Campaigners took to the streets calling for stronger action on violence against women and girls
Thousands gathered in central London on Saturday 7 March for the Million Women Rise (MWR) march, a protest calling to end male violence against women and girls. The march is held around International Women’s Day every year in central London since 2008.
Campaigners, community groups, and supporters took to the streets in show of solidarity and unity. With banners, chants, drums, and speeches, marchers called for stronger action to tackle gender-based violence.
This year’s march came less than three months after the government published its new strategy on violence against women and girls, striving to halve it within the next decade. However, many consider the process to be too slow.
Official figures show that an estimated 3.2 million women in England and Wales experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking over the year to March 2025.
As the MWR campaigners read out the names of the women killed by men since the start of 2026, the scale and the urgency of the issue was impossible to ignore.
