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There has been progress in the west – but across the world women still suffer

The fortune of women in societies that were once grimly patriarchal have changed in ways that the forefathers – and that is the right word – of current generations could not have imagined

Thursday 07 March 2019 19:30 GMT
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International Women's Day: when and how did the annual event start?

It is now, on International Women’s Day 2019, not quite a century since the first woman took her place in the British House of Commons. Other women, in Ireland, had their own elections, but, for political reasons, did not take part in the proceedings at Westminster, so it was Nancy Astor that made history in 1919 as MP for Plymouth Sutton. Even now, a hundred years on, we can still see the disparity of female representation among the people who make our laws – about two-thirds of MPs are men. Across the west, the persistence of the gender pay gap, the #MeToo phenomenon and some well-publicised cases of men still badly abusing positions of power demonstrates how much more there is to be done before women can truly claim to be equal citizens. There is, in other words, no room for complacency while employers fail to promote women on merit, pay them less, refuse family-friendly hours, and treat them as sexual conveniences. It would be foolish to underestimate the prevalence of such attitudes, even today. Britain, like many nations, may like to congratulate itself on the legislative progress it has made, as well as emblematic breakthroughs such as its two female prime ministers, but across great swathes of ordinary life women remain underrepresented, undervalued and underappreciated.

Still, in western societies they at least have the opportunity to mobilise and agitate. Even in Trump’s America, as we have seen most recently in the congressional elections, having a misogynist in the White House does not preclude further progress in making sure women have a voice, loud and clear, in protecting their civil rights and calling out casual sexism or determined chauvinism.

The ugly truth is that most of the 3.7 billion or so women who share this planet with their brothers, fathers and sons suffer systemic discrimination, denial of human rights, stolen life opportunities – and, all too often, much worse depravations. The sheer scale and variety of man’s inhumanity to women – for the great majority of such abuses are perpetrated by one gender against another – is difficult to take in. The use of rape and sexual abuse in warfare, for example, has increased in recent decades as wars among, and within, failing states have multiplied. In Syria against the Yazidi women, in Burma against the Rohingya, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to give just a few examples, forced prostitution and sexual violence have been routine weapons used to terrorise the civilian population. That UN peacekeeping troops and aid agencies have also fallen prey to such depravity is still more depressing. In the refugee crisis it is women, and their children, who have felt the harshest punishment and paid the highest price at the hands of people traffickers and corrupt officials alike.

In many developing economies, and some wealthy ones, such as the Gulf States, the status of women remains grotesquely low. When observers feel as though they have something to celebrate when Saudi Arabia at last allows its female citizens even to drive a car, we have some sense of the scale of the ground that needs to be made up.

Across large swathes of the world, girls, even more than boys, face obstacles up to and including the threat of violence in accessing education. The symbolic example of Malala Yousafzai, almost murdered by the Taliban for the crime of going to school in Afghanistan, and the work of the Malala Fund remind the world, again, about the extent of the problems, which rid women of opportunity and their nations of much-needed skills and enterprise. With more than 130 million girls out of school, worldwide, today, only determined international action can bring something approaching resolution to the issue.

Access to other services such as health care, including sexual and reproductive health services, is usually highly restricted; the result is the misery of unplanned pregnancy, maternal mortality and morbidity, the spread of sexual and reproductive diseases, congenital deformities and all the complications and costs that accompany such misfortunes.

International Women’s Day is a moment not to despair at the apparently insuperable cliff face of gender inequality and securing equal human right for womankind. It is a time to reflect on how much progress has been made, against the odds, in western cities, and how the examples of women in societies that were once grimly patriarchal have changed in ways that the forefathers – and that is the right word – of current generations could not have imagined. Women globally have the example of other women to inspire them, and the lesson that education, above all, can widen opportunity both for individual girls and for women more generally. As Ms Yousafzai declared a few years ago: “Let us wage a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism, let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first.”

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