Why do we need a women’s group anyway?

I am always moved when I read about women suffering around the world because of their gender.  There have been two high profile and painful examples recently in the brutal rape and murder of student in India and the execution of a young Sri Lankan maid in domestic service in Saudi Arabia.  Each story links on to another - the abduction of girls to be sold as wives, prostitutes or domestic slaves; the horror of genital mutilation; sex trafficking, the list goes on.   I always think the woman in the story could have been me.  What roll of the dice was it that meant that I should be born in such an open, questioning society and she should be born to such persecution?  

Getting together with other women with a purpose of recognising something that we have in common, whatever it happens to be at that moment, gives me some sense of solidarity with all women.  Somehow I feel that by honouring all the opportunities I have and trying to make them even better I am honouring that persecuted woman.  Together we prove there is another way.  What would that woman give to be us?  We owe it to her to celebrate our sex and what we achieve when society and culture let us.