Designated by the United Nations in 1993, 3 May was World Press Freedom Day, something that you might have missed in last week’s news. Journalists in Britain arguably ignore the event with good reason; as a country we are proud of our tradition of respecting the public’s right to criticise, which predates any official guarantees first set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Over a century ago the archetypal Victorian radical teetered on soapboxes flinging pamphlets to the crowd (when he had one) and today’s savvy hacks use hidden microphones and cameras to expose up-to-no-good politicians.

The situation, to generalise, exists in a similar fashion throughout the rest of the developed world. Ever since Henry Demarest Lloyd published articles exposing corruption in business and politics in 1880s America, the culture of bold investigative journalism in Western Europe and the United States has been a regular source of scandal, capable of administering strong doses of accountability to those living in the public eye.

Yet the value of a free press is easily taken for granted. The United States has historically avoided the routine pursuit of journalists’ sources, but after winning an historic election with promises of radical reform, Barack Obama’s administration has gone on to prosecute more government ‘leakers’ under the Espionage Act than any previous administration. In the U.K., the Leveson inquiry into press standards constitutes a government-mandated probe into the behaviour of a profession already ring-fenced by super-injunctions and some of the world’s most repressive libel laws. As a knee jerk reaction to the excesses of a badly behaved press, it inferred the end of press self-regulation; a universally accepted ideal and the strongest measure of a society’s willingness to embrace unfettered freedom of expression. Any perceived shift away from this framework would set a worrying precedent that will resonate around the world.

War and economic crisis make it unsurprising that so few column inches are devoted to the shocking combination of extreme violence, impunity and pernicious legislation that results from an absence of freedom of expression in the majority of the rest of the world. The headlines too often direct focus elsewhere. Yet press freedom advocates have been unwavering in calling a free press the essential right necessary for accountability and a free society. The economic rise of the Gulf States and China has not correlated with any greater regard for human rights. Sanctions on Myanmar are likely to be revoked after its recent opening, yet press censorship and human rights abuses reportedly continue. Ensuring that the structures of power exist within a framework of accountability remains the essential role of a free and independent press; taking it for granted is the first step towards losing this hard-won privilege.

The problems at the heart of the financial crisis are awfully complicated. Or so we are told. In recent years, the discussion seems to have focused on the inadequacies of mind-boggling mathematical equations, the tangle of regulations impeding the implementation of capital requirements or the ring fencing of domestic retail banking. But in fact, one of the most serious problems is wonderfully simple: shareholders have been unable to hold their banks to account. And yet for all its simplicity, it remains unsolved and virtually untouched.

Over the past 20 years, the proportion of banking profits going to shareholders has decreased, while the proportion going directly towards salaries has increased. Not only this, but in the lead up to the financial crisis, banks continued to expand their balance sheets, reduced their capital ratio and invested in ever more risky assets. Nowhere is this more evident than at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which from 2000-08 rapidly rose to global prominence as the world’s largest company by assets (£1.9 trillion). These executive strategies may have been in the CEOs best interest, but shareholders suffered and banks were consistently underperforming their FTSE100 rivals. The RBS Annual Report of 2009 illustrates this point clearly.

Why did they let this happen? If anyone could give me an answer, it was Professor Sir John Vickers, Chair of the independent Commission on Banking, Warden of All Souls and economist extraordinaire. I found him in an intimate room on the upper floors of the Ashmoleon, where he was giving a talk on his latest take on the banking crisis. There I asked him how he would explain the apparent passivity of shareholders in the lead up to the crisis. “Why they tolerated more profits going to remuneration rather than shareholders seems inexplicable”. However, he volunteered to try to explain all the same. In part, Vickers believes the reason why such risky behaviour was tolerated was that shareholders appeared to get the upsides form those investments without suffering the downsides. Many shareholders were all too aware that their banks were ‘too big to fail’ and that in case of emergency, the government would have to bail them out.

But there is also a more sinister explanation for this trend, which is the tacit collusion between the elites in the financial sector. For all the talk of free markets, power remains surprisingly concentrated in the hands of banking executives, fund managers and insurers. These individuals have approved riskier strategies and higher pay packets in the name of self-interest.  ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine’ seems to be the underlying philosophy. All too often, the board of directors have been populated with the same small crowd of executives who have an interest in partially ignoring the shareholders’ interest so as to create a norm which they can replicate at their own financial institutions.

But all that is changing. On 27^th April, 32% of Barclay’s shareholders failed to support the remuneration report which approved a payment of over £20m to their chief executive, Bob Diamond, last year. Last Thursday, 54% of Aviva’s shareholders voted against their pay report and 37% revolted against that issued by UBS.  For too long, shareholders have been asleep at the wheel. It is time to wake up.

Name a film that passes these three tests: (1) there are at least two named female characters (2) who talk to each other and (3) who talk about something other than their love interests. Struggling? The dearth of such films is indicative of a media industry that perpetuates latent prejudice in society. Or so the argument presented by Miss Representation goes. On Saturday I joined a febrile audience at the South Exam Schools to watch the a feature-length documentary, launched to critical acclaim in the States and now garnering attention on university campuses in the UK.

I liked it. It conveyed a social mission similar to the Michael Moore movies, but with less theatrics and more focus. The thesis is that Western youth are being sold the concept of female value lying in youth, beauty and sexuality. The media – increasingly conglomerated and dominated by private, masculine interests – is doing the selling and we, as consumers, are conditioned from youth to lap it up. The result is that we have an intensely patriarchal society in which new gender stereotypes encourage men and women to participate in an inequitable system which rewards and values female endeavour less. The arguments are multifaceted, and my interpretation is just one. I had only two criticisms, one incidental, the other fundamental. First, there is a somewhat lazy use of statistics. The film states that 65% of women suffer from eating disorders – this seems spurious or based on an overly expansive understanding of what eating disorders are. Second, whilst the diagnosis was clear and powerful, the prescription proved elusive.

Hollywood has undoubtedly done women a disservice by consistently awarding women mundane, one-dimensional roles. For every Thelma and Louise or Million Dollar Baby which feature strong female leads, a hundred others portray women as the helpless sexual playthings of powerful male protagonists. Indeed, the 23rd film of one long-running series of patriarchal propaganda, otherwise known as the Bond films, will be released this October. Even the Sex and the City series rarely deviates from the ladies’ desire to be whisked off their feet by handsome, rich Prince Charmings. Most ‘chick flicks’, which are supposedly ‘for women’ though usually produced and directed by men, fall into this category.

Media matters. The main reason for the female deficit at the top is a lack of assertiveness, underpinned by confidence. Leadership demands decisiveness, daring and strength of will – traits as common to females as to males, despite being shown to be exclusively masculine qualities in the media. Female assertiveness in films is strictly sexual, expressing their desire to find love and the security it entails. Otherwise they shown as are passive or emotional when faced with challenges. No doubt, women are prone to be more patient, receptive to others’ views and less confrontational, but it’s our patriarchal conception of leadership that considers these as weaknesses rather than strengths.

When a recent study asked American eight-year olds whether they wanted to become President, the proportion of each gender who responded in the affirmative was identical. Ten years later, nourished by a toxic diet of sitcoms and magazines that condescend the ‘weaker sex’, two thirds of those ambitious young girls had changed their minds, while the young boys largely retained the aspiration. Of course a host of careers merit ambition and we shouldn’t demonise those women who become committed stay-at-home mothers. The point is that as long as we have a political/business/media elite comprised wholly of men, women lose out. In fact everybody loses out: would the financial crisis have occurred if the major banks hadn’t been run by cack-handed, testosterone-fuelled machismos?

Let’s return to politics. The US Congress contains a lower proportion of women than its legislative counterpart in Afghanistan. Our own parliament doesn’t do much better. However, the situation may be improving. Here in Oxford our OUSU President is female, as were the last three Union Presidents. In Westminster Theresa May is the Home Secretary, an office traditionally seen as ‘unsuited’ to a woman’s temperament. And of course there was Iron Lady, the film that boasts a tremendous example of female success against the constraints of that age. All these figures are role models for young women, though tragically their imagery evades our popular Kardashian culture.

What needs to be understood – and to be fair the film did grasp this – is that the status quo isn’t conspiratorial. We aren’t a nation of misogynists, though that doesn’t preclude a misogynistic culture. There’s a certain inertia to the state of affairs that requires us to expunge the sort of lazy sexism represented by ‘lad’ culture that the sexualisation of women encourages. Miss Representation is right to malign it. Inducing cultural changes is hard but the regulation of the media is unpalatable to me. Largely it’s about awareness, learning what is and isn’t acceptable. The media matters because it catalyses the process. It can stop obsessing over what Theresa May wears rather than what she says. Some attack capitalism – drawing a causal chain between the capitalist market and pornification of media. Well, let’s turn the market on its head. We should use our purchasing power to bankrupt those newspapers and production studios that degrade women. Those choices have to be free in order to affect a genuine cultural shift. That requires a more thoughtful understanding of just how potent the media is.

What kind of crimes are women accused of committing as part of Afghanistan’s Zina laws, and what are the punishments?

 There are two main acts treated as ‘moral crimes’ in Afghanistan. The first is ‘running away’ which is when a girl or women flees her home against the will of her father or husband. Running away is not a crime under the Afghan penal code but the Supreme Court of Afghanistan has instructed its judges that they should treat it as one. The second main ‘moral crime’ in Afghanistan is Zina, which is sex outside of marriage. Zina is a crime under the Afghan Penal Code and is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

How does the Afghan legal system disadvantage women who are accused of moral crimes?

The Afghan legal system is biased and heavily stacked against women at every stage. An accusation from a man seems to almost always be enough for a woman to be arrested. Statements are taken from women who are alone in police stations without a lawyer or even a friend, signed (with a thumbprint) by women who cannot read. Invasive ‘virginity tests’ which have no medical validity are routinely administered and treated as valid evidence. In one case, even a letter from a woman’s husband saying that she was disobedient was treated as evidence by the court.

The defence of women’s rights was a major justification for the invasion of Afghanistan. How has the presence of NATO troops changed the situation for women?

There has been important progress. Several million more girls go to school now than did in 2001. Maternal mortality has been falling steadily, and life expectancy has increased dramatically. About 28% of the elected house of the Afghan parliament is women. There are female police officers, prosecutors, defence attorneys, judges, civil servants and even two female ministers. But overall, progress has been less forthcoming than that which women had a right to expect in the heady days after the fall of the Taliban. Worst of all, the progress that has been made is terribly fragile and could disappear within a few years, if the international community walks away entirely from Afghanistan.

What restrictions do women still face in everyday life?

Segregation of the sexes in Afghanistan is extreme. In many families, especially in rural areas, women are not permitted to leave the house at all, or at least not without a male chaperone. A large proportion of families will not permit women to work outside the home where they might come into contact with strange men. Many women still wear the burka, and all women have to wear concealing clothing and head scarves. Forced marriage is the reality for most women, and underage marriage is still very common.

What would you say are the forces behind the Karzai government that are keeping the system of moral crimes in place? President Karzai has always faced a difficult balancing act of maintaining good relations with the international partners he relies on for military assistance, while also partnering with powerbrokers in Afghan society. As the international community increasingly appears ready to turn its back on Afghanistan, Karzai’s calculus about the relative importance of these partners is shifting and it becomes less and less important for him to be seen to care about women’s rights.

Kenneth Roth is the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch