IWD 2025 Accelerate Action

I am not going to give a warm and positive spin on boys and men being respectful towards women, because that’s not always the case and that is the truth. Veritas. I am a female. I am a mother. I am an educator. These are all the qualifications I have to say what I’m going to say about the importance of International Women’s Day in society not just in school. Twice I have had the opportunity to engage in research about the importance of the female voice, so what I say stems not just from my own experience but from the voices of many women of varied ages. Let me stipulate first, I believe in the value of all-boys education, my son graduated from an all-boys school and I think he emerged all the better for it. I do not believe in the boys club that still exists in society. It allows and encourages all sorts of disrespectful and threatening behaviours, especially when undertaken in pairs or groups – pack behaviour. The week of International Women’s Day is an opportunity to shine a light on actions that limit that club from negatively impacting women. Often it is immature behaviour that a good man or good boy would never undertake on his own, so we need to remind ourselves, remind our boys and men that actually – it’s not funny. We have laws about violence, but I’m talking about the insidious masked behaviours that hurt and for which women have limited social recourse. The humiliating and belittling comments. They may seem inconsequential, but they matter. I speak from the premise that men are essentially good and do not mean to harm. But they do. It can be in those little things, those moments of disrespect that a mate may laugh off, and people will ignore, except the one humiliated. Women matter. Every woman matters. Not just the ones that cook your dinner, or feed your ego, the ones who stand up to you, the ones who disagree with you, who see the world through a different lens. Every woman on every continent. This week I’d love to see action that accelerates this change – so no woman is the victim of banter again.