Saturday, December 8, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Autumn Statement bad news for women

Posted: 07 Dec 2012 08:18 AM PST

And research says 81 per cent of benefit and tax credit cuts come from women.

In 5 December's Autumn Statement the Chancellor, George Osborne, announced cuts to benefits, tax credits and tax changes, which will save the Treasury £1.06bn.

But according to research, commissioned by Shadow Equalities Minister Yvette Cooper, 81 per cent of these savings, or £867 million, will come from women.

Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children explained: “What seems to be happening is there’s a transference of targeting – from benefits which had gone primarily to women with children, to targeting personal allowance changes which are for everyone.”

So while most working people will welcome the extra £235 a year from an increase in their basic tax allowance, Working and Child Tax Credits, Child Benefit, Statutory Maternity and Adoption pay, housing benefit and out of work benefits like Jobseekers Allowance will only increase by 1 per cent a year from April 2013, a real-terms cut of 1.7 – 2.2 per cent a year, if inflation remains at its current levels.

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizen’s Advice, said: "The government can't keep hitting the same people over and over again.

"Let's not forget, below inflation benefit increases will not just hit people who are out of work. It will also hurt working families in low paid jobs who have already been hit by wage freezes and cuts in working hours."

And as WVoN reported last week, a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that most working age people in poverty are now in work, rather than unemployed.

Geri Goddard, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said women had already paid for two thirds of the changes to taxes and welfare since 2010, and women's unemployment was at a 24-year high.

"The various policies unveiled in the name of growth offer little to support women’s greater participation in the labour market or wider economy.

"While further investment in roads and other big infrastructure projects is welcome, few of the 1.01 million unemployed women will find jobs as a result.”

"Women will continue to act as shock absorbers for the cuts,” she added.

"It's vital the forthcoming Spending Review considers the differing impact these measures will have on women and men.

"In particular government will need to go further than just a household income level impact analysis if they are to gauge the likely impact of their policies on every day women’s lives in any meaningful way.

“At the same time, keeping public sector pay rises at below inflation levels – a real terms pay cut – will also affect women disproportionately, as they make up the bulk of the public sector workforce.”

Yvette Cooper believes that this has come about because there are now so few women at the top of government.

“This is the problem with having so few women in the cabinet, nobody asks the question,” she said.

Tragic costs of cheap female labour

Posted: 07 Dec 2012 07:33 AM PST

Factory fire disaster draws the spotlight on to global retailers sourcing clothes from Bangladesh.

At least 112 people are reported to have died in a factory fire just outside the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka on 24 November.

The blaze, which tore through a clothes factory operated by Tazreen Fashions, is the country's worst factory fire to date.

Initial investigations suggest the fire was started deliberately, and that the factory doors were locked, preventing many from escaping, so that the death toll includes a number of workers whose only means of escape was to jump from the building.

Bangladesh’s garment factories generate 80 per cent of the country's total export revenue and make clothes for brands including Wal-Mart, JC Penney, H&M, Marks & Spencer, Carrefour and Tesco.

And this factory is believed to have supplied a number of Western companies and had contracts with Disney, Ikea and Edinburgh Woollen Mill.

US retail giant Walmart was quick to distance itself from the company, blaming the link to its name on a subcontractor operating without its knowledge.

Factory fires are not uncommon in Bangladesh, and this latest tragedy will add to the toll of over 400 workers who have died in 50 factory fires in Bangladesh since 1990.

In 2006 84 people were killed when fire engulfed a textile factory in the southern city of Chittagong, after fire exits had been blocked.

According to War on Want, there are over 4,500 textile factories in the country and 85 per cent of the industry's workforce is female.

Cheap labour, in the form of the country's 1.5 million female garment workers, who earn around 60 per cent of their male colleagues' salaries, has enabled Bangladesh to become the world's second largest exporter of textiles behind China.

Although the industry has provided greater economic freedom for many Bangladeshi women, the country is renowned for poor working conditions, lax health and safety laws and overcrowding, meaning the price they pay is a daily risk of injury or even death.

In recent months Bangladeshi workers have called for better pay and working conditions, but labour rights activists are subject to intimidation and harassment by the government, who view their activities as harmful to the burgeoning industry.

In April of this year Aminul Islam, a senior representative of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), was tortured and murdered. The investigation into his death remains open.

International Day for Persons with Disabilities

Posted: 07 Dec 2012 06:26 AM PST

The UN Disability Day calls for increased inclusivity of the 15 per cent of people living with disabilities worldwide.

The Paralympics over the summer has challenged and changed many people’s view of disability.

The Games provided an opportunity for disabled sports-people to demonstrate what they can do, blowing a lot of the myths of disability out of the water.

However, living with a disability is a lifetime’s experience and current estimations claim that around fifteen per cent of people across the globe are doing just that.

One quarter of the world’s population are directly affected by disability either as carers or family members.

A fifth of those with disabilities (110-190 million people) are thought to encounter significant difficulties as a result.

Monday 3 December was International Day for Persons with Disabilities.

Announcing the day, Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Ban Ki-moon, highlighted the fact that in many parts of life, people with disabilities are sidelined and excluded and called for greater inclusion of people with disabilities to achieve sustainable international development.

General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser said that we have the ability to make this happen.

"Worldwide, the link between disability, poverty and social exclusion is clear and direct.

“Yet we have at our finger tips international human rights instruments that protect and promote the rights of persons with disabilities."

The issue of disability is often even greater for women, as expressed by sixteen-year-old Manisha Sethiya in her article for the Independent on 3 December.

She talks about her life as a blind woman living in North-West India, concluding by saying that there are two areas that need attention; employment and gender.

There is a lack of international support for people with disabilities who would benefit greatly from improved education, training and assistance enabling them to find employment, contribute to their societies and achieve independence.

She says that this is even harder for women.

"Many [disabled] women in my area are confined to the household.

“They have important roles in caring for their family and home, but they remain dependent on male family members for financial stability."

This day of awareness raising is ever more poignant, coming in the week that we have been told that we are likely to be facing austerity measures, and the associated welfare cuts, many more years.

There was some positive news as Chancellor George Osborne promised that carer and disability benefits would be increased in-line with inflation.

But disappointingly he excluded the Employment and Support Allowance, a replacement for Incapcity Benefit, and only it is only to be given to those who are unable to work due to illness or disability.

Head of disability charity Scope, Richard Hawkes, is concerned that recent changes to welfare and the attitutde towards those who lean on it are disproportionately unfair to disabled people.

“The vast majority of disabled people need support. They aren’t feckless, they aren’t work-shy and they aren’t scroungers.”

As is clear from Sethiya’s article, most people with disabilities don’t want hand-outs - they want support and help to be independent.

Equality is not just about women and men, but disabled and able-bodied. It is only by inclusion that we can really improve things on an international scale.

"This multi-dimensional exclusion represents a huge cost, not only to persons with disabilities but to society as a whole. This year's International Day of Persons with Disabilities reminds us that development can only be sustainable when it is equitable, inclusive and accessible for all," said Ban Ki-moon.

Stop unwanted sexual attention

Posted: 07 Dec 2012 06:00 AM PST

There is one cheap and easy way to fight the Army's problem with sexual harassment.

Channel 4 News released an exclusive story recently which it said was based on a high level restricted British Army document it had seen.

A document which listed 'a damning series of army failings on sexual harassment, bullying, and trust in its service complaints system’.

The 'restricted document' is a letter written on 25 October 2012 by a Major General John Lorimer to the Adjutant General Lieutenant General Gerry Berragan, head of military personnel.

It outlines a summary of Major General John Lorimer's views on equality and diversity (E&D) in the Army after speaking to 6,000 army personnel.

And on sexual harassment, Major General Lorimer said that "every female officer or OR [other rank] that my Comd Sgt Maj has spoken to claims to have been the subject of unwanted sexual attention”.

That was 400 women, say Channel 4. It was also 100 per cent of the women spoken to.

"This," the Major General wrote, “is an unacceptable situation and one you might consider to be a future area of pan-Army focus."

And I thank him for saying it.

An interesting point for the ‘woman love it really’ prats, is that it was likely that those women were, within the parameters of military recruitment choice, a variety of shapes, sizes, hair colour, eye colour, make-up use, background, sexual mores…

So not just the butch, wallflower, mousey haired – tick as appropriate - for your ‘only some women complain and that’s because’ – add as appropriate to whichever crap you believe.

Unwanted sexual attention is disgusting behaviour that affects a human being’s health and happiness.

This letter Channel 4 acquired comes one year after the death of Corporal Anne-Marie Ellement, a 30-year-old Royal Military Police (RMP) officer who hanged herself at Bulford Barracks in Wiltshire, after accusing two colleagues of raping her and having been bullied by members of her regiment for making the allegation.

The Royal Military Police’s Special Investigations Branch investigated the allegation – of two RMP officers raping an RMP officer – but no charges were brought.

The Corporal’s sister's lawyer, Emma Norton, points out, that the witnesses were also RMP, and the judge was military. There is something fundamentally wrong with that, Ms Norton said, when speaking to Channel 4's man.

Back to this letter.

'Every female officer or other rank that had been spoken to claims to have been the subject of unwanted sexual attention'.

That’s shocking. Or sick. Or both.

And that's even before you get on to the bullying and the racism in a national institution that has been looking after officers and other ranks for several centuries now.

Surely they must know how people behave in groups and must by now have worked out how to stop people in groups behaving badly.

So either they haven't cared or their standards have slipped.

I have just finished reading The Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, written by former Army officer Patrick Hennessey, who served in Afghanistan (which I recommend by the way).

In view of this ‘exclusive’ with Channel 4, I think it worth remarking that he talks of magazines such as Nuts and FHM – he names them specifically – being available to serving soldiers on duty in foreign countries.

And equally, if not more shockingly, were we to talk about corruption of minds and misrepresentation of what women are and do in the UK, these soldiers’ copies of magazines that misrepresent women to British men were, Hennessey writes, accessible to the Afghan men serving alongside British forces.

It is not unreasonable to presume they are available to all men of all nationalities who British troops work alongside, by, with or near.

Wonderful. Spread the word: women are sex objects.

Which is something I think should be looked into.

I suggest that changing soldiers’ goofing matter – sorry, reading material – would be a very good place to start rectifying this ‘unacceptable situation’ in the British army.