Thursday 5 March 2015

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

I started off writing a post wondering how it is that, eighty seven years after Universal Sufferage, forty years after the (not awfully effective) equal pay act, fifty five years after the introduction of the pill, forty eight years after the legalisation of abortion, thirty six years after Britain got its first woman Prime Minister (whatever you might think of her politics), and twenty four years after the criminalisation of marital rape, we seem still to be  ceding power to men? 

Why are only a quarter of MPs women? Why are there more male CEO's called John in the world than there are female CEO's named anything at all? Of the 1112 director positions in FTSE 100 companies, why are fewer than 18% held by women? What have we been doing for the past forty odd years that the corridors of power are still pretty much the exclusive preserve of men? How is this so in 2015? 

Anyway, I started off writing about all of that and realised that all I had achieved by writing it was winding myself into a coil of impotent rage. So I think I should stop being angry and start being effective. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to change the world in time for international Women's  Day on Sunday, but I'll have a go. 


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