Yes, women can vote (almost everywhere). Fact.

Are women happy about being able to vote? Sadly they are happier than men, mostly because they are constantly reminded about the big milestone in equality that it was, as if it were a final goal and not just a step in the journey.

“Feminism is no longer needed, you can vote!” “The good feminists where the ones 100 years ago, when they fought for important things (nobody mentions that they too were silenced and ignored)”. “What else do you want? We can all vote now, we are equal!”

That was a big milestone but there is still lot to build. I was alive when rape within marriage was made a crime in UK. We will not be celebrating a century of that success anytime soon.

There is legislation in every country that affects women in a different (aka worse) way than men. There are debates held everywhere, lots of them within feminism, regarding how policy should interact with women´s bodies. And we have laws aiming to protect women from society and part of the society aiming to protect women from the unfair laws. I was going to say that these are complicated times, but the sad thing is that this is as good as it has ever been.

There is lots to do. And most of it will only change when we change culture, but in the meantime, legislation has a massive debt with women, and it is about time to correct the wrongs. And we get it, some of the things are controversial, there is not a clear answer and different theories protect different values. Do we want more freedom with our bodies? Do we want it at the expense of security of the most vulnerable people? Or rephrased the other way around do we want security? Do we want it at the expense of our own choices for own bodies?

Prostitution, abortion, surrogacy, maternity rights, paternity rights and its impact in co-responsibility, rape penalties and procedures, positive discrimination…there is a big puzzle to build, and we can only start by understanding where we are and where are we going.