Speak Up!. Laura Coryton

Greek? The very word combines the words demos δῆμος, which means people and kratos κράτος, which means force or power. But when democracy was born – in Athens in the 5th century BCE – you had to be a man of a certain age and class to be considered a person or citizen of your city-state. From the birth of democracy, women were excluded from the very concept.

      dEmOcRaCy?

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      Political realities today continue to discourage women from engaging in politics. Less than a third of UK MPs are female.

      OuT OF tHe 193 cOuNtrIeS

      tHaT aRe mEmBeRs OF

      tHe UnItEd NatIONs

      oNLY 16 hAvE a fEmALE

      hEaD OF gOvErNmEnT.

      ThAT’s jUsT 9 pEr cEnT!

      Online, the world is different. The world we have created via the internet can be truly democratic. Virtual institutions like the Open University have offered educational opportunities to men and women equally since it was founded in 1969. The internet’s political institutions have also

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      smashed gender barriers since they began. Perhaps the most striking example is online petitions.

      For years I had signed and shared many petitions and campaigns, and I could see they were

      super effective! From Lucy-Anne Holmes’s

      NO MORE PAGE 3 campaign to Laura Bates’s EVERYDAY SExISM PROJECT, there was no doubt that women were using the internet to change

      the world.

      One of the world’s leading online petition organizations is chaNgE.ORg. They are amazing.

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      Their UK director, Kajal Odedra tells me that in her experience, women sign, share and support online petitions far more than men do. Women drive change that’s instigated and legitimized by online campaigns. As a result, women truly are winning online. Via the internet, women are changing the world. While the majority of online petitions are started by men, more winning petitions are started by and run by women. In many ways we hold the equivalent of political offices and the power to persuade political decision makers through the internet.

      That is pretty astounding. It is new. It is exciting. We do not know where it will lead us yet. That is up to us.

      Back on that depressingly

      rainy afternoon, my phone

      vibrated. I STILL had not started

      revising . . . so, I looked at my phone and saw my

      friend Verity had sent me a link to an article.

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      ThIs aRtIcLe pReTtY mUcH

      cHaNgEd mY lIfE.

      It discussed the 5 per cent tax we were paying on period products. At first I presumed this tax must make some sense. If the government backed a tax on period products, then there

      must be some logic behind it, right? But I wanted to check the logic, so I began to research the UK’s taxation system (yes, I really was THAT desperate to avoid revising). This was when things started to get annoying . . . and then shocking. I discovered the extent of the absurdities that riddle our taxation system.

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      Since 1973, our government deemed products such as tampons and period pads to be luxury items. Yet they aren’t plated with gold, nor do they come with a side serving of diamonds. They aren’t even an item most of us would want to purchase if we had the choice. Period products are needed by half of the population to engage fully in public life all through the month. It’s as simple as that.

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      While women have paid tax on period products, other more frivolous items have escaped tax altogether. Why? Well, because astonishingly the government appears to have deemed many items more essential than women being able to participate in daily life.

      Things such as maintaining private helicopters, eating exotic meats and playing bingo.

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      Of course, period products are essential to people who menstruate. Yet the government deemed them a ‘luxury’. But what makes this story even more astonishing is that the UK was NOT alone in the absurdity of this tax. Oh no. Get this. In Texas, the state government also taxes period products for being ‘luxury’ products, while they have a zero tax rate for what they deem to be more ‘essential’ items. Here’s the shocking part. Such ‘essential’ items include

      CoWbOy BoOtS!

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      PeOpLe wHO mEnStRuAtE

      wErE beInG tAxEd FOr

      hAvInG pErIoDs. I wAs

      sHOCkEd. ThEn I gOt aNgRy.

      Women have been campaigning to end tampon tax for generations. But they haven’t always been able to utilize the internet or the new online political world. I was gunning to sign a petition to end the tax, but I couldn’t find one.

      When I discovered this tax had existed for so long I decided to do something I had never done before.

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      I StArTeD A PetItIOn.

      I didn’t think it would be very popular – it was a campaign cocktail of menstruation and taxation after all, not exactly the most thrilling combination of topics!

      But I had our generation’s superpower to rely on – the internet – and if I didn’t try to launch this petition now, who would, and when?

      I was shocked again: people did get behind my EnD TAMPOn tAX petition. To be more specific, over 320,000 men and women! With this kick-ass cohort of supporters, we got the prime minister to

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      say ‘tampon’ in parliament and eventually ended this tax in the UK and then in Europe. Not only that, but my initial online petition also spurred women from across the world to start their own End Tampon Tax sister petitions, which are now axing the tax in countries scattered across almost every continent, from India to Australia. Even Michelle and Barack Obama offered their support for the campaign!

      That was the beginning of the End Tampon Tax campaign. Since then it has been tackling the period taboo and encouraging women to feel more confident and comfortable in their bodies. Period!

      The internet offers a new platform upon which to organize, demonstrate our work and speak up. It’s powerful. It makes us distinctly powerful too.

      There is power in your voice. There is possibility in the internet. In combining the two, you can change your world.

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      tImE tO

      SpEaK Up

      So what do you think? I’m

      guessing if you picked up this book

      in the first place, you were already

      interested in some kind of activism. If you

      picked it up because of the awesome cover (thanks, Elaine!), then I hope this introduction has given you some things to think about.

      This book will arm you with the weapons you need to take down the problems you want to tackle. You can read it from beginning to end,

      using the speak up tOoLKIt as a step-by-step guide to creating your own successful campaign, or you can dip in and out, depending on the kind of advice you’re looking for.

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      Remember, you don’t have to launch a global campaign right this second. (You can if you want to, though!) Everyday, small actions can have a big impact. I want you to be confident in your voice, in your views and to give you the tools to make change.

      What