Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Centre for Women’s Justice launched

Posted: 25 Jul 2016 03:22 PM PDT

centre for women's justice, launch, Harriet Wistrich, Manchester Metropolitan University, “A powerful new institution which is going to challenge the state when it is letting women down”.

The Centre For Women's Justice was launched last week at an event hosted by the Sylvia Pankhurst Gender Research Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The Centre is a new project which aims to advance the human rights of women and girls in England and Wales by holding the state to account for failures to prevent violence against women and girls and by challenging discrimination against women and girls in the criminal justice system.

It also aims to support individuals and groups that challenge institutions and laws that perpetuate violence against women by using strategic litigation, linking up lawyers, academics, NGOs and those on the frontline, providing advice and support for those involved in legal challenges and undertaking research and public education.

The website is currently under construction; to like the facebook page, click here.

The launch event was a day of discussion, ideas and debate, followed by a party bringing together feminist activists, survivors, and frontline practitioners with lawyers, academics and journalists to explore ways of using the law to challenge and redress violence against women and girls.

Among those at the event were Harriet Wistrich, the founding director of Centre, and Marcia Willis-Stewart, from Birnberg Peirce and Partners, who was lead solicitor for seventy-seven of the families at the recent Hillsborough Inquests.

Fiona Broadfoot, prostitution survivor, campaigner and educator, founder and founder of 'Build a Girl'; ‘Sana’, the member of WAST who brought legal challenge against Home Office, Serco and Bedfordshire police arising from sexual abuse at Yarl’s Wood; and Alison Boydell, Independent Sexual Violence Advocate (ISVA) at SARSVL, co-founder of End Online Misogyny and co-founder of JURIES, the campaign to introduce mandatory briefings of juries in rape and sexual abuse trials, also took part.

The closing plenary was given by Estelle du Boulay, director of Rights of Women; Sally Chesworth, producer of BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live Investigates and Sonia Birdee, a barrister and volunteer with Greater Manchester Law Centre.

The event was supported by the Baring Foundation and the Sylvia Pankhurst Gender Research Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University and sponsored by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

The Sylvia Pankhurst Gender Research centre was launched at Manchester Metropolitan University on International Women's Day 2016.

The Centre provides a home for the "remarkable number" of researchers from throughout the University who are involved in gender research.

Sylvia, a daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, was the most imprisoned suffragette and also one of what is now Manchester Met's alumni, having been a prize-winning student in the Manchester School of Art at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Dr Kate Cook, head of the Sylvia Pankhurst Gender Research Centre, said: "This is an important Northern incarnation of a powerful new institution which is going to challenge the state when it is letting women down."