Women's Views on News |
| Posted: 04 Jul 2013 08:16 AM PDT
The Jimmy Savile revelations and multiple child sexual exploitation convictions all over the country have emphasised the urgent need for schools and every other agency working with young people to be proactive in preventing and detecting abuse. And it is known that, nationally, a third of girls experience unwanted sexual touching at school; a third of girls experience sexual violence from a partner; 750,000 witness domestic violence each year; 20,000 are at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM). But findings from a new survey of all secondary schools in Thurrock, in Essex, conducted by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) and published on 3 July showed that girls' safety and tackling abuse of women and girls – even though almost half of them dealt with incidents related to sexual violence, sexual harassment, pornography and intimate partner violence over the last year – is low on the local schools’ priorities list. A questionnaire was sent to all of Thurrock’s state secondary schools earlier this year and was completed by all twelve schools. The survey findings show that despite the figures mentioned above, local schools may not be actively tackling the issues or ensuring victims have access to specialist support. Five of the twelve schools reported that they had dealt with incidents of abuse of girls over the last year – including sexual violence, sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, trafficking and abuse related to pornography. Seven schools reported that they had no incidents reported over the last year; this should be examined closely in light of what is known about the high levels of abuse in girls' lives. Only one school in Thurrock has a designated person leading ways of tackling abuse of women and girls. None of the schools has a specific policy on violence against women and girls, although most said these issues are covered in other policies on bullying, safeguarding and child protection. Researchers were pleased to find that 11 of the 12 secondary schools in Thurrock are currently covering violence against women and girls in the school curriculum, giving students a chance to discuss the issues in personal social and health education (PSHE) and Citizenship lessons despite it not being mandatory to do so. Schools said that a lack of time and a lack of training were among the barriers to attention being paid to preventing and detecting abuse of girls. EVAW Coalition's director Holly Dustin said: "We are pleased that all the schools in Thurrock recognised the importance of these issues by responding to our survey. “We are sure this means their doors are open for ongoing discussion with parents, the wider community and experts on how they can improve their work to prevent abuse. "However the results do seem to show that at present abuse of girls is a low priority for Thurrock schools – no policies, no senior leads, apparently little discussion with young people in class, little teacher training, and no recent reports which may indicate that girls do not feel safe to come forward at school. "We know from research about the scale of abuse in girls' lives – including abuse in teenage relationships, sexual harassment at school, abuse related to 'sexting', or abuse in the family or by other adults outside school. "Teachers and other adults in school may be the only trusted adults some girls can disclose to, but this will not happen if schools are not proactive in talking about the issues and ensuring teachers are trained to respond to them." Lee Eggleston of South Essex Rape and Incest Crisis Centre (SERICC) said: "The survey exposes the fact that sexual violence and abuse are real in Thurrock and affecting the lives of young people. "In Thurrock we have the building blocks in place to help every girl feel safe when they are at school. Thurrock could be a pioneer in addressing the issues of sexual violence, but we need everybody on board, particularly schools, school leaders, parents, local politicians and the whole community." The aim of the survey, which was developed by the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at the London Metropolitan University, was to highlight good practice in schools, as well as identify gaps in the information and support that young people receive and to highlight what further resources and development are needed. Thurrock was approached to participate in the project because its ‘Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, Building Blocks: A Strategy and Action Plan for Addressing Violence Against Women and Girls in Thurrock’ showed it has good policies on violence against women and girls and has great potential to become a lead borough in ensuring girls are safe and supported at school. The questionnaire is part of a phased study taking place in up to five local areas in England that are championing this strategic approach to violence against women and girls. This is a major arm of EVAW's Schools Safe 4 Girls campaign on preventing violence against women and girls, which aims to work directly with schools and local authorities to promote prevention work.  |
| Posted: 04 Jul 2013 05:15 AM PDT
As a viewer, the recent BBC crime drama The Fall was a double-edged and somewhat contradictory sword. I relished Gillian Anderson's determined performance of DSI Stella Gibson: each long, hard stare down in the face of misogyny, each calm slap-down to the patriarchy trying to pigeonhole her behaviour or question her femininity. Anderson's performance was a rare opportunity to see a character explicitly written as a feminist dramatic heroine in a primetime TV drama and I loved it. On the other hand, I felt the depiction of violence against women was fatally flawed. The show's writer, Allan Cubitt has spoken to the Standard about his motivation for writing The Fall. "I seem to be reading an awful lot about crimes against women, perpetrated by men”, he said. “The opportunity to explore that is not only interesting but timely and, dare I say it, important." Despite his recognition of the pervasiveness of violence against women, the show has been criticised for 'glamourising' such violence. While 'glamourising' is not a word I'd use in this context – the connotations of 'dressing up' or 'making pretty' are too light – I was troubled by many scenes in The Fall. Most of all, I failed to connect with what the director and writer were trying to say in scenes where our imaginary serial killer, Paul Spector (played by Jamie Dornan), attacked his victims. Many of these scenes – in which Spector broke into the homes of victims, raped and killed them – seemed carefully designed to bring the viewer up close to the terror of the victims. Arguably, they succeeded – I just couldn't work out why they had to do this again and again. Who in the audience didn't already think that being attacked, beaten, raped and killed in your own home would be terrifying? Given particular attention by critics was the decision to intercut a scene of DSI Stella Gibson having sex with a colleague, with scenes of the killer lovingly bathing his dead victim and painting her nails. Is this glamourising violence? Not for me, no. But it did take my attention clean out of the drama and make me wonder what the hell the writer and director were thinking when they wrote it. It's hard to believe a drama about violence against women is a feminist drama when many of the scenes in it seem to take more time (and, dare I say it, pleasure?) depicting graphic and horrific rape than in addressing the complexities of how the criminal justice system tends to fail victims of rape. Cubitt wrote in the Guardian recently about his fascination for serial killers, and The Fall is perhaps more a testament to this interest, than to him having anything new to say about violence against women. I say this for one simple reason – most violence against women doesn't look like it does in The Fall. I'm a Writer in Residence for Aurora New Dawn, a frontline service that works with victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Working there provides me with a daily snapshot into the reality of violence against women and the failure of our social and justice system to address it – and I simply didn't recognise this reality in The Fall. Most of the victims we work with know their perpetrators, and most of those perpetrators are not highly intelligent serial killers leading a terrifyingly anonymous double life: a father and husband in the home and a raping murderer in his spare time. What we see in Aurora is that in the cases of some of the most violent serial offenders, there is no 'double life' at all. These men also carry out physical assault and sexual violence in the home. Levi Bellfield – who murdered Milly Dowler, Marsha McDonnell and Amelie Delagrange and attempted to murder and kidnap others – was also an extremely violent perpetrator of physical and sexual violence to his partners. One ex-girlfriend even identified Bellfield as a suspect in the murder of Amelie Delagrange based on her own experiences, while his ex-partner talked about Bellfield's boasts to her about the women he'd raped. In the real world of violence against women, most victims don't hear their perpetrator coming as he breaks a window and sneaks into their house, as The Fall's imaginary killer Paul Spector does. The men who threaten these women's lives with violence, the men who rape them, the men who control, harass and intimidate them every day, are more likely to be the men who sleep beside them each night. The ending of The Fall was complained about, as rapist and killer Spector headed off to a new life in Scotland free to offend all over again, with DSI Gibbons helpless, unable to do anything but issue threats of tracking him down. Yet for me, this was the most realistic part of the entire show. Perpetrators of rape and physical violence walk free to reoffend every day. Most victims of such violence struggle in the aftermath to rebuild their lives, particularly in the current climate where the services that can most help them do so are fighting for their own survival in the face of massive funding cuts. It is these women who represent the majority of victims of violence against women in the UK. Where can we find these stories being told on our screens? If we are serious about making drama about violence against women, we need these stories more than another gratuitous series of images of women being raped and killed. For most of these women, there is no feminist avenger like DSI Stella Gibson waiting in the wings. Instead, there is only the long haul to justice, to healing, and one day, maybe, to freedom. Is there really not enough 'drama' to be found in that?  |
| Posted: 04 Jul 2013 01:09 AM PDT
Two new projects are providing an antidote to the inescapability of airbrushed images of women that most societies are subjected to every day. Jane Beall, a photographer, is planning to publish her book of photos of women's postpartum bodies in January 2014. Titled ‘A Beautiful Body,’ the book is Beall's way of trying to stop what she told the Huffington Post is "an epidemic of women who feel unworthy of being called beautiful.” In Beall's interview, she mentions the "shaming" of women over the shape of their bodies after giving birth. Yet what women are being compared to is a false ideal. In its 2011 announcement of new policies, the American Medical Association (AMA) recommended the development of advertising guidelines to ‘discourage the altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image.’ An example cited in the announcement was of an image of a model whose waist had been reduced so much by photo editing that ‘her head appeared to be wider than her waist.’ Beall has already exceeded her goal of raising USD20,000 via crowd-funding on Kickstarter for publication of her book and says that she is planning future volumes covering cancer, aging and eating disorders. In Australia, Jessica Barlow published the first issue of Brainwashed magazine in April 2013, saying that she wants "body-positive content that is inclusive of all genders, sexual orientations, skin colors, body shapes and religions.” And by body-positive content, Barlow specifically means no digital retouching. Inspired by teen Julia Bluhm, who successfully petitioned Seventeen magazine to publish one unaltered photo each month, Barlow started a similar one asking popular Australian magazine CLEO to print its Photoshop guidelines in every issue. CLEO agreed to the request. As the number of campaigns against the use of unrealistic imagery grows, more and more women are publicly challenging the accepted norm of thin, young and sexy as the female ideal. Objectifying women has become ingrained in many societies through complete saturation of the advertising and media industries with falsified images that promote fake and unattainable concepts of beauty. As its name suggests, the Everyday Media Sexism project is fighting just that by providing a platform for women to share their experiences. The voluble and growing support for the No More Page Three campaign suffered a serious setback with the recent announcement by The Sun's new editor, David Dinsmore, that the images of topless women would be continued because they are a "good way of selling newspapers." With research putting numbers to the acknowledged dearth of women in positions of public power, and Port Magazine declaring this time to be a golden age of print media, under the stewardship of six white male magazine editors, women continually face the chicken-or-the-egg problem. The solution appears to be to jump into the fray in whatever way possible, publicly using and appreciating the reality of women's beauty. Each campaign victory and positive news article, no matter how small, is important in bolstering the growing resistance to images sold as perfection that are often composites of several women's body parts, all smoothed together through the use of photo editing software.  |
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