What do you think women can achieve in the next 20 years?

[Al1cewith2020vision]

Around the time of the millennium I was part of a health planning group for 2020. As part of this, we asked groups and individuals what they thought healthcare should look like by 2020.

As it's now NYE 2020 (And I've emerged from the rabbit hole to tryout a new username) I was thinking about how the question could apply to FWR for the future. What would you like to see happen to women and women's rights in the next two decades?

As the mother of Daughters, I hope that they have to fight less. I hope that they experience less grinding-down everyday sexism and I hope they have better healthcare.

In no particular order;

I hope women are listened to when they have health issues.

I hope women's sport still exists in a meaningful way.

I hope women are encouraged and enabled to participate in sport and physical activity.

I hope women are able to access safe female spaces.

I hope girls with autism spectrum disorders are given the right support.

I hope cross sex hormones and other treatments will not be administered to children and that psychological support will be available.

I hope domestic violence and rape are dealt with seriously by the criminal justice system with the blame attached to perpetrators not victims.

I hope employment rights for women improve and that women finally achieve equal pay.

I hope the burden of strategies to tackle climate change do not fall disproportionately on women.

I hope women and girls can wear what they want, do what they want and be who they want to be.

Happy New Year all.

Happy New Year 🥳

I hope that women are granted more dignity on maternity wards. More staff would probably help.

I hope women's physical needs are discussed and helped where possible in education and the workplace, like space to breastfeed, accommodation of menopausal symptoms, IVF side effects, pregnancy discrimination etc.

My hope is that porn sites are not free to abuse women the way they are now , it can't go much further can it.
My hope is for a revolution. For me, I plan to be radical. I feel empowered.

Caring work by women to be properly paid and valued (in aged care, childcare etc)

Physical and mental safety for women and girls in psychiatric wards.

I hope maternity leave and benefits are improved, not eroded.

Porn is illegal
Rape is the most prosecuted crime and the victim is respected and believed as default
Choking during sex is considered assault and punishable by prison sentence

Women make up at least half of all of senior leadership, Parliament, House of Lords etc
Women earn the same as men in the same jobs for the same hours
Men and women share childcare, domestic chores equally, straight down the middle
Surrogacy is illegal
Sex work is illegal
Women are equally represented in national broadcast news media
Women are no longer considered beautiful based on how they are in terms of appearance or adherence to sex-based stereotypes

Sorry did you mean a wish list for the next 20 years or what is achievable? Either way it's good to be ambitious!

What strikes me about the replies is how little we are really asking for.

To be treated fairly and with dignity and to be safe.

Some of the same ones others mentioned, though I don't know how likely they are:

-porn illegal or much more tightly controlled
-sex work illegal or very reduced through policy changes
-I would like to see some kind of big commission or study that looks at the way that increased technology and science in policing and crime detection has affected rates of convictions in cases of rape and sexual assault. I'm not sure what outcomes I'd want to see from that because I really don't know what it would show, but I think its something that needs to be looked into in a rigorous, systemic and professional way.
-I'd like to see proper funding of midwifery in my province.

Oh - and for sex work, I think that is going to have to include things like sex in the media that isn't considered porn. Though that may be more about changes in social attitudes rather than changes in the law.

I want all of that stuff.

Plus I want all women's clothes to be made with deep pockets.

Equal pay and more flexible work because even though we are just as good at our jobs we still shoulder more of the caring responsibility. Abolition of marriage in its current form or better divorce laws that stop working mothers being fleeced.

I hope for all of what's been said - but honestly I hope we can hold onto the rights & small gains that we have. I worry for younger generation of women.

The fucking pornification of everything.

The abuse of language & what that means for women

The capture of institutions by queer/gender theory.

What a fight we have...

I hope we can hold onto the rights & small gains that we have.

At the moment that's all I hope for too. There is currently a worldwide war on women, attempting to roll back their rights to sexual autonomy and reproductive freedom. There are many men out there who believe that women's only function is to serve as sexual partners for men, willing or not. Some of them are managing to enlist women in the assault on women's rights. It's not going to be easy.

For us to keep and be allowed to use - including here on MN - the language we need to challenge the discrimination and disadvantage we experience all through life because of our biology

I think we need a new people’s movement for women (maybe like Extinction Rebellion has been for the environment) to highlight to the public the serious dangers women are facing and we need to have a clear list of demands like to secure government targets for reduction of harms agains women.
This is a time of crisis for women’s rights.
Look at how misogyny and porn has groomed us a society and what it’s doing. It has to stop. It’s affecting women negatively across everything- from our access to legal justice if we are raped, to our employment rights if we state facts, and killing off our chances in women’s sporting competitions and deterring women from taking up healthy exercise and leisure opportunities just to name a few things.

I think for example Stickerwoman and the multiple women’s rights meetings in the uk and #metoo globally are all recent examples of this kind of campaigning but we also need to secure engagement with the democratic political process and parties and with our legal justice system, and we need to challenge the deep rooted misogyny we have in society, in order to change the infrastructure around women and children’s lives in a lasting way. Only that lasting change will start to make positive changes for women and children that are sustainable.