Among the social media comments on last week’s elections in the North, it was noticeable that there were people who saw fit to comment on the appearance of candidates, not of course on how the male candidates appeared, no matter how ugly they might be, they would receive support. The comments, instead, were on the three female party leaders. Similarly, in Westminster politics, Boris Johnson’s affected scruffiness is seen as “jolly” and “idiosyncratic,” whereas if Theresa May, the British prime minister, appears with a hair out of place, there is adverse comment. Anyone who would question the need for International Women’s Day need only follow the coverage of any election to see the gender-based difference in the treatment of candidates.

For too long, there were women who were complicit with the attitude that they were there to please men. Dusty Springfield’s annoying, “Wishin’ and Hopin'” was played on an oldies programme. It has the best forgotten lines:

Show him that you care just for him
Do the things he likes to do
Wear your hair just for him, ’cause
You won’t get him
Thinkin’ and a-prayin’
Wishin’ and hopin’

Do the things he likes to do? It is hard to imagine such lyrics not being met with laughter if Hal David and Bert Bacharach had written them now.

Complicity encouraged misogyny. Attitudes accepting the subjugation and dominance of women seemed to go unchallenged. Two years after Dusty Springfield was wishing and hoping, the Rolling Stones recorded “Under my thumb.” the lyrics of which include:

Under my thumb
The girl who once had me down
Under my thumb
The girl who once pushed me around

It’s down to me
The difference in the clothes she wears
Down to me, the change has come,
She’s under my thumb

Under my thumb
The squirmin’ dog who’s just had her day
Under my thumb
A girl who has just changed her ways

It’s down to me, yes it is
The way she does just what she’s told
Down to me, the change has come
She’s under my thumb

In a 1995 interview, Mick Jagger tried to play down allegations of sexism, “It’s a bit of a jokey number, really. It’s not really an anti-feminist song any more than any of the others . . . Yes, it’s a caricature, and it’s in reply to a girl who was a very pushy woman.”

It’s hard to imagine that women who live in fear of disobeying men would find it ‘jokey’. The song continues to be played, the YouTube video of it has had more than twenty-two million views. Would a song celebrating the subjugation of a person from an ethnic or religious  group be acceptable? Presumably not. So why can a woman be referred to as, “The squirmin’ dog who’s just had her day”?

International Women’s Day is no more than a piece of tokenism if people don’t ask about the everyday sexism, the prejudice expressed in such things as comments on appearances and in pop songs that present women as only finding contentment in the presence of the right man.