A rumor circulated online in early March 2025 that Apple "quietly removed" International Women's Day from appearing on its calendar app on iPad, iPhone, MacBook and other devices running on the company's operating systems. The globally celebrated day falls annually on March 8.
In an example of users sharing the rumor, on March 4, a verified Threads user posted (archived) of Apple, "Why did you take International Women's Day off the calendar?" Other users also shared the rumor on Apple's community forums, Bluesky, Facebook, a media blog, Reddit, Threads, TikTok and X.
Also, on March 7, Distractify published an article featuring the headline, "Apple Quietly Removed International Women's Day from Its Calendar App — Why?" The story displayed a link to a Substack blog article from influencer and journalist Liz Plank, who posted, "Apple quietly removed International Women's Day from their calendar. Not loudly. Not with a press release. Just a little silent, cowardly delete." Later, Plank or someone else removed the Substack story, with the page displaying the notice, "Page not found."
This image referenced Plank's Substack blog article.
However, no evidence indicated Apple removed International Women's Day from its calendar app, nor did any data show the company featured the day on its calendar in recent years. A spokesperson for Apple said by email that the matter involved a misunderstanding, and that the company did not previously feature International Women's Day — or Women's History Month, also occurring in March — on its standard calendar.
Screenshots showing Apple's calendar app from March 2023 and March 2024, for instance, did not display any special recognition for International Women's Day.
Distractify and Plank did not yet return requests for comment. This article will be updated should they respond.
Users shared this rumor — and a similar claim about Google — weeks following U.S. President Donald Trump's second inauguration. Multiple tech leaders, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and others, attended the ceremony in Washington, D.C. Users drew parallels between actions taken by Trump's new administration regarding ending initiatives involving diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and the purported removals of International Women's Day from both Apple's calendar app and Google calendar.
Changes to Google Calendar
Separate from Apple, on Feb. 12, Google issued a news release on its official blog, The Keyword (archived), about changes to holidays displayed with the standard calendar included with Google, for example the removal of an entry for Black History Month — a special celebration occurring annually in February.
The statement's authors sought to clarify information about changes they said they made to the calendar in "mid-2024," long before Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election:
Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of moments in a wide number of countries around the world — things like cultural celebrations, teachers days and many more. We got feedback that many other events and countries were missing, and it just wasn't feasible to put hundreds of moments in everyone's calendars — so in mid-2024 we made the decision to simplify and show only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com. Contrary to some of the comments on social media, this was not something we did just this year.
The authors also mentioned Google celebrated Black History Month and Lunar New Year in other ways, despite the observances no longer appearing on its standard calendar.
A spokesperson for Google did not answer the question of whether the company previously featured International Women's Day in its calendar, instead sending a link to the aforementioned news release.
A YouTube video recorded in 2022 showed Google calendar displaying the words "First Day of Black History Month" on Feb. 1 and "First Day of Women's History Month" on March 1, with no observance mentioned for International Women's Day on March 8. The question of whether the women's day ever appeared on Google calendar remained unclear.
Juneteenth, a federal holiday commemorating a moment marking the end of slavery in the U.S., still appeared on both Apple's calendar app and Google's calendar, for June 19, 2025. Former President Joe Biden signed legislation establishing the federal holiday in June 2021.