During a working life, an average Swedish woman earns a quarter million Euro less than a man, performing the same work. Every day, she works for free after four o'clock, while he gets paid until five.

So what does a woman have to do to get a raise?

The answer is simple: be a man.

Annelie Nordström, president of Sweden’s largest union, Kommunal, decided to protest against wage discrimination by performing a “sex change”.

A video featuring Annelie´s extreme makeover spread to over 140 countries in just 5 days, reaching a peak on International Women’s Day.

Traditional PR work and some online ad support spread the word and guided to the website, which provided a simple way to conduct a quick sex change and thus enabling everybody to join the protest.

Kommunal created the largest manifestation ever of its kind against wage inequality - being featured in some of the world’s leading media outlets and creating an online buzz, the campaign reached over 200 million people.

The overarching goal for Kommunal is to erase unequal salaries. The objective of this campaign was to initiate an international debate on structural discrimination and thus put extra pressure on national politicians and opinion makers.

The video immediately became a global hit. Within the first 48 hours it got more than 100 000 views from more than 100 countries. However, in a world where views are for sale, this does not necessarily mean anything.

Fortunately, it did not stop there. The discussion initiated by the video sparked a discussion in social media, resulting in more than 16 000 Twitter reactions, reaching an audience of more than 3,8 million on Twitter and a total of 6,7 million across social media.

This, in turn, resulted in a total of 151 articles; reaching more than 195 million people. But the real victory lies not in the numbers, but in the fact that a small Swedish campaign managed to become a global reminder of how the International Women’s Day is not a day of celebration before we have achieved equal pay for all.

The starting point of the campaign was a video press release four days prior to International Women’s Day, followed up by personal calls and mail. We targeted International news media, women organizations, activists and bloggers. In the video, Annelie Nordström, president of Sweden’s largest union, Kommunal, protests against wage discrimination by performing a 'sex change' in front of the camera.

With the help of a make-up artist and stop-motion technique, Annelie transformed into a man within 47 seconds. The video was published on YouTube and the mobilization in social media led to applications on Facebook and for Smartphones, which enabled anybody could perform a similar transformation. The results were not only posted by the users, but also collected on BeAMan.se, creating a massive manifestation, creating a massive manifestation against wage discrimination.

The video was also pitched into major media outlets and women’s organizations with the help of traditional press releases and a lot of handiwork, supported by seeding in blogger networks and online banners on The New York Times and FT. The rest was organic spread…

The whole campaign was backed by facts published in a report that even included seven concrete suggestions

During a working life, an average Swedish woman earns a quarter million Euro less than a man, performing the same work. Every day, she works for free after four o'clock, while he gets paid until five.

Kommunal is Sweden’s largest trade union with 400.000 female members affected by this structural inequality and dedicated to challenge the status-quo, especially on International Women’s Day.

The problem of structural discrimination partly exists because of its complexity. Therefore, we had to find a basic message that is simple enough to be understood quickly, as well as immediately evoking emotions.

Sweden is by many seen as a sort of socialist utopia and haven of equality. By clearly dramatizing that even Sweden suffers from deeply rooted structural discrimination, we expected an international audience to react, initiating a debate about wage inequality that eventually would put pressure on politicians and policy makers to adjust their agenda for the coming national elections in the fall. The timing was around International Women’s Day to utilize existing energies.

The budget required to drive a global issue exceeds Kommunal’s by far. We thus had to use existing energies, namely The International Women’s Day and the related organizations, opinion makers and bloggers to spread our video as interesting content.

Mobilization in social media is dependent on shareable objects and the typical trade union rhetorics need to change from complaining to giving both factual information and concrete suggestions for change to attract a broader audience than ”the usual suspects”.