Attention!

I have always admired British women: Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Margaret Thatcher, the Bronte sisters, and Virginia Woolf. Her book, A Room of One's Own, discusses why it is important for women to have their independence. Now, more than 70 years later, I read a Women's Manifesto in The Guardian. Women are still expressing their needs and wants. They want a society in which women and men are equal partners at home, at work and in public life, and where issues like pay, rape convictions, political representation, childcare and the work-life balance are addressed.

And at the European Social Forum in October at Alexandra Palace the NGOs were making themselves heard--on everything from war and peace, democracy and human rights, to the environmental crisis. They seemed less concerned about their immediate environment: thousands of leaflets ended up on the floor; people smoked in restricted areas and left the water running in the bathroom.