Iqbal Mohamed

As other speakers have said, International Women’s Day was born out of struggles waged by past generations of women whose efforts and sacrifices will by and large not be recorded in the history books, but whose actions have enabled other women to walk an easier path through life than they perhaps did. Unfortunately, the continuation of that struggle seems more pertinent now than at any other time in my adult life, as there is a concerted attempt to roll back the hard-won gains of the women’s movement. We see that in the toxic influence of a resurgent, reactionary politics, amplified via two loosely regulated social media platforms enabling misogyny literally to reach into the bedrooms of young teenage boys. I am referring to not just the Andrew Tates of the world, but the Donald Trumps of this world, who ridicule the very notion of there being an unequal playing field that hinders the lives of women—indeed, Trump and his supporters state the exact opposite. In their world, it is men, and white men in particular, who are the real victims of moves to tackle inequality. Two things about that narrative worry me. First, it is getting traction in this country. A study conducted by the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London found that nearly one in two Britons—47%—say that when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, things have gone far enough in Great Britain. That is a notable increase on the 38% who said the same last year, and a stark increase on the proportion who felt that way as recently as 2019. That means that for the first time, Britons are now more likely than Americans to agree that women’s equality has gone far enough. Secondly, those views normalise misogyny and encourage violence against women and girls. They literally put women’s lives in danger. It is therefore critical for MPs to reassert the reality of institutionalised misogyny and sexism, which more often than not is denied, whether in the House of Commons, the police force or the military, where instances of misogyny are put down to some bad apples and the institutions involved are let off the hook. We have to demonstrate more forcefully a zero-tolerance approach to hate and abuse against women. We also need more practical measures right now to make it safer for women to live their lives free of harassment and to go about their everyday lives without fear of attack. Two years after the murder of Sarah Everard, it should be the least that we can do in her memory, and in the memory of approximately 450 women murdered by—