Friday, May 24, 2013

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Taking steps to tackle sexual grooming

Posted: 23 May 2013 08:09 AM PDT

sexual grooming ‘If we ignore patterns we're going to do an injustice to the victims.’

Following the recent conviction of seven Muslim men involved in grooming and sex trafficking girls as young as 11 in Oxford, next month imans across Britain are to give simultaneous sermons condemning sexual grooming.

This is in support of a Muslim-led coalition set up to tackle sexual grooming problems by gangs on England's streets and the issue of abuse.

This synchronised event, due to take place on 28 June,will follow a conference set up by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) to discuss ways of preventing further cases of abuse.

Amsar Ali, 50, co-founder of the Facebook group ‘Together Against Grooming’, and co-ordinator of Muslim efforts against sex gangs, said: "We're asking [mosques] to devote their khutba [sermon] to this issue on the last Friday in June."

And Julie Siddiqi, 41, executive director of the Islamic Society of Britain, one of Britain's largest Muslim organisations, has appealled for street-grooming gangs in England to be exposed and eradicated.

“Child exploitation is a crime which affects all communities but the number of street-grooming convictions in the past few years involving Omars, Ahmeds and Faisals means the time has come for action," she said.

"I assumed other people were dealing with it more than they perhaps were," she added.

"I'm not sure the Muslim community's response has been good enough. The MCB need to accept that they haven't done enough."

Siddiqi, who converted to Islam in 1995, helped launch the Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE) recently, which aims to ensure that the subject is not hijacked by far-right groups.

"The BNP and the EDL have been campaigning on this issue for the last two years.

“They've been saying openly 'look at these horrible Muslims and what they do to our white girls.' The most dangerous thing is for us to allow a vacuum to be created so their voice fills it," she said.

"But if there are patterns emerging – and I think there are – of people from a certain background engaging in this type of activity, then that can't be ignored either.

“I'm not saying all Pakistani men are prone to this, or Islam says that; of course that's nonsense.

“But if we ignore these patterns we're going to do an injustice against the victims."

"I think possibly some of the men in the community are finding it harder because I'm a woman, regardless of whether I'm white or not.

“But once people have got over the fact that we're talking about this in an open way, maybe they also feel that I have a role to play because of my background because I can maybe understand aspects of this differently to others."

"Our community structures are too male-heavy, there's no doubt about that", she said. "People need to realise why that's not helpful."

A briefing paper on grooming was published in July and a fuller report four months later, reflecting on the high-profile court cases that have “mainly involved adult males of British Pakistani origin and white British female victims”, the BBC reported recently.

The reason for the spate of similar cases, this inquiry suggested, was that police and other agencies responded to publicity around previous trials by investigating whether the same problem existed in their area.

The authorities were indeed “effective in readily identifying perpetrators and victims with similar individual characteristics”, the inquiry panel concluded.

“Data is gathered more assiduously on perpetrators identified by professionals as Asian, Pakistani or Kurdish,” the report asserted.

But the focus on one particular type of perpetrator, model and approach to child sexual exploitation, disguised “a much more difficult and challenging truth”.

The abusers “come from all ethnic groups and so do their victims – contrary to what some may wish to believe”, the inquiry panel said.

“The failure of agencies to recognise this means that too many child victims are not getting the protection and support they so desperately need.”

A closer look at unpaid carers

Posted: 23 May 2013 07:09 AM PDT

carers, women, pensions, healthCensus figures show bulk of caring responsibility falls on women, especially those aged 50-64.

Figures released from the 2011 Census last week reveal that the majority of unpaid carers in England and Wales, 58 per cent, are women.

And 11.8 per cent of all women are carers, compared with 8.9 per cent of men.

Caring responsibilities increase with age – and so does the gender imbalance.

Nearly a quarter of women aged 50 to 64 are carers, compared with 17 per cent of men in the same age group.

Working women are more likely to be carers than those who do not work;  12.1 per cent of full time female workers and 16.1 per cent of part-timers in England were carers.

And this extra work takes its toll on their health.

Women in full-time work providing more than 50 hours unpaid care were almost three times more likely to report poor health than full-time female workers who are not carers.

Male carers in full-time work were only two and a half times more likely to report poor health.

According to Carers UK, the number of middle-aged female carers in the UK as a whole has risen by 13 per cent in the last 10 years and now totals 1.2 million.

This is a sharper increase than the total number of carers which has increased by 11 per cent to 6.5 million.

Carers UK estimates that the total cost to the economy of carers giving up work is £5.3 billion a year.

The charity also points to the increasing challenge for employers, as Census figures also show that 1 in 8 workers are juggling work with caring for older or disabled loved ones.

Heléna Herklots, chief executive of Carers UK, said: "Becoming a carer can turn your world upside-down and when that responsibility falls in middle age it can change your working and personal life irreversibly.

"Women who have struggled to juggle childcare and work are now also finding themselves caring for ageing parents – and sometimes also a seriously ill partner.

"Without the right support, women are forced to leave work, or reduce their hours at an age where it is a real challenge to re-enter the work force when caring comes to an end.

"This brings serious consequences for their incomes and pensions, as well as a wider cost to the UK economy.”

Now you see them, now you don’t

Posted: 23 May 2013 01:30 AM PDT

TelevisionWe thought women over 50 were disappearing from our screens. Now Harriet Harman has proof.

The problem of women broadcasters being sidelined and ignored as they age is something that has been discussed at length in the media, and there is much anecdotal evidence to that effect.

Now, the Older Women's Commission, set up by Labour's shadow culture secretary Harriet Harman, has published irrefutable evidence in terms of figures to support what everyone already knew was true.

Despite prior protestations of broadcasting bosses to the contrary.

Once a woman broadcaster reaches a certain age, she loses her employability.

According to the findings of the Commission, which was set up to consider the experience of older women in the workplace, as carers and in public life, less than one in five of the presenters over the age of fifty employed by the country's major broadcasting organisations is a woman.

The research looked at cross sectional employment figures (gender and age) of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky News, Channel 5 and ITN.

Results showed that, overall, women account for 48 per cent of on-screen presenters under the age of fifty, but only 18 per cent of on-screen presenters over the age of 50.

The percentage of women over fifty, when considered as a proportion of the entire onscreen workforce, both men and women of any age, was a microscopic five per cent.

However, it was clear that some broadcasters were performing better than others.

ITV had an impressive 55 per cent of their over-50 presenters being women.  The BBC had a less impressive 20 per cent.

That's not really a great number.

Until you compare it to Sky News who employ just 9 per cent of women in their over 50 category.

Shocking?

Well, ITN and Channel 5 employ none.

And it's not just the on-screen talent who are affected by ageist sexism… or is it sexist ageism?

Only 7 per cent of the total TV workforce, on and off screen, are women over the age of 50.

This is completely unrepresentative of a country where the majority of people who are over 50 are women – 53.1 per cent in fact.

Harriet Harman was far from pleased.

“The figures provided by broadcasters show clearly that once female presenters hit 50, their days on-screen are numbered.

“There is a combination of ageism and sexism that hits women on TV that doesn't apply to men in the same way.”

She did go on to say, “It is an encouraging first step that broadcasters have been open in providing these statistics. Their response shows that they all recognise that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed.

“I will be publishing these figures annually so we are able to monitor progress.”

Let's hope she does.

Although the figures speak for themselves, the aggregation of them was complicated.

ITV responded to the inquiry, providing only general percentages and no raw data.

The BBC also included radio presenters in their figures, making it difficult to extrapolate between what we can see and what we can hear

Presumably not being able to see an older woman makes her more palatable.

Miriam O'Reilly, who was at the centre of a much-publicised age-related employment tribunal with the BBC – which she won – must have felt utterly vindicated.

She had this to say: “In the lead-up to my tribunal against the BBC, I knew it would help to know how many women over 50 broadcasters employed.

“They wouldn’t give me this information, citing data-protection issues. So I have enjoyed being involved in getting the answers out of them.

“And to see that this is not just about prime-time shows and news and current affairs but is across all output.

“All broadcasters say they are committed to the fair representation of older women but clearly they are not. They can’t make that statement now we have these figures.”

Sadly, despite the depressing reality of the situation, there was little sympathy from some corners.

Journalist Carol Sarler said that most of the women who are now being judged and marginalised because of their age and looks, should have thought about that when they were younger, when they were “happy to trade on their looks in order to get ahead of ‘plainer’ women”.

Sarler continued, “The problems didn’t start when on-screen women got older; they started when they were 25 and perfectly happy to muscle past their plainer-Jane colleagues by primping and preening themselves into what passes for contemporary beauty: big eyes, glossed lips, defined breasts, dieted hips.

“They sold their souls to the Devil decades ago and now comes payback.”

She also said that older women broadcasters should not have a beef with contemporaries such as David Dimbleby and John Simpson who seem to be indestructible, no matter what age they notch up.

She said that it was “irrelevant” that these men now look like “dinosaurs” because they were never hired for their looks in the first place.

So, women like Joan Bakewell and Selina Scott (Sarler’s comparators) were hired (by male bosses) for their looks?  You admit that Carol?  And that's ok?  Did they have not an iota of talent?

The fact that the highly intelligent, erudite and articulate Joan Bakewell is still described as 'the thinking man's' crumpet' is somehow her own fault for also being attractive?

Remember, also, that for many years, the physical appearance of women on screen was largely dictated by male bosses.

Happily, it looks as though employers will no longer be able to dictate this, if Harriet Harman holds true to her promise of a yearly audit.

The bottom line is that, in television, like in any other profession, the job should always go to the person best suited to that job, regardless of what they look like.

Would men still watch Saturday afternoon football in their droves, even if it was presented by a monkey, rather than an Armani clad 7-figure earning ex footballer?

You bet they would. I rest my case.