29/08/2026
Women’s Equality Day: Equality Is Not Enough
On Women’s Equality Day, I think about the women whose shoulders I stand on - women who persevered through discrimination, often with few resources, and still made space for women like me.
Honouring that legacy means questioning what equality actually looks like today.
Because equality is not enough when the starting line was never equal.
Equality says: give everyone the same opportunity.
Equity asks: what does each person need to genuinely access it?
That distinction matters.
When it comes to VAWG, equal freedom means little if fear, dependency, coercive control or violence determines a woman’s choices.
For victims of modern slavery - poverty, immigration status, gender and previous abuse can intersect until rights bear little resemblance to the ability to exercise them.
And with women and girls in s*x work, whatever our views, equality cannot mean ignoring what shapes women’s choices - poverty, exploitation, trafficking, violence, addiction or the need to survive.
It matters for the next generation.
I have always focused on prevention because we must intervene before inequality becomes harm: educating boys and young men, challenging misogyny and online harms, and giving girls the knowledge, confidence and protection to navigate the world.
Perhaps the most ambitious form of equality is prevention.
Not simply helping a woman escape violence, but creating a world where she is less likely to experience it.
Not simply rescuing someone from exploitation, but addressing the conditions that made it possible.
Not simply giving a woman a seat at the table, but asking who built it, who designed the rules, and what she overcame just to reach the room.
The familiar image of equity shows people standing on boxes to see over a fence: equality gives everyone one box; equity gives each person what they need.
But why is the fence there at all?
Perhaps equality is not about finding enough boxes. It is about understanding who needs them today, providing them without apology and doing the harder work of dismantling the structures that made them necessary in the first place.
