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This is International Women's Day and it is a great moment to take the temperature of the women's movement in the UK. For quite a while it's been clear that the long-predicted demise of feminism has not happened; on the contrary, over the last few years there have been sparks of new life that have surprised many observers.
You can map those sparks in the growth of grassroots events, such as the Million Women Rise march, launched three years ago, and the Feminism in London conference, whose thousand cheering delegates surprised me with their numbers and energy last year.
You can also map them in the increasing readiness of influential organisations and individuals, from the UN to Judi Dench, to be associated with what might once have been seen as stridently feminist rhetoric. To see the grassroots and the establishment coming together is to witness a movement with a great legacy taking on new energy.
International Women's Day has not, historically, been a huge deal in the UK. It kicked off in 1911 in more idealistic and embattled times, when women all over the western world were seeking basic political and employment rights. With its roots in the international socialist movement, it is perhaps unsurprising that we hear it has more of a profile in China and Russia than in Britain.
But it has shifted up a gear this year to mark the centenary, and has been boosted in the UK by the new Equals coalition, which has brought together a raft of charities, arts organisations and individuals to join the celebrations and protests.
When I first clicked on Equals' promotional film I laughed out loud to see Daniel Craig being questioned by Judi Dench on gender equality. It's hugely pleasurable, for those of us who have been banging on about equal rights for years, to see these arguments being taken on in a mini-Bond film directed by Sam Taylor-Wood.
The arguments have jumped out of the ghetto; they're in the mainstream now. As I wrote in The New Feminism in 1998 I'd prefer to see feminism not as a separate movement, but as part of the very air we breathe. We should all, women and men, young and old, be concerned about the ways in which women across the world are still prevented from realising their dreams simply because they are women.
But we still have to be careful that as feminism broadens its appeal, it does not lose its force, its bite, its ability to create real change. International Women's Day began in a solid socialist movement, and as it moves more towards the middle ground that obviously changes its temper. But I am heartened by the strength of the demands being made on all sides.
Although my first reaction to the Equals film was a laugh, when I listened to it I felt grim again. The facts that Dench tells us are not new to many of us, but it still hurts to hear again that millions of girls worldwide are deprived of a basic education or that two women a week in the UK are killed by a current or former partner. These realities remind us that for all its achievements, feminism has produced an unfinished revolution.
Too often it is implied that feminism is some kind of western construct that we should be wary of exporting to the rest of the world. This argument is simply ignorant of the work that women have done and are doing throughout Africa, Asia, and South America to fight for their rights. In the charity I founded, Women for Refugee Women, I work alongside women from many different countries and cultures who have come to the UK for sanctuary from persecution. None of them would have any truck with the idea that human rights are less important to them because Mary Wollstonecraft didn't write in their language.
So it's good to hear Annie Lennox, who is taking a leading role in International Women's Day activities this year, point out that "from India to Illinois women face violence just for being female", or to realise that if you join one of Women for Women International's bridge events today you will be at just one of hundreds of events worldwide, from Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
If today shows something of the strength of those who seek genuine equality, as well as the scale and importance of what remains to be achieved, then it will be a day well spent.
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