16
London-News
March 2014
International Women's Day 2014:
The shocking statistics that show
why it is still so important
Photo: Erem Kansoy- Yalkın Süreç
International Women’s Day, like
any event that promotes positive
discrimination, is accompanied
by its fair share of negative remarks.
The earliest Women’s Days
were held in the first decade of
20th century. This was before
women had the vote, before
women could legally terminate a
pregnancy. In the UK, it was
only ten years since a married
woman could legally own her
own property, rather than be
property herself. Marie Curie
was yet to become the first
woman to win the Nobel Prize.
More than a century later and
it’s tempting to see International
Women’s Day as redundant, a
celebratory event at best. Why
do we need the event at all? The
causes that triggered those first
campaigns have been fought and
won. Women in today’s society
have all the equality they could
ever need, right? Wrong.International Women’s Day is still
needed to motivate change, at
home and abroad. Some of these
statistics put into sharp relief
just how far we still have to go.
Violence
Globally, about one in three
women will be beaten or raped
during their lifetime. About 44
per cent of all UK women have
experienced either physical or
sexual violence since they were
15-years-old. Britain ranks
among the worst countries in
Europe when it comes to women
being violently abused.
On average, 30% of women who
have been in a relationship report that they have experienced
some form of physical or sexual
violence by their partner.
38 per cent of all murders of
women worldwide are committed by a woman's intimate partner.
A UN report said 99.3% of
women and girls in Egypt had
been subjected to sexual harassment.
Female Genital Mutilation
This is where girls have either
all or part of their clitoris and
inner and outer labia sliced off
without anaesthesia, and sometimes have part of their vaginas
sewn up too.
Over 130 million women living
in the world today have undergoneFemale Genital Mutilation.
There as as many as 24,000 girls
are at risk of cutting in the UK.