Women's Views on News |
- Stop child maintenance fees and charges
- Film review: Powder Room
- Mr Cameron, it was End Violence Against Women Day
| Stop child maintenance fees and charges Posted: 27 Nov 2013 08:32 AM PST
The Child Support Agency, which has been in place since 1993, is being phased out and will be replaced next year by the Child Maintenance Service. It used to be free to get help from the Child Support Agency when a recalcitrant parent tried to not pay their child maintenance, but new plans will see charges introduced. Government plans include a one-off fee of £20 when single parents first approach the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) for help, and a further 4 per cent charge on every payment collected through the Service. Although those who have previously been in a violent or abusive relationship are exempt from the £20 fee, they will still see any payments collected through the service subject to a 4 per cent charge. Single parents may only approach the Child Maintenance Service for help after the non-resident partner has been given the opportunity to set up a voluntary payment arrangement, but has failed to make regular payments. These plans are part of a ‘shake up’ of the child support system based on an idea of individual responsibility and state retrenchment that has been characteristic of many of the Coalition government’s policies. Pensions Minister Steve Webb recently claimed that through these reforms the government was attempting to ‘empower parents to take control of their own lives and come to their own family-based arrangements to support their children’. He also suggested that the charges would ‘provide a nudge’ to parents to come to private arrangements without state involvement. ‘Nudge’ politics has long been favoured by David Cameron and, put simply, involves making small changes in the way choices are presented, in order to ‘nudge’ people into living their lives in a ‘better’ way. The point being that these ‘better’ lives involve less expenditure by the state. Yet regardless of political ideology, the efficacy of ‘nudge politics’ and opinions regarding the role of the state, it is a simple fact that penalising single parents for using the Child Maintenance Service ultimately hurts children. That is why, since the government’s proposals were announced, the single parent charity Gingerbread have been tirelessly campaigning against them. Gingerbread has already made substantial headway, achieving a reduction in the one-off charge from £100 to £20 and a reduction in the collection charge from 7 per cent to 4 per cent. However, Gingerbread is calling for the charges to be dropped completely, on the grounds that ‘the government will effectively be taking money away from children just because the other parent refuses to pay maintenance voluntarily’. The charity estimates that the collection charges could see hundreds of children lose over £70 of child maintenance per year. Children in single parent families are already twice as likely to live in relative poverty, and have been hit hardest by welfare reforms such as the Benefit Cap. Adding to this burden by reducing the income due to children from non-resident parents is both patently unfair and incredibly short-sighted of a government already falling behind on its commitment to end child poverty by 2020. Recent research has revealed that child maintenance, where it is paid, plays a ‘key role’ in alleviating child poverty yet 64 per cent of single parents on out-of-work benefits do not receive any maintenance. The report suggested that for a ‘distinct group’ of single parents it is not feasible to come to a private maintenance arrangements and, as Gingerbread has trenchantly argued, the implications of ‘coming to private arrangements’ for victims of domestic violence are worrying. No matter how far we feel we may have come as a society, the stigma facing single parents – particularly the single mothers who make up 92 per cent of all single-parent households – remains stubborn and their political, social and financial marginalisation shows little sign of abating. For all of the shifting rhetoric, such as suggesting it should be absent fathers, not single mothers, who are stigmatised by society, placing hurdles in the way of those for whom maintenance payments are essential for the well being and life chances of their children is an unnecessarily punitive act. Potentially reducing vital income for single parent households while giving privileges to marriage through the tax system speaks volumes about how ‘progressive’ government policy really is. Children should not be made to suffer because of the actions of their non-resident parent, nor should they be made to suffer because of the ideological views of remote figures in Westminster. The government thinks it can ‘nudge’ us into ‘better’ behaviour. Together, perhaps we can nudge the government to do the same. So, if you agree that charging single parents for help to recover money vital to their children’s well-being is wrong, please sign the Gingerbread petition.  |
| Posted: 27 Nov 2013 04:48 AM PST
Powder Room – a comedy with an all female cast and set in the private space of a female public toilet- follows a group of women on a night out in a London club. Sam (Sheridan Smith) is there with glamorous ex-college friend Michelle (Kate Nash), who is over on a short visit from Paris with her fashion blogger business partner Jess (Oona Chaplin). Michelle earns lots of money and has recently got engaged. And although they have not seen each other for five years, Sam has been following her every move on Facebook. Feeling inadequate, Sam brags about her job as a lawyer and her boyfriend Sean, but it soon becomes clear that they split up over a year ago and the best job Sam ever had was working in a cafe. And to make matters worse, someone has spilled red wine over the back of her jeans. By chance Sam's best friends, sassy Chanelle (Jamie Winstone), hedonistic Saskia (Sarah Hoare) and dependable Paige (Riann Steele) are also in the club. And despite her best attempts to maintain the facade, Sam's cover is ultimately blown. But she also discovers (rather too predictably) that her friends' Parisian lifestyles are not quite what they were first cracked up to be either. Powder Room is based on Rachel Hirons' play When Women Wee, and is the debut feature of director Morgan Jane (MJ) Delaney who was behind the You Tube hit Newport State of Mind, a spoof of the Jay Z and Alicia Keys hit about New York. Although some of the characters draw a little too heavily on well-worn female stereotypes – the sensible one, the sluttish one, the glamorous one and so on – there is much in this film that women will recognise from the underage clubbers who haven’t quite learned to read the signs of human attraction to the bouncer who has seen it all before. As a new survey of young women in Britain reveals nearly half feel they have no-one to turn to and two thirds say they have been discriminated against at work this film is a vivid portrait of the pressures and insecurities they face. Powder Room will be in UK cinemas from 6 December.  |
| Mr Cameron, it was End Violence Against Women Day Posted: 27 Nov 2013 01:09 AM PST
By Stephanie Davies-Arai. November 25th is End Violence Against Women Day. According to a 2013 WHO global study, 35 per cent of women worldwide, and nationally up to 70 per cent of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime from an intimate partner. Out of the countries with available figures, the U.K.’s percentage (28.4 per cent) is higher than the vast majority of other European countries. (Compare this figure to Canada’s 7 per cent). One of the criticisms I often hear of the No More Page 3 campaign is that countries without newspapers displaying photos of topless young women still have high levels of violence against women and therefore Page 3 is not a cause. But this of course ignores the fact that every country has its own culturally-specific ways of keeping women in their place. Given that we live in a Western democracy (rather than a country with entrenched and legalised discrimination against women) the rate of violence should be far lower here than it actually is. So what keeps it at such an unacceptable level? The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women states that violence against women is ‘a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men.’ The U.N. General Assembly 2006 Report of the Secretary General urged governments to ‘develop prevention strategies that address the causes of violence against women, particularly the persistence of gender-based stereotypes.’ The UN Commission on the Status of Women Resolution in 2013 specified the critical role of the media in ‘refraining from presenting (women) as inferior beings and exploiting them as sexual objects and commodities.’ The U.K. government have signed this Resolution, but the fact that David Cameron, in an interview on Woman’s Hour last week, once again failed to take seriously the effects of the sexualised representation of women in the U.K. media makes a mockery of that fact. There are many men in this country who see women as full human beings entitled to equality and respect on the same level as men. Discounting those men who, when the issue is Page 3, are passionate advocates of female choice and employment opportunities, there are also a large number of men who see women as not fully human, only good for one thing, commodities to be used and discarded. Which of these views does Page 3 support? Shouldn’t we as a society be educating that second group of men to respect women as full human beings rather than validating their beliefs on a daily basis on the influential platform of a national newspaper? Should we not be reinforcing the beliefs of the first group of men? Which choice would make women safer? Currently we might as well broadcast daily on the most visible page of a national newspaper this specific message to boys and men: ‘Women are sex objects, they exist to please you sexually, this is their greatest value and it’s what we as a society believe is women’s main role. They exist only in terms of their biology. Every day you get a new one, they are that interchangeable. Enjoy!’ And to girls and women: ‘You are defined by your bodies, your physical appearance and your willingness to be sexually available to men. In the U.K. men are empowered by wearing clothes, doing jobs and running the country, and you are empowered by taking your clothes off in public.’ There would be a public outcry if an editor wrote that every day in a newspaper. But we do worse: the power of images sends the message far more effectively, with much greater impact particularly for children, a fact of which Cameron needs to be aware before blithely dismissing the evidence that children can and do see Page 3 in public places. Dr. Lynell Burmark, Ph.D. Associate at the Thornburg Center for Professional Development says, ‘Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2). Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.’ David Cameron understands the power of images over words in government policy such as the introduction of pictures of disease on cigarette packets, he knows how advertising works and he cannot feign ignorance of the daily conditioning impact of Page 3 and other similar sexualised images of women in the U.K. tabloids. The 2006 report further stated: ‘Given the fluidity of culture, women’s agency in challenging oppressive cultural norms and articulating cultural values that respect their human rights is of central importance.’ Are you listening to the No More Page 3 campaign David? To Caroline Lucas? Jane Garvey? The Girl Guides and the Girls’ Brigade? The four major teaching unions? Rape Crisis? EVAW? Because while we have U.K. government-sanctioned representation of women as sexual commodities in the British national press we continue to provide a fertile breeding ground for disrespect and ultimately violence towards the girls and women of this country. On International End Violence Against Women Day that’s not good enough. In fact it’s rubbish. Stephanie Davies-Arai runs a website and blog for parents, and campaigns for No More Page 3. A version of this post first appeared in The Huffington Post.  |
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