Women's Views on News |
- Spoons help prevent forced marriages
- Prostitution on the rise in Hull
- What the exam results this year show
| Spoons help prevent forced marriages Posted: 20 Aug 2013 08:00 AM PDT
The idea is that if you are being taken abroad against your will, having a spoon in your underwear will set off security alarms at airports, giving you one last chance to ask for help from the airport’s staff, after you are taken away from your parents, or minders, to be searched. The idea is being promoted by the charity Karma Nirvana, an organisation which was set up to prevent forced marriages and honour killings. Based in Derby, the charity fields 6,500 calls from Britain each year, with a spike at the beginning and end of school holidays. “The charity is working with airports – so far London Heathrow, Liverpool and Glasgow, with Birmingham to come – to spot potential signs, such as one-way tickets, the time of year, age of the person and whether they look uncomfortable.” One woman told AlArabiya that she was threatened with death by her father: “I was shipped off with a total stranger. That night I was raped by my husband and this abuse continued for about eight and half years of my life." Eventually she fled. The United Nations predicts that more than 140 million girls will become child brides by 2020 if current rates of early marriage continue. Last year, the British Foreign Office's Forced Marriage Unit dealt with some 1,500 cases – 18 per cent of them men. A third of cases involved children aged under 17. The oldest victim was aged 71; the youngest just two. And earlier this month The Guardian revealed that the British Forced Marriage Unit dealt with 114 cases involving people with mental disabilities. The government released the figure after a high court judge was criticised by campaigners for refusing to annul the marriage of a mentally incapacitated Sikh man from the West Midlands whose parents had arranged a wife to come from India and marry him. The woman said she was unaware of her partner’s disabilities before the marriage. Karma Nirvana says that disabled people are married off so that their partner has to become a carer. Lynne Featherstone, MP, a minister in the department for International Development, said the UK government was working to raise awareness of these issues in this country and to prevent arranged marriages throughout the world. Research shows that if girls receive seven years of education they are more likely to marry later and have fewer children. “The UK’s flagship Girls Education Challenge will ensure that up to one million of the world’s poorest girls get a good education," Featherstone told The Guardian recently. “Girls who are forced into marriage are often trapped in poverty with no means to lift themselves out. “These girls are robbed of an education, vulnerable to death in childbirth and at a greater risk of domestic violence and contracting HIV. “Early marriage is also inextricably linked with girls suffering domestic abuse and being coerced into sex. “Put simply, it endangers life." If you need help, or know someone who might, to contact Karma Nirvana, click here.  |
| Prostitution on the rise in Hull Posted: 20 Aug 2013 04:44 AM PDT
The Humberside Police Force and the Hull Lighthouse Project, a charity that helps street workers in Hull, blame the increase on welfare reforms and high unemployment rates. Police Constable Lorraine Summerfield, who patrols an area where prostitutes often seek work, said: "The number of girls working had reduced but, recently, it has flared up again and it is because new girls are going out, who have never done it before. "Some of these girls are desperate to feed and clothe their children and they are going out to do that, which is really sad." Humberside Police hopes that a new campaign will enable women to step away from prostitution. During the campaign, which launches later this month, police officers and support workers will meet women who are out looking for work and will offer them advice and help. Police officers will also seek out and challenge people who are looking to pay for sex. First-time offenders will have to attend a course, and people who reoffend may be banned from certain areas of the city. PC Summerfield, speaking to a local newspaper about the operation, said: "We have had more complaints from residents, which is why we are launching another project. "When we have done similar operations, it has worked brilliantly so, hopefully, this will too. "We want to help the women who are doing it, educate them and reduce the demand by targeting the kerb-crawlers." Trained volunteers at the Lighthouse Project are also doing their best to help the women. They have been handing out food parcels and running their evening drop-in centre, which is used by over 90 per cent of the women who work on the streets of Hull. Anne Dannerolle, chair of trustees at the charity, said: "We have started to see women who are literally starving and they are out there to feed themselves. "Often, that is because of benefit cuts or sanctions, when their benefits are taken away from them for a couple of weeks. I have a real concern about that. "If they have no one to turn to in an emergency, they have to find a way to get money – and that often means crime or going out on the streets." She also said she recently saw a woman working on the streets for the first time to raise money for food. “After that, she carried on coming out and got involved in drugs through being on the streets,” she said. “Many of the women hate what they are doing so much that they take drugs or consume a high level of alcohol to numb it.” She added: "I suppose it is seen as a crime that hurts nobody – it just hurts themselves." Lighthouse staff have so far met over 300 female prostitutes in Hull and enabled over half the women they have developed an ongoing relationship with to exit the sex trade. As well as tackling prostitution, the charity helps women with domestic violence problems, drug addiction and housing needs.  |
| What the exam results this year show Posted: 20 Aug 2013 01:09 AM PDT
With August comes the usual scrutiny of girls and boys performance in end of year examinations. But don't let this August's media circus allow your attention to dwindle completely from some of the key issues revealed by this year's results. Exam performance is one of the few "gender gaps" where females often outshine their male counterparts, yet media rhetoric around the issue often relates to the "underperformance" of boys. It is claimed that girls tend to thrive in subject assessments which are coursework based, whereas boys perform better in end of year examinations. Earlier this year Education Minister Michael Gove announced plans to make GCSE examinations harder, and to scrap most coursework and modular courses in favour of end of year exams by 2017 – a move which the Association of Teachers and Lecturers described as "discriminatory" against female students. Androcentric government intervention to address boys' underperformance is not a new phenomena, for example under the old 11-plus system, where girls had to achieve higher grades to attend grammar schools and ensure that the ratio of girls and boys remained equal. Last week's A-level results revealed that girls continue to outperform boys in achieving A*-A grades, with 26.7 per cent of female entrants, compared with 25.9 per cent of males, attaining these highest grades. However, the data also reveals that while girls continue to lead boys at most levels, this has dropped significantly since 2002. This year 8 per cent of boys achieved the coveted A*grades compared with 7.4 per cent of girls, a phenomena which has risen 0.5 per cent since boys overtook girls last year. Professor Alan Smithers, director of the University of Buckingham's Centre for Education and Employment, argues that this “shifting balance" is a consequence of the A-level reforms in 2010 which not only introduced the A* grade but also reduced the number of modules and sought to better assess the entire course. Since boys tend to populate the higher and lower range of grades, whereas girls bunch in the middle, the introduction of A* grades has enabled those boys at the higher end of the spectrum to "show what they can do", he claims. Professor Smithers also highlights the important point that subjects where examination success relies on finding the correct solutions (eg maths), rather than those which are dependent on an examiner's judgment of a discursive argument (eg English), tend to be dominated by boys and more allied with achieving higher grades. This, then, alludes to another worrying trend revealed by this year's A-level results. The subject selection of this year's students has fallen back into gender stereotypes in terms of subject selection. Seven out of 10 English papers were sat by girls this year, as were three quarters of psychology exams. In contrast, 4 out of 5 physics and 6 out of 10 maths exams were taken by boys, while female participation in the subjects fell significantly compared with last year. Sir Peter Knight, president of the Institute of Physics, said: "Major concerns do continue to be raised about the very low proportion of girls choosing to study physics. "There is still a huge amount of work to be done to ensure girls are not denied their entitlement to a good physics education. “Not least, we know that anachronistic gender stereotypes persist in many classrooms and these contribute to an outrageous unfairness that we continue to fight against." While this year's results look bleak for the future of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM subjects), there was hope in the form of biology, where girls not only dominated the subject but the number of female students sitting papers in the discipline rose by 3.6 per cent to 57.8 per cent. Despite this noteworthy success, Chris Keates, general secretary of the teachers' union NASUWT, highlighted the long-term implications of this year's growing gender gap in subject uptake, saying: "Of concern is the increasing gender divide that we are witnessing in students' subject choices. “This is an issue that the government cannot ignore as it could have serious ramifications for the future education and employment options of boys and girls." While the government seems keen to address the "underperformance" of boys in examinations, its ready willingness to address the continued gender stereotyping of subjects in school is not as forthcoming. In a report published in June this year, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee called on the government to address the issue of stereotyping in education so as tackle the continued under-representation of women in certain sectors of the workplace. It said: "The early influences children are exposed to are crucial in informing them about career opportunities. As such, the current absence of comprehensive careers advice is a matter of deep concern. “The government must develop an enhanced careers strategy, with careers advice fully incorporated in the work of both primary and secondary schools." Sure we want to see all young people – irrespective of their gender – given the opportunity to achieve their potential when it comes to end of year exams, but this year's results should show more than ever, that if the government is committed to tackling gender inequality beyond the playground then equality begins at school.  |
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