2022 saw unprecedented attacks on gender equity across the US. In response, the League of Women Voters (LWV) launched a Women’s Inequality Day (WID) campaign around three core issues: ongoing voter suppression efforts targeting women voters, the Supreme Court of the US’s repeal of reproductive rights, and Congress’s continued failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. WID took place on what is usually known as “Women’s Equality Day”: August 26, 2022.
Our objective was to raise awareness and discourse around the three aforementioned issues using digital and print media, in partnership with a collective of diverse, women leaders in advocacy.
We also aimed to grow our digital community by increasing our subscribers across email and social media, further empowering our nonprofit to protect voters and defend democracy.
Our leadership, organizing, and communications teams identified dozens of women-led organizations across the civil and voting rights advocacy spaces and began personal outreach to their leaders. We meticulously organized a list of partners based on their willingness to join the campaign, participate in a WID video, have their names listed in a print ad, and/or contribute financially to the project.
LWV worked with a local video production agency to draft 90, 60, and 30-second versions of a campaign video. 11 speakers were featured in the videos, each filming on a separate schedule managed by the communications team. These videos were shared on August 26 via our YouTube channel and other social media accounts.
Simultaneously, we wrote and commissioned a full-page print ad for the Washington Post. The ad took the form of a letter to Congress and was signed by all of our partners. The ad was published on WID, August 26, and digital versions were shared across LWV’s social media.
LWV created social media toolkits to promote WID both in advance of and on the date of its recognition. These toolkits were shared with our advocacy partners, their organizations, and hundreds of local and state Leagues.
LWV utilized both organic and paid promotion across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, and LinkedIn to promote the campaign and its unique hashtag, #WomensInequalityDay. Paid promotion targeted women 18-34, as this is a community that LWV is particularly enthusiastic about engaging with and growing.
A landing page hosting our partner list, toolkit, and information about the campaign was created prior to its launch. Visitors to LWV.org were directed to this page via both a website banner and a pop-up lightbox. The page featured an email sign-up form to encourage visitors to join our mailing list.
LWV sent over 1.8 million emails alerting our audience of the campaign and encouraging them to become involved.
The WID campaign greatly surpassed our expectations in terms of diverse partnership opportunities, digital reach, and audience engagement.
35 women leaders from across the advocacy space joined our campaign, representing a wide-range of communities and lived experiences. They participated by appearing in our video, signing our print ad, supporting WID financially, and promoting WID from both their personal accounts and via the organizations they represented. These organizations spanned a wide range of communities and focus-areas, from Planned Parenthood to the APIA Fund to the National Urban League.
LWV’s social media around WID reached 1.9 million people, surpassing our initial goal of 250k. We received “mentions” in 688 posts across social media, not including those posts that did not tag LWV accounts. As a result, our social media following grew by 223 users across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
To date, our WID videos have been viewed over 13k times. User comments include:
“Powerful. Thank you” - @kujones on TikTok
“WOMEN LEADERS SPEAK OUT! Great Listen, Hear It!” - Cedar D on Facebook
“This video is powerful & beautiful..[sic]thank you” - @viiviione on Instagram
“This is powerful. Thank you LWVUS!” - @leeramp on Instagram
The print ad reached an estimated 1.3 million readers, and our WID landing page was viewed by 9.4k+ users. LWV’s email subscribers grew by 587 thanks to day-of WID efforts.
