International Women’s Day is a cause for celebration – and a call to action

It is a remarkable thing that the first International Women’s Day was in 1911. Remarkable, that is, because this facet of the diffuse feminist movement predates almost all the global institutions with which we are so familiar today.

It’s a day to remember that the struggle for women’s rights is essentially one where, by their own efforts, they have to reclaim their human rights – because no one else was going to do it for them, and the men, embarrassingly for all concerned, were determined to thwart them.

International Women’s Day is a day of global activism, and belongs to all and is for all to share; this year’s theme is “Inspire Inclusion”.

As the author and feminist activist Gloria Steinem once declared: “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organisation, but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.”

The Independent is proud to join this moment of celebration with an exhibition of specially commissioned portraits of the most influential female figures in British society today. Independent Women: The Influence List will be publicly shown in London, and features Esther Ghey, mother of murdered teenager Brianna, at the head of the list, with Tracey Emin, Floella Benjamin, Kate Garraway, Claudia Winkleman, Mary Earps and Sue Gray, among others.

Obviously, though, International Women’s Day is also a moment for reflection and a spur to action. For example, exclusive polling by Savanta, seen by The Independent, reveals that two in 10 young women say they were followed by someone in the last year, inflicting the kind of anxiety that is much less common for men. More troubling still is that one in 10 young women say they were forced to have sex in the last year, and 15 per cent say they have had private images shared without their consent in the last year.

Violence against women and girls may or may not be more widespread than in the past – historical data, with low reporting rates and just as low police interest in “domestics”, are a poor guide – but it is sadly something that still scars society. High-profile cases such as those of Brianna Ghey and Sarah Everard are merely the most extreme examples.

As she has for the past nine years, Jess Phillips recently stood up in the House of Commons to memorialise 98 women who have been murdered or unlawfully killed in the last 12 months. According to Femicide Census, every three days a woman is killed by a man in the UK, and one in four women experience domestic violence. As Ms Phillips said, she has grown weary of the task: “Never again do I want to hear a politician say that lessons will be learned from abject failure. It is not true.”

Perhaps that is because, while the fight for equality has taken so long and is not yet won, in the context of the rise of civilisation, it is relatively recent. Looking back at the origins of the women’s movement, it is sometimes too easy to forget how late it was in the annals of human progress before women were organised and free enough to even begin campaigning for their full human rights.

Not much more than a hundred years ago, women across the world were still denied the vote – New Zealand was the first to emancipate them in 1912 – and they were largely excluded and discouraged from going to university, entering the professions, making their way in business or playing an equal role in sport. The notion that any could be in the clergy would have been virtually blasphemy. There were no equal opportunities employers, no mentoring schemes, no outreach programmes, and no equality laws.

Much obvious progress has been made since then, and women in leadership roles are not quite the objects of curiosity and male condescension as once they were; but in too many areas, equality of esteem and of pay remains elusive.

The latest reports on the rewards for women in the City of London, where the facile culture of testosterone-fuelled arrogance defined the world of finance for so long, shows how much more there is still to do to close the indefensible gender pay gap. Even now, not quite a century after women won equal voting rights in the UK, and 45 years since the first woman was appointed prime minister, there is little prospect that the House of Commons will be a 50/50 institution after this year’s general election.

This year is also a moment for reflection about the reverses that women have suffered in recent years. The rise of Islamist extremists around the Middle East in the 2010s was especially grievous for women; but in the West, the so-called “anti-woke” warriors and the hard right have been active, too.

The reversal in the United States of the Roe v Wade, and the consequent suppression of the reproductive rights of women, proves that this is no longer a one-way street towards equality, if it ever was. In France, at least, a constitutional amendment should prove to be an early move in the entrenchment of rights that have been so hard won.

If experience is anything to go by, International Women’s Day will be an annual fixture for the foreseeable future. Every year brings fresh cause for joy – but too often also for anger and fear. Feminism is an eternal struggle, and one that finds expression, setbacks and success all the time at work, at school, at home and out socialising.

In that sense, every moment of every day is another challenge. The good news is that the women can win.