WE are, we might like to think, post-suffrage. The suffragette is a piece of history. Surely, when two female filmmakers are able to make a Hollywood movie documenting the story of these rights campaigners, we must be at that point? Can we not kick off our high heels, and consider the times to be, if not post-feminist, at least post-suffragette? The bulk of the work is done. That argument is over. Everyone believes in equal rights for women. Indeed, it’s so done and dusted that many of the reviewers of Suffragette seemed to feel what was missing from the film was any sense of the perspective of the anti-suffrage culture of the early 20th century.

Except, of course, it isn’t over – either globally or in the UK. The world still needs its equivalents of Emily Davison (the suffragette who died after throwing herself under the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby), or its Maud Watts (the composite character in Suffragette played by Carey Mulligan, and representing many working-class women of the time).

The original suffragettes were battling, of course, for voting rights for women. But the idea of the suffragette speaks of something much wider – it speaks of a fighter on the frontline willing to risk imprisonment, physical harm or death for her cause. These women still exist. A film could be made about them, and it would not be history, it would be now.

It would be now in Saudi Arabia, where in August this year, women were finally allowed to register to vote for the first time in December’s municipal local elections – and where Fawzia al-Hani, a Saudi suffragette, has long been pushing for the vote through the campaign, Baladi, meaning “my country”. In that country, where women are not allowed to drive, our Maud Watts might be Manal al-Sharif, the activist who initiated the Women2Drive social media campaign in 2011. After the film of her driving through the city of Khobar was put on YouTube, she was imprisoned for nine days.

Or it could be now in Iran, where in recent years the One Million Signatures campaign is attempting to secure equal rights in marriage and inheritance, an end to polygamy, and stricter punishments for honour killings. There, Maud Watts might be Parvin Ardalan or any one of the activists arrested at a peaceful protest in 2006 and sentenced to three years in prison for "threatening the national security".

Or, it could be last March in China, when, in the run-up to International Women’s Day, five feminist campaigners were detained under suspicion of "picking quarrels and creating a disturbance". Their plan? To distribute stickers with slogans such as: “Police: go arrest those who committed sexual harassment.”

It could be 2012 in Liberia, where journalist Mae Azango, when she reported on Female Genital Mutilation, a “taboo” topic, received so many threats she had to do into hiding, sending her nine-year-old daughter to stay with relatives.

Or it could be 2013 in India, where police arrested and detained 13 women’s rights activists after anti-rape protests swelled in West Bengal.

And, yes, it could be now in the UK, where many feminists who speak out online are trolled with death threats. It could be here, and Maud Watts might be the Caroline Criado-Perez, who kept campaigning to see a woman’s face on a bank note in spite of the threats she received. Or she might be Fahma Mohamed, the Bristol schoolgirl who persuaded Michael Gove to write to all schools in England about FGM. Or she might be one of the Sisters Uncut campaigners who stormed the red carpet at the Suffragette premiere and lay on the ground chanting: “Dead women can’t vote.” Their aim? To draw attention to the impact of austerity cuts on women, particularly on domestic violence services. One Sisters Uncut tweet points out that on the day of the premiere, an estimated 150 women would have been turned away from domestic violence refuges.

Of course, the protests of Sisters Uncut and other UK feminist groups, do sound rather safe compared with those staged by the original suffragettes, whose vandalism and disregard for personal safety seem shocking to this day. Kitty Marion, militant suffragette and arsonist, was force-fed more than 232 times in prison when she went on hunger strike. As well as being trampled by a horse, Emily Davison threw herself down a 10-metre iron staircase while in prison for arson. She also hid overnight in a Westminster chapel cupboard, so that on the census form she could legitimately give her place of residence as the House of Commons.

Nevertheless, to believe that the spirit of the suffragette is no longer needed is, as one Sisters Uncut protester pointed out, "delusional". When Suffragette screenwriter Abi Morgan was asked to name today's suffragettes, she mentioned Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl campaigner shot in the head by the Taliban, and the two Pussy Riot members who spent nearly two years in prison for their role in a protest.

There are many Maud Watts out there. And there will be, for decades to come.