Women's Views on News |
| Posted: 18 Sep 2013 08:54 AM PDT
Many people know the statistic: ‘two women in England and Wales a week are killed through domestic violence’; but how many try to connect with that and to feel the impact of what it really means? In the first three days of January 2012, seven women in the UK were murdered by men: three were shot, two were strangled, one was stabbed and one was killed by fifteen blunt force trauma injuries. As a result, Karen Ingala Smith began recording the names of women killed through domestic violence. She was – and is – trying to make the horror and unacceptability of what is happening to women feel more real. Then as time went on, she wanted to make connections between the different forms of fatal male violence against women. Perhaps because it was the beginning of the year, she writes on her blog, she just started counting, ‘and once I'd started, I couldn't stop. Since then, I've counted 197 women killed through suspected male violence.' Her list also serves another purpose in that she wants society to stop seeing the killings of women by men as isolated incidents. She wants us to put them together and to see the connections and patterns. She doesn't, for example, think the murders of Kimberley Frank and Samantha Sykes by Ahmad Otak were any less about male violence against women than if he had been the boyfriend of one of them. Nor does she think the murders of Margaret Biddolph, 78, and Annie Leyland, 88, by Andrew Flood, 43; or Irene Lawless, 68, who was raped, beaten and strangled by 26 year-old Darren Martin, after he had been looking at pornography involving rape and older women, were any less about misogyny. The murders of some women barely cause a ripple, some don't make it into the national media, she says. If the press took this seriously, there would be more chance of people seeing what is going on and of understanding the implications of male violence – to say 'no more'. Ultimately, she states, 'I want to see men stop killing women. 'I want to see a fit-for-purpose record of fatal male violence against women. 'I want to see the connections between the different forms of fatal male violence against women. 'I want to see a homicide review for every sexist murder. 'I want the government to fund a Femicide Observatory, where relationships between victim and perpetrator and social, cultural and psychological issues are analysed. 'I want to believe that the government is doing everything it can to end male violence against women and girls. 'I think the government should be recording and commemorating women killed through male violence – not me, a random woman in a bedroom in east London.' And, she continues, she is not going to stop counting and naming the women until she think the government is doing the same; that is, counting dead women and doing all it can to make the connections, making good its commitment to end male violence against women. When she started keeping the list, she says, she was shocked and angry about the lack of attention given to these murders, and at what feels like a wilful refusal to look at the links between the forms and causes of violence against women. And she is not the only one. 'Male violence against women and girls’, she continues, ‘is a cause and consequence of inequality between women and men, and until government seriously approaches the issue from that perspective, women and girls will continue to be beaten, raped, assaulted, abused, controlled and killed by men.' She started her list in January 2012, and she has listed the 79 UK women killed through suspected male violence from January this year until nearly the end of August: 79 women in 243 days. That's one woman every 3.1 days. Please sign her petition asking Home Secretary Theresa May to act on the deaths of all UK women killed through male violence. |
| Music videos eroding self esteem Posted: 18 Sep 2013 04:10 AM PDT
According to academic Dionne Taylor, teenagers now see sexualisation as "part and parcel" of living, and the constant streaming of raunchy dances featuring scantily-clad women is affecting their life chances. Taylor’s study of black women aged 15 to 29, living in Birmingham and London, found that this sexualisation on videos, which are played back-to-back on music channels, affected their confidence, education and ultimately their employment prospects. Taylor, a criminology lecturer at Birmingham City University, told the Birmingham Mail recently that when she was growing up as a black teenager she felt similar pressures. “As a teenager I was told 'you've got a big bum' – the focus was always on my body parts,” she said. “There was a feeling that you had to conform in some ways to these images to be worthwhile.” While this study focussed on the black community, Taylor recognises that white and Asian girls also face similar pressures and she criticised the much publicised "twerking" by Miley Cyrus as “ignorant”. “There was a part where [Cyrus] had black backing dancers and she smacked their bottoms. It was ignorant. The men we see in these videos are fully clothed and women are scantily clad.” Her research, entitled ‘I Wanna Love‘, discovered a complex relationship between teenagers and black music culture. On the one hand they identified with the music, but on the other, did not feel the sexualisation represented them. At a conference in April, British school teachers raised their concerns about an over-sexualised culture and the link between low self-esteem and body image, and debated how best to talk about the issues in schools. Siobhan Freeguard, founder of Netmums, said: "There is a toxic combination of marketing, media and peer pressure which means children no longer want to be seen as children, even when as parents we know they still are." Meanwhile, singer Cyrus grabbed the global headlines, in the western world at least, with her "twerking" routine at a US awards ceremony. It caused a media meltdown because she had formerly played the clean-cut girl-next-door Hannah Montana and has, in the tradition of many before her, re-invented herself using sexual iconography. This performance was quickly followed by the release of her "Wrecking ball" video – in which she appears naked – which was produced by Terry Richardson, who is famous for sexualising artists in his shoots. Marcela Kunova, writing in The Huffington Post, said: “Miley is sending yet another important message to young women: the best way to get noticed is to embrace your sexual objectification. And it works.” She’s right there. The video has broken the record, previously set by One Direction, for the most views in one day. Since then it has been viewed more than 46 million times. |
| Posted: 18 Sep 2013 01:09 AM PDT
I recently took part in 12-hour sponsored sleep out. It was in aid of Kairos Women Working Together (WWT), a Coventry-based charity that supports women who are risk of or subject to sexual exploitation, including those involved in street-based sex work and those aspiring to leave it. Like many small charities, Kairos relies on fundraising in order to boost revenue and enable the continuation of vital services. A sponsored sleep out, an approximation of 'rough sleeping', was chosen as a fundraising event because of its significance and relevance to the lives of the women Kairos supports. There is a strong correlation between street-based sex work and homelessness, as research by Kairos and by national organisations confirms. And one recent report by the charity Brighter Futures saw such repeated links that it has suggested that 'street sex work is how women sleep rough'. An earlier report, by Crisis in 2006, had described the ‘unwanted sexual partnerships’ homeless women are forced into in order to survive. So on 24 August a group of 11 women – staff, volunteers and friends of Kairos WWT – congregated in a city centre car park, each with nothing but a sleeping bag and a cardboard box to put between them and the cracked, bug-riddled tarmac. Packed solidly, sometimes restrictively, into layers and layers of clothing, most of us were nervous, in anticipation of what a night spent outdoors would entail. Bolstered and galvanised by our cause, and by a wish to honour our many and generous sponsors, we gamely bedded down and saw the night through in our individual ways. It would, of course, be arrogant and insulting to suggest that one night participating in a structured and safe event such as this is in any way akin to the reality, and uncertainty, that homeless women face. Yet experiencing, albeit in a manufactured way, something of the dangers and consequences of rough sleeping was a potent way of raising our collective consciousness; to give sight, sound and actuality to what may previously have been only words. For myself, 'sleep out' became something of a misnomer as I spent the whole night awake, my head snapping up at every unidentified sound, my bones grating through the vastly insufficient cardboard box I was lying on. The initial camaraderie of our shared venture; playing games, talking and laughing, slowly ebbed away as people fell asleep or fell silent. What I recall most as I remained awake was how drawn out, lonely and somehow strangely magnified everything became. Every sound seemed so loud, so important; perhaps it was my notoriously overactive imagination but the expectation that one of those sounds at one point might signal harm meant I couldn’t – or wouldn’t – let myself fall asleep. No matter that we were locked in a car park, in a group, with professionals who had performed risk assessments. If this, but stripped of companionship and relative comfort, was my reality I genuinely believe I would struggle to survive. The pain of an old running injury was also exacerbated by a night in proximity to cold concrete. No position gave relief and by 6am there was a distinct limp to my walk, and a dull ache which lasted for days. This lack of comfort – and this inability to actually approximate anything like comfort – was something remarked upon by many of the participants. Having an injury, or the aches of age, or insufficient bedding, while sleeping rough must be so psychologically damaging. My experience brought sharply into focus just how desperate many women sleeping rough must be for a good night of sleep, and what this may force them to do to obtain it. Yet the sense of vulnerability was what I felt most keenly – something I shared with fellow team members. Reflecting on her personal safety, Kate told me that “as a team, we had safety in numbers, as well as the added advantage of being locked in a gated area, in the middle of summer…privacy and safety are things I take for granted, and if I had been sleeping alone somewhere, there is no way I would have been able to let myself fall asleep and put myself at risk.”. Female rough sleepers are often subject to violence and rape, either as a consequence of their vulnerability on the streets or as a consequence of their engagement in sex work. The reports of the rape of a rough sleeper in Oxford just days after our event was a timely and sharp reminder of the vulnerabilities and atrocities faced by women who are already excluded from society, or traumatised and damaged by their experiences with poor mental health, motherhood, drug abuse, alcoholism, or violence and exploitation. Female rough sleepers are too often hidden from view. They do not form part of our conception of homelessness as their particular vulnerabilities make them less likely to sleep in plain view, and so they will not turn up in a local authority's rough sleeper counts. Equally, research suggests that many sex workers sleep at clients' houses during the day, or at crack-houses, or on friend's sofas. In this way they are not looked for, and so are not recognised as 'homeless' in the typical sense. Street-based sex workers are often out working at night, not curled up in a shop doorway at the prescribed time when local authorities perform their counts, or when local charities provide their outreach. And so they shade past policy makers and those who commission services. Their particular needs and increased marginalisation due to their status as a 'prostitute' means that they fall through the cracks made by the erroneous way homelessness in women is conceptualised and catered for. Kairos WWT’s project manager Lucia Leon told me that, as well as highlighting how 'exposing' the experience of sleeping rough must be, the event made her realise how “just one night without quality sleep can impact on your overall sense of well-being.” The consequences to health of prolonged homelessness are, of course, dire. The charity Crisis currently puts the average life expectancy of a homeless woman at 43. Lucia’s thoughts on the event touched upon another important issue: the detrimental effects of homelessness on physical and mental well-being. Health, which can only come from adequate housing, is the foundation upon which a life is rebuilt. Sex workers who wish to resolve life-controlling issues or exit sex work have little chance of succeeding without access to appropriate housing-related assistance. In a recent interview with Women's Views on News, Lucia highlighted the lack of, but pressing need for, crisis and specialist accommodation for sex workers in Coventry. Precisely because of their complex needs and chaotic lifestyles sex workers are often denied access to refuges or hostels, as they are not equipped to cope with or support their needs. This is something I witnessed first hand while I was helping with refuge referrals for a domestic violence charity, something which led me to question who helped these women, and where they would go if they needed safety. A question which led to my involvement with Kairos WWT. National research from Homeless Link supports Lucia's assertion: their 2013 Survey of Needs and Provision expressed concern that 'only one surveyed project provided targeted services for sex workers in 2013…[down from]…3 per cent in the previous year'. Research also indicates that women in mixed sex hostels are often preyed upon and sexually exploited – essentially singled out by men for their 'earning potential'. A horrific situation, but one that particularly highlights the need for women who are attempting to exit sex work, or need help obtaining positive support-based outcomes, to have access to safe, women-only accommodation. The Kairos WWT sleep out, and the awareness raising that is naturally garnered through sponsorship raising, I hope went some way to highlighting the need for greater housing-based support for women in Coventry, and to highlighting more tangibly the problems faced every day by the women Kairos support. Lucia summed up the event by saying: “Working for Kairos WWT is a daily affirmation of the strength and resilience of women. “I’m proud of the team of volunteers who came together for the night to not only to raise funds for Kairos WWT but to raise awareness of one of the issues that affects too many of our service users. “I’d like to thank all those who sponsored the team, and contributors from the local community who helped make our experience slightly more comfortable.” The event raised a total of £1,134.80 for Kairos WWT, a fantastic achievement by all involved and which will help with the continuation of vital work with vulnerable, marginalised and excluded women in Coventry. |
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