“The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights” Gloria Steinem
Last Friday (March 8) marked International Women’s Day. This day marked the celebration of an unborn child who has as much right to live as her male counterpart, a young teenage mother who has the right to still get an education, good health and a life of dignity, the working mother who does a double shift to keep her family going of an old woman who can see most her life pass her through her own eyes. It was a day for women in places high and low and everything in between striving for fulfilment and their roles as daughters, mothers, sisters and wives.
This day is not only a day set aside to celebrate being a women, but it’s also a reminder that there is still so much to do to empower the lives of women and girls across the world.
Gender-based violence is one of the most pervasive and, at the same time, least-recognized human rights abuses in the world. As many as one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or abused in some other way – most often by someone she knows, including by her husband or another male family member.
The Humanitarian organisation, Care estimates that 1 billion women will be victims of violence in a lifetime.
http://www.care.org/campaigns/voices-against-violence/index.asp
In 2011, Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, confirmed that girls aged between 16 and 19 are now more at risk of domestic violence than women in any other age group. On Valentine’s Day, the Home Office launched a three-month campaign against teenage relationship abuse, following similar campaigns in 2010 and 2011; MP Stella Creasy also called on parliament to make sex and relationship education, of the sort given by the Tender Charity, compulsory in schools as a means of eliminating violence against women.
Although there have been massive life changes for women since we first got our vote on that momentous day in 1911, Wednesday was a reminder that there is still a long way to go.
Join us in celebrating equality for women.
Have a wonderful week and thanks for reading. Catch you next week x
