Progress still matters: International Women’s Day 2026
On International Women’s Day, Master of St Catherine’s, Jude Kelly CBE, reflects on women’s leadership, visibility and why progress still matters.
International Women’s Day always prompts reflection. How far have we come? What remains unfinished? And what kind of world are we building for the generations that follow us?
At St Catherine’s this year, I marked the occasion by sitting down with three students, Elizabeth Hamilton, our JCR President, and Student Ambassadors Shraddha Gautam and Julia Gartold, for an open conversation about leadership, confidence and opportunity. What struck me most was not simply the intelligence of their responses, but the clarity with which they understand the possibilities now open to them. That confidence is significant.
When St Catz was founded just over 60 years ago, the idea of a fourth-year woman studying biology here, as Julia is today, would have been almost unimaginable. The Master would not have been a woman. The JCR President would not have been a woman. Many roles women now hold across universities and professions were simply closed to them. And yet the shift has happened within a lifetime.
What the students expressed so clearly is that leadership today no longer needs to fit a single mould. For many women of my generation, entering leadership meant navigating structures built without us in mind. There was often an expectation that to succeed, women might need to imitate the prevailing model, usually male, and that assumption is quietly dissolving.
Leadership, as these students described it, can take many forms: outspoken or reflective, collaborative or quietly decisive. Elizabeth spoke about her role as JCR President partly as noticing the people who have something to say but may not yet feel able to say it, and making space for their voice. That instinct, leadership as the widening of participation, is precisely what modern institutions require.
“Representation matters because it changes expectations.”
Another theme that surfaced repeatedly was visibility. Julia spoke about the power of seeing women in science, as lecturers, researchers and supervisors, and how transformative that can be for students imagining their own futures. Representation matters because it changes expectations.
That conviction lies behind much of my work, including founding the Women of the World Festival. When women’s stories, achievements and perspectives are visible, it becomes much harder to sustain the old idea that women belong on the margins of public life.
But progress should never be mistaken for completion. Across the world, girls are still denied education. Even in societies that consider themselves progressive, violence against women remains a reality that demands attention and action. Rights are rarely permanent; they are maintained through vigilance, advocacy and cultural change.
Listening to these students, I found myself optimistic. They spoke about the women who inspired them, their mothers, grandmothers, teachers, and the encouragement they received that nurtured their confidence. And confidence is not something most of us simply inherit, it is nurtured by communities that encourage people to speak, to lead and to believe their voice matters.
Universities have a profound role to play in that process. If we create environments where leadership can emerge in many forms, then the students who pass through our colleges will leave not only with knowledge, but with the confidence to shape the world around them.
And if that confidence continues to grow, then whoever sits around a table like ours in a hundred years’ time will have an even better story to tell.
Jude Kelly CBE, Master of St Catherine’s College
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Find out more about Women of the World, here.