Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have committed to finding common ground with the incoming President-elect, but where some collaboration is clearly necessary, they must also challenge the dangerous sexism that threatens to take root in the UK’s political system. It bears repeating: pandering to the right only emboldens the right – especially their attitudes toward women.
5) Marginalised women continue to bear the brunt of social inequality…
When we talk about women’s rights, we’re talking about all women’s rights.
In November, 24-year-old Harshita Brella was found dead in the boot of an abandoned car. Just months earlier, she’d reported being a victim of domestic abuse to the police and was granted a Domestic Violence Protection Order. In a statement about her death, Southall Black Sisters said, “Black, minoritised and migrant victim-survivors face heightened disbelief from statutory agencies, eroding their trust in the state system and discouraging them from seeking assistance.
“Even when they do report abuse as Harshita did, their engagement is often cut short by statutory agencies’ inadequate understanding of their unique experiences of abuse and failure to provide culturally appropriate support.”
Wiktor Szymanowicz/Getty Images
Earlier in the year, it emerged that Samaria Ayanle, a 19-year-old woman studying Japanese and History of Art, was reported missing by her university two weeks after her body was found. Why did it take so long to connect the dots? When will missing Black women be treated with the same urgency as white women?
The state is also letting transgender people down. Just this month, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced an incoming ban on puberty blockers – not for cisgender kids, just the transgender ones. As former GLAMOUR Woman of the Year Munroe Bergdorf powerfully wrote on Instagram, “The attacks on [transgender] human rights, bodily autonomy and presence within society have become scarily normalised.”
Marginalised women are being let down at every corner, which is only exacerbated by the government and media’s preoccupation with so-called ‘culture wars’. In 2025, let’s put an end to this nonsense. A better world for women is a better world for everyone.
For more from Glamour UK’s Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
