Jo Brand

Comedian, writer and actor

I’d like to think that in 100 years’ time men will have come round to the idea that their passivity has been contributing to holding back the progress of women, so that women no longer remain objects to be gawped at, patted, stroked, patronised, verbally and physically abused, paid for like commodities, smuggled, threatened, humiliated and all those other negative actions that are rained down on them purely because of their gender. Am I hopeful? No comment.

Ruby Tandoh

Baker, columnist and author

I want there to be a culture of eating and feasting and nourishment that celebrates women’s appetites rather than policing them. All bodies – thin, fat, cis, trans, of every size and shape and race – need to be given the fuel, space and support to thrive, whether that’s by increasing access to food within disadvantaged communities, giving out free school breakfasts to all children, or just doing away with our culture of body shame.

Lubaina Himid

Turner prize-winning artist

Lubaina Himid. Photograph: Darren O'Brien/Guzelian

During the decades to come we must fight for every woman to be able to travel alone in safety throughout the day and night. Our daughters, sisters, mothers and lovers deserve the right to look at the moon and the stars without fear; even in the streets, parks and hills of Britain.

Jess Phillips

Labour MP

Jess Phillips. Photograph: Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images

For me, the thing that has to change is the prevalence of violence against women and girls. I have sat in the same meetings for the past 10 years and will do for the next decade. We will lament that one in five women is sexually assaulted, one in three will suffer domestic abuse and two women will be murdered each week. Change won’t be easy, but the very first thing we have to do is to teach our kids about these issues. We must care about discussing this stuff as much as we care about maths and English GCSEs. Unless we stamp out tired gender roles, the dominance of men and the belittling of girls that starts at birth, I will be in the same tired meetings for years to come – and women will keep dying.

Jane Fae

Feminist and writer

Short term, we need to embrace and embed recent structural changes: society must further enable women to participate in all spheres of life as equal actors, given the support, in terms of education and access to childcare, to ensure we are not sidelined into domesticity, or discriminated against in work, or excluded by violence at home or on the street. Long term, my hope is for a complete inversion of social values: let us exchange a world in which we value toxic masculinity, with its control, status and domination, for one in which co-operation and difference are celebrated.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Space scientist and broadcaster

Maggie Aderin-Pocock. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

In the area of Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) we have come a long way, but we still have a way to go. Some areas, such as medicine and biology, are dominated by women – considering that the first woman to be awarded a licence to practise medicine, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, received her qualification in 1865, we have come a long way. However, in subjects, such as engineering and computing, the percentage of women is down in the low 20s – here, we haven’t reached gender equality yet.





Nina Power

Cultural critic

I would like for girls and women to be free from violence and sex-role stereotypes, and to be treated as equal human beings in all aspects of life. I would like heterosexual male desire to be displaced as the dominant mode of human sexual and social interaction. I would like men and women to treat each other as comrades and friends, and not as mysterious alien creatures. I would like women’s voices to be heard, and would like to see an end to gendered socialisation that teaches girls and women that their job is to pander to male feelings, and teaches boys and men to expect such treatment from women without having earned it.

Juliet Jacques

Writer and critic

Juliet Jaques. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

It’s hard for me to single out any issue when gender-based oppression remains so rife, but I feel that feminism, socialism, anti-racism and LGBTQI movements should be inseparable, and that any struggles for equality must proceed on that basis.

Karen Ingala Smith,

Chief executive of Nia

We need to end men’s violence against women and to do that we need to make connections across the many ways that women and men are kept unequal. Men’s violence against women is a product of and reinforces inequality between the sexes. We will never have equality while access to women’s bodies can be bought and sold, while women are objectified, commodified and under-represented; and while socially constructed gender is seen as what defines being a woman or man.

Sophie Walker

Leader of the Women’s Equality party

Sophie Walker. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

I’d like girls and women to know they are enough. To take up space and express themselves without fear. To move freely in a society that recognises them as equal to men, in all their glorious diversity. And to be able to vote for a form of politics that reflects and invests in their lives.

Penny Pepper

Writer and disability rights activist

Currently, disabled women from all backgrounds are an afterthought. I’d like to see equality at every level of society – the barriers removed, the negative attitudes beaten down and discarded – plus a better framework for support, collaboration and understanding.

Laura Bates

Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project

I want people to listen to women. To hear their voices. To believe them. And to change the things that need to change so that another generation of girls never has to grow up to experience the harassment, discrimination and abuse that women today are bravely speaking out about. It’s not enough to write titillating headlines and turn it into a “sex scandal”. It’s not enough to say that the problem is solved because it is finally being talked about. The government needs to act. It could start by reinstating section 40 of the Equality Act, so that the employers of women such as those sexually harassed at the Presidents Club dinner have a duty to protect them.) Businesses and organisations need to act. The gender pay gap needs closing and every workplace should have clear, transparent reporting procedures in place for cases of sexual harassment. Schools need to act. Every child deserves to learn about sexual consent and healthy relationships in an inclusive, age-appropriate manner. And individuals need to act. We will never solve gender inequality and sexual violence unless we shift the normalised societal attitudes and ideas about women that enable us to go on treating them like second-class citizens, abusing them and blaming them for their own assault. Unless every one of us chooses to stand up, step in, and speak out, nothing will ever change. Your silence allows sexism to flourish.

Archie Panjabi

Actor

Archie Panjabi. Photograph: ITV

We need to stamp out sexual and workplace harassment for women and men in all industries across the globe. Abuse of power is a silent crime that has existed in our society for decades. #MeToo

June Eric-Udorie



Writer and feminist campaigner

June Eric-Udorie. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

The first thing I’d like to question is which British women won the vote in 1918? Was it white women only? Did women of colour have equal access? I ask these questions because mainstream white feminism celebrates victories that often ignore or sideline marginalised women and instead demand that we ride on the coattails of white women’s success. Ideally, in 100 years, no woman – regardless of her race, sexual orientation, class, disability, immigration status – will be left behind. As a black, queer disabled woman, I’m always fighting for today’s mainstream feminist movement to remember that people like me exist and that we matter too. In 1989, the black feminist legal scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” as a means for us to understand the way that oppressive structures intersect with our marginalised identities, causing poor women, women of colour, Muslim women, and other marginalised women to face a double or triple bind of oppression. In 100 years, there won’t be a need to harp on about how crucial intersectionality is, because it will be central to our feminist practice and politics. In 100 years, there won’t be such an extortionate pay gap between white women and black women. In 100 years, when we talk about sexual assault, we’ll include the voices of migrant women, service workers, disabled women. In 100 years, feminism will be a movement working to liberate all women. Can you imagine how powerful that will be?

Anne Wafula Strike

Paralympic wheelchair racer

Anne Wafula Strike.

Women got the vote but there’s a lot more to achieve, especially for disabled women and girls who experience double discrimination and are still treated as an afterthought in society. I would like to see disabled women’s voices amplified and an introduction of programmes and grants to create opportunities that will impact positively on their lives – we need to make sure that no woman is left behind.

Kate Varah

Executive director of the Old Vic

We need gender parity in access to education for girls, so that “having it all” in its broadest context becomes a positive, uplifting aspiration for men and women, rather than, at worst, an impossibility and at best an aspersion cast when people feel women are overreaching. And more unisex loos.

Helen Pankhurst

Great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and women’s rights activist

All the social norms that belittle, degrade and discriminate against women have to go, full stop. #Still Marching.

Sofie Hagen

Comedian

Sofie Hagen. Photograph: Andrew McGibbon

I should not have to say this in 2018, but I sincerely hope that social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter will decide to protect women (and other oppressed groups) from trolling, death threats and the likes, so it is no longer dangerous for women to be outspoken online. I’m tired of tracking down people’s wives or parents online to tell them that their husband or son told me to go kill myself, because I tweeted that it’s OK to be fat.