I spent much of today in Bristol at an International Women’s Day event in the M-Shed. It was organized by Bristol Women’s Voice and seemed to have been a great success. My congratulations to Sian Webb and her team.

From my point of view, the most encouraging thing about the day was how multi-cultural it was. There were lot of non-white women around, many of them playing important roles in the event. The amazing young women of Integrate Bristol, who campaign against FGM, were amongst the stars of the show. I was also very impressed with rugby player, Deborah Fleming (even if she is English). A special shout out to Refugee Women of Bristol who do amazing work.

There were lots of stalls, including my friends from TIGER. There was a really fun theatre company called Lady Strong’s Bonfire (check out Tomasin’s art). And I was fascinated by a new group called No More Taboo. They campaign on issues to do with menstruation. Did you know that in the average British woman life she generates 150 kg of waste from sanitary products, spending between £1400 and £3500 in the process? That’s can’t be good, either for the finances or the environment, but nothing is done about it because no one wants to talk about menstruation. There will be an article about this coming up soon.

The big news from today, however, is the launch of a city-wide campaign to pledge zero tolerance for gender-based violence. This is an initiative that has come out of the Bristol Women’s Commission that was set up by Mayor George Ferguson when he signed the European Charter for equality of women and men in local life back in 2013 (Bristol was the first UK city to sign up). Today Penny Gane, the Chair of the Commission, launched this pledge, and wheeled in a bunch of the great and good from around the city, George included, to support it.

There are two things I particularly like about the pledge. Firstly, any organization that signs it commits not only to having zero tolerance, but also to doing something about it. Secondly, it really is about gender-based violence. The pledge says:

Gender based violence includes domestic and sexual violence and abuse of women and children, domestic and sexual violence against men, sexual exploitation, FGM, forced marriage, honour based violence and sexual harassment.

So there is no room for the Men’s Rights Activists to complain, “What about us men!”. Nor is there much room for the TERFs and their claim that the mere existence of trans women is an act of violence against women. I might have worded it a little differently, but the principle of ending all gender-based violence is there.