‘The Time is Now’: Education unions celebrate women’s activism on International Women’s Day 2018

March 8^th 2018 may go down in the history books as the first International Women’s Day celebration after the ‘global uprising for women’s rights’ that started in 2017.
On January 21^st 2017, six million people in more than six hundred cities on all of the world’s continents took to the streets in coordinated ‘women’s marches’. The rise of conservatism and right wing political leadership in many countries and a regression of hard-won human rights across the world, were key factors that spurred women to organise, protest and resist. In the latter half of 2017, mobilisation coalesced around the viral #MeToo social media campaign, which shone a glaring light on the high prevalence of sexual abuse, harassment and violence that countless women and girls face in all spheres and walks of life. More...