TODAY, March 8, marks International Women’s Day. Can we just take a second to think about our sisters under fire, especially in places where they are running or fighting for their lives including in wars all over the world? 

On days like this, many of us wonder what we have achieved? How much we still have to do to truly enjoy the rights of gender equality both economically, socially and politically?

It is very frustrating and unfortunate that in the 21st century we women still must fight and campaign for respect for our rights.

I would like to tell you about a couple of women who have left us a wonderful and very important legacy as they gave their lives for the rights of women. 

For me, one of the most inspirational was Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a brilliant Mexican writer and poet born in 1648. 

Her first poem was about the right to education for women. She always wanted to attend school but, in those times, it was impossible since women were only allowed to marry, cook and have children. 

To escape marriage and to find a way to access books and study, she became a nun. Her criticism of misogyny and the hypocrisy of men led to her condemnation by the Bishop of Puebla who forced her to sell her collection of books. 

For those of us who know the freedom that words and literature can bring, it is easy to recognise this cruelty as a form of torture. 

Tragically most of her written work, including her private papers, were burned by the Catholic church. She died in a convent, having caught the plague while looking after her sisters.

One hundred years later, in 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft, the English writer, philosopher and advocate of women’s rights, became another beacon of freedom. 

Her first writing was about also the right to education of women. I think she would have had a thing or two to say about a dodgy knighthood for a Tory secretary of education who presided over one of the worst times for learning in our history. 

During her brief career, she authored novels, treatises and a history of the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft wrote the Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appear to be only because they lack education. 

She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings, and she imagines a social order founded on reason.
 
At the end of the 19th century, in 1893, in New Zealand women achieved the right to vote for the first time. Later, the women’s suffragette movement was a member of an activist women’s organisation after fighting for several years they won the right — without having to own property — to vote in 1928 in Britain. 

In Mexico, as in many countries in Latin America, women achieved the right to vote in 1947. Sor Juana would have been proud but would have said it was 300 years too late.

Mexico currently has the most progressive government in its history. Since the government took office, more than 100 social programmes have been approved to support women such as through education, support for micro-businesses, micro-financing for rural women, scholarships for education, savings and housing programmes, food support, support for rural towns, support for the elderly, basic education for children of migrant families, support for the indigenous population, temporary employment support and support for women at home.

In the capital, the leader is now a highly capable woman, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, a Mexican scientist turned politician. 

Her role as head of the government of Mexico City is a position equivalent to a state governor. She is only the second woman elected to this position in the city. She contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. 

Mirroring the federal government’s support of women, many social and educational programmes have also been established in Mexico City under Sheinbaum’s administration.  

With a population of over 20 million, and with many female heads of households in Mexico, these programmes are a real lifeline, enabling women to work or study to improve their life chances or — as in Britain where the burden of caring for family members falls mainly on women and where there are 13 million unpaid carers — help women to navigate this impossible situation where they are exploited in their own homes as well as outside.
 
Mexico City’s government has invested in the maintenance of educational establishments; in infrastructure for the safety of women with the Senderos Camina Segura; in the recovery of forests, parks and bodies of water; in the construction and expansion of accessible transport systems that connect the east with the west of the city; in the extensions of the Underground (STC-Metro) and bus services (Metrobus); in the maintenance and renovation of the hydraulic infrastructure; in road infrastructure; the construction of infrastructure for health, among others. 

Achieving substantive equality by guaranteeing women full access to their rights is an inalienable goal.

The cherry on the cake is that this administration really walks the walk. At the beginning of this administration, the Secretariat of Women of Mexico City was created to promote actions that make their rights effective via the establishment of a programme of Women’s Defence Lawyers.

In May 2021, the “Network of Women on Alert for You” was created with the aim of promptly identifying cases of violence against women in the family, exacerbated by the context of the pandemic.

To attend to and follow up on the measures of the alert on violence against women, there are 150 lawyers, three refuge spaces, 21 hospitals specialising in cases of violence, three justice centres for women, five care centres for victims, and five hospitals with care services for the legal abortion — one of the biggest achievements in Mexican women’s rights in recent years. 

There are now thousands of sites with free wi-fi across the city, including health centres and transport hubs, where 97 per cent of the population lives.

In the 21st century, Mexico has made astonishing progress in many areas, however we still have a long way to go.

Tragically, femicides — killings of women, disappearances and torture — continue to occur throughout the country, and for thousands of women who tried to migrate to the US for survival.

In Mexico more than 3,000 femicides were registered in 2021, and seven out of 10 women suffer from violence; it is extremely uncomfortable for women to denounce the aggressor since they continue to be ridiculed by patriarchal macho operatives. 

We continue to live in a macho, misogynistic and patriarchal society, therefore we must continue to organise and support each other. 

We remember the great women who gave their lives for us and who are doing so as we speak across the world and sometimes in exceedingly difficult circumstances.

Our right to live equally and in peace should be their legacy. It is our duty to continue the struggle to ensure that women do not have to live in fear — now more than ever we must unite.