March is a fantastic month. Spring is really starting to get underway, the days are lengthening and, at the end of the month, the clocks will move forward an hour into British Summer Time. Everything is starting to feel more hopeful. I celebrate my birthday in March (although getting older isn’t always something I want to be reminded of), and in this country, and across the world, we celebrate women too. 

We start the month of March with International Women’s Day on the 8th of the month – a day on which to commemorate women’s fight for equality and celebrate how far we’ve come, whilst also remembering that there is always more to do. Then, at some stage in the month (depending on when Easter falls), we celebrate Mothering Sunday or Mothers’ Day, as we give thanks for the mothers who gave us life and cared for us as we lived. Finally, in the Church, we celebrate Lady Day on the 25th March, or to give the day it’s posh name, we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation – the day when we remember the Virgin Mary being told that she would bear a son for God (nine months before Christmas). 

Women deserve a bit of celebrating – we wouldn’t be here without them. They make up 50.55% of the population and - in our country, in our local communities, in our families – we rely on them for so much and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. Yet sadly, women aren’t always celebrated in our society and afforded the respect that they deserve. Women still have a number of real issues to overcome. As well as problems like the gender pay gap there is also the shameful problem of violence towards women. 

There’s the issue of domestic abuse, for example. It is thought that 22% of the population will have experienced some sort of violence from the age of sixteen. And it isn’t a problem only experienced by adults either. A quarter of girls aged 13 to 18 report experiencing physical abuse in their own relationships with partners. Currently about 8 women are killed each month in England and Wales by a current or an ex-partner. It is further estimated that 1 in 8 women who take their own lives do so as a result of domestic abuse. Every day almost 30 women attempt suicide as a result of the abuse they have suffered and every week three of them will succeed in their attempt. Of course, it isn’t only women who endure abuse from their partner – men do as well, and in surprisingly large numbers – but women make up the vast majority. 

As a society we need to nurture a sense of respect for one another. And that respect needs to be more than simple virtue signalling. Perhaps we would do well to recover Jesus’ teaching from his Sermon on the Mount. “Treat others as you want them to treat you.” That’s what he said – and if we did that then, the world would be a better place for women, children, men and all the creatures we share our world with too. 

Peter Cook