Friday, December 21, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

App makes sharing explicit content easier

Posted: 20 Dec 2012 06:30 AM PST

Controversial mobile app receives funding boost as teen 'sexting' epidemic is revealed.

A controversial photo-sharing app dubbed the ‘sexting app’ is likely to receive an $8million boost from the same company that funded Instagram.

SnapChat allows users to share photos that 'self destruct' seconds after they are viewed by the recipient, with the evidence deleted from the company's servers just as soon as the images disappear from the app.

The app will also let you know if someone takes a screenshot of your image, although if anyone does decide to make a copy, there is nothing you can do to retrieve it - perhaps the biggest flaw and most worrying aspect of the service.

Just last week the start-up, which only launched earlier this year, announced the addition of video to the app, meaning users can now share ten second clips with each other.

The app, which sees around 1,000 images shared every second, is popular with under-25s who are making use of it to share pictures they may not want to post on Facebook or Twitter.

Although its creators have gone to great lengths to deny SnapChat is a sexting app, and you would hope not all of those 1,000 images a second are explicit, it's no surprise that the service is being used in this way.

SnapChat co-founder Evan Spiegel told TechCrunch:  "I'm not convinced that the whole sexting thing is as big as the media makes it out to be. I just don't know people who do that. It doesn't seem that fun when you can have real sex."

For teens however, Spiegel seems to be missing the point.

According to a study by Plymouth University for the NSPCC, reported in the Telegraph last week, children as young as 13 are regularly swapping explicit images on their mobile phones.

Professor Andy Phippen, from Plymouth University, said: “This is mainstream, this is normal, this is almost mundane for some of the people we spoke to.”

The investigation by the NSPCC and Channel 4 spoke to children aged 13-16 over a period of six months, to reveal a culture shaped by easy and instantaneous access to hardcore adult pornography.

Dubbed 'generation sex' by the report, one 15-year old girl said, “I get asked for naked pictures… at least two or three times a week,” while one boy of the same age said, “you would have seen a girl’s breasts before you’ve seen their face.”

Both boys and girls claim to feel pressurised by the porn industry and celebrity culture to act and look a certain way, but according to Jon Brown of the NSPCC, it's girls who usually find themselves coerced into sharing explicit images.

"Boyfriends normalise it – it's the whole ‘If you really love me' argument. And it's often basic sexism, with girls being seen as boys' property. We've seen pictures where girls write across their breasts ‘I belong to X [the boyfriend's name]'," said Brown.

Sexting also provides ready material for cyber bullying, leaving girls vulnerable to exposure online and the devastating consequences it can have.

In 2009 US teenager Jessica Logan committed suicide after a naked photograph she sent to her boyfriend was forwarded to classmates.

Closer to home, police have launched an investigation after explicit images of young women from Blackpool were posted online.

A Facebook group encouraged men and boys to post images that had been sent to them to 'name and shame' young women and girls.

One 22-year old woman said: "It ran on the premise of asking people to send explicit photos of girls… many who I suspect were under the age of 18.

"The abusive language and bullying targeted at the girls and other people who were reporting the page was horrifying."

SnapChat has already spawned a Tumblr page charmingly entitled SnapChat Sluts.

The short-lived venture apparently showed images of women who chose to participate, but demonstrated the ease with which this 'disappearing' content can be captured.

Tuition fees making students vulnerable

Posted: 20 Dec 2012 02:53 AM PST

Website hoax takes advantage of students forced to turn to the sex industry.

A 39-year old man has been arrested on suspicion of incitement to prostitution, following undercover investigations by both Channel 4 News and the Independent newspaper.

Married father of two Mark Lancaster claimed to be an 'assessor' for Sponsor A Scholar, a web-based company which offered sponsorship of up to £15,000 a year to female students in return for 'discreet adventures' with wealthy businessmen.

In a film broadcast by Channel 4 News on 30 November, a reporter posing as a student was asked to dress up and pose for photographs and undergo a 'practical assessment' with Lancaster.

Similarly, a reporter from the Independent was told she would have to 'demonstrate the level of intimacy' that would be required by sponsors as a form of 'quality control'.

The website, which has since been taken down, claimed to have arranged sponsorship for 1,400 women aged between 17 and 24, but appears to be an elaborate hoax created by Lancaster to target young women for sex.

One student told Channel 4 News she had been pressured into having sex with Lancaster after struggling to pay her tuition fees.

“He just kissed me before I really had time to think about it or ask any questions … and I just froze because I really didn’t know what to do. Then he started undressing me.

“I was in a different city, and he’d picked me up from outside the place and walked me in so in my mind I was, like, ‘I can’t leave right now because I don’t know where I am and if I do leave and he chases me, I don’t know what to do’. So I just froze and went along with what he was doing,” she said.

Following her ordeal she was sent an email from Sponsor A Scholar telling her she had been unsuccessful, but that she could reapply in a couple of months.

In the wake of the reports, Minister for Women Jo Swinson has insisted that the government is committed to tacking such sexual exploitation.

"We are committed to tackling the harm and exploitation that can be associated with prostitution. We want to see the police use the law, where appropriate, to tackle those who have taken advantage of those who are forced into prostitution," she said.

Both Channel 4 and the Independent have passed the information from their investigations on to the police.

The case has highlighted a disturbing trend for students to turn to the sex industry to help fund their education.

The rising cost of university tuition fees in particular have been cited as one of the main reasons cash-strapped students are turning to sex work instead of bar work to avoid huge debts.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5, NUS national women’s officer Estelle Hart said that increased living costs, higher fees and cuts to the education maintenance allowance (EMA) are driving students to the streets to pay for their studies.

“Students are taking more dangerous measures,” she told an interviewer. “In an economic climate where there are very few jobs, people are taking more work in the informal economy, such as sex work.”

Earlier this month, the National Student reported that the number of students working in the sex industry had doubled in the past year.

A study carried out by professor Ron Roberts of Kingston University revealed that six per cent of students are turning to the sex industry for employment and every year between £600,000 and £3million is channelled into each UK institution by students working in the industry.

Professor Roberts said: "Sadly, students are a financially vulnerable and heavily indebted financial sector and have become targets for people with money.

“The economy of the sex industry is now heavily intertwined with higher education economy."

The English Collective of Prostitutes said the number of calls made to its helpline from students has also doubled in the last 12 months.

“They [ministers] know the cuts they’re making are driving women into things like sex work. It’s a survival strategy so we would hold the government responsible for that.”

In Wales, a new project led by Swansea University is carrying out a three-year study into the scale of the problem.

The Student Sex Workers Project is a Big Lottery-funded initiative in partnership with the Terrence Higgins Trust, which will offer support to student sex workers in Wales and investigate their motivation.

The project is led by Dr Tracey Sagar from the university’s Centre for Criminal Justice and Criminology.

Speaking to the Huffington Post she claimed that the Sponsor A Scholar case was the "tip of a very large iceberg” and that the internet enabled such exploitation due to loopholes in the law.

She said: "The law has not caught up with the internet and nor has society. Technically the website falls between loopholes in the law. The internet falls between everything."

Harriet Harman marks 30 years in parliament

Posted: 20 Dec 2012 01:00 AM PST

UK’s longest serving female MP celebrates historic landmark.

Earlier this month, the speaker of the House of Commons held a reception at his home to mark a rather historical occasion.

The great and the good of Westminster and beyond gathered to pay tribute to the UK's longest serving female MP, who was celebrating three decades in the business.

Yes, 30 years ago this winter, Harriet Ruth Harman, solicitor and equality campaigner, became Member of Parliament for Peckham.

At the time, just 3 per cent of MPs were women.

The fact that women today have a far more prominent – albeit fluctuating - place around the tables of power is, in no small part, down to the years of campaigning on the part of Ms Harman, who would eventually become the country's first ever Minister for Women.

But having trained and qualified as a solicitor, she was making her mark as an equality campaigner long before anyone had ever heard her name.

Her first job as a solicitor was at Brent Law Centre, the left-wing campaigning body where she met her husband Jack on a picket line, if legend is to be believed.

Even then, she was fighting against a tide of patriarchy and trying to make her way in what was very much a man’s world.

When she was job-hunting as a trainee solicitor, law firms would advertise for “the right young man for the job… It wasn’t recognised what women could do,” she said.

She then became Legal Officer for what was then the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), and is now simply called Liberty, where she took on the first cases for women under the – then new - Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts and won a landmark Sex Discrimination Act case.

After several years of frustration witnessing women struggle for equality in the workplace, as well as in society in general, she decided that there was a more direct way to tackle discrimination – and became an MP.

At the time, she was one of only ten women Labour MP’s..

Three decades later, she is still in the House, now representing Camberwell and Peckham.

This in itself is quite an accomplishment, and her list of achievements on the equalities front is more than significant.

But being a woman in politics, it was inevitable that she would make regular headline news – some good, some not so good.

On a personal level, she has been criticised and vilified for everything from being 'on the posh side'  – she is a a descendant of the 7th Earl of Longford - and, conversely, for deliberately dropping her 't's, and from sending her own children to an opted-out Catholic School, to being banned from driving and fined for speeding.

On a professional level… Well, that has also, on occasion, been something of a bumpy ride, not least of all for her rather questionable turn at the Labour Party conference this year.

But like every political figure, she will most likely be judged on her legacy, and for her, that means the ways in which she has changed the way women in this country live and work.

She has held an array of impressive posts, from Shadow Minister for Social Services, Labour Spokesperson for Health, Shadow Secretary of State for Health, for Social Security and for Employment, Minister for Women and of course deputy leader and acting leader of the Opposition.

And she has campaigned for – and achieved – many landmark changes in the law and in social attitudes that tackle gender discrimination.

After joining Parliament in 1982, for example, she set up the first Parliamentary Labour Party Women's Group.

When it looked as though Labour would select an all-male shadow cabinet, she campaigned for places to be reserved for women – and in 1989, 3 places for women were added.

In the same year, she was instrumental in the introduction of 'women-only shortlists', which led eventually to the election of 101 Labour women MPs in 1997.

The national minimum wage is largely thanks to her, and she introduced the New Deal for Lone Parents, to help lone mothers who wanted to get off benefits and into work.

In 1998 she established the National Childcare Strategy, and for years she campaigned for longer maternity leave and higher maternity pay.

As Solicitor General, she campaigned for the prioritisation of domestic violence, and  this in turn led to the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act.

It was not exactly plain sailing, however, and she has said that she considered quitting ‘many, many times’ but didn’t want to send out the wrong message to other women.

She has also said that in the early years, it was hard being a woman in a overwhelmingly male environment.

Attitudes were ‘you're too young; then with children, an absolute write off, too much on your plate; and then past it. You never have a prime.

‘Yet for men, when they're young they're ambitious and thrusting: if a man has four children, his work colleagues will regard him as reassuringly virile. And then when he's older, he's all wisdom and sagacity.’

Like all politicians, Harriet Harman hardly has an unblemished record and has attracted her share of scandal around party contributions and expenses issues.

But one thing is indisputable.

Without her, we might never have had the protections against discrimination for women with regards to pay, maternity rights and employment conditions that we do today.

And while she is now no longer at the cutting edge of equalities, being, as she now is, the Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, she is still seen as a torchbearer for the fight against gender discrimination.

She once said that if she became prime minister, 'there wouldn’t be enough airports for all the men who would want to flee the country'.

As unlikely a prospect of her ever becoming prime minister may be, should it happen, there is always the ferry…