INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day is a moment when we can reflect on and celebrate women’s achievements worldwide, but conversely it must also be an occasion when we recognise the huge barriers that that still impede women’s advance. 

Despite the fact that a veneer of juridical equality exists in the majority of (certainly not all) countries, violence against women is on the increase worldwide. Globally, according to the UN, an estimated 736 million women — almost one in three — have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (30 per cent of women aged 15 and older). This figure does not include sexual harassment. The figures for femicide are similarly shocking. In 2022, around 48,800 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. This means that, on average, more than five women or girls are killed every hour by someone in their own family.

What this reveals is a very uncomfortable fact — misogyny remains embedded in the 21st-century culture bequeathed by its long history in all forms of class society. Misogyny is not simply hatred of women, it is an ideology and practice the purpose of which, when actualised, is to control and enforce women’s subordination and to uphold male patriarchal dominance.