Thursday, December 6, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

A murderer, yes, but a really good person

Posted: 05 Dec 2012 09:01 AM PST

From Sian and Crooked Rib.

How does the media report murders of women?

Hot on the heels of the Daily Mail re-branding stalking as romance, the BBC report today that tributes are being paid to a man who shot his wife before killing himself.

I honestly cannot think of another situation where tributes would be paid to a man who committed a violent crime.

The police describe how the man, who was the leader of the council, shot his wife and then himself. But this doesn't seem to be the news story. The news story instead is about the tributes made by councillors, colleagues and neighbours to the man who:

"typified what’s good about the town and the district of North Norfolk."

It's a story about how the flag on the council building is flying at half mast, how despite 'being from different parties' he was 'always very good to deal with', how he was a 'good public servant' who was 'respected across the political spectrum'. No-where is it really mentioned that by shooting his wife, this pillar of the community murdered a woman.

Because that is what just happened. There’s nothing in the article to suggest suicide pact or complicity. He shot his wife. I don't know why, I don't care why, I don't know if there was a history of domestic abuse. What we do know is he shot his wife before killing himself.

It seems to me that it's only in the case of domestic abuse when the news coverage bends over backwards to talk about the perpetrator as really a good person. It seems that it's only when crimes are committed against women does the media try to mitigate it by assuring us that – apart from in his relations to his wife – the man with the gun was a 'good guy'. I think it happens because it's simply too terrifying to face the fact that twice a week, men murder a current or ex partner. That at least two men a week are killing women.

It reminds me of the man who killed his wife and only got eighteen months because his actions were 'out of character' and he led a 'respectable and successful life'. The deaths of the women became subordinate to the story of the man. And make no mistake, it’s this kind of reporting, that diminishes blame for a violent crime against women, that then has an impact on juries finding violent men guilty, on judges handing out sentences to men who kill their wives. This has a real impact. Every time a man is violent to a woman, and the media reports it as a crime of passion, of jealousy, or a retaliation because ‘she took his kids’ or ‘she left him’, then that media is victim blaming, and it’s a victim blaming culture that means we have a 6.5% conviction rate for rape, for example. The way the media reports violence against women matters. It has an impact on all of us women.

Today's story is a tragic one. As before with the stalker, any death is awful and of course those who knew him are devastated. But it's a tragedy that involves her death as well, and what this reporting does is just focus on how he was a “good guy”. Her death and her life just does not seem to be considered in this article at all.

On the Yahoo report of the story one of the commenters says:

"Probably another domestic incident gone wrong."

It's a telling comment. It's not murder, it's a domestic incident gone wrong. That's how this story can so easily be re-framed, to be one about how tributes are being paid to a man who shot his wife and then killed himself. It's just another example of how our culture refuses to acknowledge what violence against women and girls looks like.

This year, according to the OneinFour Twitter feed, 104 have lost their lives as a result of gender based violence.

If you can, please make a donation to WomensAid and Refuge, so no more women lose their lives to men.

Domestic Abuse Helpline: 0808 2000 247

Sian Norris is a Bristol-based writer and feminist activist. She co-ordinates the Bristol Feminist Network and runs a successful blog, sianandcrookedrib. She has written for a range of blogs, newspapers, magazines and websites, including the Guardian and the F Word, as well as presented at a variety of feminist academic conferences. She recently published an anthology of experiences of becoming a feminist 'The Light Bulb Moment' and her children's book, Greta & Boris: A Daring Rescue is due to be published in 2013. In her day job, she's an advertising copywriter for a range of charity clients.

The glorification of family annihilators

Posted: 05 Dec 2012 09:00 AM PST

From My Elegant Gathering of White Snows.

Two more family annihilators being glorified in the press.

There have been two murder-suicides this weekend: Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins before killing himself. Keith Johnson killed his wife Andrea before killing himself. Today, two sets of families on two different continents are mourning the loss of their daughters; both murdered by their partners. Two women a week in the UK are murdered by the men who claimed to love them. Despite this fact, press coverage is always about what “nice” men they were. The coverage does not focus on the women murdered but on the careers and personal characteristics of the murderers. The coverage of the deaths of Kasandra Perkins and Andrea Johnson are no different.

The BBC coverage of the murder-suicide in Cromer includes these statements:

Mr Johnson, a former mayor of Cromer, became Conservative leader of North Norfolk District Council in May.

Fellow Conservative councillor Trevor Ivory, a friend of the couple, said: “It’s a complete shock. I last saw them both on Thursday evening and they were both very happy and seemed to be enjoying life.

“The words Cromer and Keith Johnson are synonymous. He typified what’s good about the town and the district of North Norfolk.”

In a statement, North Norfolk Labour Party paid tribute to Mr Johnson. Chairwoman Denise Burke said: “The death of Keith is a tragedy and a massive loss to Cromer and North Norfolk, too.

“Keith has been a real public servant throughout his life and will be sorely missed by the whole community. He was much respected across the political spectrum.

“Our thoughts are with Keith’s friends and family at this time.”

If Johnson typified all that was good about Cromer, then they have some serious problems. This man murdered his wife and he will be sorely missed? What about his wife Andrea? Will she be sorely missed? Andrea barely gets a mention in the article. We know that the man who murdered her was a well-respected career politician but, his wife, just an addendum to the story. Was Andrea’s death not a tragedy? Just the death of her murderer?

Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins before shooting himself in front of the coach and general manager of his football team, yet this story focuses on the fans and the team:

Although the game was unimportant — especially with neither the Chiefs (2-10) nor the Panthers (3-9) bound the playoffs — it did provide some relief for the team and community.

Kasandra is just as absent from this article as Andrea. There is no discussion of the grief of her family and friends. There is no mention of her life at all. Both Andrea and Kasandra are being written out of the story of their murder whilst the eulogies of their murderers begins.

This is the War on Women. Not only do we pay for the hyper-masculinity within the Patriarchy with our bodies through rape, torture and our deaths but we are also written out of the stories of our own lives.

I await with sadness the inevitable stories to follow which will blame the women for their own murders.

Louise Pennington is a feminist activist, historian and writer with a background in education. Her personal blog My Elegant Gathering of White Snows is part of the Mumsnet Bloggers Network.

UK Uncut protests: Saturday at Starbucks

Posted: 05 Dec 2012 06:14 AM PST

This Saturday, 8 December, UK Uncut is staging a national day of action.

Activists will be targeting Starbucks coffee stores in protest at the company’s tax avoidance and the impact of government spending cuts on women.

And to highlight the sickeningly disproportionate impact of the government’s spending cuts on women.

People throughout the country will be joining forces to show their opposition to government cuts to vital public services - from crèches to domestic violence refuges and homeless shelters.

With the scything force of spending cuts in full swing, victims of rape and domestic violence are being turned away from safe homes as newly under-resourced women's services find themselves incapable of meeting demand.

And women and families are facing homelessness in increasing numbers. Benefit caps and housing shortages mean the number of children living in temporary accommodation will be at record levels this Christmas.

Meanwhile, international corporate giant Starbucks is refusing to pay its taxes and the the UK’s tax collectors, the HMRC, are turning a blind eye.

As part of the nationwide protests being planned for 8 December, two groups of women and campaigners, led by UK Uncut, will transform two Starbucks coffee houses in North London into a refuge from the cuts, to object to the attack on women's access to work, services, financial independence and safety.

Around 400,000 women are sexually assaulted and 80,000 women are raped each year.

Yet this government is planning £5.6m of cuts to services including refuges for abused women, domestic violence advocates, victim support centres and centres for women who have been raped or sexually assaulted.

And so in Islington, a Rape Crisis Centre will start opening  at 12 noon in the Starbucks opposite The Angel underground station at 7 Islington High Street.

Join us as we set up an info centre inside Starbucks providing information on the services out there for women who have been raped and sexually assaulted and making a space to discuss how we can continue to campaign for these services that are vital to so many women.

Bring yourself, an open mind and some passion for ensuring we don’t let this male-dominated government take life-saving services away from women.

And, slightly further along the road, from 2pm another Starbucks – at 3o Islington High Street – will be transformed into a home and will be having a house warming party.

Bring some things (pot plants, pictures, cushions, curtains, cake) to make it feel like home and celebrate our resistance!

More and more women – one million more women than men are being affected by housing benefit cuts –  and families are facing homelessness as housing benefits are cut, rents soar and the massive lack of social housing forces families and individuals out of their homes and into temporary accommodation, slum housing or out on to the streets.

And many London families are being forced to leave their homes, schools, jobs and communities and moved to far reaches of the country by councils unable to or refusing to house them.

Disgusted with a government which refuses to acknowledge the scale of the crisis?

Join us.

Clck here to check up on UK Uncut events on facebook.

Click here to see where there is a UK Uncut day of action event near you.

Exhibition: See Red Women’s Workshop

Posted: 05 Dec 2012 04:30 AM PST

The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is holding an exhibition about the See Red Women’s Workshop.

A screen printing workshop run as a women’s collective from around 1974 to the early 1990s, the See Red Women’s Workshop was a radical campaigning and publicising organisation fully committed to the ideals of the second wave feminist movement.

The exhibition ’is a studied look at the See Red Women’s Workshop collective and their associated ephemera of protest and Women’s Liberation’.

See Red developed a range of feminist posters that attempted to address many different issues, ranging from the domestic isolation of mothers and unethical marketing by pharmaceutical giants to racism in Britain and solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles abroad, as well as domestic violence, sexual equality and the media’s treatment of women.

Overall, 25 women worked at See Red during its lifetime. They worked from home in the early days, then progressed to renting shared space with Women in Print, at 16a Iliffe Yard, off Crampton St, London, SE17.

Initially run without any grant aid, the women contributed up to three working days a week to the workshop while earning an actual living elsewhere.

In the early 1980s, the collective received funding from the then Greater London Council which made moving to new premises, at 90 Camberwell Road, SE5, possible.

The group arose out of a period that saw ‘not just the extension of both political and cultural concerns, but also the rise of community activism’.

They produced radical yet accessible campaigning designs in what became their signature raw screen-printed aesthetic. They published their own material in the form of posters, calendars and cards alongside designs and commissions for other organisations.

Initially they wanted to prioritise the strength of the message over slick techniques or beautiful art, and made posters that served an urgent purpose that they acknowledged might ultimately be short-lived.

However, by the mid 1980s more professional equipment and a change in ideas about aesthetics prompted this comment by the collective:

‘… Every day we are confronted with images created by media folk with their clever designs that perpetuate views and stereotypes that society has about whole classes of people – Women, Black people, Homosexuals.

‘Our posters help counteract those images and challenge the stereotypes in television, advertisements and magazines’.

The exhibition at the ICA runs from 5 December until 13 January, and will be accompanied by an essay by Dodie Bellamy and a screening of the film ‘Nightcleaners‘ on Tuesday 11 December at 6.30pm.

Nightcleaners Part 1 was a documentary made by members of the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphry Trevelyan), about the campaign to unionise the women who cleaned office blocks at night and who were being victimised and underpaid.

Intending at the outset to make a campaign film, the Collective was forced to turn to new forms in order to represent the forces at work between the cleaners, the Cleaner’s Action Group and the unions – and the complex nature of the campaign itself.

The result is ‘increasingly recognised as a key work of the 1970s and as an important precursor, in both subject matter and form, to current political art practice’.

Strange mathematical ideas

Posted: 05 Dec 2012 03:00 AM PST

The 30% Club is a group committed to bringing more women onto UK corporate boards.

And it celebrated its second birthday last week.

Its members have declared their voluntary support for the 30 per cent goal and are taking action to achieve it.

But as their website says, clearly, in big letters, this is not a call for quota.

Instead, they say, they want to achieve a better gender balance at all management levels 'in a way that encourages real, sustainable and faster change'.

The 30% Club sees itself ‘as complementing the many other efforts underway in this area and, 'as a neutral, non-commercial body, can help to coordinate these and deliver actions beyond words'.

Got to love it.

The idea for the 30% Club came in May 2010 when Helena Morrissey, CEO of Newton Investment Management, and Labour peer Mary Goudie were at a meeting about Cranfield School of Management's Female FTSE Report, which had revealed how few women were making it into top positions.

They agreed that talking was not enough to get more women into the boardroom and that a concerted effort by the business community was required.

It should, they agreed, be 'spearheaded by a non-commercial organisation to coordinate activities'.

Two chairmen – Sir Roger Carr of Centrica and Sir Win Bischoff of Lloyds Banking Group –declared their commitment within hours of the idea being floated, and the 30% Club was formally launched in November 2010.

For as Lord Sharman, chairman of Aviva, said: "Women on boards add a different dimension to deliberations, and critically importantly act as role models and mentors to develop the many talented women in our organisations.

“Balanced leadership is important to help organisations fulfill their aspirations."

And the idea is championed by Angela Knight CBE, Chief Executive of the British Bankers' Association and – according to the website – Theresa May, the Home Secretary.

At an event celebrating the Club's second year, the business secretary Vince Cable acknowledged the slow progress of women reaching the boards of major companies in full-time roles.

New data showed there has been little progress in increasing the number of female executive directors: the figure remains static at just under 7 per cent of all executive directorships.

And two of the highest profile female FTSE directors – Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson, and Anglo American mining boss Cynthia Carroll – have recently resigned.

The UK government has 'stepped away' from introducing mandatory boardroom representation for women but ‘has adopted proposals by the former banker Lord Davies that 25 per cent of UK boardroom seats should be held by women by 2015′.

Stepped away. Interesting idea.

Alison Brittain is one of the most senior women in the banking industry, the head of one of the biggest bank branch networks in the UK and the largest mortgage lender in the country.

Speaking to the Guardian about her experiences recently, she said she was “ambivalent” about whether quotas for women in the boardroom should be imposed, but admits she is worried about the impact of voluntary measures to increase their number.

She fears that firms are hiring women as part-time non-executives to boost the balance in the boardroom, but failing to bring on talented women executives.

“I do think this obsession with non-executives is a problem,” she says, because it has the effect of “sucking out executives”.

“Where are the chief executives of the future going to come from when 38-to-48-year-olds are missing from the full-time workforce?”

Her worry about quotas is that women will be told they have only got the job because of their gender.

“It shouldn’t be necessary,” she says. “But there are other days when I wonder: how do we get there?

"It is absolutely true that if I have a job on my team, any man will apply if they’ve got two out the 10 attributes required.

“Women will wait until they’ve got nine.”

Meanwhile the European Union move to set a 40-per cent quota for women on the boards of listed companies was delayed “several weeks” in October.

Show your support of EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s proposal to put women in 40 per cent of Europe’s board seats by 2020: sign the petition.

This directive ‘is visionary and essential for building a society that engages all of its citizens in designing and building the future’.

And it will showcase Europe as ‘an example of empowered, balanced leadership, something we can be proud of and that can be emulated around the world’.

The rest of us will aim for representational balance: 51 per cent of the population, 51 per cent on the board.

At least 51 per cent.

Fears grow for Iranian prisoner of conscience

Posted: 05 Dec 2012 02:00 AM PST

The hunger strike of  imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh enters its eighth week on today amid growing concerns about her imminent hospitalisation.

Iranian authorities arrested Sotoudeh in September 2010 for allegedly conspiring to threaten state security and spread anti-regime propaganda.

Sotoudeh was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment and banned from practicing law for 10 years.

She is being held currently in Ward 209 of Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.

Reserved for political prisoners, the Ward is outside judicial jurisdiction which enables harsh conditions within to remain unchallenged by the judiciary.

Cells in Ward 209 do not have beds and there is no heating to protect from the freezing temperatures of a Tehrani winter.

If these physical conditions weren’t enough to quash the spirit, these political prisoners are also subject to physical violence from prison guards. In a recent letter to from the female political prisoners to the head of Evin Prison (co-signed by Nasrin Sotoudeh), they complain about, ‘the brutal behaviour by some agents during the bodily searches of the female prisoners [that] cannot and will not be forgiven, for this violent and obvious act of aggression and desecration is so reprehensible that putting pen to paper to describe it renders one ashamed and disgraced.’

Since her arrival at Evin Prison, Sotoudeh, a mother of two, has served 18 months without personal phone calls, as well as being held in solitary confinement for long periods of her internment. She has also suffered a reversal of her visitation rights for refusing to wear the chador, a decision which she explained to her children thus: ‘…I did not act on the basis of resistance. I acted to uphold the laws in its entirety, and that is why I refused to wear the chador. I did not want my family, particularly my young children, to realise the pressures and humiliation [in prison] by seeing their mother – who does not usually wear the chador – under forced cover.’

She was distinguished by the international community for her representation of opposition activists following the disputed 2009 presidential elections, as well as her defense of prisoners of conscience and those facing the death penalty for crimes committed while they were juveniles. Sotoudeh, along with film director Jafar Panahi, were recently awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The award, reserved to honour those who have dedicated their lives to the preservation of human rights and freedom of thought, was previously won by Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.

Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, has made the egregious nature of these allegations very clear to the international media: ‘The world should know that all she has done to earn this punishment is support her clients. Even when she was threatened with arrest, she continued to support her clients with bravery and determination. The world must support her now.’

WVoN reported last year that International Human Rights Day, which coincided with the launch of the Free Sotoudeh Project, had been used to raise international awareness about her imprisonment and, it had been hoped, put pressure on the Iranian authorities for her release.

It seems, however, that the authorities have only increased their pressure on Sotoudeh, now fabricating a case against her husband and 12 year old daughter which embargoes them from international travel. It is this latest development, reported by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, that triggered Sotoudeh’s latest hunger strike and which she refuses to break until her daughter’s travel ban is lifted.

For the voiceless female prisoners of Evin Prison, hunger striking is a grimly common way of life. How else can they ensure that their stories of injustice are heard outside Ward 209?

This is Nasrin Sotoudeh’s fourth time; the effects on her health can only be imagined.

Since her hunger strike began on 17 October, her weight has so far dropped to a chilling 43kg (94.7lbs) and she is understood to have been in and out of the prison infirmary. Khandan told Reuters that he was ‘seriously concerned about her health’ and he expected her imminent admission to hospital after discovering that her body had now begun to reject fluids.
Safe World for Women are petitioning the UN Special Rapporteur to take action, you can add your name here.

Amnesty International is lobbying the Iranian authorities.   Email the Supreme Leader of Iran to call for Nasrin Sotoudeh’s release here.