Women's Views on News |
- Technology to keep women safe
- Sex for the disabled: a charitable service?
- Call for quotas for women academics
| Posted: 08 Feb 2013 07:00 AM PST
Following high-profile coverage of the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year old student in Delhi, India has placed a renewed focus on the issue of women's safety. This case, and others like it, which have rarely been reported in the international media, have sparked a drive by Indian technology companies to find innovative ways to keep women safe. The BBC reported last week that the Indian government is working on a GPS watch, designed specifically to help in its fight against rape. The watch, which could cost from £13-£32, includes a GPS system to pinpoint the wearer's location, a built-in video camera with the ability to record for up to half an hour, and a 'panic button', which sends a message to the nearest police station or a relative. Indian technology trade group Nasscom has launched a competition to encourage firms to develop apps specifically designed to keep women safe. Even Indian students are getting involved in the drive; one group of children has designed a sandal which acts in a similar way. With two stamps of the foot, an alarm is sent by SMS to a predetermined number, along with the location of the wearer. The rape-alarm sandal is unlikely to make it to market, but technology developers across the world have been quick to identify demand for a whole host of apps designed essentially to protect women, from men. Gone are the days of carrying a bog-standard rape alarm, and with it being illegal in the UK to posses pepper spray or a pink stun gun which can discharge eight million volts (yes, really) it seems today’s women and girls aren’t protected unless they have an app for it. Available in the UK, Stay Safe bills itself as a personal safety tracker app. It alerts your emergency contacts if you don't check in (so you have to remember to check in) provides your location via GPS and has a panic button function. The free version will only send an email to one contact, but for £4.99 a month you can have up to five emergency contacts who will be notified by text message if you fail to check in. This paid-for version however is currently only available on iPhone. Bsafe is another GPS-based safety alarm app. Originally designed for use in the US the premium version costs £1.49 a month. As well as the SOS alarm and GPS positioning, it has sound and video recording and lets your friends follow you home with live GPS tracking. Circle of 6 is a free app which lets you send pre-programmed text alerts to up to six friends, pinpointing your location. Originally designed for students, you can even request a call from one of your contacts to help get you out of a tricky situation. Of course, safety comes at a price, and while you can access some free apps, the most sophisticated inevitably demand a fee, and you also need to have a smartphone, which, according to recent figures over 50% of Britons do. But what about the other forty-something per cent who don't? The most vulnerable in society are the least likely to be able to adopt this technology, and so the story goes; it is easier to stay out of harm's way if you can afford it. This technology divide is even starker when we look at developing countries. In a blog for the Huffington Post, Henriette Kolb, CEO of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, highlights how the digital revolution excludes the majority of the world’s population; according to a report by Intel, 4.6 billion people don't have access to the internet, and the situation is worse for women and girls. According to Kolb, in developing countries there are 21 per cent fewer women with mobile phones than men, compounding existing forms of disadvantage for women and girls. The mobile phone revolution has certainly hit India, but according to one source only nine per cent are smartphones. In more rural areas, the technology may be there, but cultural norms can still hamper access to it. One village in Bihar is reported to have banned women from using mobile phones, in the belief their use was 'encouraging women to elope with lovers’. In an age of endless technological advances, it's tragic that the world over we are still looking for ways to protect women from the most primitive forms of violence and victimisation. And even more heartbreaking, that somehow the responsibility for the safety of women from men lies squarely at the feet of those very women.  |
| Sex for the disabled: a charitable service? Posted: 08 Feb 2013 04:23 AM PST
When former Madam Becky Adams announced she would be opening the UK's first brothel reserved for disabled clients, it caused quite the media stir. Cue tittering tabloid articles and online jokers asking whether disabled clients would be "using a different entrance". But when it emerged that a care home in Sussex was being investigated for facilitating sex workers to visit their disabled residents, tittering turned to outrage as the public demanded to know whether taxpayers' money was being spent on prostitution. Many people have come out in defence of Becky Adams and the Sussex care home, insisting that access to sexual services is part of holistic care and to deny this would be a violation of the Human Rights Act. One strong defender was David Ainsworth, of flagship charity publication Third Sector, who argued sexual services could and should be viewed as just another charitable service for disabled people. He said that: "If that's what disabled people need, then the [charity] sector should help meet that need, with the same tact, dignity and support offered in other areas, ensuring that those who are disadvantaged do not suffer more than they need to for the sake of saving other peoples' blushes." Does Ainsworth really imagine that the difficult questions thrown open by this story are simply a case of "other people's blushes"? Nothing more than Victorian prudery to be cast aside along with full length bathing suits and the covering of table legs? His blog makes a plea for disabled people's human rights and their "ancient and primeval need" to have sex. Yet the human rights of the sex workers in question, a group who have routinely had their rights ignored, go unmentioned. Feminists have for a long time debated whether or not sex work can in theory be a free, empowered choice for the sex worker. But one thing most feminists agree on is that in reality too many sex workers face exploitation, abuse and an emphatic lack of choice. Never in his article does Ainsworth enquire after the treatment or working rights of the sex workers being hired. He uses the phrase "people in a pretty desperate situation". But who is in the more desperate situation, the disabled person desperate for sex or the sex worker desperate to make a living? It's a difficult one. The trouble with defining sex as a human ‘need’ is it tends to involves two people, so immediately you're confronted with another, often opposing set of needs. Women and men have different reasons for entering sex work, but one recurring motivation has always been financial desperation and a lack of employment options. And now, as living costs rise, benefits and wages plummet and suitable jobs become increasingly scarce, more people than ever find themselves in this situation. Of course we must recognise that when seeking a sexual partner, disabled people find themselves up against social and physical barriers that abled bodied people would struggle to comprehend. And the force of body fascism which dictates who is sexy and who is allowed to have sex saves particular contempt for the physically disabled. But by ordering in sex workers to service mostly male clients are we really flinging back the cloak of shame and secrecy which covers our social attitudes to sex and disability? Let's be honest, we've hardly rattled the status quo off its perch. Writing for Disability Now, researcher Kirsty Liddiard gives a far more nuanced response to the issue of sex workers in care homes. She writes: ‘As a disabled woman who has researched heterosexual disabled men's experiences with female sex workers, I feel that sex work should be a legitimate form of sexual access, but crucially, not the only form of sexual access for disabled people. ‘But this doesn't mean I don't have reservations; particularly around the ways in which paying for sex is often clumsily positioned as the answer to a much bigger social and cultural issue for disabled people. ‘Patriarchy…and capitalism…work together to ensure that commercial sex work markets will always cater more to men than women, disabled or otherwise.’ Even supporters of Becky Adams and the Sussex care home find the obvious gender divide in the use of sex workers a difficult one to square. Sarah Ismail wrote in the Independent: ‘As a disabled woman and a feminist – although I don't think I'd use it myself – I hope Adams' planned centre will be open to disabled women as well as men.’ Despite Ismail's hope that these services will be open to women as well as men, she's quick to state she wouldn't use them. And it's clear that Becky Adam's brothel will cater mostly to a male clientele. This gender divide suggests the ‘need’ for sex is more complex than just the universal biological need for food or shelter. It suggests sexuality is something far more complex, shaped by socialisation and structures of power. And are we to believe buying sex is a disabled person's only route to expressing their sexuality? I'd guess that most disabled people, like other people, would rather their desires for sex, intimacy and love weren't reduced to a "primeval need", to be met via an economic transaction, portioned out by local care providers alongside your new wheelchair and weekly prescription of painkillers. Because whatever you think about sex work, buying sex in an economic exchange and entering into a mutual sexual relationship is not the same thing. The disabled men interviewed by Kirsty Liddiard were certainly mindful of the difference; ‘For most of them, paying for sex could be sexy, fun and exhilarating, but was also a source of great sadness which highlighted their social and sexual isolation and affirmed their feelings of undesirability.’ The debate about care homes facilitating sex workers is one we should be having, but we shouldn't stop there. We should be asking how taboos and stigma around sex and disability can be challenged and disabled people can be enabled to explore their sexualities in fulfilling ways. Because how many people, disabled or otherwise, really want their experience of sex and intimacy to be reduced to a ‘biological need’ like eating or going to the toilet?  |
| Call for quotas for women academics Posted: 08 Feb 2013 01:00 AM PST
The University and College Union (UCU) announced last week that set quotas were needed to bring in more women academics. Currently, only one in five professors are women, and only one in fourteen professors are from a black or ethnic minority. Pay-scale discrepancies were also highlighted, with female professors earning at least £4,828 less than their male counterparts. In its newly published report, the UCU monitored data from 23 separate universities across the UK. Official figures show that women make up 47 per cent – 76,500 – of lower level academic staff across all UK higher education institutions. But they account for only 20 per cent – 3,450 – of professors. The situation is not aided by the fact, highlighted in the report, that men were four times more likely to apply for a professorial vacancy than women. According to the report, the lack of female applicants applying for professorial roles was significant, even if they were more than capable of filling them. This disparity was also demonstrated amongst the number of applications from black candidates or ethnic minorities; just 0.4 per cent of the of the UK’s academics and professors are black. The UCU’s General Secretary, Sally Hunt, said, “We want universities to take decisive action to stop this terrible waste of talent.” Universities, she continued, “need to examine the reasons why women and black and minority ethnic staff stop climbing the career ladder, and develop new, effective strategies to support them to reach the top.” The report noted that in the current policy of employment for most universities, it could take up to 38.8 years for the gender representation gap to equal out, and 15.8 years for black and ethnic minorities. The report concluded that universities should actively seek new means to resolve these huge disparities in their academic staff. These could include deploying set quotas and targets to encourage more equal opportunities for women and ethnic minorities. However, the idea of using set quotas met with some negative responses. Writing for the Telegraph, Dr Brooke Magnanti insisted that setting such concrete targets for universities would do little to encourage a better balance among the academic staff. By targeting women and minorities specifically, equal opportunities could potentially be more at risk. “It might have the undesirable effect of concentrating these groups into the fields viewed as “more suited” to societal stereotypes of feminine and ethnic ability. And that would be opportunity wasted on the greatest level,” Dr Magnanti said. Yet, it is clear that some measures do need to be taken to remedy the gap, and the union has issued guidance to its workplace-based branches about how to work with institutions to improve representation. To read the report, click here.  |
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