WARNING SENSITIVE CONTENT: It’s a worthy cause, but what does International Women’s Day actually achieve? Women at The Mirror reveal their grievances with an awareness day that feels all bluster and no action
Happy International Women’s Day to all who celebrate – but I won’t be.
This morning, your social media feeds will be buzzing with inspirational quotes about the power of women. There’ll be long captions about sisterhood, gender equality and resilience, and a few feminist fist symbols thrown in for good measure.
With the cesspit that is today’s geopolitical landscape – let’s not forget that the president currently leading the world into a global war was found liable for sexual abuse – I’d happily have this feminist content served on my Instagram and TikTok every day of the week.
But still, it’s not enough to convince me that there’s much to celebrate. I have a hard time swallowing the patronising tone of an event that for years now has been hijacked by corporate companies looking to brag about the women they’ve hired (do you want a medal?); or beauty brands offering a discount on lipstick.
Away from the PR spin that makes me wince each year, the cold hard truth is that women in the UK and across the world still face dire financial inequality, abhorrent medical neglect, and terrifying threats to our safety at the hands of men, day in day out. Thanks to the gender-pay gap, women in the UK effectively worked for free for the first month and a half of 2026. Let that sink in. That’s before we even start talking about the motherhood pay gap.
This year’s theme is “Give to Gain” – a campaign that looks to highlight the importance of collaboration and generosity for achieving gender equality. It’s a worthy cause, but feels so vague in its mission. Here, women at the Mirror share their frustrations over an awareness day that, while still needed, fails to paint the true picture of our lived experiences…
While men get paid more, women fleeing danger STILL have no-where to turn…
Ellie Fry
When Sarah Everard was abducted, raped, and murdered by Metropolitan police officer Wayne Couzens, the nation was outraged. For weeks after his heinous crimes came to light, thousands of women bravely shared their own experiences online of being followed while walking home, painfully explaining to men – many of whom who stayed silent – why they clutch their keys in their fist while trying to walk as quickly as they can, sticking to roads lit by street lamps. I felt utterly hopeless, and so too did friends – how would we ever feel safe in a country where sadistic killers are allowed to rise up the ranks in an intstitution that’s supposed to keep us safe?
It felt like a real watershed moment in the nation’s approach to violence against women and girls (VAWG) – despite there being countless of forgotten victims before Sarah. Women across the country protested; the Met promised to weed out every ‘rotten apple’ in its ranks; the National Police Chiefs Council and College of Policing declared that VAWG is a national epidemic; the government finally passed the landmark Domestic Abuse Act and more recently, announced its commitment to halve VAWG within a decade.
But what’s really changed since Sarah’s murder five years ago? I’ve reported on violence against women for 10 years, and while there has been great strides in changing the tide on protecting women – including harsher sentences for abusers and killers – as I sit here and write this article, there are still women and children fleeing violence with nowhere to turn, because the specialist services designed to protect them have been forced to shut their doors due to lack of funding.
It’s worth noting that funding for domestic abuse shelters has improved under Labour. But women’s charities warn that while the Domestic Abuse Act ushered in a range of well-needed reforms to protect women and girls, a staggering £321 million funding gap remains – leaving survivors in danger. They also cite dangerous systemic problems within the family courts, which often favours abusers and leave children at risk.
As a society, we’re far more clued up on the myriad of ways abuse presents itself now – coercive control was not a phrase that many were familiar with until recently – but while the government and police finally play catch up, abusers are moving even faster. With new technology comes new ways to torment women – perpetrators are using smart kettles, smart thermometers and AirTags to track, manipulate, and control their partners. AI will only make things worse. And within this terrifying world of digital control, women are being forced to breaking point. Hundreds die of suicide after suffering domestic abuse – another hidden horror that the government and the courts desperately need to address with new legislation.
The dangers that women face are painfully clear in the latest data. The Femicide Census, a vital project that tracks the names of women who have been stolen at the hands of men, has found that in the UK, fatal violence against women has “not shown a tangible decline since the first year we monitored, 2009”. It adds: “The Femicide Census shows that a woman has been killed by a man, on average, once every 3 days, over a 10-year period. If we focus on women killed by current or former partners only, it’s one woman every four days.” It’s also important to note that these are only the women we know about.
As I read these statistics and report on the likes of the Jeffrey Epstein; crossbow killer Kyle Clifford; Dominque Pelicot’s heinous campaign of abuse against his wife Gisele, and even Ian Huntley, I find myself thinking that the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day – give to gain – couldn’t be more tone-deaf.
This International Women’s Day, the horrors of maternity care in the UK go painfully ignored…
Frances Barton
International Women’s Day is great in theory, but really, how much meaningful change are women actually seeing in the areas of health care and maternity?
Last week, a damning interim report published after a national investigation into England’s maternity services laid bare systemic issues affecting women and babies, including poor treatment from maternity staff, “cover-ups”, chronic staff shorages and racism and discrimination. Harrowingly, the rate of maternal death in the UK is 20% higher than it was in 2009-11, and stands at 12.8 deaths per 100,000 maternities.
For almost 10 years I complained about debilitating abdominal pain only to be fobbed off time and time again. We don’t know, we don’t really care. It was only recently that I was diagnosed with adenomyosis – a painful condition like endometriosis that causes the endometrial lining to grown inside the wall of the uterus. It was spotted as an incidental on a scan, just a throw-away remark. Out of eight pregnancies, I have one baby. Did it need to be that way?
The losses were traumatic in and of themselves, but it was the health care I received that really compounded them. During lockdown I learned that the baby I was carrying – my fifth – had serious health issues. At 13 weeks I needed to have a ‘termination for medical reasons’. Hidden away in a breast feeding room, the doctor refused to operate, insisting that I had to deliver the little baby girl. I couldn’t face it, my miscarriages had been horrific – massive blood loss, ambulances called. And I knew I couldn’t go through such a macabre delivery.
So I was forced to go to a regular abortion clinic miles from my home where I sat for hours surrounded by teenagers and those with unwanted pregnancies. I had wanted mine so very much. In one final twist of the knife, woozy and exhausted, I had to rush across counties to deliver the remains of my dead baby – by hand – in an envelope to the hospital for testing.
The results came back suggesting an inherited problem and that further testing was needed. The hospital sat on the information and allowed me to conceive again, unaware. I was seven weeks pregnant with my sixth child by the time they corrected their mistake. Thankfully the tests came back clear but that unnecessary month of panic and fear was beyond cruel.
I lost another baby at 12 weeks – my eighth. That time I insisted on having surgery to ‘remove the products of conception’ as they horribly call it. To me, it was my daughter. I was lying on the gurney about to be put under when they forced me look at the scan of my dead child to confirm the reason for the operation. I’d refused to look at that image before, I didn’t want to see my baby collapsed and lifeless. I burst into tears, racked with deep sobs. The male anaesthetist simply said: “No need to cry, we do this all the time,” as if that was the point.
That surgery, however, did not work. I continued to bleed but my concerns were ignored. After three long weeks of repeated calls, I was finally booked in for a review and it was discovered that, yes, I did know my own body and bits of my baby had been left behind. Because of huge wait lists I had to undergo something called an MVA – manual vacuum aspiration. It is as barbaric as it sounds.
Six or so nurses held me down while one inserted a hand-pump to suck out the remains. The pain was indescribable, one of the worst I have ever experienced. For more than 30 minutes the agony endured, I was sick and shaky for days after. How is it deemed appropriate for grieving women to have to suffer through such a degrading and agonising experience? It would not be allowed for men.
But did that work? No. And was I listened to when I told them I was still bleeding? No. Again, it took weeks to be seen again. More apologies, more waitlists. But I couldn’t go through another procedure and risk another failure. Instead I spent all my savings going private.
When it came to my live birth, my wonderful baby boy, I chose to have a C-section. My miscarriages had been physically brutal, ambulances had been called and I frequently passed out. Knowing the state of NHS maternity care, the thought of something bad happening filled me with dread. This was my one and only chance at becoming a mum.
Clearly not trusted to make decisions about my own body, I had to ‘apply’ to a board and have an ‘interview’. I was warned over and over about the risks to myself and the baby. But what about the risks of your maternity wards, I wanted to shout. Years later, I would need surgery to correct injuries caused by the C-section and adhesions that has stuck my organs together.
Let me be clear, I have also received some excellent care along the way with nurses and doctors treating me with compassion and kindness. But it is these horrors that mean my remaining embryos have sat unclaimed in an IVF clinic for years. The trauma has been too great.
As a Gen-Z woman in the UK, the gender-pay gap is abysmal…
Niamh Kirk
On International Women’s Day, it’s great to see us all celebrating powerful women all around us from our mums, aunties, sisters and friends. But I’m sick of no-one recognising the gender pay gap for what it really is.
There is so much societal pressure put on women to settle down and start a family. But with what money? France has recently sent its young citizens a not-too-casual reminder to start having babies. Every 29 year old in France, both male and female, will receive a letter encouraging them to think about having children in a strategy to boost the country’s birth rate which has reportedly fallen to around 1.56 children per woman – the lowest level it’s been since the First World War and well below the 2.1 replacement rate. But how many 29-year-old men and women navigating modern society in a cost of living crisis are even position to get pregnant?
Next summer I will turn 29. I will most likely still be living in a six-bed houseshare in London because, let’s face it, there’s no way anyone can foot the rent for a one bed, let along a two bed place right now. The rent already devours much of my salary, and I am also still chipping away at two student loans, one for an undergrad course and one for a masters – thanks to a cack-handed system where the interest charged is through the roof. And don’t even get me started on pensions.
Every day brings fresh reports of mass redundancies, jobs are sparse and competition is fierce. The influence of AI is already being felt on the job market. Getting a mortgage is out of the question so how I could pay for a baby on top is beyond me.
So, I think I speak for quite a few women when I say, if I ever received this letter, it would be ripped up and not given a second thought, and it probably means when the time comes, if it ever does, I will be classed as a ‘geriatric’ mother, but who really cares.
For confidential support, call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Freephone Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit womensaid.co.uk.
If you or your family have lost a friend or family member through fatal domestic abuse, AAFDA (Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse) can offer specialist and expert support and advocacy. For more info visit www.aafda.org.uk.
For support after baby loss, contact the Sands helpline on 0808 164 3332 or visit www.sands.org.uk.
For emotional support you can call the Samaritans 24-hour helpline on 116 123, email [email protected], visit a Samaritans branch in person or go to the Samaritans website.
