A celebration of the impact of revolutionary females marks International Women’s Day on Tuesday, with a host of events taking place all around the city over the next few days.
This year’s campaign is a pledge for parity and organisers hope people will celebrate “the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women”.
Pamela Ball, founder of the Liverpool branch of the Women’s Equality Party, told JMU Journalism: “Despite the fact we have come a long way from where we were when we didn’t have the vote last century, we still have a long way to go.”
“Part of our goal in the Women’s Equality Party is that we don’t want to wait another 100 years for anything to happen.”
International Women’s Day was founded in 1911 and became officially sanctioned by the United Nations, which began sponsoring it in 1975. Its history is rooted in movements designed to achieve better pay and voting rights for women, problems they still face today.
Pamela said: “Our aim is to get women into more legislative parliamentary positions who can push through the agendas. If we wait, the way things are going right now, it would take 70 years to close the gender pay gap and that’s just not acceptable. We’re talking two generations.”
There are also challenges within the media and aggression towards women online.
She added: “If you look at the page three model, we are still objectifying and sexualising women. We could have the celebration of women and great leaders but instead we have that.
“There is no doubt about it that women take more online abuse than men do. If someone threatened to kill David Cameron or rape him because of something he said there would be a huge outcry but we allow it to happen to women on Twitter all the time.”
An evening labelled ‘A Celebration of Pioneering Women’ for the Women’s Organisation will be held tomorrow (Tuesday) at 6pm in 54 St James Street. It will feature an esteemed panel of businesswomen, discussing their journeys to success and the future for enterprising females.
Elsewhere, the International Slavery Museum will be holding an event at 2pm as Dr Ray Costello presents a talk highlighting the female abolitionists who fought to end slavery, looking at how they were perceived and treated.
On the same day, the Walker Art Gallery is to host a talk at 1pm with four female winners of the John Moores Painting Prize: Mary Martin, Lisa Milroy, Sarah Pickstone and Rose Wylie.