100 Women, review: Men weren't marginalised - but misogynists were

There are those who say that 100 Women, the season of programmes on BBC World News and BBC World Service highlighting the experience of women across the world, isn't necessary.

They are, one presumes, the same nincompoops who think the existence of Radio 4's Woman's Hour means that female listeners are fully catered for and should therefore remain invisible for the rest of the day's programming, and who, on International Women's Day, take to the internet and bellow "But when is International Men's Day?" (It's in November, stupid).

If justification for 100 Women were required, you only needed to hear the statistics unearthed by the Global Media Monitoring Project last week on one of the season's early debates, "Is News Failing Women?", which revealed that only 24 per cent of the individuals seen, heard and read about in the media are women, and only one in 10 news stories have women as the central focus. Across 500 global news organisations, the research found that only a third of full-time journalists were women.

You also needed to listen to the wonderfully named midwife Dr Comfort Momoh in Health Check about her campaign against female genital mutilation. Momoh runs a clinic at Guy's and St Thomas' hospital to counsel patients about FGM and treat those who have been through it for the physical and psychological after-effects.

She applauded the strides made by fellow campaigners and the leaders who have outlawed it, but she also told tales of regions and cultures where it is still accepted practice, where girls are stitched up so tightly that they are susceptible to life-threatening infection and where the cut-out clitorises are available to buy in markets to be used in fertility potions peddled by witch doctors.

Doubters might also have benefited from hearing Monday's documentary Young, Geeky and Black, where we learned that women make up half of the US workforce, but only a quarter in the computing world. Within this female computing sector, only three per cent were black women. The programme visited Black Girls Code, a series of technology awareness classes in Memphis. It was hoped that some of these women, who were residents of one of the poorest areas in the United States and yet were some of the most joyous and hopeful young people you could ever hope to meet, would be the tech entrepreneurs of the future and break through into an industry dominated by rich white men. Reflecting on today's industry, the curriculum leader Karen Farrell-Shikuku noted: "I don't see a lot of people that look like me."

The sceptics might also have learned a thing or two in Tuesday's 100 Women Debates, which examined issues of leadership and image. While the former looked at how men have retained the stranglehold at the top of the corporate sector and asked whether typically female traits should be embraced or altered to get ahead in office life, the latter revealed how, from early childhood, girls are overwhelmingly judged on appearance rather than capabilities. It also told us how women outrank men in terms of pay in just three areas – modelling, pornography and prostitution.

Throughout all these programmes there were stories of conflict but also kinship, of oppression and opportunity, and all pointed to the shared experiences and overlapping problems faced by women of all ages, races and economic backgrounds. 100 Women had nothing to do with marginalising men and everything to do with highlighting the female experience across the world. Who on earth wouldn't want to listen to that?

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