This last has been an eventful week for women, and International Women’s Day on the 12th of March could not come at more poignant time. The survey conducted by UN Women UK also revealed that 97% of women in our age group say that they have suffered some form of sexual harassment, confirming what many of us already knew and have experienced. I’m sure most of you have seen this statistic plastered over social media, but just take a moment to really consider what it means. This shows that it does not matter what women are wearing, their lifestyle choices or what they do or anything else, because this is a universal experience to practically all women. Sarah Everard’s disappearance and death has overshadowed much of my life this week, and I’m finding it hard to move on from the fact that not only could it have been any one of us, but that she was one of us not too long ago. I have used an image from the ‘Reclaim the Night’ march in 2014, but it just as easily could have been from the original protests in 1970s, those in 2005, 2017 or present day, a depressing reflection of how little has changed.
In an effort to end on a more cheerful note: all my article picks this week were written by women – it wasn’t purposeful, but it seems appropriate.
In memory of Sarah Everard by Livia Dove-Woods
The women in British politics by Hazel Laurenson
The rise of the music biopic by Caitlin Painter
Beige diet foods: rediscovering foods by Alex Rigotti
What the Zoe Sugg scandal has highlighted about sex education in England by Lily Webber
Image: PictureCapital on Flickr under the Creative Commons License 2.0