International Women’s Day is celebrated around the world. The theme this year is #PressforProgress. One startling fact: the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report shows that gender parity is 217 years away!

And on to harassment in its many forms – our own Wera Hobhouse MP is calling on the government to make upskirting a criminal offence as reported by Caron on Tuesday. Wera says,

The fact that this is not a sexual offence in England baffles me, as much as it horrifies me. In Scotland upskirting was made an offence back in 2009. There is simply no excuse for ignoring this issue any longer.

Relying on outraging public decency is absurd. It should not matter how public it was or who else saw it. The law should focus on the individual victims and the crime committed against them. It is their body that is being taken advantage of without their consent.

But true equality is about resolving power inequality. Professor Mary Beard’s latest book, Women and Power, discusses the structures inherent in society which need to change. In discussions with a friend this week we realised that until we get most histories written by women, most laws written by women, society governed by women in the majority at every level, we will never achieve gender equality. The world is not only run predominantly by men but is also contextualised in books, histories, films, etc., by men. The whole world is skewed by a man’s perspective on everything. Living is framed by men.

On International Women’s Day I encourage all women to continue to fight every aspect of the system. It is a battle of thousands of years of perception, with layers of male-dominated understanding that pervades many women’s thinking as well. We can’t get away from it. Unconscious bias on a new level – once you get that almost everything is shades of patriarchy, the penny drops and the battle begins.

Yes, let’s celebrate the achievements women have managed to make even though the odds are mostly stacked against us. And let’s empower our future generations of women to be the masters (see, another male word) of their own destinies. It’s about rebalancing power at every level of society, from the home, to school, to work, to Parliament.

* Kirsten Johnson was the PPC for Oxford East in the 2017 General Election. She is a pianist and composer at www.kirstenjohnsonpiano.com.