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March4Women: More Women Needed In Power Says Sussex University Alumna, Helen Pankhurst

This year's March4Women event is moving online due to the pandemic, with a virtual event at noon on Sunday (March 7).

Normally, hundreds of activists and celebrities march down Whitehall in London ahead of International Women's Day, but this year the march will be done online and through social media.

CARE International, which is behind the March4Women event for gender equality, is a charity which works around the globe to tackle poverty and achieve social justice.

Helen Pankhurst, who is the great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and granddaughter of Sylvia Pankhurst, leaders in the British suffragette movement, is CARE International UK's campaign ambassador.

She's also a University of Sussex alumna, studying African and Asian Studies in 1987.

This year's focus is #StopTellingHalfTheStory, a drive for more women in positions of power. The charity wants to see more women in leadership at this year's G7 summit, at COP26 climate summit, and demonstrated through UK Aid. Both summits will be hosted in the UK in 2021.

It also wants the UK government to:

- Increase support through UK Aid for women’s leadership and rights, including women’s rights organisations responding to crises

- Ensure diverse women’s leadership and priorities shape the G7 agenda on recovery from COVID-19

- Make gender justice and women’s leadership central to the COP26 agenda.

According to Helen, the consequence of not having diversity of decision makers is that they don't look at the real problems, and the solutions that are offered are 'half-baked'.

Helen said:

"If we look at how slow the government was to understand that domestic violence was going to increase and what it could do in terms in policy; if we look at the issues around who was going to become unemployed; pregnancy related discrimination; issues around homecare and how that was going to affect families...

"There's so many layers and layers in the UK, and globally, where male dominated decision making has been insufficient and inappropriate to all sorts of consequences."

MARCH4WOMEN - MORE

She added: "I hope that with equality of representation we will have better policies and that will benefit everybody."

On Sunday (March 7) a free online event is hosted by STYLIST, featuring a mixture of music, poetry and panel discussion.

You can find out more and join the event here.

 

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