Women's Views on News |
- Fifty-fifty: ‘equal shares or chances’
- Goldovskaya and Russia since Perestroika
- Ireland apologises for Laundries
- Turning off the red light in Ireland
| Fifty-fifty: ‘equal shares or chances’ Posted: 01 Mar 2013 08:11 AM PST
Seems only fair. Currently, women do not have an equal presence and voice in British politics. You knew that. Only five of the UK’s 23-person Cabinet ministers are women. Women hold only 22 of the 122 ministerial posts and 9 government departments are 'female free’ zones. And only 1 in 5 members of the Westminster Parliament are women. This means that the most important decisions this country makes – everything from whether to go to war to what we teach in schools – are being made with no or few women present. This in effect means that the different experiences and perspectives and dreams of one half of the country are not being heard or considered. And this absence of women at the top table of politics sends a clear signal to people in all other walks of life: namely that it is OK to cut women out from positions of power. No, it is not. The dearth of women's representation in politics is not an easy problem to solve, and ensuring women have a greater presence and voice in politics requires action on many fronts. And as far as the Counting Women In campaigners are concerned, we need to change the UK's political culture so it works for not against women; need to change the culture of parliament. Political parties must also do more to recruit and promote women. The House of Commons routinely sits until 10 pm at night, there is no consistent agreed parental leave policy for MPs and little in the way of childcare support for Members. Very few people break into politics without the support of a political party, but all too often women considering standing as candidates come up against old fashioned and sexist attitudes about the role of women in public life. David Cameron pledged that 1/3 of his ministers would be women by the end of his first term as Prime Minister. Well, 2015 is not far away. Make sure David Cameron keeps his promise to improve women's representation by signing the petition. And the media really must treat women in public life with respect. Women in politics can find themselves subject to the kind of media attention men in public life rarely experience – with their actual views and voting records given scant attention in comparison to their appearance. The Counting Women In campaign is aiming for 50/50 gender representation at all levels of national, local and devolved government. The 'we' heading this campaign are the Centre for Women and Democracy; the Electoral Reform Society; the Fawcett Society; the Hansard Society; and Unlock Democracy And we are and will be fighting to ensure women have an equal presence and voice in our democratic system. Join us: click here for info.  |
| Goldovskaya and Russia since Perestroika Posted: 01 Mar 2013 06:14 AM PST
London's Pushkin House recently hosted a retrospective of Russian director Marina Goldovskaya's documentaries under the heading 'Russia since Perestroika’. And Masha Karp recently wrote about Goldovskaya's distinctive art and the issues raised in her films for openDemocracy. ‘Over a quarter of a century has now passed since Mikhail Gorbachev announced to the country that it must reform to survive. ‘What actually happened back then and what has happened since is not particularly clear to ordinary Russians. ‘Indeed, the fewer people who remember their own experience of the Soviet era, and the more aggressively schools and the media push their false and simplistic version of the past, the more derogatory the word perestroika becomes.’ Watching Marina Goldovskaya's retrospective, however, Karp said, is like re-living the hopes raised by perestroika, its huge potential and, later, its tragic failure to change things in Russia. A human life, watched closely in every mundane detail, and set in a precise social and historical context, is always at the centre of Marina Goldovskaya's films. This, Karp continued, ‘combined with high-class camera work, is her distinct style, her trademark. And as her social and historical context is always Russia, her documentaries serve as a chronicle of change and upheaval in the country.’ As soon as it became possible under Gorbachev's 'glasnost', Marina Goldovskaya started talking about Stalin's 'great terror'. Her film 'Solovki Power' (1988) was the first Soviet documentary about the gulag. The people filmed by Goldovskaya twenty five years ago, survivors of the Solovki camp for political prisoners – Academician Dmitry Likhachev, writer Oleg Volkov, memoirist Olga Adamova-Sliozberg and others– are, Karp writes, all dead now, but their stories, which form this portrait of the terrible abuse of human rights that lasted from 1921 till 1939, are horrendous and vivid. This documentary, which won numerous awards, was just the beginning – since then the theme of the murderous regime has been present in nearly all Goldovskaya's films. In 1989 she made "I am 90, My Steps Are Light", a film about Anastasia Tsvetaeva, sister of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva, who spent 15 years in Stalin's camps. Goldovskaya's films do not offer any direct political analysis, Karp points out, yet by focusing on people caught in a developing drama and affected by it, she draws attention to a deficiency in Russian politics, which consistently ignores the 'human factor'. If there is one film where Goldovskaya's different themes come together, Karp said, it is her latest documentary, 'A Bitter Taste of Freedom' (2011) about her friend, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered at the entrance to her own block of flats in Moscow in October 2006. The personal and political almost merge here; the fate of an individual and the fate of the country are intertwined more than anywhere else, surely because Politkovskaya herself, as one of her friends says at her funeral, has become the conscience of Russian society. Goldovskaya unflinchingly follows the most horrific events of Putin's rule – the Second Chechen War, the Dubrovka Theatre hostage crisis, the massacre in a Beslan school, – where Politkovskaya was involved as a journalist and sometimes as a participant. Interviews filmed after Politkovskaya's murder are interspersed with family scenes shot 15 years earlier, when Anna was primarily the mother of two small children and the beautiful wife of a famous husband. The woman that Goldovskaya meets again a decade later is someone who has made her choices in life. The children have grown and she has become a journalist dedicated to her profession. She has divorced her husband and she helps people who are not getting help from anyone else – parents of children abducted in Chechnya, hostages during the theatre siege. It was one woman's war with a powerful state and finally the state got her. Politkovskaya's murder was yet another sign that instead of its hoped-for transformation for the better, Russia had resumed its totalitarian ways, albeit on a different level: Politkovskaya's articles in 'Novaya Gazeta' were not censored as they would have been under Brezhnev, she was not arrested and killed in the GULAG as she would have been under Stalin. Under Putin, Karp writes, she was simply murdered near her own building entrance, silenced for ever. As they picture the present, Marina Goldovskaya's documentaries embrace the Russian and Soviet past. That is what brings her back, again and again, to the confrontation between the individual and the state.  |
| Ireland apologises for Laundries Posted: 01 Mar 2013 03:04 AM PST
The Irish government made history recently by offering an apology to the women who were inmates of the Magdalene Laundries. Taoiseach Enda Kenny gave an emotional, 17-minute speech in the Dáil during which he apologised "unreservedly" to the women, speaking on behalf of all the Irish people to acknowledge and regret the abuses and stigma they suffered. The apology came after a Dáil debate, convened to discuss the findings of the Inter-departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalene Laundries which was published at the beginning of this month. The Committee, which was set up after a recommendation from the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT), had delayed its report from its initial publication date of summer 2012. The facts contained in the report were not news to most people in Ireland, but illustrated for the first time and in scathing terms the extent of State involvement with the infamous Magdalene institutions. For those unfamiliar with this sordid branch of Ireland's past, the Magdalene asylums were institutions which housed so-called 'fallen women' and sought to rehabilitate them back into society. Such institutions operated across Europe and North America but became particularly pernicious aspects of Irish society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In addition to 'fallen women', a euphemism for prostitutes, they housed unmarried mothers as well as women and girls who had fallen victim to societal ills such as illegitimacy, domestic or sexual abuse, incest, poverty, and disability. Some were committed by their families as a means of dealing with potentially shameful accusations, while others were incarcerated by the judicial system. In Ireland, the asylums were named for Mary Magdalene. They operated laundries which took private and public contracts and thus became known as Magdalene Laundries. The Laundries became notorious in Irish life as homes for women and girls cast aside for perceived shameful behaviour. In a country mired in the iron grip of the Catholic Church, any kind of promiscuity or licentious behaviour – even where the girl or woman in question had been the victim of abuse – was deemed too shameful to discuss or acknowledge and the societal solution was to cover it up. By confining these women and girls to the Laundries, which were run by religious associations, they could conceal unwanted, out-of-wedlock pregnancies and other behaviour which was deemed not in keeping with the pious mores of the time. The last Laundry closed in 1996. Over time, survivors became increasingly vocal about the abuses they suffered and the hardships they faced. Justice for Magdalene, an advocacy group set up to seek redress for former inmates, has provided testimonies of hundreds of women who had spent time in the Laundries. The grim portrait painted was of a veritable life of slavery, hidden behind high walls and rigorous social structures, where girls and women were forced to give up their names on entry, hand over their babies – and sometimes never see them again- and work endless hours while subsisting on a meagre diet of bread, porridge, potatoes and sausage. One report from a survivor revealed that the women were given "one egg a year, on Easter Sunday". No effort was made to educate girls of school-going age. In June 2011, UNCAT recommended that an inquiry be set up to investigate State collusion with the operators of the Laundries. The United Nations committee had stated that it was "gravely" concerned at the State's failure to protect women and girls who had been incarcerated involuntarily between 1922 and 1996. The Report found that more than 2,500 women and girls were sent to the Laundries by the State, yet inspections into their working and living conditions were extremely rare. The State gave lucrative contracts to all the Laundries in Ireland, yet did so without heed to fair wage and social insurance contracts. It, further, inspected the Laundries under Factories Acts so that the inmates were forced to continue to work slavishly with no pay. Those incarcerated worked extremely long hours in atrocious conditions, dealing with bleach and toxic chemicals while operating the laundry machines and having to lift extremely heavy loads of linen for washing. Temperatures were extremely hot and injuries were common, with the chemicals leaving sores on the women's skin and bleach often getting in their eyes. The inmates were locked in the Laundries at night, with bars on the windows and high walls surrounding the institutions. Those who escaped were often caught by the Garda Síochana – the police – and although not legally bound to be at the institutions, returned to the Laundries. Inmates were not allowed to leave unless they had found a "suitable place to go", according to the Mother Superior of one convent that operated one Laundry. When women died in the Laundries – and some spent their entire lives in the institutions – they were buried unceremoniously in Laundry graveyard plots. When the report was first published on 5 February, there was outrage at the reaction of some Irish politicians. Taoiseach Enda Kenny stopped short of an official apology – and was criticised for suggesting the government take time to absorb the Report. He later met with survivors ahead of the Dáil debate. Other party leaders such as Micheál Martin of the formerly ruling Fianna Fáil party expressed regret that the matter had not been dealt with earlier. When the Taoiseach finally did apologise, in an emotional and heartfelt speech, there was a sense that one of Ireland's darkest legacies was finally dissolving. The country has never had a strong track record where protecting its women is concerned, not least due to the only recently loosened stranglehold of the Catholic Church, but the systematic and cruel manner in which society and government had failed the women of the Magdalene Laundries is particularly shameful. Tánaiste Éamon Gilmore, who also spoke during the debate, made reference to the twisted relationship of Church and State when he said "there is nothing so blind as the blindness imposed by a dominant ideology, and a subservient State." It is both striking and shocking to realise that some inmates spent up to 70 years in asylums that were veritable prisons, especially given the average life sentence of a tried and sentenced criminal in Ireland is 17 years. The government is now seeking to set up a fund to provide redress to former inmates of the Laundries, including compensation for work, medical cards, and counselling services amongst other provisions. It has appointed judge and president of the Law Reform Commission John Quirke to undertake a three month review and make recommendations as to criteria that should be applied in providing such assistance.  |
| Turning off the red light in Ireland Posted: 01 Mar 2013 01:12 AM PST
In 2007, the Immigrant Council of Ireland commissioned research designed to map the scale of Ireland's sex industry and to uncover the scale of exploitation of women and girls. The resulting report, Globalisation, Sex Trafficking and Prostitution – The Experiences of Migrant Women in Ireland, uncovered the – shocking – reality of rape, abuse and sexual exploitation of victims of sex trafficking. It also clearly documented the physical, emotional and psychological harm these women and girls suffered. The report was based on interviews with women and the examination of data and information from rescue, support and health service providers. It revealed that, over a 21-month period from 2007 to 2008, 102 women and girls who were victims of trafficking presented at such services. The overwhelming majority of the women involved were migrant women. But these are a fraction of the real number of victims of trafficking in the country: these were the ones who were rescued or escaped from their traffickers and pimps. Buying sex is not illegal in Ireland. Neither is selling sexual services. The law protects these transactions as agreements between consenting adults. Some activities associated with prostitution are outlawed, however, as public order offences. These include curb-crawling, soliciting in public, loitering in public places, brothel-keeping and living off immoral earnings. And while it is illegal to have sex with someone younger than 17, the courts have ruled that being mistaken about the age of the young person may be used as a defence. In 2008, it became illegal to buy sex from someone who had been trafficked – but the purchaser of sex can use the defence that he did not know that the person from whom he was purchasing sex had been trafficked. A contrast to the equivalent law in the UK, the Policing and Crime Bill, where the purchaser of sex from a trafficked person cannot say that he did not know that the person from whom he bought sex had been trafficked. The demand from men who buy sex fuels both the trade in trafficked women and girls, and sustains a prostitution industry worth an estimated €180 million a year in Ireland. Any thought that women who are involved in prostitution in Ireland have made a free choice, and are engaging in commercial transactions from which they are benefiting, was dispelled by this report. Many of the women involved in Ireland's sex industry, even those who do not meet the definition of a victim of trafficking, have had no real choice: poverty, deception and gross exploitation mark many of their stories. Some argue that prostitution is a harmless, commercial transaction between consenting adults and that women choose to become involved in prostitution and should have the freedom to do so. Campaign group Turn Off The Red Light (TORL) refutes this. Following revelations about Ireland's booming prostitution rackets in 2012, a former Dublin prostitute wrote a stark account of her seven year ordeal in the industry which began when she was just 15. "The nation is finally beginning to take a look at the intrinsic harm of prostitution. …It is a harm I have understood since I was a 15-year-old prostitute, being used by up to 10 men a day. "…they all knew just how young I was. They all knew because I told them, and I told them because it had the near-universal effect of causing them to become very aroused … a good thing because … the whole ordeal will be over fairly fast." "When the Sexual Offences Act of 1993 came into force it drove me and many others indoors, where we had even less autonomy over the conditions of our own lives. In the brothels and the 'escort' agencies, we had … no screening process as to who would pay to abuse us." And: "The misogyny from a lot of men was so potent and so deliberate it could cause nothing but trauma." But – how to stop this? The sex industry, which exploits and harms women, exists because there is a demand from men to buy sex, so effectively tackling sex trafficking in Ireland – and prostitution – will require a response to deal with demand from men to buy sex. Women's groups believe that Ireland can learn from Sweden and Norway, countries which have legislated to penalise the purchase of sex, while decriminalising the selling of sex. This approach has been seen to reduce the demand for prostitution and incidences of trafficking for sexual exploitation. The Irish Government must recognise the need for a modern approach to prostitution that reflects best international practice. Turn Off The Red Light is a campaign run by an alliance of over 55 civil society organisations to end prostitution and sex trafficking in Ireland. TORL believes tackling the demand for paid sex should be central to this approach to combating the exploitation of women, men and children in Ireland's sex industry. TORL also believes this will most effectively be achieved by penalising the purchase of sex, along the lines of legislation that has been demonstrated to work in Sweden. After the documentary 'Profiting from Prostitution' was aired on RTE Primetime television, members of the TORL campaign were invited by the group of Taoiseach-nominated senators for an emergency briefing with twenty-one TDs, senators and representatives, members of Dáil Éireann, on 8 February. And the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, said Minister for Justice and Equality Alan Shatter is looking at how the purchase of sex can be criminalised and the Criminal Law Offences Bill should be published with this in mind. These discussion also put the UK’s government is coming under increasing pressure to review prostitution laws in England and Wales. MPs, peers and women’s groups based in England are supporting the changes being considered by Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and are calling on the government to consider introducing the so-called Nordic model. The Guardian reported Jacqui Hunt, London director of the human rights group Equality Now, saying: “An increasing number of countries are recognising that true gender equality can never be reached as long as it is considered acceptable for one more powerful segment of society to purchase the bodies of those members whose options are much more limited.”  |
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