I was once told I wrote about “fluffy” subjects and, well, in my line of work that’s rarely intended as a compliment. I don’t know what the person’s intentions were but I didn’t feel particularly wounded; after all, I have always considered frivolity to be a very serious business: life is dark enough. I was once again reminded of just how dark life is last Monday and like many others before me, I want to move away from what I usually write about and dedicate this space to a woman who was in a number of ways a role model to aspiring female writers and journalists everywhere.

While many people go out of their way on a daily basis to sling mud at women and call them hysterical for stating that the divide between men and women is not just a figment of the female imagination, I can’t help but think back to my university days. Virginia Woolf’s lines in A Room of One’s Own about Shakespeare having an unknown sister whose talent could never be recognised spring to mind, closely followed by Adrienne Rich’s essay on what it means to be a woman.

Let us have the courage to speak up when we have been wronged and not sit prettily and take it because we have been raised to be complacently toothless

One cannot help but be haunted by her retelling of a Jewish prayer which starts by the supplicant thanking God that he was not born female. Our lack of history has robbed us of voices: it has rendered us too weak and tired of cooking, cleaning and raising children to speak.

Whether you loved or loathed her, and indeed no one could remain lukewarm in the face of such a force of nature, Daphne Caruana Galizia was a woman ahead of her time whose eloquence could only be matched by her great wit. Multi-gifted, she did not only find time to chase stories all over the island and beyond; she was also a renowned tastemaker who produced some of the most beautiful magazines that I have ever had the fortune of owning. Time and time again, she wrote about injustice, unfairness and downright misogyny on this speck of rock we call home and time and time again she was proven right by how truly backwards people could be when they went out of their way to deride her role as a journalist and call her a ‘witch’. Indeed, witch was one of the more favourable names she was given by people whose greatest offence towards a woman is to call her ugly.

As a close friend pointed out a few days ago, the witch hunt is indeed finally over; however, our work has just begun. It is now up to us to push harder and write our way through the glass walls and ceilings so carefully placed around us from birth. Let us have the courage to speak up when we have been wronged and not sit prettily and take it because we have been raised to be complacently toothless. The situation for many women has been desperate for some time; let’s finally change it.