When the chips were down, we were confronted with the fragility of the gains we’d made over the years
It’s almost impossible to imagine that on this day last year I ledhundreds of women marching shoulder to shoulder through London’s streets. On International Women’s Day feminists come together to find our voice, find our power and find the strength to carry us through the other 364 days of the year that are largely the purview of men. Back then, we didn’t know that a pandemic was about to fundamentally change all of our lives, but we could have grimly predicted how damaging its effects would prove to be for women. When the chips were down, we were confronted with the fragility of women’s equality.
You didn’t have to be an epidemiologist to understand that the impact of the virus, and any efforts to control it, would fall unevenly on people according to their status in the economy and society. And you didn’t need a crystal ball to know that the Conservative government would bypass any opportunity to acknowledge and address those inequalities, even when lives were at stake. Their priority at every stage has been to deliver the kind of support that can most easily be taken away.
