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A picture with a symbol that reads "Stop violence" against women. 

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The International Women's Day inevitably reminds us that many women have been left behind on account of gender-based violence. Let us take a moment to not forget the survivors of (sexual) violence as well as those who couldn't make it.

The United Nations provides the following statistics on violence against women:

An estimated 736 million women—almost one in three—have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (30 per cent of women aged 15 and older). This figure does not include sexual harassment. Women who have experienced violence are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and HIV, with long-lasting consequences.

Violence by intimate partners: Most violence against women is committed by current or former husbands or intimate partners. More than 640 million women aged 15 and older (26 per cent) have been subjected to intimate partner violence.

Femicides/Feminicides

In 2023, around 51,100 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. This means that, on average, 140 women or girls are killed every day by someone in their own family.

While 60 per cent of all female homicides are committed by intimate partners or other family members, only 12 per cent of all male homicides are perpetrated in the private sphere.

Sexual violence against women and girls

Non-partner sexual violence: Globally, 6 per cent of women report they have been subjected to sexual violence from someone other than their husband or partner. However, the true prevalence of non-partner sexual violence is likely to be much higher, considering the particular stigma surrounding this form of violence.

Adolescent girls at risk of sexual violence: Around 15 million adolescent girls worldwide, aged 15–19 years, have experienced forced sex. In the vast majority of countries, adolescent girls are most at risk of forced sex (forced sexual intercourse or other sexual acts) by a current or former husband, partner, or boyfriend. Based on data from 30 countries, only one per cent have ever sought professional help.

Human trafficking and exploitation of women

In 2020, for every 10 victims of human trafficking detected globally, four were adult women and two were girls.

Ninety-one per cent of trafficking victims for sexual exploitation are females. Analysis of court cases shows that female victims are subjected to physical or extreme violence at the hands of traffickers at a rate three times higher than males.

Technology-facilitated violence against women and girls

One in 10 women in the European Union report having experienced cyber-harassment since the age of 15. This included having received unwanted and/or offensive sexually explicit emails or SMS messages, or offensive and/or inappropriate advances on social networking sites.

In the Arab States, a regional study found that 60 per cent of women internet users in the region had been exposed to online violence in the past year.

In the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe countries, more than half of women present online in the region have experienced some form of technology-facilitated violence in their lifetime.

In Uganda, in 2021, about half of the women (49%) reported to have ever been involved in online harassment.

According to a 2016 survey by the Korean National Human Rights Commission, 85 per cent of women experienced hate speech online.

The paradigm is bleak. We must keep fighting to break stigma, to end the cycle of violence, and to foster gender equality and education.

On a more artistic note, this poem by Adrienne Rich describes the plight of women in a male-dominated world:

From Adrienne Rich Diving into the Wreck, Poems 1971-1972 "Rape"

There is a cop who is both prowler and father:

he comes from your block, grew up with your brothers, had certain ideals.

You hardly know him in his boots and silver badge,

on horseback, one hand touching his gun.

You hardly know him but you have to get to know him, he has access to

machinery that could kill you.

He and his stallion clop like warlords among the trash, his ideals stand in

the air, a frozen cloud

from between his unsmiling lips.

And so, when the time comes, you have to turn to him, the maniac's

sperm still greasing your thighs,

your mind whirling like crazy. You have to confess

to him, you are guilty of the crime

of having been forced.

And you see his blue eyes, the blue eyes of all the family whom you used

to know, grow narrow and glisten,

his hand types out the details

and he wants them all

but the hysteria in your voice pleases him best.

You hardly know him but now he thinks he knows you: he has taken

down your worst moment

on a machine and filed it in a file.

He knows, or thinks he knows, how much you imagined; he knows, or

thinks he knows, what you secretly wanted.

He has access to machinery that could get you put away; and if, in the

sickening light of the precinct,

and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,

your details sound like a portrait of your confessor.

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Nací para poeta o para muerto

Nací para poeta o para muerto,

escogí lo difícil

-supervivo de todos los naufragios-,

Y sigo con mis versos,

vivita y coleando.

Nací para puta o payaso,

escogí lo difícil

-hacer reír a los clientes desahuciados-,

y sigo con mis trucos,

sacando una paloma del refajo.

Nací para nada o soldado,

y escogí lo difícil

-no ser apenas nada en el tablado-,

y sigo entre fusiles y pistolas

sin mancharme las manos.

<B>

Gloria Fuertes. Obras incompletas.

Cátedra, 1984.

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GATA CATTANA - Ana Isabel García Llorente  

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GATA CATTANA - Ana Isabel García Llorente  

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Buscando una luz, buscando una luz
Yo os invoco hijas de Eva

Desde que Prometeo les mostró el truco del fuego
Sometieron nuestro ego desde Atenas a Estambul
Tú y cuántos como tú contra estas dos titánides
Corre ve y dile a aquel que no vamos a ser tan dóciles

Imbéciles se creen que son la élite caerán
Por su propio peso cuando rescate a Eurídice
Lapídame, humíllame, si quieres ponme un burka
Arráncame la voz y el clítoris pa' ser más pulcra

Escóndeme, tápame bien ese escote impuro
No sea que te pervierta o te transporte al lado oscuro
No sea que te intoxique con mi psique de cianuro
La mujer es el diablo eso seguro, ten cuidao'

Y ando cayendo ya, encallándome en mí
Propia guerra civil como Lisístrata
Sin más que decir, que aportar a la causa
Un tributo a mis musas que luchan

Diciendo que la mujer, si no es prostituta es tonta
Pero si es que no es ninguna de las dos, lo que sí está seguro es que es mala
Las mujeres no somos ni malévolas, ni malignas
No engendramos el demonio, y tampoco somos santas
O que nos santificamos cuando llegamos a ser madres

Las mujeres somos mujeres

(Lisístrata)

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Women were at the centre of social networks in Iron Age Britain

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Women were at the centre of social networks in Iron Age Britain

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Press release issued: 16 January 2025

Women were at the centre of social networks in Iron Age British Celtic communities, research in this week’s Nature suggests. The analysis of 2,000-year-old DNA reveals evidence for matrilocal Celtic societies, in which married women stayed in their ancestral communities.

The research, led by Trinity College Dublin working with archaeologists from the University of Bournemouth, was supported by researchers at the University of Bristol.

The structure of human societies is shaped by where married couples tend to reside; patrilocality is where partners predominantly reside with or near the families of the male, whereas in matrilocal societies, the couples live near the female’s parents.

Patrilocality is the most common system observed in European Neolithic, Copper and Bronze Age sites. However, archaeological evidence suggests that Celtic societies may have given women high status; for example, the Durotriges tribe, who occupied the central southern English coast around 100 BC to AD 100, buried women with valuable items. Genetic data analysed by Dr Lara Cassidy at Trinity College Dublin and colleagues support this theory.

The authors analysed the genomes of 57 individuals buried in Iron Age cemeteries associated with Durotrigian communities in southern Britain.

They discovered that most individuals were related through the maternal line and that unrelated individuals found in the cemetery were predominantly male (assumed to have migrated to the area after marriage).

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2025/january/iron-age-research.html

See also

https://phys.org/news/2025-01-ancient-genomes-reveal-iron-age.html#google_vignette

Lara Cassidy, Continental influx and pervasive matrilocality in Iron Age Britain, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08409-6. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08409-6 Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone, Women were at the centre of social networks in Iron Age Britain, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-04214-3 , doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-04214-3

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Her autobiography (1857) was the first published by a black woman in England. It provides evidence of her dedication to her profession as a nurse, as well as the racial prejudice she faced.

This autobiography demonstrates Mary Seacole's keen sense of hypocrisy and her fondness for sarcasm. She frequently stands up happily to criticize the false restrictions placed on her because she is a black woman. She comes through in her writings as a unique person with a very un-Victorian desire for freedom, travel, and adventure. (https://www.amazon.es/Wonderful-Adventures-Seacole-Lands-English-ebook/dp/B0BWWR7FXH)

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Mary Leapor (1722-1746) - ‘An Essay on Woman’ 

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Mary Leapor (1722-1746) - ‘An Essay on Woman’ 

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Woman, a pleasing but a short-lived flower,

Too soft for business and too weak for power:

A wife in bondage, or neglected maid;

Despised, if ugly; if she’s fair, betrayed.

"Obliged to work as a kitchen maid during her teenage years, Leapor was keenly aware of the restrictions she faced because of both her gender and her class. Fortunately for us, she did not let this stop her from writing poetry, and when she later returned home to keep house for her widowed father the efforts of her new friend Bridget Fremantle meant that the publication of her poetry became a real possibility. The production of two-volume anthology was funded via subscription publishing, a system through which interested patrons could basically preorder one or more copies of a work before it ever went to the press, with the money then being used to fund the printing costs.  Sadly, Leapor herself died of measles (at 24) before their plans could come to fruition but, in accordance with Leapor’s dying request, her poems were published after her death ‘for the benefit of her father’.  The posthumous subscription garnered almost 600 signatories."

(from The Age of Oddities: Reading the Eighteenth Century)

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Matrimonial Advertisements in the 19th Century

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Matrimonial Advertisements in the 19th Century

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"The following matrimonial advertisement was placed in an 1811 issue of London’s Morning Post ... Notice that the lady advertising does not mention her appearance, her age, or whether or not she is a widow or a spinster." Mimi Matthews

https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/01/04/alternative-courtship-matrimonial-advertisements-in-the-19th-century/

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Stitching the world: Embroidered Maps and Women’s Geographical Education

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Stitching the world: Embroidered Maps and Women’s Geographical Education

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From the late eighteenth century until about 1840, schoolgirls in the British Isles and the United States created embroidered map samplers and even silk globes. Hundreds of British maps were made and although American examples are more rare, they form a significant collection of artefacts. Descriptions of these samplers stated that they were designed to teach needlework and geography. The focus of this book is not on stitches and techniques used in 'drafting' the maps, but rather why they were developed, how they diffused from the British Isles to the United States, and why they were made for such a brief time. The events of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries stimulated an explosion of interest in geography. The American and French Revolutions, the wars between France and England, the War of 1812, Captain Cook's voyages, and the explorations of Lewis and Clark made the study of places exciting and important. Geography was the first science taught to girls in school. This period also coincided with major changes in educational theories and practices, especially for girls, and this book uses needlework maps and globes to chart a broader discussion of women's geographic education. In this light, map samplers and embroidered globes represent a transition in women's education from 'accomplishments' in the eighteenth century to challenging geographic education and conventional map drawing in schools and academies of the second half of the nineteenth century. There has been little serious study of these maps by cartographers and, moreover, historians of cartography have largely neglected the role of women in mapping. Children's maps have not been studied, although they might have much to offer about geographical teaching and perceptions of a period, and map samplers have been dismissed because they are the work of schoolgirls. Needlework historians, likewise, have not done in depth studies of map samplers until recently. Stitching the World is an interdisciplinary work drawing on cartography, needlework, and material culture. This book for the first time provides a critical analysis of these artefacts, showing that they offer significant insights into both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century geographic thought and cartography in the USA and the UK and into the development of female education.

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“Hope is a radical act.”

—Jaha Dukureh

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"WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS", by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014)

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"WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS", by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2014)

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We teach girls shame. Close your legs. Cover yourself. We make them feel as though by being born female, they are already guilty of something.

~

But what matters evem more is our attitude, our mindset.

What if, in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender? What if we focus on interest instead of gender?

~

I know a woman who has the same degree and same job as her husband. When they get back from work, she does most of the housework, which is true for many marriages, but what struck me was that whenever he changed the baby's nappy, she said thank you to him.

~

Some people ask, 'Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?' Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general - but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should aknowledge that.

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A book titled We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is placed in front of a potted plant with vibrant pink and orange flowers near a window.

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Moon marked and touched by sun

my magic is unwritten

but when the sea turns back

it will leave my shape behind.

I seek no favor

untouched by blood

unrelenting as the curse of love

permanent as my errors

or my pride

I do not mix

love with pity

nor hate with scorn

and if you would know me

look into the entrails of Uranus

where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell

within my birth nor my divinities

who am ageless and half-grown

and still seeking

my sisters

witches in Dahomey

wear me inside their coiled cloths

as our mother did

mourning.

I have been woman

for a long time

beware my smile

I am treacherous with old magic

and the noon's new fury

with all your wide futures

promised

I am

woman

and not white.

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Sex and gender in the lives of girls and women

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Sex and gender in the lives of girls and women

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00 sex and gender in the lives of girls and women