Feminist Statistics: Why We Still Need Feminism
Women and non-binary people have come a long way since the term ‘Feminism’ came about in the late 1880s. This year we celebrated the 100th anniversary of some women in the UK getting the vote, a statue of Millicent Fawcett now stands in Parliament Square holding the sign “Courage calls to courage everywhere”, and, get your party hats on — Ireland has finally Repealed the 8th!
Often it can be hard to stay positive in the fight against the patriarchy; it can feel lonely and even hopeless sometimes. We have to remind ourselves why we fight so we can keep our motivation rolling, but we must also remember that we still have work to do. This isn’t an article to get you down, but rather to have a list of statistics to go to if someone tells you that feminism has completed its job — which, lets face it, most of us have heard…
- Women earn on average 9% less than men
- 62 million girls are denied education all over the world
- Worldwide only 22% of parliamentarians are women, in the UK it reached 29% in 2015
- 1 in 3 women are sexually abused at some point in their lifetime
- Each minute, 28 girls are married before they are ready
- An estimated 200 million girls have undergone Female Genital Mutilation
- 71% of all trafficking worldwide are women and girls
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dismissed 52% of sexual harassment claims in 2015 despite 1 in 3 women suffering
- There are more CEO’s named John than there are women CEO’s altogether
- Only 7% of director’s behind 2016’s top-grossing films were women
- A mere 17% of 3,212 producer, editors and writers on these films were women- the same percentage in 1998
- The International Organisation for Migration found that 80% of Nigerian women who arrive in Sicily will go on to live a life of forced prostitution in Europe
- 1 in 10 girls in the UK aged 14–21 can’t afford menstrual products
- 68,000 women in the UK are currently homeless
- Women only make up 17% of crowd scenes on screens yet we are 51% of the population
- 85,000 women in the UK are raped every year and over 400,000 are sexually assaulted
- 70% of speaking roles in Hollywood films are men (although actresses are 5 times more likely to be asked to get naked than their male counterparts)
- Women in Britain spend an average of £18,000 on their periods over a lifetime, making period poverty a very prevalent problem in the UK
- More than 137,700 girls missed school in 2017 due to not being able to afford sanitary products
- 8,000 girls a year are expelled or drop out of school in Tanzania due to pregnancy
- 60% of all undernourished people are women and girls
So, whilst we should celebrate all that we’ve accomplished so far, we should remember to keep the fires in our hearts sparked and not let those who believe it is time for us to sit back down get to us. The power of Feminists is very, very real and strong, and we have to stick together in order to fight (and win!) for equality.
Power to you, badass Feminists. We’ve got this.
Article by Helena Burton — Jones
