Happy International Women’s Day y'all! It’s a big one: 100 years ago from today, the Women’s Day was first marked with rallies campaigning for women’s right to work, vote, be trained and hold public office among other things. The first three women had just been elected to Finnish parliament.
We have come a long way since. But not long enough. Women still get paid less than men, are victims of domestic violence, are being discriminated because there is a chance of them getting pregnant and are still being harassed. The UK government recently, unsurprisingly, rejected the compulsory boardroom quota for women. Instead, the companies were given a meaningless warning to increase the number of women in boardrooms.
Currently 18 FTSE 100 companies have no female directors at all and nearly half of all FTSE 250 companies do not have a woman in the boardroom. Then again, the government itself is not exactly doing well equality-wise, with only four female members in the cabinet of 23.
Luckily it looks like the EU is planning to force a 20% quota in European boardrooms. At the moment, women make up only 3% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and in Europe, only 12% of positions on boards are occupied by women. As low as 20% sounds like, it’s still an improvement.
And it’s not all bad news. All across the world, women are taking things to their own hands. Hollaback is a movement started in New York, and now also working in London, dedicated to ending street harassment. They are working on abolishing the cultural acceptance of sexual harassment. It's not just a "feminists' attempt to ban the fun". Do a little gallup among your girlfriends, I bet you find more than one case where they have been groped by a stranger, “because, you know, wearing skirt that short means that you’re gagging for it anyway”. And ask them how they felt about it.
As well-meaning and lovely the men in our lives are, the equality is not going to happen without women demanding it. Nobody is going to do it for us. And sisters, we are doing it for ourselves.
