International Women’s Day on March 8 is always an important day in my calendar.  

Each year, I receive a pound for every man who says to me, ‘What about International Men’s Day?’ 

I am now a millionaire.  

I always reply: “You get the other 364 days.” 

This is generally deemed to be evidence of my radical feminism, by which I mean my outlandish belief that women might need a look in from time to time.  

Right now, I see no evidence that I need to change my view. 

Recently, our reporter Dolly Carter reported that Ipswich Hospital hadn’t had gas and air operating for pregnant women for some months. A problem with emissions. 

As a woman who has given birth twice, I can barely express the rage I felt on behalf of those mums-to-be who had to endure labour without this extremely helpful pain relief.

I tried to imagine a comparable example for men but there isn’t one since no pain comes close to the agony of giving birth. That said, I’d have liked to have seen how quickly the hospital got around to fixing the problem if men were being forced to undergo vasectomies without the usual pain relief.  

With the gas and air, it took two months, leaving many women having to go through birth in even more 'excruciating pain’, as one mum put it, than usual. Of the mums we spoke to, few had even been warned there was an issue before they went into labour, an oversight which was, quite frankly, a disgrace. Thank heavens, after Dolly’s two stories, they managed to resolve things. I hope International Women’s Day will remind not just our hospitals but everyone in public life that just because only women are affected, a problem doesn’t matter less. 

I don’t believe that most men or the institutions they generally run deliberately disregard things that matter to women. They just don’t think about them.  

It doesn’t tend to occur to a boss who is a man that a woman in her 50s might want to work from home today because she is bleeding all over the place or because she hasn’t slept properly in days. He doesn’t have to go through the menopause, and she sure as heck doesn’t want to have to walk him through it.  

Men might get frustrated by a woman colleague who is constantly on the phone during office hours. But would they think to ask her if everything is alright at home? It's important to recognise the signs of a woman who is subject to coercive control. Perhaps International Women’s Day will help remind them? 

Men may not realise that to be a woman is to spend a lifetime guarding oneself against sexual aggression. To fear the footsteps behind you. The too-close-proximity of an unwanted admirer. The ‘harmless’ comment that might really be harmless but it makes us afraid of you anyway because how do we know? 

As a capable, relatively successful woman, I still quail if a man shouts at me. Almost every occasion like this in my life has not led to violence, but all my body remembers is the time it did. Perhaps International Women’s Day might remind the men in our lives that when you think you are just being loudly passionate, there will always be women in the room who will not hear a word you are saying because they are looking for the best route via which to escape.  

Business owners who hold back from hiring women of childbearing age? Maybe today you will remember that we only have children because men want them too.  

A woman who is raped is not in ANY way to blame, whatever she was wearing, however much she drank. Domestic violence is not ‘six of one and half a dozen of the other.’ 

Today is a good day to remember this.  

Somebody said to me recently that women shouldn’t be singled out for a day anymore because this excluded certain groups. But why does highlighting the many concerns that pertain to women need to be against others? Can’t we deal with everyone’s issues in turn? Surely that’s healthier than pretending the issues of women no longer exist? 

I have spoken out about sexism many times in my life and career. I used to get laughed at. Less so now. The environment I run at the newspaper is unrecognizable to the one in which I was trained. There is no difference, as far as I am aware, in the types of stories our men and women reporters are allocated. Women feel empowered to speak up in meetings. No one is afraid of being yelled at. Or belittled for having a brain.  

I am not claiming to have solved the problems of the world here but I have been part of the solution to some of the ones I once faced which is all one can really do. 

My voice, a woman’s voice, is as valid or invalid as anybody else’s.  

Today, I’m using it. And I intend to do so until the issues of women are being considered on the other 364 days as well.