International Women's
Day event with Glenys Kinnock (Jan Royall, Sue Bertwistle and Alice
Jolly)
On March 9th
I, along with at least 150 others, attended an event that was
empowering, very moving and at times utterly depressing. We gathered
for soup, tea and a conversation about women and their place in the
world.
The glorious Glenys
Kinnock spoke about the horrendous situation that women find
themselves in around the world. The statistics speak for themselves.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 12% of the female population has
been raped at least once. That is 48 women being raped every hour.
Rape
continues to be used as a weapon in these war-torn countries.
The problems do not
only lie in the developing world though. In the UK women still find
themselves discriminated against in a systematic manner.
Approximately 30,000
women lose their jobs each year as a result of being
pregnant
The British Crime
Survey of 2005 showed that 45% of women have experienced
some form of domestic
violence, sexual assault or stalking
.
Approximately 10,000
women are sexually assaulted and 2,000 women are raped every week
.
Female graduates earn
15% less than their male counterparts at the age of 24 – this
increases to a massive 40.5% by the age of 45.
The list goes on, and
on, and on.
Then we began our
conversation, and what we spoke about was not these huge,
insurmountable imbalances. It was the individual situations in which
we find ourselves everyday that remind us that, despite years of hard
work and legislative change we are still not equal in society; we
still do not have equal rights; we still do not have equal
opportunities; we still do not have equal pay; and we are still not
treated as equal under the law.
We
spoke about the incredible hard work that individuals have done –
to improve the chances of cared-for children, to improve the domestic
violence refuges in the county (that have now been slashed and
demolished; did you know there is only one refuge for victims of
domestic violence in the whole county of Gloucestershire?).
Ex-Labour Group leader
on Gloucestershire County Council, Maureen Rutter, spoke passionately
about the guilt that she felt at not speaking up when she saw a
typical example of the ways careers are split between male and
female.
A group of scientist in
a local school play were all played by boys. Seemingly a small event,
not worthy of note. But it is these unconscious stereotypes that
perpetuate the attitudes that continue to hold us back.
If a young girl sees
that, even in a fictional school play, scientists are all male, she
will be less likely to view that as a possible career path. It is a
small thing, but add all of those events that you have witnessed that
are similar to this and it is not hard to see why these attitudes
still remain. And why the ratio of
male to female scientists is massively unbalanced.
We all understood
exactly what Maureen had seen, and the guilt that she felt at not
speaking up, at not attempting to break that cycle.
The work that Maureen,
Glenys, Jan, and others like them have done over the years has
broken that cycle though, and it is our responsibility to continue
that. To educate each other and our girls that they can do anything,
be anything, that they want. To pave the way and do the hard work so
that those women that come after us do not have to face the
systematic inequality and abuse that we and the generations before us
have experienced.
Education
is absolutely key, here and across the world. Educating females –
especially to secondary school level – is one of the most effective
way to reduce poverty, to reduce child marriages, to reduce child
mortality and family sizes. An educated women knows her rights and
how to claim them. An educated women knows the importance of
educating all of her
children, not just the male ones. An educated woman is powerful. And
we need powerful women.
(Please feel free to
contact me regarding any of the statistics that I have used)
