Women's Views on News |
| Call for relationship education Posted: 07 Jan 2013 01:30 AM PST
A cross-party inquiry, led by MPs Amber Rudd, Sandra Osborne, and Lorely Burt, has called for a nationwide strategy to tackle unplanned pregnancy in the UK. Approximately 40,000 young women have unintended pregnancies in England each year, resulting in the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe. And over half of the UK’s unplanned pregnancies happen because people are not using sufficient contraception. At present, it is only compulsory for young people at school to learn about the biology of sex, with puberty, reproduction and the spread of sexually transmitted infections comprising the core topics in the curriculum. Issues like relationships, sexuality, consent, reproductive rights, sexual violence and coercion, however, are all left to the discretion of the school. And while some schools elect to cover some of these topics in Personal, Social, Health, and Economic Education (PHSE), a survey related to the report revealed that staff teaching these lessons often receive no additional training. With young people responding best to teachers who deliver material confidently and without embarrassment, the fact that one study found that one in ten teachers do not know that chlamydia is a sexually transmitted infection, casts doubt on the efficacy of those who do incorporate Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) into the existing curriculum. With teachers often failing to engage students, and existing SRE programmes only attending to the biological aspects of sex, it is unsurprising that a Brook survey of over 2,000 secondary pupils found that nearly half of them felt that the existing SRE failed to address the issues that they were most concerned about. The top five topics that they wanted to learn about were body confidence, how to avoid peer pressure to have sex, how to treat a partner, love, and virginity. With not one of those concerns being addressed in the existing statutory curriculum, where are children getting their answers? Pornography, the MPs suggest. ‘Clearly pornography does not involve advice on contraception and does not tend to promote the use of condoms, [consequently] it is likely to make it harder for young girls to insist that condoms be used.’ Indeed, if young men are getting their sexual education from pornography, divesting contraceptive responsibility by refusing to wear a condom is the tip of the iceberg. Where are they learning that girls and young women should be treated with respect and dignity? Where do they learn that girls and young women are more than masturbatory fodder? As the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) Schools Safe 4 Girls campaign revealed, 71 per cent of 16-18 year olds have heard sexual name-calling directed toward girls at school at least a few times a week and nearly a third (29 per cent) of 16-18 year old girls have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school. While the inquiry remains focused on the issue of unplanned pregnancy, these statistics are demonstrative of the far-reaching and transformative possibilities that a comprehensive and high quality compulsory SRE curriculum could produce. In addition to wanting SRE made compulsory, the inquiry makes a case for piloting combined sex education classes. ‘Given the dominance of the male view of sex in popular culture and pornography’, the report suggests, ‘bringing girls and boys together would provide a context where mutual learning and respect between the two sexes can be encouraged.’ The efficacy of SRE is improved when it is taught before a young person becomes sexually active. Which is why the inquiry also propounds the benefits of introducing age-appropriate material in primary schools. This particular issue was on the political agenda before. Labour tabled contentious legislation that would have made SRE compulsory in all schools, but failed to get it into the statute book before the 2010 General Election. It had been anticipated that the Coalition would proceed with a watered-down version that would have enabled parents to withdraw their children from sex education classes in school until they were 15 years old. Instead, this government has dropped the entire issue, claiming that it would only make the classes compulsory if there was ‘clear evidence of the benefit to pupils of doing so.’ This inquiry does just that. Will the Coalition keep their word, or bow to pressure from the right? Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, an organisation which extols an abstinence approach to sex education, said: “Sex education as it is taught in many schools is part of the problem of the sexualisation of children, not the solution.” This is an assertion vehemently refuted by Simon Blake, director of Brook, a charity providing free and confidential sexual health services and advice for young people under 25. He said: ”There’s no doubt that young people live a highly sexualised culture and are sexualised by companies wanting them to buy their products. This is one reason why we must talk to them about sex and relationships. “We can’t protect them by pretending the world isn’t sexualised.” This inquiry reinforces the importance of statutory SRE in schools, the need for teaching a comprehensive curriculum which explores not only the biology of sexual relations, but also the intricacies of relationships, and the complex power relations bound up with sex. Its implementation has the potential to leave a legacy that would far outlast the Coalition, with young peoples’ unanswered concerns addressed by a curriculum informed by sexual health practitioners rather than pornography. Is it really that simple? Not any more. While the government was busy shelving plans to change the law on sex education, they were also busy enacting an education policy which encourages schools to split from Local Education Authorities and convert to Academy status. This gives the schools relative autonomy over the curriculum they teach, as well as the way what is taught is delivered to their pupils. The consequence of this is that even if legislation were passed to make Sex and Relationship Education statutory, it might reach only a proportion of young people. And perhaps this is an example of the true legacy of the Coalition: inequality.  |
| Posted: 07 Jan 2013 01:00 AM PST
Trigger warning for description of violent sexual attack. We have all watched appalled as the horrific events that led to a young Indian woman's death unfolded in the international media. The woman, now named as Jyoti Singh Pandey, was raped repeatedly by 6 men on a moving bus in Delhi, had an iron bar inserted into her body causing severe internal injuries, and was then thrown off the bus and left to die, alongside her badly beaten male companion. The sheer scale of this tragedy is hard to contemplate and has triggered global condemnation of the perpetrators and also of India's rape culture. It has also triggered an outcry in India, with thousands of women and men protesting on the streets about a culture that does not take the rape and sexual assault of women seriously. As the Oculus blog outlines in nauseating detail: “I don't want to recount the hundreds of times I've been groped in crowds in Delhi. “Hands moving over you, pinching your bottom, rubbing your breasts as you desperately try to find some inch of ground that will be safe. “Women routinely carry sharp objects like needles and drawing instruments to dissuade such attacks but there are too many incidents to deal with.” However, the current Western media focus on ‘othering’ this attack is not helpful, as this article so clearly outlines: “Those poor women suffering at the hands of those horrible men [who live in 'patriarchal "Eastern" cultures']. “We must loudly proclaim our empathy for those people, who either know no better or are unable to live by our enlightened social standards. “This narrative is racist, homophobic, sexist, heteronormative and imperialist; [a] reductive and disempowering narrative that allows…no local, national or global context.” Meanwhile, as Suzanne Moore points out: “something is happening [in India], anger is overtaking fear. The dam has burst.” What I am interested in is when will the dam burst in the UK? Every woman and girl in this country knows that she is not safe on the streets on her own, particularly at night. And figures show that 80,000 women are raped and 400,000 are sexually assaulted every year in this country. Why are we not protesting en mass? Why do we not converge outside Number 10 demanding that this government takes steps to end this war on women? Is it because the ‘othering’ that we see in the media reporting on the Indian rape case also happens here? Certainly, I immediately turn to the feminist blogosphere for a more nuanced view of rape and sexual assault reports, to not only get an acknowledgement that we are actually living in a rape culture, but also to engage with the conversation and support the protests against the misogyny that underpins it – for example this Virgin advert, the Page 3 campaign and the EverydaySexism blog. That acknowledgement of rape culture is shamefully absent in the majority of news reporting of sexual attacks on women in UK is astounding. We need only look at the Savile reporting to see this; much hand wringing about 'well it was just how it was back then' and no acknowledgement that IT IS STILL HAPPENING NOW. But the lack of acknowledgement of our rape culture continues, evidenced by not only ignorant mainstream press reporting, but also the unforgivable low conviction rate for rape in this country, all underpinned by a culture that persists in victim blaming. The latest example can be found in a campaign by Thames Valley Police who have produced this poster. In the meantime, rapists continue to rape and non- (or not yet) rapists, routinely catcall, grope, harass and otherwise keep women in a perpetual state of fear: witness this account of a woman standing alone on New Year’s Eve at Aldgate East train station. And this harassment is often carried out under the guise of 'it is just a compliment': a compliment? Really? What is it about us, as a nation of women, that stops us demanding our right to safety from sexual assault and rape in our own country? As it stands we have numerous voluntary agencies, such as Rape Crisis, which struggle from month to month desperately in need of funding to keep going, who magnificently pick up survivors, counsel them, stand shoulder to shoulder with them in court, and offer ongoing support to help them get their lives back together. Why do they have to struggle for funding? Similarly, on the same continuum of violence against women, the domestic abuse agencies, such as Refuge, again voluntary and always in need of funding, help women every year flee their abusers, through a helpline and provision of refuges, psychological support and legal advice. It seems that our superstructure - the government, judiciary and media – consistently denies rape culture exists, conveniently allowing them to not deal with the problem: meanwhile in the real world we have a patchwork of voluntary agencies that are struggling to deal with the tragic fallout of this denial. So again, why are we not on the steps of Number 10 demanding that rape and sexual assault against women be taken seriously? Is it because the superstructure is too strong? When we look at protests that have taken place since the failure of the Miners’ Strike in 1984, the only one that had any effect was the Poll Tax riot in 1990. Even then it took the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, months to resign. Since then we have had student protests against fees, we have had protests against the austerity measures, we have had protests against the attack on disability benefits – to what end? None of these marches and protests have made one iota of difference to this government of millionaires who run this country to benefit their mates in big business. Even the riots in August 2011 were portrayed as a few poor people nicking trainers, rather than an uprising of feeling from the dispossessed. Is it this, plus the eons of social conditioning that keeps women quiet and compliant and reluctant to make a fuss that stops us taking to the streets? Or stops our female politicians naming misogyny in parliament as clearly as the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gilliard did in 2012? Surely we do not want to wait for an appalling rape case similar to Jyoti Singh Pandey’s before we say ‘enough is enough’? There are enough women in this country who are fed up with living in fear and having that fear denied – let us take some action now, so we don't need to riot to protest the death of one of our sisters. The superstructure has GOT to listen. Listen and act. Contact the editor@womensviewsonnews.org if you are interested in continuing this conversation.  |
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