We’ve still a long way to go on journey to equality –

IOVERHEARD a conversation of a group of young men, with one commenting how he’d love to “rape her” and the others laughed like hyenas surrounding their prey. realised how very far we have yet to travel, on that night, when I’d hoped only to wind down.

If I could say that was the first time I’d heard such a vile use of language to signify male power over women, to somehow attempt to normalise rape and sexual abuse, I’d be lying.

But I was shocked at the age of the men. They couldn’t have been any more than 20. I’d thought the young were the new hope.

The young men, huddled in a group, were eyeing up a young girl, of perhaps 18, rifling through her bag. She was completely unaware of any threat nearby and her brief look of concern, for what could have been lost money, switched to joy when her friend, another girl, returned and jumped up behind her.

The girls, around my own daughter’s age, walked off to the bar in this Dublin pub and ordered shots.

I hoped they wouldn’t get too drunk because they simply couldn’t know what lurked right here in this nightspot, a place which shouldn’t have posed any threat.

But why do we still live in an age where some men think it’s normal to talk in such a derogatory and threatening manner about women?

Why shouldn’t young women be free to get tipsy or drunk sometimes when they’re having fun, without considering who might be out there?

The fact is most young women don’t think too much about male predatory types on nights out because they want to feel equal, they want to be free.

My question is, in our society as it is, are they?

It seems, despite a series of campaigns to raise awareness of sexual violence and harassment of women, this terrifying attitude and male sexual violence against women is somehow still acceptable to some.

I’d like to say we live in a different world to the one I grew up in as a teenager in the late 1990s but, in truth, somehow I feel we’ve regressed somewhat.

I spoke to a taxi driver recently on a journey to a friend’s. He revealed to me that such behaviour was common. He’d heard such references about women in the back of his cab.

The cab driver told me he’d been particularly disturbed one night when he’d heard a group of college boys discussing putting something in girls’ drinks to “loosen them up”.

He had a daughter himself, he was terrified to think what characters she could meet as she enjoyed a night out. In turn, he warned her. I warn my daughter too.

Young women have told me the dating culture today doesn’t do much to inspire hope either. There’s too much ‘Netflix and chill’ and not enough romance and longevity in relationships. Simply put, there’s a lot of sex without love, it would seem.

On International Women’s Day yesterday, again we stopped to think how far we have come. I, like