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Let me start with an affirmation: I consider myself a pro-feminist man. I believe it's possible to be a man and to view gender equality as being as important as any social cause on this planet. I have a daughter and a partner and a mother and a sister. I founded an NGO in Brazil that works to engage men and boys in achieving gender equality and ending violence against women. Of course I think there is a place for men in achieving full equality for girls and women. I've got skin in this game.

As a man, I celebrate the advancements the world has made toward gender equality. Women are now 40% of the global paid workforce and half of the world's food producers. With a few exceptions, girls are as likely as boys today to be in primary school. Millions of women in the Global South benefit from microcredit programs, and millions more are being lifted out of poverty with cash transfer programs. Fewer women today die during childbirth. There are more women in politics, in business, in government jobs and working outside of their homes than ever before.

But women's income continues to be on average at least 20% less than men's for the same work. About a third of the world's women will experience violence from a male partner, or some form of sexual violence. Women's full participation in the highest levels of decision-making, the media and in business is shamefully unequal. Women and girls carry out two to 10 times more of the unpaid care work in the Global South and even the most progressive countries in the global North have not achieved full equality in domestic work and childcare.

I'm outraged at how far we still have to go to achieve equality even as we have achieved so much.

At the same time, I think that too much of the work to achieve full rights for women and girls lets men off the hook. Too much of the women's rights field ignores that men have skin in the game.

We know that some men are opposed to full equality for women. But we also know that many men and boys support equality. By not shaming the vocal male opponents to women's equality, and by not capitalizing on the male advocates, many women's empowerment initiatives ignore men's and boys' role in gender equality.
Why do we need to engage men to empower women?
Let's start with ending violence against women. As Jackson Katz so powerfully reminds us, violence against women is men's violence against women. There are many reasons men use violence against female partners. But this we know: it's not genetic. It's not part of our biological make-up as men; it is learned. The violence men see as children is the violence men use as adults. Our research finds that men who witness violence against their mothers growing up are 2.5 times more likely to use violence against a female partner when they become adults.

Men who grow up with violence are traumatized men. This does not excuse men's violence against women. It explains why effective prevention must include men and boys, while we also enhance laws and law enforcement. And it makes clear how our lives as men improve when we grow up in households without violence.
What about reproductive health?
Every woman's integrity over her body and her ability to choose when and if she has children must be a core tenet of women's rights. But we must include men in this equation. This doesn't mean taking away women's right to choose and control their bodies. It means acknowledging that men are half of reproduction. To state the obvious: Except in the fairly limited cases of assisted fertility, men are equally responsible for pregnancy and should be equally responsible for contraception.

Biology determines that only women can become pregnant, but the responsibility for contraceptives and condoms is something men and women can and should share. Family planning that only focuses on women is not a step toward equality and empowerment. It is a resignation that we don't think men can change; it lets men off the hook. Currently, women are responsible for about 75% of contraceptive use in the world. Equality means that men must take more personal responsibility for their sexual and reproductive health, and must be supportive of women's contraceptive choices. And it wouldn't hurt to have men involved as allies to counter the conservative male voices that would take away women's reproductive rights.
What happens at home?
Achieving full economic equality for women means full and equal access to employment, credit, education and ownership of land and property. And it means that men and boys must do 50% of the world's unpaid care work: that includes washing dishes and waking up for 2:00 a.m. feedings. The only countries in the world that have achieved something closer to equality for women and girls in the workplace have simultaneously advanced paternity leave and other policies to promote men's participation at home.
Where do we go from here?
This International Women's Day, let's affirm that we're in this together as women and men. Our lives our intertwined. The second-class status of our partners and daughters and sisters is our loss and our shame. It corrodes our lives as men.

In her eloquent short story, "The Matter of Seggri," the science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin creates a powerful allegory of a fictional planet where women and girls live in towns and men are banished to the outskirts. Some "tamer" men are allowed occasional interactions (for sex, or for trade) with the townswomen. At the age of 10, boys must leave their mothers and sisters and live with the other banished adult men in a semi-feral state. It's a powerful, telling fable of what a world of violent men could become.

But back here on Earth, women and men live together. Sex segregation (and ethnic segregation and class segregation) is nearly always a sign of inequality, not a sign of equality. There are men whom we might wish to ban to the outskirts of our towns, but the more realistic path, and the only path to lasting change, is to help (and to obligate, if necessary) men realize the benefits of gender equality.

As a man, I affirm this: Feminism is not exclusively for women or exclusively about women. Feminism is the simple, radical notion that women and girls are human beings. That affirmation means that men are inherently involved in feminism and it means that men's lives improve when we embrace the full equality of women.

To men who are brave enough to fully accept and support it, feminism offers us the chance to see that we are not born to cause harm to others -- that we are not inherently violent and don't need to be banished to the edges of civilization. That our birthright, and that of women, is to the full range of human potential and human relations, including having close, connected, caring, non-violent and equal relationships with others.

That's what I want for my daughter and my partner and my mother and my sister. That's what I want for myself as a man and for all men on International Women's Day.

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On International Women's Day, Is There a Place for Men?

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Let me start with an affirmation: I consider myself a pro-feminist man. I believe it's possible to be a man and to view gender equality as being as important as any social cause on this planet. I have a daughter and a partner and a mother and a sister.

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JAMES BOND SUPPORTS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

The two-minute short, specially commissioned for International Women's Day, sees 007 star Daniel Craig undergo a dramatic makeover as he puts himself, quite literally, in a woman's shoes.

Directed by acclaimed 'Nowhere Boy' director/conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, scripted by Jane Goldman ('Kick Ass') and featuring the voice of Dame Judi Dench reprising her role as 'M', the film will be screened in cinemas and streamed online in a bid to highlight the levels of inequality that persist between men and women in the UK and worldwide. It is the first film featuring Bond to be directed by a woman.

In the film 'M' interrogates Bond with a series of searching questions on gender issues, from pay inequality to domestic violence. 'M' asks: "For someone with such a fondness for women, I wonder if you've ever considered what it means to be one?" Bond then appears in a blonde wig, a dress and women's shoes, in a sequence that is both highly emotional and deeply disturbing. As he/she stands silent, Dench continues to read a list of brutal statistics relating to the role of women and their treatment in our society.

Sam Taylor-Wood said: "Bond is challenged by 'M' to think about gender inequality, and I hope that the film encourages viewers to do the same. Despite great advances in women's rights, statistics show that when it comes to the balance of power between the sexes, equality is far from being a global reality. As 'M' reminds Bond, facing up to gender issues and the sometimes covert nature of sexism in the 21stcentury is something that we all have to recognise, confront and challenge."

The film was commissioned by EQUALS, a coalition of charities and organisations brought together by Annie Lennox to step up the call for equality between men and women. Produced by Barbara Broccoli, the woman behind box-office hits 'Casino Royale', 'Quantum of Solace' and the forthcoming 'Bond 23', and shot by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, the film will be released at midday on Monday 7 March to mark the centenary of International Women's Day the following day.

EQUALS spokeswoman Esme Peach said: "We are thrilled that Sam Taylor-Wood, Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench and such a prestigious production team agreed to create this powerful short film for EQUALS. We feel it is crucial to involve men in the movement for women's rights and EQUALS is about men and women working together for positive change. So who better to convey that message than the partnership of Bond and 'M', two iconic British characters with global appeal and influence - and who better to conceive and direct the film than Sam Taylor-Wood, an artist and film-maker whose work is questioning, often provocative and deeply moving?"

The film can be viewed at www.weareequals.org from midday Monday 7 March.

Notes

The cast and crew have donated their time and services pro-bono to the project, to help promote discussion and action around these crucial issues.

The film will receive its cinema premiere at the Birds Eye View Film Festival at the BFI Southbank on International Women's Day, 8 March.
http://www.birds-eye-view.co.uk

Sam Taylor-Wood is a renowned British filmmaker, photographer and conceptual artist. In 2009 she produced Crying Men, a powerful series of photographic portraits featuring leading film actors, which received worldwide acclaim. Her directorial feature film debut was the 2009 Nowhere Boy, for which she received a BAFTA award nomination.

EQUALS is a partnership of leading charities that have come together to step-up the call to demand a more equal world. Brought together by Annie Lennox OBE, International Women's Day will be a day of debate as well as a day of celebration.

The EQUALS coalition is evolving every day and includes ActionAid, Amnesty International, CARE International UK, the Fawcett Society, Oxfam, Plan UK, Save the Children, The White Ribbon Alliance, Women's Aid, Women for Women International, 1Goal, Bond, Dance4Life, Every Mother Counts, The GREAT Initiative, Merlin, Mumsnet, National Union of Students, OBJECT, One World Action, Platform51, the Royal Commonwealth Society, UKFeminista, VSO, WomanKind, Women for Refugee Women, and staff from The Elders. We are also supported by arts partners such as Brightwide, Birds Eye View, Good Screenings, Bond, FILMCLUB, Funny Women, SouthBank Centre and Sphinx Theatre.

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We Are EQUALS - Daniel Craig, Judy Dench, Jane Goldman & Sam Taylor Wood - for International Women's Day

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JAMES BOND SUPPORTS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY The two-minute short, specially commissioned for International Women's Day, sees 007 star Daniel Craig undergo a dramatic makeover as he puts himself, quite literally, in a woman's shoes.

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In the winter of 2015, when I started writing my book Modern Women, I felt sure of my parameters. The plan was to write profiles of 50 or more women who had created the modern age by expanding women's possibilities, whether by breaking barriers of race, class, age, disability, gender or sexuality; challenging the biological determinism that says a woman's reproductive capabilities are her destiny; or doing something as simple as wearing trousers when this was considered radical (hats off to Katharine Hepburn).

Katie Sandwina, for instance, the suffragette circus strongwoman whose posters in the 1910s showed her standing on a plinth emblazoned with the words, "The wonder of female strength," and holding three men on a bicycle above her head. At 210lb, with 14in biceps, Sandwina was venerated for her beauty, described as "a perfect woman by all the accepted standards".

I wrote about Frida Kahlo, with her confronting, brutal portraits of childbirth and miscarriage; Jan Morris, who became a journalistic sensation by covering the first successful attempt to summit Everest, and was then lauded as one of the greatest of all post-war authors; Virginia Woolf, with her passport into female consciousness and her exploration of its epic possibilities; and Maya Angelou, who excelled not only as a poet, memoir writer, actor, singer and documentary maker, but also came to represent the moral conscience of her country.

While profiling women, from the 17th-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi through to writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and film director Gurinder Chadha today, there was a sense of forward motion, of conditions improving for women and men. But as 2016 unfolded, the world began to seem less progressive. Politics was becoming more populist, nationalist and visibly dominated by authoritarian strongmen; the rhetoric used about refugees grew more divisive; there was a rise in hate crimes after Britain voted to leave the EU; and a concurrent backlash against feminism, summed up in the battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, which promised a significant step forward in women's representation - and delivered the opposite.

This backlash has been greeted with protest, most notably in the Women's March, the day after Trump's inauguration, in which an estimated 4.5 million women and men marched on all seven continents, in nearly 700 separate demonstrations. It has been suggested we're now entering an age of resistance, and, in that spirit, here are seven role models for the struggle ahead - each one an extraordinarily modern woman.

Jayaben Desai (1933-2010), strike leader

When Desai walked out of the Grunwick film processing plant in north London in August 1976, she began a two-year strike over pay and conditions which changed the perception of women in general, and Asian women in particular; any stereotype of subservience was impossible to maintain in the face of her tenacity, wit and courage. "What you are running here is not a factory - it is a zoo," she told her manager, as she downed tools. "But in a zoo, there are many types of animals. Some are monkeys who dance on your fingertips; others are lions who can bite your head off. We are those lions, Mr Manager."

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon (1921-2008 and 1924- ), lesbian activists

It wasn't easy to be gay in the US in 1955, when Martin and Lyon co-founded the country's first lesbian organisation, the Daughters of Bilitis. Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witch-hunt had been broadened to target gay people, and the climate was such that, for instance, the women's army corps began using a verbal test for recruits, to weed out lesbians. It included the question: "Do you envision sucking a woman's breast?"

Martin and Lyon were undeterred; they fell in love in the early 50s, and spent a lifetime organising against discrimination. Perhaps their most famous activism came in their 80s, when they were plaintiffs in a series of lawsuits that led to the ban on same-sex marriage being overturned. Two months before Martin's death, in June 2008, when Lyon was 83 and Martin was 87, they married in one of the happiest embodiments of the feminist slogan that the personal is political.

Ida B Wells (1862-1931), activist and journalist

Others had campaigned against lynching before Wells, but no one had done so with such power, analysis and determination. Her campaign led to an angry mob threatening her with death, and trashing the offices of the newspaper she part-owned and edited in Memphis. She made for New York, packing a pistol for protection, before taking her message to the UK, where supporters set up the British Anti-Lynching Committee. Wells faced severe discrimination - the New York Times called her "a slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress". But she was never cowed. Her refusal to be deferential is a lesson for all women.

Miriam Makeba (1932-2008), singer

Makeba spent the first six months of her life in a prison cell with her mother, who had been jailed for making beer; the racist laws in 30s South Africa decreed that black people were not civilised enough to drink. Makeba's hits, including irresistible dance number Pata Pata, went on to make her one of Africa's first international superstars, and after travelling to the US to perform in late 1959, she was barred from returning to her home country. This only made her speak out more determinedly against apartheid. Her exile finally ended in 1990, after Nelson Mandela 's release from prison. Following her death in 2008, he remarked she had been "a mother to our struggle". Her superlative use of her voice - in song and in politics - is a reminder of the necessity of speaking up, even (especially) when the circumstances seem impossible.

Sophie Scholl (1921-1943), anti-Nazi activist

On 18 February 1943, Scholl and her brother, Hans, headed to the University of Munich to distribute their latest leaflet. They were both part of a small resistance group, the White Rose, whose members had caught the Gestapo's attention by travelling around the country, posting leaflets from cities all over Germany, giving the impression of a large, organised, potentially very troublesome network. As the pair distributed leaflets in the university building that day, a caretaker spotted them, and the local Gestapo chief was summoned. Under interrogation, Scholl was pressured to betray her brother and to say she supported Hitler. She refused. On trial days later, the 21-year-old student interrupted the notorious Nazi judge Roland Freisler more than once. "What we said and wrote are what many people are thinking," she said. "They just don't say it out loud!" She and Hans were beheaded by guillotine on 22 February - all six members of the White Rose were executed that year. In mid-1943, Allied forces printed thousands of their leaflets and dropped them from planes all over Germany.

Harriet Tubman (1822-1913), abolitionist

In September 1849, Tubman escaped slavery in Maryland, making a 90-mile journey to Philadelphia on foot, with the help of the underground railroad - a group of people who assisted fugitive slaves by providing hiding places and guiding them to the next safe spot. This was an era in which fugitive slaves were hunted with bloodhounds, and some slave owners cut the achilles tendons of unsuccessful escapees. Tubman could have been expected to simply enjoy her liberation, and stay away from slave states for ever. Instead, she returned to Maryland, the first of 13 missions in eight years, leading about 70 people to freedom, including her own parents. She also worked as a nurse and a spy during the American civil war, and guided troops in a raid along the Combahee river which led to more than 750 people being freed from slavery.
Modern Women by Kira Cochrane is published by Frances Lincoln on 2 March (£20). To order a copy for £17, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Topics

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The strike-leader, the singer and the anti-Nazi activist: role models for resistance

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In the winter of 2015, when I started writing my book Modern Women, I felt sure of my parameters.

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t was towards the end of her seventh decade when Connie Burkhart attended her first protest march. The journey on this icy day from her small, rural community of Hope, Idaho (population 86), to Sandpoint, the city where the Women's March was being held, wasn't easy. As she gritted her driveway, she told the friend accompanying her that the Republicans should be scared by the effort they were prepared to make.

Idaho is a Republican state, ("very red", says Burkhart) but the numbers attending the Sandpoint rally, held at a theatre, spilled over on to the street. The atmosphere was emotional, she says, because for the first time since Donald Trump 's election win in November, people realised they weren't alone. This is the most dramatic era Burkhart, 68, has lived through. She's a Democrat, but has voted Republican in the past, "because I vote for the person who I think is best". "My first thought when the president was elected - I can't say his name - was that, for the first time in my life, I have no respect for the president of the United States."

As a result, she has been organising. She attended a meeting of the Sandpoint Indivisible group and knows of two other such groups in the area. Indivisible is a guide to resisting Trump's agenda, put together by around 30 congressional staffers. The guide went viral when it was published online in December. By the time I speak to Burkhart in mid-February, the guide has been downloaded more than 1m times, and there are thousands of local groups registered on the Indivisible website, determined to "resist Trump's agenda, focus on local, defensive congressional advocacy and embrace progressive values". Taking a leaf from the conservative Tea Party movement, to which many trace the start of Trump's rise, the guide advises people to react to the Washington agenda - bombarding their elected Members of Congress with their objections, whether in person, by letter or phone (making those same politicians worry, in turn, about their chances of re-election). Burkhart has been busy. A retired school administrator, she objected strongly by letter, for instance, to the nomination of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education (DeVos is a long-term advocate of publicly funding private schools).

When we speak, she is about to attend an organising meeting with a group she has formed with 15 other women, and says she recently attended a Democrat function, where a state congressman was speaking. "He said the first time he came to the pizza and politics event in Sandpoint, in 2013, five people showed up, and one left," she says. "At this event, 160 people showed up. So something's happening." She pauses. "Something's happening."

Before the Women's Marches took place, the day after Trump's inauguration, there were suggestions they would be pointless and ineffective - nothing more than a nice day out. On 21 January, women and men marched on all seven continents (in Antarctica, a placard proclaimed "Penguins march for peace"). With almost 700 marches across the world, and an estimated 4.5 million marchers in all, this was among the biggest human-rights demonstrations in history.

In Palmer, Alaska - another red state - Burkhart's cousin, retired nurse Kay Bush, 65, went on her second-ever protest (the first was in support of the Roe v Wade abortion rights ruling in the early 70s). In the snow, she marched alongside people dressed as suffragettes and orange-faced parodies of Trump. There was a surprisingly high turnout in general, she says, but she was particularly struck by the number from the city of Wasilla, where former vice-presidential candidate and Tea Party favourite Sarah Palin was once mayor.

Women at many of the marches - including the one I attended in London, alongside an estimated 100,000 others - found themselves in an unusual state of enthusiastic stasis, a sea of people, many in pink "pussy" hats, stretching out around us. Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who attended the main march in Washington, says it was one of the most exhilarating days of her life. "It was also a day of standing for an hour and a half in total human gridlock."

Kendell says she heard the same story of overwhelming crowds from a friend in Boise, Idaho; her sister in Park City, Utah; and her family who marched in San Francisco, California. "Everyone reported three main things. The marches were far larger than anything they imagined. There was a level of camaraderie and hail-fellow-well-met kind of attitude - we were all family together. And there was just ferocity that we will not allow hate and degradation to triumph."

Carmen Perez, one of the four co-chairs of the Washington march alongside Tamika D Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Bob Bland, points out that the protests were grounded in the non-violent ideology of the civil-rights movement. Extraordinarily, there wasn't a single incident of violence on any of the marches, worldwide.

Perhaps the reason the central event in Washington attracted such global support is that Trump seems the face of a broader backlash against women's rights. It has been two years since the Women's Equality Party (WEP) formed in the UK, and its leader, Sophie Walker, tells me that in the past six months she has seen a significant shift backwards. Whereas, at first, people would challenge her to make the case for why a party for women's equality was necessary, she now finds herself being challenged to make the case for why women's equality itself is necessary. "There is this extreme language of division and hate and racism and sexism and misogyny that is being normalised by Trump and by elements of rightwing populism in our own country," she says. This has happened since the Brexit referendum, "but increasingly so since Trump, because that has emboldened those similar elements in this country", she adds.

The backlash has prompted a backlash of its own. The WEP saw a jump in membership after the Brexit result, a jump after Trump's win, and the four days following the women's march brought a spike of about 1,000 new members. "I've had so many conversations," says Walker, "with people who say: 'Oh, up until now I would sit and say, Oh God, someone should really do something about this. And now I've realised it's me. I have to do something about this.'"

The march has inspired a wave of action around the world. Vivienne Mayer, a spokeswoman for the Women's March Global, tells me of the network of local grassroots teams that have formed to enforce the child marriage ban in Malawi, to combat female genital mutilation in Ghana and fight for women to walk the streets safely in India. In Frankfurt, Germany, the Women's March organisers have developed eight pillars of resistance, including rapid-response actionsIn London, on Valentine's Day, the Women's March responded to a call for people to send letters to local MPs and councils, asking them to support the so-called Dubs amendment, which had been expected to enable around 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children to settle in the UK until the government suddenly announced it would be stopping at just 350 children.

Ten actions are being issued by the central Women's March over the course of 100 days, the second of which was a call for groups to meet up in "huddles" and organise. By mid-February, more than 5,000 huddles had been set up around the world, from Mexico to Madagascar, Morocco to Japan. At the one I attended in London, organised by feminist group Fourth Wave, there was discussion of upcoming protests before they set to work making placards.

Jade Moulds and Sophie Yates, both 28, and members of Fourth Wave since it was set up two years ago, tell me about the work they have been doing in supporting feminists fighting for reproductive rights in Poland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. They are keen to work with Russian activists around the recent decriminalisation of some forms of domestic violence in the country and are determined Trump's win won't deprive UK issues of oxygen. "People were really active around austerity, and it hasn't finished, and nothing's changed," says Moulds. "If anything, the cuts are getting harsher and people are distracted."

Yates says they will also fight for the right of Europeans to remain in the UK post-Brexit. "That isn't directly a feminist issue," she says, and Moulds jumps in. "Well, 50% of the people who will be affected will be women, so that's why we want to be a voice."

That January day seems to have been the start of a new era of street resistance. Perez says many who attended the women's marches had never protested before, but after Trump signed the travel ban into effect, they came to airports across the US, "to show their solidarity and support for the refugees coming to this country, and didn't leave until the refugees were actually released". In London, the demonstration against the travel ban outside Downing Street was estimated at 30,000 people and had a similar atmosphere to the Women's March - dominated by homemade signs, and a slight lack of confidence when it came to chanting; a crowd apparently new to protest, but committed and enthusiastic.

For International Women's Day on 8 March, the Women's March and the International Women's Strike are calling for women to go on strike in a major action against economic inequality, male violence and attacks on reproductive rights. On that same day, says Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in the US, there is going to be a march on the Department of Labor then, in the week of 10 April - spring break for many US schools - families will be taking action together, with plans for a caravan of children to travel from Florida to Washington DC to deliver letters to the administration. Walker is currently organising a Women's Day Off for 2018 to coincide with the centenary of women first being given the vote in the UK. There are also tax marches planned across the US on 15 April and three upcoming marches in DC: the March for Science on 22 April; the People's Climate March on 29 April; and an Immigrants March on 6 May.

Hebh Jamal, 17, has been involved in organising two student walkouts in New York so far, one just after Trump's election, and one in February. The second involved about 700 children, she says, walking out of 20 schools at midday, and marching to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education as they marched, she says, and so their message was about the importance of education, and "also about the Muslim ban, the treatment of African Americans in this country, and of LGBTQ people".

I ask if she is fearful about the next four years with Trump in office. "Of course," she says. "My younger brother has autism, and I have a lot of friends who are immigrants ... For me, personally, going to college soon, and just being a Muslim in general in this era it goes two ways. I'm not necessarily as scared for myself as I am for people around me - I mean I am a citizen, I am American." But she says that, as a visible Muslim, there is a genuine fear that she could be targeted with violence.

She is currently creating a student coalition, a platform where high-school students across New York City can convene and be a force for political influence. "The idea, and the hopeful goal, is that there can't be any policy passed without the consent of younger people. And hopefully it could perpetuate coalitions across the country." This is inspired, says Jamal, by the civil rights movement, with the sit-ins staged at segregated restaurants, commitment to non-violence and determination to stand firm until laws changed. "I look to those examples," she says, "to see that we have leverage - there's a little risk, but potentially great gains."

Signs of resistance are arising everywhere. Kate Kendell is a lawyer and was recently involved in the training of 1,200 lawyers in San Francisco, including Muslim advocates as well as immigrant rights, reproductive justice and queer organisations giving information about what worries them most (for her, it is the rollback of trans rights, and the rights of LGBTQ asylum seekers). "At the end of the day, the lawyers could sign up with the different organisations they wanted to provide pro bono assistance to. It was jam packed and, from my perspective, a wild success." There are more training sessions planned in other cities.

The Trump administration has threatened to defund reproductive healthcare provider Planned Parenthood, and Dayle Steinberg, CEO of the organisation's southeastern Pennsylvania chapter, says the local support has been extraordinary. The week before Trump's election, the organisation has 45 visits to its web page; the week afterwards, 800. "In the week before the election," she continues, "six people completed volunteer applications; the week after, 135. Right now, more than 700 volunteer applications have been completed ... And the donations, both locally and nationally, have been pretty much unprecedented." The US vice-president, Mike Pence, has long opposed Planned Parenthood and, last year, a wave of donations started streaming in in his name - by the end of January 2017, there had been 83,450. For each, Pence will have received a thank-you note.

Finally, there has been a rush of women pledging to run for office. Between election day and mid-February, Emily's List, which helps pro-choice Democratic women get into office, heard from more than 6,500 women - nearly seven times the number in contact in the 22 months before Trump's victory. VoteRunLead, which encourages women to run for office, has recently had 5,500 women sign up for its online course.

On the day after the Women's March, 500 women gathered at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington for a training session organised by Emily's List, in conjunction with six other groups, including Higher Heights, which works to support black women's leadership at all levels. The session was fully booked a week in advance, with 500 more women on the waiting list.

Dana Vickers Shelley, 59, a black woman from Baltimore County, Maryland, was in attendance. A communications specialist, Shelley campaigned for Hillary Clinton and has worked in and around politics for years. She always laughed off the idea of running herself. But the weekend after Trump's victory, she resolved to do so.

"The one positive thing, for me, about Hillary losing," says Shelley, "is that all of these women now believe they can make a difference ... Maybe if she had won, people would have said: 'Yes, if she can do it, I can do it too,' but let's put it this way, there wouldn't have been 500 women in a room on 22 January learning about how they could run for office."

In other words, there is an urgency now, she says. She went to a rally in her state capital, Annapolis, recently; Maryland has a Republican governor, and she says he has made no comment, "on anything that 45 has done". (Trump is the 45th president - like Burkhart, Shelley prefers not to refer to him by name.) "So we were there saying: 'No ban, no wall, make the call,' and the point is that there were all these people who would have been at the mall, or watching TV, or reading books on a Saturday, if Hillary had won." Now, at rallies, at town halls, in huddles all over the US and beyond, they are organising, protesting and continuing the great march forward.

Modern Women: 52 Pioneers by Kira Cochrane (Frances Lincoln, £20) is out now. To order a copy for £17, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.

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'Something's happening ...' How the Women's March inspired a new era of resistance

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Since Trump's inauguration, women in the US and around the world have been organising, protesting and preparing to run for office - and the wave is growing every day

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International Women's Day 2024 campaign theme: Inspire Inclusion

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FREE International Women's Day 2024 campaign theme resources to Inspire Inclusion - #IWD2024 #InspireInclusion

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The lesson begins by challenging some stereotypes and asking students to consider why there aren't more women in science. They then read a text which provides some possible reasons, and discuss how these relate to their own opinions.

The lesson then focuses on reference words, and how they link a text together, before a final speaking tasks about different jobs and gender.

Aims:

To raise awareness of the relative lack of women in science, and encourage students to consider why this might be so.

To develop the skill of identifying the main ideas in a semi academic text.

To help students understand how reference words are used to link the ideas of a text together.

Age:

Older teenagers and adults

Level:

CEF level B2 and above
Time:
45 minutes + 15 minutes for extension activity
Materials
The lesson plan and student worksheets can be downloaded as PDFs below.
Looking for more content like this?
Unsung heroes is a lesson for older teenagers and adults at B1 level and above. The lesson involves a jigsaw reading activity about five remarkable women, a focus on relative clauses and a final writing activity. Link to this lesson: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/unsung-heroes

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The lesson begins by challenging some stereotypes and asking students to consider why there aren't more women in science. They then read a text which provides some possible reasons, and discuss how these relate to their own opinions. The lesson then focuses on reference words, and how they link a text together, before a final speaking tasks about different jobs and gender.

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Emma Watson introduces the new HeForShe.org

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Have you heard about Emma Watson's HeForShe campaign? It's all about gender equality - which means women and men having the same rights. Watch the first part of the video (to 5 minutes and 15 seconds!), do the exercises and then have a look at the HeForShe website.