Women's Views on News |
- The rape of James Bond
- Girls: unimportant, again
- Concern as The Women’s Library moves
- Marie Stopes clinic survives vote
- Maternity discrimination on the rise
| Posted: 21 Mar 2013 07:30 AM PDT
On sexual assault and realism in popular culture. This essay discusses rape of both women and men throughout. No specific real-world cases are mentioned nor are any scenes described graphically, however as it's about realism, it does necessarily shuttle rapidly between incidents in fairly silly texts and grim facts about the real world. Spoilers for Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and minor spoilers for various older texts. Last year, halfway through the second book of the series, I gave up reading [fantasy novel] A Song of Ice and Fire. I had enjoyed the first novel very much – I liked the sense that the fantastic elements were providing a different lens on the Middle Ages, removing the sense that there was something default or inevitable about mediaeval European culture, and re-revealing the fundamental strangeness of a world of knights and kings. I enjoyed the resonances with specific episodes in real history – the War of the Roses, the Jacobite rebellions. It reminded me of the songs by the Corries that I, a fake Scot, grew up on. I even enjoyed all the freaking heraldry and food. That sense of history seemed to be dwindling away a bit in the second book, but in the end, that wasn't what drove me away. Instead, it was all the rape. This surprised me. After all, I'd known going in that there was quite a lot of it, and though I was prepared to find its treatment at least somewhat problematic, I'd also expected to be able to handle it. I'm usually able to read fairly graphic scenes without getting more distressed than the story called for, and friends of mine who I thought were more readily upset by that sort of thing had read the books just fine. And, as it turns out, a lot of the rapes in A Song of Ice and Fire aren't graphic at all. But. There. Are. Just. So. Many. Of. Them. And occasionally they are really graphic. But that they're mostly not almost made it worse for me. That made it possible for the narrative to load that many more of them by the casual handful into chapter after chapter. Rape as backstory, as plot point, as motivation – however badly handled, I can usually cope with it. I found I couldn't cope with rape as wallpaper. When there had been two rapes of children (one of whom was also murdered) within about twenty pages of each other, when I realised I was physically tensing up every time a male and female character were in the same scene as each other, because something always happened, even if it was "just" sexualised verbal abuse, it occurred to me I was no longer having any fun with this book. This is where the fans, whether of author George.R.R.Martin or Rapey Pop Culture in General say, "But! That's the point! That horrible sense that sexual violence permeates everything — that's realistic." Because it's not only George R. R. Martin, of course. It's comics and film and video games and TV. Buffy couldn't get through her entire series without one drawn-out attempted rape scene and the eventual revelation that sexual violation was the ultimate source of all the Slayer's powers. In this the series fell into line with a longstanding trend. When rape in fiction isn't stage-dressing, as it is in so much of A Song of Ice and Fire, it's frequently a Campbellian Call to Adventure. Your girlfriend was raped, (and probably murdered)? You were raped yourself, but at least you're alive and the protagonist? Go forth and kick some ass! Recently it was decided that Lara Croft couldn't get by any longer without some rape in her origin story, because her new incarnation was going to be all rough and dark and gritty. And "realistic." Some feminists counter the "realism" defence with the argument that if your world is full of dragons and magic then it's nonsense to complain about anything being unrealistic. I see the point of this argument – it's certainly true that a lot of readers, male and female, use even would-be "gritty" works for escapism and it's fair to argue that female readers should get more chances to enjoy that without constantly being reminded of the miserable realities of the real world and, in many cases, their own lives. But I'm not completely on board. Firstly, I don't accept the implication that it's silly to use the word "realism" in relation to SFF and other forms of genre fiction. That a text departs from reality in some way – by introducing magic, or impossible technology, or even just a very improbable premise – doesn't mean the human characters should stop acting like humans. If it did, Fantasy would be only about escapism, ever, and could never have anything meaningful to say about, well, anything. Secondly, to make the argument that fantasy is unrealistic anyway so why not extend that unrealism to the depiction of rape, is to accept that what we currently have is realistic, and that it cannot be changed without sacrificing that realism. So first it should be said that it's not a given that the Middle Ages were actually a wall-to-wall rape-fest. And while rape is appallingly prevalent in our modern world, it's still something like a 25% chance a woman will be raped over the course of her life, not a 25% chance that she'll be raped today. That's still a majority of women not being raped, though nowhere near as overwhelming a majority as it damn well ought to be. I think it is true that, sometimes, failing to acknowledge the risk of rape in circumstances where it would be particularly likely to be present can diminish the authenticity of a text. I remember a friend of mine coming home from a modern dance piece about the torture of political prisoners (yes, we were the sort of people who would go to see modern dance piece about political prisoners). The prisoner, in this case, was female; her captors were male. Even in a dance piece, from which "realism" might seem to be even more distant than from a fantasy novel, my friend found it jarringly unrealistic that there was no hint of a threat of sexual violence in the depicted torture, to the extent that it left the whole piece feeling superficial and slight to her, too afraid of its own subject matter to engage with it honestly. "Come on," my friend said. "Really?" I've been in the position of plotting out a novel, and suddenly realising I had placed not one but two female characters in circumstances that sexual violence seemed almost overwhelmingly likely. (One of them was, indeed, a political prisoner). Every time I thought hey it was my book and I could just wave my hands and declare that bad stuff would happen, but not that kind of bad stuff, I got an uneasy feeling I wasn't being honest. It wasn't true to either the characters or the power-structures I'd depicted. When I thought about having the rape actually happen, I got uneasy in another way again. So what the hell was I to do? More of that later. For now, though, let's just agree that in so called Genre fiction, we love to strip away protection from our characters to give them an interesting job of coping on their own; parents are dead or absent or abusive, homesteads are burned down, authority figures are blinkered or oppressive; you can trust no one, for no one can hear you scream… And all these things will, in the real world, heighten a person's vulnerability to all forms of violence, including sexual violence. So yes, realism does sometimes mean dealing with that vulnerability somehow or other. But that heightened vulnerability to sexual violence applies to men too. So where are they, all the raped male characters? People say, it would be unrealistic if she wasn't raped, but take it for granted that of course he wasn't. Why is that? About one in every 33 men is raped. That's much lower than the one in four chance that an American woman (sadly I only have US statistics for the most part) faces over the course of her life, but it's still a significant number. And that's your statistically average, real life man. Despite all the privileges and protections of being male, he still faces a non-zero risk of rape. He also doesn't have a horde of enemies explicitly dedicated to destroying him. He doesn't routinely get abducted, and tied up. Facing a megalomaniac psychopath gloating over causing him pain before taking over the world is not the average man's average day at the office. All of those things would surely raise one's risk of being raped. And all of those things happen to fictional male heroes all the time. Not just once per character, but repeatedly. My go-to example for this used to be James Bond. "Is it realistic that James Bond has never been raped?" I would say. How many times has he found himself utterly at the mercy of men who want to hurt, degrade and humiliate him before killing him? I will accept, on any one such occasion, the odds might be in his favour. I suppose it is plausible for many of his enemies – even most of them – not to think of raping him or having him raped by others, despite having captured him, tied him up and possibly removed some of his clothes. But all of them? Here we have scores of horrible, destructive, evil people, and not a single one of them is evil in that way? Now, all right –it might be unlikely we would actually see a completed rape on screen even if Bond were a woman, the rating system sees to that. But rape is suggested in PG or 12 rated movies all the time, which in practical terms means female characters get threatened with it a lot. Off the top of my head, there's Marion in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, there's Elizabeth in at least two of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Kristen Stewart's Snow White, and even Jasmine in Aladdin (or shall we forget what forced marriage/ "enchant her to fall in love with me" means? )! So wouldn't we expect a female James Bond to be, at least, tied to a chair at gunpoint while the villain unbuttoned her top and suggestively touched her thigh? Then Skyfall came out. And the villain has Bond tied to a chair at gunpoint, while he unbuttons his top and suggestively touches his thigh. I found reactions to that scene fascinating. I got the sense a lot of male viewers found it particularly unsettling. Some (and not only men) felt it was homophobic – suggesting the villain was that much more evil because he was "gay." The fact that entering "Bond Silva" into Google prompts it instantly to offer "Bond Silva Gay" is a genuine concern, though for what it's worth, the narrative does make clear the character has sex with women. Personally I didn't think you could tell anything about Javier Bardem's character's orientation from the scene – that he got a sexual thrill from a dominating a helpless opponent, yes. But that he'd get the hots for a consenting Bond he met via a dating site for fucked up spies or that he wouldn't have got that same thrill from dominating an unwilling female opponent… well, at least, I don't see the film provides any evidence for it. Yet I did see a lot of men reading it as Silva "trying to turn Bond gay" or "seduce" him. Erm. When you're tied to a chair and there's a gun at your head, unless you have very specific tastes and agreed to all this beforehand, that is not a seduction! It is something else, something quite specific. That scene is, to coin a phrase, not about sex, it's about power. And it is the most literal way I have ever seen a male hero (and the ultra-masculine Bond at that) treated like a female character. And it only took fifty years. I was gobsmacked, and I wasn't the only one. Because it was a man, this has been a Big Thing, even though what happens to Bond in that scene never goes past a few buttons undone and an unwelcomed caress of his thigh. In Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Marion is subjected to a protracted assault with clothes-tearing and thrusting and gasping – you know, for kids! But that was just normal. But Bond is far from the only male character who, going by the particularly brutal definition of "realism" we're using for this post, realistically ought to have been raped by now. In the real world, your risk of becoming a male victim of rape rises dramatically if you go to prison. Again, I only have US figures, and I'd like to hope that here in the UK and elsewhere, the picture may not be quite so bleak, though I fear I may be too optimistic. In any case, in the US, the figure is thought to be somewhere around one in six. That's much closer to the risk a woman runs over the course of her life. Can life as a superhero really be less dangerous than prison? Wow, imagine if you were a superhero and in prison! And if it was a really lawless, awful, violent prison… oh. Here we have Batman, in a physical state that left him spectacularly unable to defend himself, at a phase in the story which was supposed to represent the lowest low from which he'd have to fight his way back… and no one, in what was supposed to be the most godforsaken horrific hellhole on the face of the world, thought to take advantage of the vulnerable newcomer? Are we supposed to believe all these men, who sometimes tear people's faces off for fun, who never ever get out of the prison, are entirely chaste? Or is it that all the sex they are likely to be having with each other is completely consensual? I'm sorry, we were talking about realistic? Everyone was quite nice to Batman, really. To briefly return to A Song of Ice and Fire: The Black Watch, an all-male organisation that's a bit like the Catholic church and a bit like the military, has a bit of a bullying problem. Some of the recruits are explicitly "rapers." But none of the bullying turns sexual, not even from characters who have form as perpetrators of sexual violence. None of the boys suffers rape. Neither do any of the male peasants who are taken prisoner at various points by various factions. Despite being smaller and weaker than most of his male peers, Tyrion does not get raped, nor is he made to fear rape, either when captured by enemy noblemen or surrounded by hundreds of violent, volatile outlaws. They threaten to kill him, even to mutilate him, but not to rape him. Why not? Isn't this supposed to be a grim, ruthless, realistic world? Men, if you're feeling a bit queasy at the idea of so many beloved characters suffering rape – if you're feeling creeped out by someone enthusiastically arguing in favour of them being raped because it's too bad if it upsets you, it's realistic… Well, hi. Welcome to the world of women. This is not, I promise, the opening of a ghoulish campaign to see more male characters get raped. Not exactly. Though I will confess that I appreciated that in the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, when the male hero wanders like a little lamb in to the lair of a serial killer/serial rapist, and once he has been, to the surprise of no one but himself, overpowered and tied up, the villain immediately shares his plans to rape him before murdering him. Why? Because this man has a bloody dungeon for raping and killing people, and the hero is in it, why would anything else happen? Of course it actually doesn't. Completed rape remains reserved for the female characters – but I liked that at least threatened rape wasn't: that Blomqvist was almost raped, diminished a sense that being raped was part of what Lisbeth Salander was for. And I liked that a woman got to do the burst-in-and-save-the-love-interest routine, like Kevin Costner's Robin did for Marion. I'd been waiting since the age of 12 to see it. Noticeably, the Swedish film (I haven't seen the English language one) omits this specific threat against Blomqvist. I've always wondered why that was – if it was just about pacing or length, or whether someone felt Blomqvist would be emasculated as a hero, if he were even threatened with what Lisbeth Salander actually undergoes. But my point. I do have one – in fact, several. My first point is not that I am arguing for all this rape; it's that if you are going to argue in favour of the current level of fictional rape of women and girls, you should be. You, if you care so much about realism, must demand the rape of Batman and James Bond. In fact, given not only that so many male fictional characters find themselves in such high-risk environments but that male fictional characters outnumber female ones about 2 to 1, we should be seeing nearly as many raped men in fiction as raped women. But my other point is that there is another way. Even if "realism" does demand that your setting include a lot of rape, there is more than one way you can communicate that to the reader. I want to come back to the anecdote I started with – my friend, who found the dance piece inauthentic because it didn't address the risk of rape. Two things about that. 1) The fact that I can tell that anecdote says that my friend lives, and I live, in a world where rape is fairly common, no? Look, worldbuilding, no hands. And no rape scene at all. 2) It doesn't mean my friend wanted to see an explicit rape scene. She wanted to see the threat somehow addressed. So how can that work? You can have the victims and potential victims refer to it. Not necessarily at great length or in much detail – if it's such a huge presence in their lives, a daily risk, they won't need to. They'll know what goes on. You can have characters who are less likely to be raped worry about the ones who are more vulnerable. We do not need to watch every rape that happens or can be assumed to have happened in the course of the story. And though from time to time, it may be interesting and revealing to show us how the rapists think about it, if you depict rape mainly from the view of the male perpetrator, the vengeful male lover of the victim, the male witness—and rarely or never from the perspective of the victim – there's a strong risk you're reinforcing a social narrative in which rape is fundamentally a power exchange between men (rapist and husband… male author and male reader). Or, if you're writing another kind of text, and you use rape as your motivating crisis for a female hero again… well, it can be done brilliantly, inspiringly — but as it has been done so often, you risk adding to a cumulative implication that women's lives revolve in smaller, more sexualised orbits than men's, that there's only one kind of bad experience they can have, the whole rest of the world of potential risk and response is closed off to them. You risk implying that female lives are defined by the presence of rape; almost that an un-raped/unthreatened woman is a boring woman. These things aren't harmless. In the course of writing this post it struck me that unlike Westeros, Romanitas-world has a whole class of people who can be raped with near impunity. "Realistically", there must be at least an equivalent amount of rape going on, if not more. And yet it never occurred to me that unless I had a rape scene every ten pages or so, my portrayal of that world would be unrealistic. So I decided I'd count the number of rape scenes that I'd put in my own trilogy and think about the way I treated rape in general. I've written up my findings in some detail but this post is already really long and I can summarise pretty easily: Number of times completed rapes that actually happen on the page in the entire trilogy? One. (It happens in the course of a short paragraph). And I do not believe this was unrealistic. That one rape is by a slave-owner, of a slave. It is plainly neither the first nor the last time; both victim and perpetrator treat it as routine. (Though we will later discover that this does not mean the survivor is not profoundly angry about it). The story does not let you assume that that's somehow the only rape to occur; an unquantifiable number of rapes are shown to have happened, in the way people behave, the situations in which some characters feel at risk, the signs they exhibit of trauma, the way they worry about each other, the assumptions that other characters make about why someone is present or how they can be treated, the language they use. One character outright states that a lot of rape is going on alongside other forms of violence against slaves. I want the reader to know that, to empathise with it. But that doesn't mean I have to force an endless parade of rape into her brain without regard for what memories or daily fears may already be there. That one scene is not, actually, the result of the small crisis I mentioned having at the start of this post — the one time I felt "realism" placed two female characters at particularly severe risk of rape, when I thought, "Now what do I do?" Well, I continued thinking. I thought about it for ages. I talked about it to people. Because the answer wasn't immediately obvious to me. I seriously wondered if I should have the risk realised, especially in case of one of the two women. But in the end I asked myself, "Is the rest of the story going to be about the repercussions of this rape? Is it going to be at least, an extremely significant narrative strand? No? Then I won't put the reader through it." (The threat is made, the risk is not glossed over, it's made clear it could have happened, but in the end in the end the women manage, partially, to protect each other. The rape would have been realistic, yes, but that doesn't mean the way it's averted is unrealistic.) That question I asked myself, "Is a substantial part of the rest of the story going to be about the repercussions of this rape for the survivor" is a question I would like writers to ask themselves more often before writing rape. Because anything less than that, you might not be taking it seriously enough. But here are some other questions: "Do I need to put the reader through this?" Because you have as much as a duty to your reader as you do to "realism"— especially as you may find "realism" a far less solid and singular thing than you might imagine. Your readers are more real than "realism" and can be hurt much more easily. "Would I ever write a story in which the male hero is raped as part of his origin story, or as the nadir he had to fight back from, or to inspire someone else to take revenge?" And if you would, yes, I think perhaps you should go ahead and do it. If done very well, and respectfully, it could even help to destigmatise the experience of male survivors. It could help to diminish that sense that rape somehow defines female experience. And if you would not, ask yourself why not. And if there's any part of you that answers, that you wouldn't find a male survivor of rape heroic, that it's too humiliating to even think about – then, for everyone's sakes, until you can honestly find a different answer within yourself, you need to not be writing about rape at all. Sophia McDougall is the author of the Romanitas trilogy, set in a modern world where the Roman Empire never fell, and Mars Evacuees, the first of a series of sci-fi books for children, to be published by Egmont in 2014. She blogs at Sophia McDougall.  |
| Posted: 21 Mar 2013 07:00 AM PDT
“Stop pigeonholing kids into horrible narrow limiting little boxes, it’s 2013 and we still have to put up with this regressive stereotyping rubbish? Grow up, weetabix. Disappointed.” said MezzoPiana. “Wow! Talk about gender stereotyping! :s" exclaims sarferg82. These were the two top comments on the YouTube video at the time of publishing and are indicative of what is being posted to Weetabix’s facebook page and on Twitter. The – very – offending advertisement shows a brother and sister competing over who should have the last Weetabix. They compare how ‘busy’ their days will be. The girl plans to organise her dolls, pamper her dog, practise a team dance with her friends, and write in her diary, all in a haze of pink and sparkles. Her younger brother is dressed as a super hero and plans to spend the day disrupting his sister’s ‘fun’ in a crime-busting manner. The sister brings the scene to a close stating "You’re right, your day is bigger than mine. But I’m bigger than you." So not only does the boy get to be a super hero, his day is also bigger and busier than the girl’s. The gender stereotyping taking place in this advertisement is horrifying. But it’s just an advertisement, right? What’s the problem with a little stereotyping now and then? A lot. Research has shown that children imitate the actions and behaviours of same-sex models more readily than opposite sex models. It is also argued that television and advertising can be more influential than parents when it comes down to gender stereotypes. Simply by the virtue of the pervasiveness of it in our daily lives. With this in mind, it really does matter what our children are exposed to, because it will influence how they feel about themselves. Put very simply, this advertisement is telling girls that what they do is not as important as what boys do. And they should love pink. If that wasn’t bad enough, it then reinforces the social myth conception that size and power are more important than anything else. Watch the advertisement a few times, and you begin to spot more worrying stereotypical snippets. ‘Dad’ lounging on the couch, watching the television clearly ignoring his dancing daughter. The name ‘James’ in a heart as the girl – aged around 11 – writes “He looked at me today!”. We should expect more responsible advertising from this ‘family favourite’ and once supporter of the Women’s British Open golf championships. It is lazy and thoughtless marketing at best and potentially damaging at worst. And of course, there’s always the possibility that it’s little more than a cynical ploy to generate a buzz through its ham-fisted stereotypes. Make yourself heard by contacting them here: Tweeting them here @weetabix or growling on facebook.  |
| Concern as The Women’s Library moves Posted: 21 Mar 2013 04:09 AM PDT
The campaign to save The Women’s Library gained renewed vigour on International Women’s Day when a group of 70 feminist activists occupied the building on Old Castle Street in Aldgate. The library houses a unique record of women’s history, comprising over 60,000 books and pamphlets, 3,500 periodicals. It also has over 5,000 objects of interest, including campaign banners from the suffrage movement and documents related to the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. Indeed, so important is the collection that items from the women’s suffrage archive were inscribed into UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. In early 2012, The Women’s Library faced permanent closure when the troubled London Metropolitan University, former custodians of the archive, announced that they could no longer afford to operate the facility. In November 2012, London Metropolitan invited bids from interested institutions and a proposal from the London School of Economics (LSE), which guaranteed the collection a place in its existing academic library at the LSE’s campus in central London, was deemed the most acceptable. At its current 10 year-old purpose-built location in East London, The Women’s Library is accessible from street-level, a design characteristic which strengthens its ties with the local community, as well as facilitating the collection’s accessibility. So after the initial relief that the collection’s transfer to LSE would keep the historical documents in the public domain, its new home – on the fourth floor of an academic building – has raised concerns about exactly how publicly accessible that domain will actually be. As Dr Laura Schwartz, Assistant Professor of Modern British History at the University of Warwick, explained: “I’ve no doubt [the] LSE will well look after collections, but The Women’s Library is about more than just pieces of paper. It is about the people who use it and the place where it lives. “The removal of the collections to [the] LSE will threaten accessibility, putting an end to a decade of community and outreach work in the local area. “Women deserve a library of our own, and this is a real step backwards for those who fought to give women and their struggles due recognition.” Save The Women’s Library has been campaigning to protect the archives since they first came under threat in 2012. Hosting a tribute event at the end of last year, they used the large external wall outside the building to project a continuous stream of images from the campaign, as well as relevant feminist quotes, and a film made by a local girls’ school at the library. Not only will this kind of community installation be impossible at LSE, but it is also unlikely that the girls’ school – not to mention countless others in the area – will have the same open and welcoming access at the new site. Using International Women’s Day at a fitting juncture, feminist activists from Occupy, UK Uncut, Solidarity Federation, and Disabled People Against Cuts united to form Reclaim It!, taking direct action against the move and highlighting the unprecedented toll that the government’s austerity regime is having on women. “Much of [The Women's Library] archive documents women’s struggles for equality. “At a time when women are bearing the brunt of this government’s savage cuts, cuts which compound the gender inequality of our society, this history is more important than ever,” said lecturer and library user Josie Foreman. Their occupation of the historic East End site, however, did not involve blockades or barricades; instead the doors were left wide open so that the public could have continued access – an ethos in keeping with the library’s own. Protestors organised a full timetable of events, which ranged from a debate on the future of activism to a performance called ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ and a self-defence workshop. As the occupation entered a second day, it also extended the library’s exhibition ‘The Long March to Equality – Treasures of The Women’s Library‘, which had been due to close on International Women’s Day. High Court bailiffs and police brought the occupation to an end, finally dragging the “defiant” protestors from the building amid cheers of support from the hundred-strong crowd waiting outside. The Women’s Library is due to close its doors for the last time in East London on 22 March 2013. We can only hope that the relocation does not close the doors on the huge steps that this unique facility has made ‘to redress the long-term invisibility of women in history and national heritage’.  |
| Marie Stopes clinic survives vote Posted: 21 Mar 2013 03:00 AM PDT
A proposed amendment to ban abortions from being carried out in private clinics in Northern Ireland was rejected earlier this week by the Northern Ireland Assembly. The amendment would have made it illegal to access abortion anywhere other than a public health clinic. The bill’s defeat comes after over 100 people, mainly women, signed an open letter in which they revealed that they had either taken abortion-inducing drugs or helped someone to obtain some. The proposed amendment was put forward by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). It sought to ensure that abortions could only be performed by public health providers, thereby preventing private organisations such as the recently-opened Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast from providing the service. A Marie Stopes clinic opened in October 2012 and was met with resistance from anti-abortion activists, despite the fact that it operates only within Northern Ireland’s already existing – and restricted – legal framework. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK to which the Abortion Act of 1967 has not been extended. Abortions are legal only where there is a risk to the life or health of the mother, but there are no official guidelines for medical professionals, meaning that even those women who are entitled to access an abortion may encounter difficulty in obtaining one. The open letter, which was sent to The Observer recently as a response to the changes proposed in the amendment, is now the subject of a police probe after the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) launched an investigation into its contents. Those who signed the open letter run the risk of prosecution under the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 and the Criminal Justice Act of 1945. These statutes make the procurement of an abortion, or the act of helping someone to procure an abortion, a criminal offence with a potential penalty of life imprisonment. The signatories say that they took the decision to go public with the letter in order to illustrate that abortion is a reality of life in Northern Ireland. "In effect, the only reason for [the proposed amendment] was to try to close the Marie Stopes clinic," says Goretti Horgan of Belfast-based Alliance for Choice, which organised the letter. "We felt it was incredibly hypocritical because we know our politicians and our prosecution service know about women taking the pill illegally. “We felt it was time to stop brushing everything under the carpet and start to look at the reality of women’s lives." The amendment was defeated after a petition of concern was submitted by members of Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party, and the Green Party. This meant that the amendment had to obtain a cross-party majority in order to be passed. When it failed to do so, it was defeated. Anna Lo of the Alliance Party described the proposed changes as “manipulative” and said “MLAs should make decisions [based] on pragmatism, not on religious belief.” Caitríona Ruane of Sinn Féin echoed her sentiments, saying “this amendment is about trying to close down the Marie Stopes clinic and as a result [limit] the opportunity for a woman to exercise the option of a termination where her life is in danger.” These developments throw into sharp relief the challenges still facing those seeking an abortion in Northern Ireland. It is perhaps easy to forget, because it is a part of the UK, that there are services available in England, Scotland and Wales which have not been extended to Northern Ireland. Given the much-publicised situation in the Republic of Ireland, which is only this year legislating for a twenty-year-old case which finally recognised a right to abortion in limited circumstances, there is a tendency to forget that progress in women’s health rights needs to be made throughout the entire island and not just the south. Unlike the Republic, there is no constitutional provision barring the introduction of abortion services in Northern Ireland. There is, however, a similar culture of traditional, religion-driven opposition to abortion which has meant that any attempts to extend the 1967 Act have been challenged by both politicians and anti-choice groups. In 2009, for instance, Northern Ireland’s Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) were forced to withdraw draft guidelines which had been prepared for medical professionals providing abortions because of a legal challenge by an anti-choice organisation. Only last month, and following eleven years of legal action by the Family Planning Association, did the DHSSPS finally agree to produce new guidelines. The actions of the open letter’s signatories speak to an escalating belief that abortion law in Northern Ireland should be liberalised. A November 2012 poll by the Belfast Telegraph indicated that 45 per cent of people felt the current law should be liberalised. There is currently no provision for women who have become pregnant from rape or incest, and women who travel from Northern Ireland to the UK for an abortion are not entitled to an abortion on the NHS. The financial and mental strain caused by these difficulties mean many women turn to buying abortion pills over the internet, and it is this untenable situation to which Alliance for Choice and its fellow campaign groups wish to draw attention. "We just felt that desperate measures were needed to make women's voices heard,” says Horgan. "Our aim is to make abortion available, free, on the health service in Northern Ireland. “That probably means extending the 1967 Abortion Act but we'd be happy with whatever kind of law that would allow women to control their own bodies."  |
| Maternity discrimination on the rise Posted: 21 Mar 2013 03:00 AM PDT
Pregnant women are facing increasing levels of discrimination at work and one in seven is being made redundant while on maternity leave. According to a new survey, more than one in ten female employees have been replaced by the person who covered their maternity leave. Aand an alarming 40 per cent reported a cut in hours or demotion on their return to work. Almost a third of new mothers said they felt they didn't fit in and two in five said they lacked support from their employer on returning to work. The poll, conducted by employment law firm Slater & Gordon, revealed that just three per cent of those affected had sought legal advice on maternity discrimination. Samantha Mangwana, an employment lawyer at the firm, said: “Women are suffering in silence. “The big issue is that women are somehow seen as being less committed to their employers because they are now mothers. "Many companies are settling out of court because they don’t want to be seen to be treating pregnant women or new mothers like this. “But the awful thing is that I see the same major companies again and again and again, writing out these cheques – accompanied, of course, with a confidentiality clause.” The findings are echoed in a report by the charity Working Families, which said almost ten per cent of calls to its advice line were about maternity-related issues. “This is the third year we’ve reported on high levels of maternity discrimination, with signs that employer attitudes are hardening and discrimination becoming more blatant," said Sarah Jackson, chief executive of Working Families. “Eight years ago – before the recession hit – the Equal Opportunities Commission found 30,000 women lost their jobs each year because of pregnancy or maternity. “It is time the issue was revisited, as we believe our helpline reveals only the tip of the iceberg." According to Working Families, the erosion of flexible working arrangements combined with cuts to childcare tax credits has had a disproportionately negative impact on women, who still shoulder the majority of childcare responsibility. The introduction of a £1,200 fee for employment tribunals will also no doubt stop many women from seeking justice through the legal system, at a time when they face losing their income and meeting the additional costs of childcare. Legal action against maternity discrimination is so rare that cases often draw much media attention. Recent examples include the high-profile case of Katie Tantum, a trainee City lawyer who claims she was rejected for a permanent position because she was pregnant, and Kate Torpey, who is suing retailer Kew after her boss allegedly told her she would be 'totally useless' as chief finance officer if she had two children. According to the Fawcett Society, in times of austerity discrimination against women in the workplace is likely to rise; when employers cannot afford to take any perceived risks, women become the less affordable choice. One of the most effective ways to combat this perceived risk would be to give men equal access to paternity leave. It may be a long time before the responsibility for childcare shifts towards equality, but when it does the risk of employing men and women will even out. Liz Gardiner, head of policy for Working Families believes shared parental leave would help tackle maternity discrimination, and said: “Improving rights for fathers to take paternity leave would make it harder for employers to view women of child bearing age as the problem.” According to a survey by another law firm, Allen & Overy, 58 per cent of men in the UK would consider taking paternity leave. This jumps to 79 per cent of 25-34 year-old men. From this month, both parents are entitled to increased unpaid parental leave of 18 weeks, and there are proposals in the pipeline for shared maternity/paternity leave. Under proposals made by the coalition government, which are currently under consultation, from 2015 mothers and fathers could choose how they share time off after the birth of a baby. The move has been welcomed by Maternity Action. Rosalind Bragg, director of the national charity said: "We welcome any proposals to allow genuine shared parenting, which is good for the baby, mother and father. "Many businesses understand that fathers, as well as mothers, should be allowed to carry out parenting duties and we need to spread this good practice across Britain. "Enabling both parents to remain in the workforce during their childbearing years has long term benefits for the UK by protecting family incomes during the recession, reducing the number of families living in poverty, and reducing pressure on the benefits system. “It also means that employers retain valuable skills and experience that are otherwise lost." The UK currently ranks 18th out of 27 developed countries when it comes to job security and pay for women. The UK has slipped down the table, which was complied by PriceWaterHouseCoopers, whereas the Nordic counties, where shared parental leave is the norm, have retained the top spots.  |
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