Women's Views on News |
- Petition for a stalkers’ register
- New young poet laureate for London
- Royal Society to investigate imbalance
| Petition for a stalkers’ register Posted: 06 Oct 2014 06:40 AM PDT
Stalkers steal lives and take lives. Both our daughters, Kirsty Treloar and Jane Clough, were murdered by their stalkers. Kirsty was just 20 years old when she was stalked and stabbed to death. She had given birth to a beautiful baby girl three weeks before she was killed by Myles Williams, a man who she said she never wanted to see again. He was coercively controlling and violent to Kirsty and he had abused other women. Sentencing Williams, Judge Nicholas Cooke said: ‘Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you represent an exceptional danger to any future female partners'. Jane met Jonathan Vass at work. She was an A&E nurse and he was an ambulance technician. Jane was just 26 years-old when she died. Nine months earlier she had a baby girl and the abuse escalated whilst she was pregnant. When he raped her in front of the baby, she knew she had to leave him. She ended the relationship and told police that he had raped and beaten her, but he was granted bail while facing nine counts of rape and four of assaults. He waited three months to access Jane. She had stopped going out as she was scared he was going to find her and kill her. As she became more isolated she used Facebook to talk to people and he stalked her by monitoring her account. When she eventually returned to work, he lay in wait in the hospital car park and stabbed her 71 times. Our daughters could have been saved if their serial abusers were on a register and being managed and monitored. Currently there is no existing framework which can track or monitor serial domestic violence perpetrators and stalkers. Rather than the perpetrator being effectively controlled and managed, oftentimes it is the victims who are forced to modify and change their behaviour and even flee their homes and disappear themselves in order to stay safe, which is unacceptable. People with a history of stalking are as dangerous as sex offenders and there needs to be tracking and monitoring of them. We need to act now to save lives by protecting women from serial stalkers and domestic violence perpetrators by introducing a register which would help police to pro-actively identify, track, monitor and manage stalkers instead of relying on a series of victims to report multiple crimes. This needs to change. It is the perpetrator's behaviour that is the problem. There needs to be a positive obligation on them to change their behaviour and take responsibility. They are the ones who need to be tracked, supervised and managed and not the victim. We can't bring our daughters back but we can save others in the future. Since this happened we have both become ambassadors for the National Stalking Advocacy Service Paladin, who are supporting our call for a stalkers register. We need to treat stalking with the seriousness it deserves. Many stalkers are serial and there should be a positive obligation on the abuser to change their behaviour. They are the ones who should be tracked and managed, just like sex offenders. Please help us to make sure that we protect other women so other families do not go through what we have. Please sign our petition to the Home Sectretary, Theresa May, MP. |
| New young poet laureate for London Posted: 06 Oct 2014 04:30 AM PDT
Poet Lemn Sissay appointed 21 year-old Aisling Fahey as the new Young Poet Laureate for London on National Poetry Day, 2 October 2014. Acting as a voice for young Londoners, Aisling will provide comment and reflections on current events across the capital throughout the coming year, as well as working with communities and London-based organisations to inspire and inform through poetry. Aisling follows in the footsteps of Warsan Shire, who was appointed the first ever Young Poet Laureate for London last year and had a whirlwind year of commissions and development opportunities. Warsan Shire was recently named as author of one of the '50 great modern love poems of the last 50 years' for her acclaimed work 'For women who are 'difficult' to love'. The others on the '50 great' list included American Maya Angelou, who was chosen for her lyrical plea, Come, and Be My Baby, in which the poet writes: “you sit wondering / What you’re gonna do. / I got it. / Come. And be my baby”, while Indian author Seth made the list for the mournful All You Who Sleep Tonight – “Know that you aren’t alone / The whole world shares your tears” as did Margaret Atwood‘s Variations on the Word Love and Scottish poet Jackie Kay for Her. “I had been told about her,” writes Kay. “How she would always, always. / How she would never, never. / I’d watched and listened / but I still fell for her.” The poets came from 30 countries, from Saint Lucia to Iraqi Kurdistan. Warsan Shire, who was announced as Young Poet Laureate for London by Carol Ann Duffy at the Houses of Parliament in October 2013, said: “Being Young Poet Laureate for London has been an incredible experience. "It has been challenging, humbling and rewarding. "I’ve had really beautiful moments connecting with Londoners over the transformative power of poetry. "It has been truly inspiring and I’m excited about the way it has informed and accelerated my work as a poet.” Aisling Fahey was selected from a shortlist of six young poets aged 18-25 which this year was all female. She is a Slambassadors Youth Champion and London Teenage Poetry Senior Slam Winner, and has performed to a wide range of audiences, from Glastonbury Festival to Tate Britain, Battersea Arts Centre and Royal Festival Hall. She was a member of the Barbican Young Poets, Burn After Reading Collective and Slambassadors. Check her out on YouTube. |
| Royal Society to investigate imbalance Posted: 06 Oct 2014 01:09 AM PDT
The Royal Society has promised a full investigation into the gender imbalance in its recently announced science fellowships. There is a buzz around getting women into science at the moment – which is why the Royal Society’s announcement of their University Research Fellowships (URFs) last month came as a surprise to many. After years of slow progress, 2010 saw one third of the Society’s fellowships secured by women. But since then the percentage of fellowships received by women has been steadily declining, and of the 43 fellowships awarded in 2014, just two went to female scientists. The prestigious fellowships provide five years of assured funding and the possibility of an extension to scientists in the early stages of their careers. This gives researchers the stability and support they need to become potential leaders in their field. 'This year women accounted for 19 per cent of the applications for the URF scheme but only accounted for 13 per cent of those shortlisted, 9 per cent of those interviewed and less than 5 per cent of those awarded.' The President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse, wrote, in the Society’s In Verba blog; ‘Last year women accounted for roughly 20 per cent at all stages of the process.’ ‘We do not know why the numbers this year are so different to previous years but I have asked for an investigation. ‘We need to find out what happened and if we identify problems in our systems we will correct them,' he said. While women have fared better in some of the other fellowship schemes the Royal Society operates, Nurse wrote that the gender imbalance in the URFs sends out the wrong message to young women looking to pursue a career in science. He was nonetheless keen to point out that 21 per cent of the people on the committees which oversaw the URF process this year were women. Nurse appears to believe the problem may lie in the calibre of the female applicants. 'The Royal Society must focus on excellence and we will not compromise on that, but we are aware that too many talented individuals do not fulfil their scientific potential because of issues such as gender, ethnicity or disability,' he wrote. 'This is a problem across science, including at the Royal Society, and I hope that by investigating the problems we can better understand what needs to be done to improve the situation.' A focus on excellence is all very well, but as one commentator on the In Verba blog rightly noted: '[A] selection based on excellence will not result in a gender disparity.' The promise of an investigation and the transparency with which the Royal Society has displayed its diversity figures are to be applauded. But the Royal Society has been criticised before for its selection processes. Jonathan Eisen, an American evolutionary biologist at the University of California, reportedly called the Royal Society “a club of mostly older white men that every year picks more similar members to join their club”. In addition, by implying that the URF gender imbalance could be down to the quality of the candidates and/or due to a sector-wide problem, Nurse appears to be trying to direct attention away from the Society's responsibility to confront internal bias, no matter who was on the selection committee. Let's hope the investigation does not also try to deflect responsibility. |
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