arches upside down for International Women's Day – TRUE

In 2018, it wasn’t just burgers that McDonald's flipped when they turned its iconic “M” into a “W” on its social media feeds, part of a marketing strategy for International Women’s Day. It was true, as research from Snopes proved.

One restaurant in Lynwood, California, even 'flipped' its real sign for the day.

Not everyone embraced this slick piece-of-marketing though.

Some users online claimed that this was empty ‘McFeminism’, that wouldn't challenge the inequalities women face and had nothing to do with women’s liberation.

However, at the time McDonald's chief diversity officer Wendy Lewis said the stunt was “in honour of the extraordinary accomplishments of women everywhere and especially in our restaurants.”

Claim #4 – The early suffragettes were photographed eating pizza - FALSE

The suffragettes were a group of women in the UK who fought for the right for women to vote. In 1928, all women aged 21 and over gained the same voting rights as men. Ten years earlier, a law had been passed that women over the age of 30 - who met certain conditions, one of which was being a property owner - could vote, but this excluded many younger women who had campaigned for the right.

An image circulated in 2025 showed a group of suffragettes from 1921, suggested that the women were eating pizza in bathing suits as a protest 'to annoy men’.

Online comments about the image have included "This pic… really bugged men" and "Eating pizza…? Literally what I do every Thursday night. Little did I know it was in honour of the suffragettes."

Back in the 1920s, some people thought it was shocking for women to wear swimsuits or eat in public, so seeing them do it would have seemed a bit wild at the time.

But the photo, as Snopes found, actually depicts them in a pie-eating contest at the Tidal Basin bathing beach, a public swimming area, in Washington DC.

The recent claim, which spread quickly on sites including X, Facebook and Reddit — makes a fun contest sound like a serious feminist protest. It's an example of misinformation, where people unknowingly share incorrect information about somebody or something.

Claim #5 – A fast food chain said on International Women’s Day that women “belong in the kitchen” - TRUE

In 2021 Burger King UK faced a social media backlash after an X post on International Women’s Day said “Women belong in the kitchen”.

It was followed by a second, linked post that clarified: “If they want to of course”. The company said in the post that it was on a “mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry” by empowering female employees who wanted to pursue a culinary career.

Burger King UK later deleted the post and apologised. It said it had wanted to draw attention to the fact that only 20% of professional chefs in the UK are women. The apology post was shared 5,000 times and had 24,000 likes.

This article was published in March 2026

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