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Why we need International Women's Day

Chance UK

3 min read Partner content

Gracia McGrath, chief executive of Chance UK reflects on why International Women's Day is incredibly important, because it starts a much needed conversation.

Initiatives like Everywoman Safe Everywhere - Labour's Commission on Women's Safety and the government's Action Plan, calling for an end to violence against women and girls, focus on the issues of importance and reiterate the real problem that we have with violence against women and girls both at home and abroad.

The call to end violence against women and girls is desperately needed, because we are at a stage where it has become fashionable.

Men's behaviour shows an increased amount of machoism towards women and amongst the younger generation of women we are seeing a staggering level of acceptance of violence.

Take the Chris Brown example. When he was charged with beating Rihanna before the Grammy Awards in 2009, the charge sheet was horrendous. But when it was made public, there were cases of young girls Tweeting and putting up messages on the internet sayings things like, "I would put up with a beating to go out with Chris Brown".

Incidences like this show the level of acceptance of violence amongst young women.

There is an attitude that Brown did what he did and that is fine, it is a little bit embarrassing, but it is all forgiven. It doesn't matter that he didn't publically apologise.

We work with young boys, who show violent tendencies and believe in their need for them to have positive male role models, but there is also a need to work with girls who have grown up being witness to or victims of domestic violence.

Some girls are subject to violence, they are living in violent homes, and their whole communities are incredibly violent. That obviously has an impact on girls and they need to know that violence and aggression towards them is not acceptable.

Girls need positive male and female role models too. They need to know that actually it is not acceptable for a man to beat a woman.

We are not just talking about physical violence, but verbal violence, for example men frequently calling women ho's. This is a form of violence and type of behaviour that young girls should know is not acceptable.

People ask if in today's world advertisements against rape are necessary

We are increasingly hearing reports of rape, particularly gang rape. It is frightening that we are at a stage that we need to remind people that rape is not acceptable, but we do.

We need to fight against the culture of women being used as an accessory, there to be used and abused.

This is why we need International Women's Day, because it starts that conversation, a conversation that hopefully transcends beyond one day.

Gracia McGrath OBE is chief executive of Chance UK, a mentoring programme that works with children aged 5-11. Chance UK also now runs a specific girl's project.

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