Women's Views on News |
- We are on a break
- Laurie Penny looks at cybersexism
- Atos deaths: memorial day and protest in London
- UN remarks on women’s status in UK
- Spotlight on sex trafficking in Armenia
- Toys, stereotypes and violence
| Posted: 23 Aug 2013 09:34 AM PDT
We will be back online week commencing 9 September 2013.  |
| Laurie Penny looks at cybersexism Posted: 23 Aug 2013 09:00 AM PDT
Author and leading feminist commentator Laurie Penny is entering the debate on Twitter, women and trolling with 'Cybersexism', a new essay that explores how the political map of human relations has been recently redrawn by feminism and changes in technology. Cybersexism is from Laurie Penny’s forthcoming book ‘Unspeakable Things: The New Sexual Counter-Revolution’, to be published in early 2014. Penny is exceptionally well placed to write about this contentious issue in a way that adds genuinely new and nuanced views; she was one of several female journalists in the UK to recently receive a bomb threat on Twitter, along with campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, MP Stella Creasy and historian Mary Beard. A proud ‘nerd, nomad and activist’, Laurie Penny explores how the internet can be liberating as well as limiting. Cybersexism starts: 'The Internet is a godless place, but that's as close to an in-the-beginning-was-the-word as it gets. The phrase was coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, in time for the London Olympics opening ceremony, but the principle that the Internet should be socially, economically and politically free, and that anyone anywhere should be able to use it to build new interactive platforms, extend the frontiers of human knowledge or just surf dating forums for cute redheads, is basically sound. This is for everyone. Or at least, it was supposed to be. ‘There was a time, not so long ago, when nerds, theorists and hackers, the first real colonisers of cyberspace, believed that the Internet would liberate us from gender. Science fiction writers imagined a near future just on the edge of imagination, where people’s physical bodies would become immaterial as we travelled beyond space and distance and made friends and connections and business deals all over the planet in the space of a split second. Why would it matter, in this brave new networked world, what sort of body you had? ‘And if your body didn’t matter, why would it matter if you were a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, or something else entirely? ‘I'm twelve years old and I've started hanging out in the type of chat forums where everyone will pretend to believe you're a 45-year-old history teacher called George. At the same time, the other half of the Internet seems intent on pretending that they are thirteen year-old schoolgirls from the south coast of England. Amidst growing moral panic about paedophiles and teen sluts preying on one another in the murky, unpoliced backwaters of Myspace, I feel something a little akin to freedom. Here, my body, with all of its weight and anxiety, its blood and grease and embarrassing eruptions, is not important; only my words are important. I don't want to be just a girl, because I already know that being a girl is understood to be somewhat less than being a person. I want to be what web theorist Donna Haraway calls a cyborg: ‘A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism… I'd rather be a cyborg than a goddess.' And Penny goes on to ask why threats of rape and violence are being used to try to silence female voices, analyses the structure of online misogyny, and makes a case for real freedom of speech – for everyone. Cybersexism is available as of 22 August as a Kindle Single.  |
| Atos deaths: memorial day and protest in London Posted: 23 Aug 2013 07:22 AM PDT
According to figures from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), between January and November 2011, 10,600 people died during, or within six weeks, of being put through the Atos Work Capability Assessment (WCA). The WCA decides people’s entitlement to benefit based on a tick-box system that is unable to assess complex impairments and mental health issues. And according to the British Medical Association (BMA), 40 per cent of assessments are overturned after they are appealed, with the success rate rising to 70 per cent for those who take up legal representation – proving it costly, inaccurate and ineffective. The British Medical Association has demanded that the WCA should end “with immediate effect and be replaced with a rigorous and safe system that does not cause unavoidable harm” On 28 September, the disabled and non-disabled will gather to remember those who have died and those still suffering as a result of this current government’s austerity assault, which particularly affects disabled people. 10 Thousand Cuts and Counting is to be a memorial day for those who have had their lives devastated by the austerity programme. For some of these people the assessment contributed directly to their deaths and the rest were made to endure the indignity of stressful and humiliating tests during the final weeks of their lives. This 10,000 figure is the tip of an iceberg. Perhaps most concerning is that the full extent of the problem is unknown. The fate of those who have been found fit for work, and therefore left the benefit system, is not recorded. What is recorded is that: Disabled people are paying back 9 times more than non-disabled people through cuts, and those with the highest support needs are paying back 19 times more. Hate crimes against disabled people have risen alarmingly over recent years due to 'benefit scrounger' propaganda. Recorded crime figures doubled between 2008 – when records began – and 2011. And this benefit scrounger propaganda is a cynical campaign. The government's own statistics show that only 0.5 per cent of claimants of disability related benefits are acting fraudulently. And for every pound in fraudulent benefit claimed, £17 of benefits goes unclaimed and is returned by the DWP to the government. All this even before you mention the bedroom tax. This gathering will demand an immediate end to the Work Capability Assessment, something voted for by the British Medical Association, and a New Deal for sick and disabled people based on their needs, abilities and ambitions as outlined in the WOW petition, reproduced below: These are: A Cumulative Impact Assessment of all cuts and changes affecting sick and disabled people, their families and carers, and a free vote on repeal of the Welfare Reform Act. An immediate end to the Work Capability Assessment, as voted for by the British Medical Association. Consultation between the Department of Health to improve support into work for sick and disabled people, and an end to forced work under threat of sanctions for people on disability benefits. An independent, committee-based inquiry into welfare reform, covering but not limited to: (1) Care home admission rises, daycare centres, access to education for people with learning difficulties, universal mental health treatments, Remploy closures; (2) DWP media links, the ATOS contract, IT implementation of Universal Credit; (3) Human rights abuses against disabled people, excess claimant deaths and the disregard of medical evidence in decision making by ATOS, DWP and the Tribunal Service. This government is reducing the Welfare State in a way which creates even more economic and social inequality and does not save the country money – this cannot be allowed to continue. On 28 September we will remember those who have died and those living who are having their independence and dignity challenged as a result of austerity, and the event will be led by disability activists; Occupy activists; David Ison – the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral; Michael Meacher MP and other representatives. A delegation from the gathering will present The Downing Street Demand to the Prime Minister, in support of the demands set out in the WOW petition, which has to date been signed by 52,000 people. Come and join us on 28 September at 12 noon – probably at Parliament Square. Please wear white clothing as a symbol of remembrance. If this is not possible, a white scarf or other small item would be useful. Please also bring a white flower if you would like to lay one in remembrance. For more information click here.  |
| UN remarks on women’s status in UK Posted: 23 Aug 2013 05:11 AM PDT
The UN Committee dedicated to ending all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW) has called on the UK government to step up its efforts regarding establishing gender equality in the UK. As a signatory of the UN CEDAW Convention, the UK government is bound by CEDAW to uphold women's human rights as set out in the convention. Or take steps towards doing so. The UK presented its four-yearly review of the status of women in the UK to the Committee in July. The CEDAW Committee has now published its concluding observations. Among the positive developments remarked upon over these last four years are the government’s equality strategy called ‘Building a Fairer Britain’, and the UK’s role in the adoption by the G8 ministers of the Declaration on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict. However, the CEDAW Committee said it had particular concerns regarding the impact of the government’s austerity measures on women and the women’s service sector, and it urged the government to ‘mitigate the impact of austerity measures on women and services provided to women, particularly women with disabilities and older women’. It recommended that the government ‘should also ensure that Spending Reviews continuously focus on measuring and balancing the impact of austerity measures on women’s rights.’ The Committee also said it was concerned that the Equality Act replaces the Gender Equality Duty (GED) with one single Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) that was to cover all grounds of discrimination. In England, unlike in Scotland and Wales, the PSED’s specific duty requirements do not have any explicit gender component, and does not adequately protect women against multiple discrimination. A number of other areas were also looked at for development over the next four years. Several specific recommendations focused on the rights and status of marginalised groups of women. These related to traveller women, disabled women, women of colour, female asylum seekers, women with insecure immigration status and women with experience of the criminal justice system. In particular, the Committee expressed concern at the ‘continued reports of violence against women, including domestic violence, particularly affecting black and minority ethnic women, and the so-called honour killings against ethnic minority women’. The Committee’s focus on marginalised groups of women reflected the involvement of specialist women’s organisations in the whole CEDAW process, who produced a ‘shadow report’. These groups include Sisters of Frida, Asylum Aid, and FORWARD. They formed part of the UK’s CEDAW Working Group, which was coordinated by the Women’s Resource Centre. The UK has also been called upon to ensure progress in women’s rights and gender equality in the devolved parliaments, a move welcomed by women’s rights organisations including Scotland’s Engender and the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities (NICEM). NICEM’s Strategic Advocacy Project Manager, Helena Macormac, expressed her delight at the CEDAW Committee’s report, which, she said is, “something tangible that can be used to pressure the Northern Ireland and the UK governments into improving the situation of black and minority ethnic women’s rights in Northern Ireland.” For example, the Committee criticised Northern Ireland’s current anti-abortion laws, which are not the same as those in the rest of Britain, and called upon the UK government to ‘expedite the amendment of the anti-abortion law in Northern Ireland with a view to decriminalise abortion’. It recommends that ‘legal abortion’ covered not only ‘cases of threats to the life of a pregnant woman’ but also ‘other circumstances’, such as ‘threats to her health and in cases of rape, incest and serious malformation of the foetus’. This is a significant remark as in an earlier report to the Committee this year, the UK government had said that there were ‘no plans to change the law on abortion in Northern Ireland.’ The UK government has also been asked to assess the impact of the recent legal aid reforms on women’s rights, including women’s access to justice in courts and tribunals. The Committee also expressed its concerns regarding continuing gender segregation in education, particularly female participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (the STEM subjects) and apprenticeships. Women and Equalities Minister Jo Swinson recently hosted a meeting with experts from the academic and business sectors aiming to encourage more women and girls to choose STEM subjects and careers. Perhaps this was a response to the concluding observations. But otherwise, at the time of writing, no formal government response to these concluding observations has been released.  |
| Spotlight on sex trafficking in Armenia Posted: 23 Aug 2013 02:24 AM PDT
Sexual slavery, forced labor and the extraction of body organs: These are the most common reasons for human trafficking, which represents an estimated USD32 billion per year in international trade. In 2008, the United Nations estimated that nearly 2.5 million people from more than 125 different countries were being trafficked into some 135 countries around the world. According to the International Organization for Migration, sex trafficking means coercing a migrant into a sexual act as a condition of allowing or arranging the migration. Sex trafficking uses physical or sexual coercion, deception, abuse of power and bondage incurred through forced debt. Trafficked women and children, for instance, are often promised work in the domestic or service industry but, instead, are sometimes taken to brothels where they are forced into prostitution, and their passports and other identification papers are confiscated. They may be beaten or locked up and promised their freedom only after earning – through prostitution – their purchase price and their travel and visa costs. Vulnerable populations in former Soviet states, such as Armenia, are particularly susceptible to this global phenomenon. Since Armenia's independence, thousands of Armenian women and girls have been taken – to Russia, Turkey, and some Arab states of the Persian Gulf – to be initiated into prostitution. A 2003-2004 investigation by journalists Edik Baghdasaryan and Ara Manoogian, concluded that approximately 2,000 Armenian women were involved in the sex trade in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman. Their findings were documented in the film and book, 'Desert Nights'. Earlier this year, Armenian-American author Vahan Zanoyan released 'A Place Far Away', a crime novel about sex trafficking in Armenia. While the storyline reads like a sordid suspense saga, the situations are largely based on actual events, the result of on-the-ground research by the author. In Zanoyan's engrossing tale, the action shifts between the trafficked Lara Galian and Swiss-Armenian investigative journalist Edik Laurian's attempts to uncover what happened to her and her relatives. I interviewed author Vahan Zanoyan on June 20, 2013. Lucine Kasbarian: How did you decide to write this book? Vahan Zanoyan: I discovered the Armenian sex trafficking phenomenon by accident. While on a business trip to Dubai, I ran into a beautiful 17 year-old Armenian girl. The girl was talking with another woman, and I could tell the conversation was strained. It's a long tale, but it took six months to extract her story from her because the girl was very scared. I compensated her for her time so that her pimps would not get suspicious. Finally, she started to trust me and tell me what happened to her. I spent close to two years researching the issue. To be clear, Lara Galian is a composite sketch of four Armenian girls I met in Dubai. All the names and locations in the book have been changed to protect the innocent. LK: What has the reaction been to 'A Place Far Away'? VZ: The book has received very favorable responses and reviews from media and readers. I don't seek to make a profit from this initiative. My aim is to raise awareness, assist the victims and work on prevention. All proceeds from the book go to the United Methodist Center on Relief, a nonprofit organization that helps integrate and rehabilitate freed victims of sex trafficking, and that has a significant presence in Armenia; and Orran, a charitable organization that provides a safe haven to the most vulnerable in Armenian society – such as homeless youth forced to live on the streets. They are the first to be picked off by traffickers. Orran does preventive work, while UMCOR has shelters where they help rehabilitate rescued victims. Rescuing the victims can be especially challenging work since some pimps stage fake rescue attempts to fool the girls. The pimps then lock them up, beat them and thus deter them from considering genuine rescue attempts in the future. But there are not enough resources or money to do everything that needs to be done. LK: In June, your book was translated into the Armenian language. Tell us about that. VZ: To help launch this new edition in Armenia, I appeared on perhaps every major talk show on Armenian television. A reception was held at US Ambassador Heffern's home in Yerevan, which was attended by around one hundred people, including journalists and organizations engaged in the struggle against human trafficking. Unfortunately, today's Armenia is divided into the filthy rich who don't read, and the penniless class who love to read but can't afford to buy books. Thus, nowadays, Armenia does not boast a widespread reading public as it once used to. That said, trafficking of Armenian women is a hot topic in certain circles right now. My book costs 3,000 dram [about USD7.50], which most native Armenians cannot afford. So I'm not sure how well the book is selling in Armenia, even though it did make it to the top of a bestseller list compiled by ArmenPress. LK: What message would you like to send to the young, poor or disadvantaged women of Armenia? VZ: Don't fall for promises that sound too good to be true or appeal to your vanity. When you face poverty, there are other alternatives. A 16 year-old will trust her own circle of friends or relatives, many of whom might sell her off. This could include former childhood classmates who have fallen in with a bad crowd, brothers who have drug addictions to feed, or uncles who have gambling debts to pay. They don't think twice about bartering a friend or relative to feed their habits. LK: Do some of the girls escape and return home? Why do some stay even after they have "paid their debts?" VZ: For the vast majority of them, escape seems impossible. For many, there are moral issues that can't be overcome. How can a girl resume a respectable life in Armenia if she has been dishonored through prostitution? These thugs rule by fear. The traffickers, pimps and madams are all Armenian. They pay off the police, too. LK: What do you say to those Armenians who don't want to call attention to this trend because of how shameful it is? VZ: We can't say amot eh [it's shameful], get embarrassed, and stay quiet. Our silence makes us participants in this crime. The best thing for traffickers is this kind of radio silence on their activities. By exposing them, we help the victims. If I had the means, I'd freely distribute the book to every Armenian over 18, both inside and outside Armenia. Speaking out could also make public officials more diligent. After the Desert Nights documentary surfaced, Armenian authorities began to take notice and action. Before this, the officials would consider the casualties to be complicit in the crimes rather than victims of crime. LK: What would you like to see happen regarding human trafficking? VZ: There are many great organizations that fight against the symptoms of trafficking. One is House of Hope. It provides teenage girls from state-run orphanages with a safe home, a family environment, and psychological support, as well as life and job-training skills. While such organizations do valuable work, they treat the symptoms affecting these girls but not the root causes, which are the pathetic economic and social conditions in Armenia. Seventy years of Soviet rule, broken homes, fathers who have left their families to work abroad and did not come back – all these have contributed to the decay of our collective moral fiber. In 1915, Armenian women threw themselves into the Euphrates River to die rather than be raped by Turks. Now, underprivileged Armenian women and families are turning to prostitution as a survival option. Some improvements are happening, and I'd like to see this continue. The police in Armenia are more cooperative on this issue. We need more people working with victims, prevention organizations, law enforcement, and victim rehabilitation and reintegration programs. There is a new flow of victims every day, so we must stop it at the source while taking care of the existing victims. But as I said earlier, the root cause is the horrible economic and social conditions in the country. Unless that problem is addressed, this phenomenon will only get worse.  |
| Toys, stereotypes and violence Posted: 23 Aug 2013 01:09 AM PDT by Liz Ely, development worker for Zero Tolerance in Scotland. At Zero Tolerance our mission is to prevent violence against women before it occurs, which can only be achieved by eliminating its root cause, gender inequality. This is not an easy task when gender inequality is present in so many aspects of our lives and in wider society. The stereotypes present in toys, children's media and clothes tell boys they must be tough, that expression of emotion is a weakness; they tell girls that they matter less, their stories are less important and that their appearance is their main asset. These stereotypes foster a culture where violence against women is allowed to flourish. This is why we developed Just Like A Child: Challenging Gender Stereotyping in the early years, a guide for childcare professionals to support them in challenging these stereotypes and providing an environment where girls and boys aren't forced into categories which lead to inequality. Gender training – start them young: Gender stereotypes affect and surround us all, so it is easy to be unaware of how we are treating children differently. It may feel like the most natural thing in the world to compliment a girl on how cute she looks in a new dress, but it is important to recognise what messages we are giving out about the importance of her physical appearance. Do we also tell her that we value what she thinks and does, as well as how she looks? Putting boys into 'the man box': Similarly, it is important for us to address what messages we give to boys about expressing their emotions, and what it means to be a man. In his excellent TEDTalk 'A call to men' American activist Tony Porter describes how he treated his son and daughter differently as young children. He speaks about how he would give his daughter all the time in the world to cry, but with his son he found himself acting in a different way. "Kendall would come to me crying, it's like as soon as I would hear him cry, a clock would go off. I would give the boy probably about 30 seconds, which means, by the time he got to me, I was already saying things like, 'Why are you crying? Hold your head up. Look at me. Explain to me what's wrong… I can't understand you.'… I would find myself saying things like, 'Just go in your room… Sit down, get yourself together and come back and talk to me when you can talk to me like a man'. "He was five years old." Porter goes on to talk about how the 'man box' (or the 'collective socialisation of men') supports gender inequality and violence against women, including some powerful stories from his own experience. Toys – helping to build the man box: By segregating and stereotyping toys for children, we confirm and support the existence of a 'man box'. By telling children that certain toys are not for boys (or girls) we also tell boys that girls and femininity are inferior. It's accepted for girls to cross the line and play with 'boy' toys, but not the other way around. The implication that 'boys' things are superior is clear Children learn to police gender expression very early, and gender stereotypes in toys only encourage this. One childcare worker shared this story with us: 'I work at an after school club for 5-9 year olds, this week one of the boys (let's call him Bob) decided to sit at a table with some girls. One of the other boys started chanting at him 'Bob is a girl, Bob is a girl' in a really mocking way.' If 'girl' is such a potent insult, what are we teaching boys about girls? But isn't that just nature? Some people might suggest that stereotypes mimic natural behaviour; however evidence shows that stereotypes shape behaviour too. In her excellent book 'Delusions of Gender' Cordelia Fine gives examples of how reminding female students about negative stereotypes concerning women's aptitude for maths and science actually led to lower test results than when they were not reminded of these stereotypes. Experiments like this one (widely replicated) show the power of stereotypes on attainment in adult life, when the brain is more fully developed. Fine argues that in the early years, when the brain is more elastic, the potential impact of these stereotypes is even greater. So what are we going to do about it? Many stereotypes about men and women are so deeply ingrained we may not be aware of the ways in which the affect how we treat children. The Just Like A Child guide offers ways for practitioners to reflect on this and consider gender stereotyping within their childcare settings. Play Fair: As well as supporting childcare workers to challenge stereotypes in daycare settings, we have joined together with White Ribbon Scotland to launch the Play Fair campaign, to support the aims of Let Toys Be Toys in Scotland. We provide opportunities for grassroots activists to meet others who wish to end gender stereotyping and take action in Scotland. It may sometimes feel like an uphill struggle, but it is possible to change society. Let Toys Be Toys have already shown that it is possible to get toyshops to change their policies. If childcare workers, parents and campaigners join together to challenge stereotypes they will inevitably lose their power. Find out more about Play Fair via the Play Fair tumblr or follow @PlayFaircamp on twitter. Liz Ely works for Zero Tolerance in Scotland as a development worker. Zero Tolerance aims to prevent violence against women in all its forms, and has a project working in the early years for which Liz is the lead. This article first appeared on Let Toys Be Toys’ website.  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Women's Views on News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |