This year, from March 8 onwards, we celebrated women who dare to innovate, lead, and uplift others towards a more equal and inclusive workplace, under the theme Challenge. Champion. Change.

"Diverse perspectives drive innovation by giving us new ideas and a better understanding of our customers’ needs," said Jorrit Van der Meulen, Amazon EU Retail Vice President, who kicked off the week of celebrations.

For the first time, we brought our International Women’s Day events to both our employees and our customers across Europe. Until the end of the month our customers can head to their European stores to access a range of events and curated content from small businesses, Prime Video, Audible, books, artists and more:

Joining forces with Women@ Amazon employee affinity groups throughout Europe, we offered our employees coaching sessions, panel discussions and hosted guest speakers from around the globe on a wide range of topics related to women, diversity and inclusion.

We also explored how fashion and advertising increase representation across the gender spectrum and abilities with Zoe Proctor co-founder of Zebedee, a talent agency representing models, actors, and dancers with visible disabilities across Europe and the USA.

European senior leadership from Amazon discussed “Championing Women at Work”, and “How to keep innovating and driving equality through the pandemic” with external participants including publisher HarperCollins UK, the British Royal Institute of Blind People, the CEO of a Spanish company Jamon Privé specialized in gourmet products, which is also a marketplace partner. Two Amazonians with children shared their experiences of being a leader and a parent during these challenging times.

We also presented Amazon MatchUp, our global peer-to-peer mentoring program that helps to foster connections at work.

Click here to learn more on how we continue to support inclusion and diversity.