Women's Views on News |
- Footballers team up with No More Page 3
- Supporting Pussy Riot
- Preventing abuse in the UK: a matter of education
| Footballers team up with No More Page 3 Posted: 17 Dec 2013 08:39 AM PST
Cheltenham Town Ladies FC has joined the nationwide campaign No More Page 3 (NMP3) asking to the editor of the Sun to stop showing the Page 3 topless images and to start representing women with respect. No More Page 3 decided to start a Just Giving page to raise £2025.00 to buy Cheltenham Town Ladies FC football kits with the No More Page 3 logo on it – and at the time of writing have raised over £8,500. Both the team and the campaign organisers felt it would be incredibly powerful to see women playing football and saying No More Page 3. The Sun is a paper renowned for sport, yet instead of encouraging girls and women to take part in sport, it encourages them to do nothing more than take their clothes off for men. Writing in Football Beyond Borders, NMP3's Lisa Clarke said, ‘We need to show our young women and girls the achievements they could aim for. "If they don't see sportswomen portrayed what do they see instead that they can aspire to? "Is it any wonder so few women take up sport or exercise of any sort while so many girls worry about their weight and appearance?’ First-team player Natalie Berry and development team captain and central mid-fielder Joanne Lenton first got involved with No More Page 3 when they decided to raise awareness of the online campaign. And they wrote on the No More Page 3 site, ‘We feel we have shared beliefs with the No More Page 3 team and the thousands of supporters of their campaign – we want to raise awareness of women's issues and our club actively encourages women and girls to get involved in sport. This is really important to us – we want young girls to be inspired by fellow athletes like Jessica Ennis and we don't want them to view themselves as objects.’ Team chairman Andy Liddle then said if No More Page 3 raised £2,000, the campaign’s logo could be printed on their football strip. Berry told the Gloucester Echo: "The Page 3 feature was introduced in the 1970s but I think we have moved on from those days. "The nature of the industry means that people, including children, are exposed to it and, although we do not think it should be banned completely, it should be governed which publications can print photos like this. "It undermines the image sportswomen like us create." The team's involvement comes after a letter signed by 150 MPs was sent to The Sun newspaper requesting that it removes its Page 3 feature. It read: "The largest female image in our most widely-read newspaper is of a semi-naked young woman. She is there purely for the sexual gratification of men. This is unacceptable. "We want to live in a society where the most widely-read newspaper is one that respects women. Instead, The Sun publishes Page 3, which reduces women to objects. It reduces men to objectifiers. And it reduces this country to one that upholds 1970s sexist values."  |
| Posted: 17 Dec 2013 04:10 AM PST
All-female EDM and digital art collective female:pressure have released a new compilation album in aid of Pussy Riot. Seventeen artists have lent their considerable talents to the record – among them Xyramat, Caro C and Olivia Louvel – as well as their support for imprisoned Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina. The compilation hopes to "increase exposure for their cause" and, if they are released soon as is suggested, to celebrate their freedom. Until that happy day, however, all money raised from the album will be donated directly to the Voice Project, who manage the International Support Fund for Pussy Riot. The album costs a mere 5 euros – although you are able to donate more if you wish – and is available to download here. And if you'd like to know a little more about female:pressure, Amy Bell points out in thegirlsare, then there is a feature on them in the brand new magazine, available – ahem – to purchase right this way. Earlier this year, maybe you missed it, German-born performance artist Emely Neu curated a 256-page collaborative creative dialogue art book called Let’s Start a Pussy Riot. And the proceeds from sales go to Pussy Riot. When three members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned last year, Neu staged a mini-festival to raise funds for the women, and started a blog for the public to submit artworks. The first half of the book provides an overview of Pussy Riot, including their manifesto and court statements, while the second section features the work of nearly 70 artists and musicians such as Yoko Ono, Jenny Holzer, Judy Chicago, Kara Walker and the Knife. One such work is ‘Sinead O’Connor‘ by Amber Edgar of Citizen A, from the series Feminist Playing Cards by Homoground. "This is a very playful contribution to the feminist debate, and it's also about redefining history,” Neu explained. "The Feminist Playing Cards project is a collaborative effort by 14 artists and features 54 illustrations of musicians who inspire them. "The images on early card decks featured only men, reflecting the dominant role they had in the royal courts. "Even today, many cultures still do not include a queen or any female in their card decks. "It was important for me to include Homoground [a Brooklyn-based music project run by Lynn Casper] because they offer a popular platform for queer and allied artists as well as for music lovers worldwide.” Another is 'Untitled', by Ekaterina Samutsevich, one of the three Pussy Riot members jailed in August 2012 but who was later released on probation. Samutsevich's graphic asks 'Why does the state in Russia care so much about every woman?' and answers the question with: 'she is a cheap and obedient worker, she looks good in hardcore porn and turns men on and she can give birth and raise children on her own'. “It was important for us that in the second part of the book Ekaterina and Masha [Maria Alyokhina, who is still in prison] stand out as individual artists, not just as members of Pussy Riot. "Ekaterina's personal work has, for me," Emely Neu explained in the Guardian, "the same effect as a Pussy Riot performance. "It's very provocative – as you read, you start to empathise as you draw connections to your own surroundings, recognising that it can also apply to where you live.” Let’s Start a Pussy Riot was launched at Yoko Ono’s Meltdown festival in London on 15 June, since when it has been available to buy from roughtrade. "I feel this is a very important moment for my generation,” Neu told the Guardian. “The amount of young women I hear saying 'feminism was something that happened in the past' – Pussy Riot use the raw, infectious, DIY power of punk to shake things up and get people thinking about feminism again.”  |
| Preventing abuse in the UK: a matter of education Posted: 17 Dec 2013 01:09 AM PST
By Holly Dustin, from The End Violence Against Women coalition (EVAW). Recent research from the Office of the Children's Commissioner in England has highlighted disturbing levels of abuse experienced by girls and young women, often at the hands of friends and boyfriends. It is a problem that the Home Office is tackling with its re-launched This Is Abuse campaign which, refreshingly, turns the traditional prevention campaign on its head by challenging abusive attitudes and behaviours in boys and young men, rather than focusing on the behaviour of the victim. Attitudes and behaviours are formed early, so the Home Office's focus on young men is well targeted. There is a great deal of research to show that this group are most likely to hold violence-condoning attitudes and are influenced by harmful images in the media. For example, research this year also by the Children's Commissioner found that boys are more likely than girls to seek out pornography, and that it is linked to negative attitudes towards women, viewing women as sex objects and having earlier and riskier sexual activity. There is growing evidence about the way in which our sexualised media, including pornography and music videos, provides a 'conducive context' in which violence against women and girls flourishes. So it is a smart move by the Home Office to run the new This Is Abuse campaign ads on MTV and to use pop stars and DJs in a series of films 'calling out' abusive behaviour. The new campaign also links in to a storyline on youth soap, Hollyoaks, about domestic violence and Hollyoaks stars have been doing the rounds on breakfast TV sofas with government Ministers and experts to promote the campaign. NSPCC research in 2009 found that almost one in three teenage girls had experienced sexual violence from a partner, and that teenagers are the age-group most at risk from domestic violence. Research also by the NSPCC on 'sexting' (sharing sexual messages or images via mobile phones or online) in 2012 found that it is linked to coercive behaviour, harassment and even violence and disproportionately affects girls. The problem was tragically highlighted by the case of 13 year-old Chevonea Kendall-Bryan who fell to her death from a block of flats in 2011 whilst begging a boy to delete an image of her being raped by another boy that had been passed around her school. Our own poll in 2010 found that one that in three 16-18 year old girls in the UK have been 'groped' at school or experienced other unwanted sexual touching. The Home Office leads a cross-government strategy on violence against women and girls, an approach for which our members had long-campaigned. This Is Abuse delivers on one of the priority objectives of the strategy: "To prevent violence against women and girls from happening in the first place, by challenging the attitudes and behaviours which foster it and intervening early to prevent it." Despite this commitment, prevention remains the weakest part of the government's strategy. There is an absence of any real vision of how to achieve a violence-free society and key departments, notably the Department for Education in Westminster, are failing to play their part in the task of prevention. The Department has said repeatedly that it will not be disseminating This Is Abuse to schools in England – meaning that the opportunity to use campaign materials may be missed, as well as any warning to school staff to prepare for disclosures from children who have seen the ads. This is baffling from the key department with responsibility for child protection and is one of the reasons why the Westminster government was scored just 24/100 earlier this year for its action on prevention. Westminster policy and practice is still predicated on the assumption that violence is somehow inevitable and this is reflected at local levels. In February this year, the report of a joint inspection on young sex offenders found that, in many cases, there had been an earlier display of sexually harmful behaviour which had been over looked, minimised or dismissed by parents, teachers and social workers. The result was that an opportunity to intervene at an early stage was lost. More recently an Ofsted Inspection found that poor teaching of Public Social Health and Economic (PSHE) education is leaving children vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Our own surveys with local Secondary Schools as part of our Schools Safe 4 Girls campaign found a general failure to address violence against women and girls adequately, with few specific policies and little ongoing training for staff. The researchers who carried out the NSPCC's qualitative research into sexting said this: “As researchers going into the schools to meet with young people, we were distressed by the levels of sexist abuse and physical harassment–even violence–to which the girls were subject on a regular basis. More than this, we were struck by the way in which it is entirely taken for granted by both girls and boys–even when the same behaviours would be grounds for dismissal in other settings and among adults (e.g. in the workplace) or for arrest and prosecution if they happened in public space.” That we afford girls less protection from harassment and abuse than adult women is horrifying and deeply shameful. This is not to say that there aren’t good initiatives in schools and local areas. There are. But there is no national plan or coordination of activity to prevent abuse. The From Boys to Men project found that social marketing campaigns such as This Is Abuse need to be integrated with work with young people to be properly effective. So whilst the Home Office is to be applauded for continuing to run the campaign, it can only ever be one step in a comprehensive programme of work to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls. It is clear what action governments at all levels need to take. A large-scale UN study on men who perpetrate sexual and domestic violence found that tackling social norms and damaging notions of masculinity, and promoting gender equality is key to ending violence. The ground-breaking Model of Perpetration prepared for the EU sets out pathways to violence, and consequently what policy interventions are required to disrupt those pathways. Our own report, A Different World Is Possible, uses the Model to set out a blueprint strategy on prevention. Research on sexual consent from the Children's Commissioner stressed the importance of work with young people on how to gain enthusiastic consent, in line with the Sexual Offences Act, not just how to give it. Key elements of a prevention strategy include: a legal obligation on schools and other educational institutions to do preventative work with young people and ongoing training for teachers on how to identify the signs of abuse and respond appropriately; a guarantee that both survivors of abuse and perpetrators have access to specialist support in the community; long term investment in public campaigns like This Is Abuse which are targeted at specific groups (similar to the long-running road safety campaign THINK!); further work to regulate and restrict harmful messages in the media that condone violence, building on recent action to address children's safety online; and community and bystander programmes. Critically, we need to see leadership from politicians at national and local levels in the same way that successive Directors of Public Prosecution have said this is a priority issue for them and have revolutionised their policy on child sexual abuse in the wake of the Savile case. We cannot continue to wring our hands at the litany of abuse and, in extreme cases deaths, of women and girls in our homes, communities, schools and workplaces. The government must build on This Is Abuse by setting out the step by step pathway to achieving a world free from violence against women and girls. Holly Dustin is director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW). A version of this article was originally published in OpenDemocracy 5050.  |
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