International Women’s Day in 2018- still progress to be made?
The 8th March marks International Women’s Day, and has done since the early 1990s. The day recognises and celebrates female achievements across the world, while still calling for gender equality. Women have been fighting for social change and equality for decades, and only last month we celebrated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote.
In many ways it’s strange to think that in 2018 there is still mass gender inequality across the world, many women across the world are not as privileged as us here in the UK where women have had the vote for a century!
Across the world, in 2018, there have been some amazing movements empowering women and one that has been widespread across all news outlets and social media platforms is the Time’s Up campaign…
The Time’s Up campaign was pioneered at the Golden Globes earlier this year, it called for attendees to dress in black and many guests brought female rights activists as their ‘+1’. Time’s Up was born in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandals that scarred Hollywood. The campaign aims to support every woman in every walk of life and wants to end sexual harassment by empowering women to speak out. Their manifesto aims to ‘remain committed to holding out own workplaces accountable, pushing for swift and effective change to make the entertainment industry a safe place for everyone, and telling women’s stories through our eyes and voices with the goal of shifting our society’s perception and treatment of women. In Solidarity.’
This movement has taken the world by a storm and the campaign has raised over $20 million to combat sexual harassment by providing subsidised legal support for men and women who have been victim to harassment.
Although there are incredible steps of all sizes being taken across the world, we cannot ignore the fact that we are still in need of huge changes…Holly Willoughby underpins the problem in her instagram post after the Brit Awards last month…
There wont be global change over night, and we know that, but everyone can be making small changes every day that will slowly close the gap between gender inequality. For starters, just make sure you always big up your friends, support them in everything they do and just try not to slag anyone off (whether in real life or on social media, whether you know them or not!). Just make sure you’re standing up for what you believe in, if someone says something derogatory or unnecessary don’t be afraid to call them out on it! If you see someone in a spot of trouble on a night out- just check that they’re alright, it doesn’t take much. If everyone make’s small changes in their day to day life the world will be much closer to achieving Time’s Up.
(Images are sceenshots from the timesup website and instagram.)
Kelan Mahon