British women are the angriest in Europe. I know exactly why

Oh, really, the Hologic Global Women’s Health Index? Oh really? British women are amongst the angriest in Europe, are they? A quarter of them reported feelings of rage in your annual survey, compared to just one in seven on the continent, are they? Why don’t you get back out there with your clipboards and your little pencils and tell me something I don’t know?

I’m sorry. It appears the new findings on fury may have an element of truth in them.

That 25 per cent of us are consumed by wrath compared to an average of 14 per cent across EU countries, or that 47 per cent of us describe ourselves as more likely to feel rage this year than last, surprises me only in a way that makes me ask: “Who are the missing 75 and 53 per cent, what are they taking and where can I get some?”

Though the findings have just been released, the survey of 76,232 women and girls was taken in 2024. And women are still angry, because since 2024, things have arguably got worse.

The answer to the question of why UK women are so angry is a deeply complex one, so settle down, get comfortable and lean in.

It is because women are people. And people in the UK are, thanks to things like Brexit and oil prices that are currently soaring thanks to the actions of a White House from which various UK governments have failed to distance themselves when they had the chance, having a crap time.

So, there’s that.

And then there are all the other things. Like the fact that women are habitually paid less than men so the cost of living crisis occasioned by all of the above falls disproportionately heavily on us. And then it does so again because we spend more of our lives doing the kind of domestic labour – childcare, elder care, that kinda thing – that brings us into more contact with health, social and other services suffering from acute and chronic underfunding.

So too is the criminal justice system, which, combined with a police force, the headlines daily show us to be riddled with incompetence, making it unlikely that the well-evidenced epidemic of male violence against women will either shrink or see its perpetrators stopped or punished. In 2024, just 2.7 per cent of reports of rape ended in charges being brought by the end of the year. If you rape a woman in this country, you are pretty much guaranteed to get away with it.

So there’s that.

And then there are all the small things. Being catcalled on the street (or, if you’re a bit older and not tempting enough to the eye, shouldered out of people’s way instead), say, or sexually harassed at work.

Being expected to smile and make nice all the time instead of being invited to take lumps out of people who really, really need to have lumps taken out of them. Being told not to worry by your husband when there is plenty to worry about, or being assured that “everything always works out in the end”.

Yes, it generally does because women have spied potential problems, worried about them, done something about them and smoothed again your passage through life without you ever appreciating the hours of someone else’s time and energy that have gone into it.

I could go on. And on and on and on and on. But I won’t. Because we live in a world in which, if we dare to express our anger or even the smallest fraction of it, the most likely response is mockery, minimisation or disdain (“Time of the month, is it?”). And that makes us angriest of all.

Or it may, of course, just be the weather. There is that.