YEP says: Celebrating Leeds women - take a pledge for International Women’s Day

You may ask why we even need International Women’s Day in 2019, surely the days are gone when we needed to single out women for special praise and encouragement - are we not all equal now? Well, it’s a fair point. For how long now have women been demanding recognition or equality?

Last year’s celebrations of (some) women getting the vote brought out many stories of incredible women who joined the suffrage movement, which could arguably be the start of “girl power” in Britain.

Women stepped into men’s roles in the first world war and the second world war, and they played their part in active service in those conflicts too.

But Yorkshire women have something of a reputation for being strong, capable types. Perhaps it’s because our area has an industrial past with women often working alongside men on the looms or in factories, in farming or in enterprise but, and this is a big but, despite all that, all the “liberation” of the 1960s, the bra-burning of the 1970s, the girl power of the 1990s there are still inequalities of aspiration, achievement, reward, health and treatment that need to be addressed.

It’s not a day to do men down, or leave men out, but it is a day to give all women a voice.