A note from our Chief Executive, Laura Montgomery
A very Happy International Women’s Day from all of us at Glasgow City.
As a football club created by women and solely for women and girls, today is one of 365 other days crucially important to us in celebrating women and their achievements, challenging those who create and perpetuate gender bias in our society and taking positive action as much as we possibly can for equality.
We live in a world filled with inspiring women, from our sisters, our mothers and grandmothers, our daughters, our colleagues and our friends. We also live in a world filled with incredible men, who live their own lives to help create a more equal society for women. I am very fortunate to have a number of these men involved with our own club.
As much as we celebrate women today and we will over the course of this week at our own club highlight some of our own inspiring women, it is important to remember we are still far from equal.
We do not live in a gender equal world. The gender pay gap is significant, the gender pension gap is frightening. In sports not only do women suffer greatly from parity in pay, but also in sponsorship and visibility in the media. There are not enough women in boardrooms, not enough women in leadership roles and still no equality in the political landscape. For those women who are in power, their leadership has been clear and admirable from afar, with Jacinda Arden just one terrific personal example.
We do not have enough women in STEM roles, yet women and girls very often excel academically.
There are not enough female directors and the male gaze still dominates our movie screens. It is believed that only about half of films meet the Bechdel test, most basically described as more than two women appearing in a movie and have dialogue with each other about something other than just a man. Is this really acceptable in 2021?
As we hopefully helped highlight last November/December as part of the UN 16 Days of Action, violence against women around the world continues to be at an alarming and completely unacceptable level. We must all do what we can to change this.
The Women and Equalities Parliamentary Committee reported last year that over 6 in 10 women in the UK feel negative about their body image. Diet culture, post-childbirth pressures, being bombarded with images of photo-shopped, edited and sexualised women as well as the aging process and the lack of visual representation of older women are all things that cause women to suffer with poor body image.
I feel I could write pages on the injustices and inequality, but whilst we have a long, long way to go, today we celebrate those who are incredible and we ask that we all work together, everyday to make the world a more gender equal society as every new day passes. It is believed it will take at least 100 years for anywhere near gender equality. Let’s all do our bit to move this much, much faster.