This March issue of Perspective comes at a time of three important anniversaries. It’s now 48 years since the UN decided to mark International Women’s Day annually on 8 March, and twenty years since the invasion of Iraq on 19 March 2003. A month earlier, millions of people – including the magazine’s staff – marched in protest around the globe as part of the world’s largest ever coordinated demonstration. Meanwhile, it’s three short but intense years since the UK entered an unprecedented national lockdown as part of government measures intended to combat Covid-19.
Despite the many advances made, the issue of women’s rights holds perennial areas of grave concern. Even the question “what is a woman?” no longer has a straightforward answer. In this issue, Kamin Mohammadi, (The courage of Iranian women) asks why the world has stopped focussing on the “Woman Life Freedom” movement in Iran, when many still face imprisonment or death for their opposition to extreme state repression. And the UK is not immune: here, a woman dies at the hands of a man every three days. Jess Phillips, Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding, talks to Rowan about her annual, sombre ritual when she rises in the House of Commons and reads out the names of those killed over the past year (The Interview with Jess Phillips). In a more cheerful vein, Zoe Strimpel tries to discern who’s on top in the sex wars (Unfazed but confused) and historian Katie Hickman revisits the subject of her book, Daughters of Britannia – the audacious Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu). In the same uplifting vein, Helen Lederer shows how women’s contribution to comedic writing has been every bit the equal of men’s (Funny Woman).
As to the other anniversaries, Fred Skulthorp talks to the academic Toby Green about The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor, the book he co-authored with Thomas Fazi, which questions whether lockdown helped anyone except the laptop classes (Silence of the lambs). And Amir Amirani reflects on the many lasting impacts of the 2003 war and protests (The many and the few).
As ever, we’ve tried to bring you viewpoints and voices that are not always given space elsewhere. This includes writing from the frontline of the environmental movement, which Peter in particular has championed for the past twenty years. Wade Graham highlights the dangers of GMO tree-planting (p 45), and in his Letter from Elsewhere, Ben McPherson (p 76) lets out a howl of protest at the ongoing cull of Norway’s tiny wolf population. It is fascinating when these different themes collide, as they do in Natasha Walter’s Journal (Placards, poetry and the price of protest). The founder of the charity Women for Refugee Women and author of 1998’s The New Feminism, these days Walter is a dogged protestor against the world’s biggest polluters.
As we sign off, we think it fitting to pay tribute to Baroness “Betty” Boothroyd, former hoofer and first woman speaker of the House of Commons. In 1997, when Rowan became editor of The Erotic Review, a national newspaper phoned her publican mother, Hazel, to ask what she made of her daughter’s disreputable choice of career. Without missing a beat Hazel replied, “Betty Boothroyd started as a Tiller Girl and look at her now!”
*Protest remains central to the women’s movement, and other causes such as peace and the environment, as does the Pankhurst name (see Natasha Walter’s Journal, Placards, poetry and the price of protest). In this issue of Perspective we also consider the many confusing societal currents confronting western women, which fracture the sense of unity that protest brings.
Rowan Pelling and Peter Phelps
Editors
