A women’s rights campaigner is speaking at Preston’s university to mark International Women’s Day.

Barbara Gorna, who owns the sash Emily Davison tried to attach to the King’s horse in 1913 as part of the suffragette movement, has spent 20 years campaigning for women’s rights.

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Ms Gorna, who completed a law degree at Lancashire Polytechnic in 1979, said: “It’s 2018 and ‘you’ve come along way baby’ according to the song. But have we? We still have to fight for equal pay, equal rights and equal visibility in the media.

“We will be equal when no one notices whether there is only one woman on the panel because there will be 50 per cent as the norm; when child maintenance is paid promptly and with good grace; when women subject to domestic violence are not forced to leave the home and hide with the children – that’s like giving the burglar your house – when women are not afraid to speak up and speak out like our Suffragette sisters of old; the plucky mill girls in their shawls and clogs (and my great grandmother, grandmother and mother worked in those ‘satanic mills’), then we can say, ‘well done, sister suffragettes.”

The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place on Thursday 8 March and explores how women’s rights have changed a century after women were given a limited right to vote.

Read more: Why it is only right we have a statue to Edith Rigby in Preston

Also speaking at the event will be human rights activist Saima Afzal and chief executive of Disability North West Melanie Close.

The event is from 9.30am to 4.30pm in UCLan’s Adelphi building and you can register to attend via Eventbrite.