Women's Views on News |
- Funding crisis for domestic violence aid
- Film review: Honest Lies
- Preview of the Women in the Arts festival
- Anti-bullying projects up and running
| Funding crisis for domestic violence aid Posted: 06 Dec 2013 08:12 AM PST
A new report from Women's Aid, a national charity working to end domestic violence against women and children, shows the huge gap in funding for domestic violence (DV) services in the UK. The results of their 2013 survey show the devastating effect of funding cuts to DV services across the UK. Over 150 organisations were surveyed; and 112 specialist posts were lost in 2012-13, the majority due to funding cuts. And the stark reality of these cuts is that women and children fleeing abusive homes have fewer places to turn to; the survey looked at a 'snapshot' day in which 155 women and 103 children were turned away from refuges. Polly Neate, chief executive for Women's Aid said, “Specialist gender-specific domestic violence services are reaching a breaking point. “Over 1.2 million women were estimated to have experienced domestic violence last year and two women a week are killed by perpetrators.” In an open letter to Home Secretary, Theresa May, Neate urged the government to do more to support charities supporting the victims of domestic abuse "A third of our providers are expecting to receive less money from Local Authorities this year – on top of already drastic cuts in the past few years," Neate wrote. "More women are seeking support from outreach services than before and more women with serious mental health support needs are approaching our services. The need for specialist services is growing, but provision is beginning to shrink to dangerous levels." Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, told the Independent: "This report from Women's Aid is a damning verdict on Theresa May's lack of strategy for domestic violence victims, as specialist and community outreach services have been heavily cut back and Women's Aid warn that more women are remaining in abusive situations as a result." The Home Office has responded, and talks about the £40million ring-fenced for tackling domestic abuse and the introduction of Clare's Law, which will allow people to check the police records of their partners. Despite these measures however, there clearly remains a huge shortfall in what is needed to enable these organisations to continue to help those who need it. The survey results recorded that in 2012 an estimated 27,900 women were turned away from the first refuge they approached; 7,085 victims were turned away from non-refuge services. Nicola Graham-Kevan, an expert in partner violence at the University of Central Lancashire, said: "In the economic downturn… you're going to have increased family stress and joblessness, so you'd expect there would be an increase in need. Yet undoubtedly there's been a decrease in funding because local authorities have had their budgets cut." An increase in need, coupled with a decrease in provision means that ultimately women who may be attempting to flee abusive relationships may well find themselves with nowhere to go, and a choice between homelessness or returning to an abusive partner. Unfortunately this is yet another example of how the government cuts have disproportionately affected women, often those already vulnerable situations. Just this week a group of smaller organisations working with the victims of DV have drawn attention to the difficulties created by the government's changes to legal aid, which severely and unfairly reduce access to justice for victims of domestic violence. Despite this government's pledge to help end violence against women and girls, cuts have affected services across the board as a report commissioned by the Trust for London and Northern Rock Foundation showed last year. Neate makes clear the Government’s role in leading the way in ensuring there is adequate provision for the increasing need of women andchildren escaping abusive households: “I must warn you that many services are now at breaking point. “Unless the Government now takes a strong leadership role, many services will not survive. As you know, specialist, gender-specific services are absolutely vital to women's safety. Without them, women cannot be provided with the support they need to successfully rebuild their lives and live free from violence.” The bottom line being that women’s lives are at risk because of these funding cuts.  |
| Posted: 06 Dec 2013 07:46 AM PST
The premiere of an 11-minute film - Honest Lies - by screenwriter and producer Gabriella Apicella, recently took place at Amnesty International’s headquarters in front of an audience of almost 200 people. The film, funded through Kickstarter, is based upon a story written by Anita James during a writing workshop run by Apicella and Eaves. The film focuses on a meeting in a cafe between Sophie, a prostituted woman, and a client's wife. The meeting between the two women is tense, with the wife – portrayed as a well-off, middle class woman – expressing her hurt and bewilderment to Sophie at finding out her husband has been purchasing sex. As Rachel Moran, author of 'Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution', said: “Honest lies is a short, sad look into the emotional and psychological impact of commercial sexual exploitation and, crucially, it reveals who bears the brunt of that cost. “The film explores the collision of two women’s lives; one who’s been sexually exploited and another whose marriage has been ripped apart because of it. “Written by a prostitution survivor, it’s little wonder it provokes a compassionate and rounded reaction.” What struck me about Sophie's portrayal was how welcome it is – in essence an ordinary woman, walking through the street towards the meeting, unremarked by passers by. In this, the portrayal is unusual when set against the typical 'glamorous belle de jour', or 'bending into a car' tropes. Also unusual is the meeting itself, which encapsulates the pain of two women – from different walks of life - when brought together through a man's entitlement to sex. Silvia Murray Wakefield, Chair of Object, echoes this: “Honest Lies gives an authentic voice to the women whose lives have been marred and shaped by the destructive nature of prostitution. “Being based on a story written by someone who has lived these truths, it conveys the harm to a person's selfhood and self-determination that is implicit in prostitution, through the depiction of two women forced into opposition because of a man's freedom to purchase sex.” Heather Harvey from Eaves said: "I love the film because it is so refreshing and unexpected coming from the perspectives of the women and specifically from Sophie – the woman involved in prostitution. “I feel the meeting and the discomfort of them both is a testament to the continuum of women's experience of inequality. It shows the importance for women to be in control of their own story and how it's told." For Apicella, the aim of the film is to give a voice to women involved in prostitution and also to open discussions of the subject. “The woman who wrote Honest Lies, and others who attended the writing workshop for women exiting prostitution, have told me that nobody cares about their stories,” she explained. “Making this film began as an opportunity to demonstrate that is not the case. “It has already become a tool to inform people about the realities of prostitution, and open discussions of this subject. “I hope that it will continue to be used in this way, and be seen by industry peers as a useful contribution to honest onscreen portrayals of complex stories about female characters." The premiere featured speakers Fiona McTaggert MP; UK Feminista’s founder Kat Banyard; Eaves’ Exiting Prostitution Development Worker Cheryl Stafford, and writer and campaigner, Ruth Jacobs. There were some criticisms of the discussion generated by the speakers at the premiere by Alex Bryce, manager of the National Ugly Mugs Scheme run by the UK Network of Sex Work Projects. He questioned findings from Eaves in 2012 that showed 92 per cent of prostitutes wanting to exit immediately, arguing that this stance does not take into account the diverse nature of the business. Bryce said, “There is a tendency amongst those advocating criminalisation to use research focusing purely on street sex workers and suggest misleadingly that the findings are a reflection of the industry as a whole. “In fact, street sex workers form a minority of the overall sex worker population in the UK – estimated as low as 10-12 per cent in some studies.” In contrast, the speakers at the premiere were clear that, for them, whether women were street workers or not, the practice of prostitution is part of a society that permits the exploitation of women, and using words such as ‘agency’ and ‘empowerment’ only masks the reality that underpins the industry: the pursuance of profit based on the purchase of sex as a human right. However, the film itself steers clear of these kind of arguments – for example, it is not clear whether Sophie works primarily indoors or on the street, and there is no mention of what led to her into prostitution. And, in so doing, the film concentrates on the inequalities that women face – prostituted woman or not – as a result of men's entitlement to sex. The film, which is not yet available for public consumption, has so far been screened at the London Screenwriters' Festival, the UnderWire Festival and has been entered for next year’s Birds' Eye View Film Festival. ————– Note: the term ‘prostituted woman’ has been used to reflect the preference of the writer of the original story.  |
| Preview of the Women in the Arts festival Posted: 06 Dec 2013 06:32 AM PST
From 16-18 December the Women in the Arts festival will bring together women producers, writers, actors, poets, musicians, comedians, artists and directors to foster collaboration, build mutual support and to examine how we can help ourselves and each other to develop our work. The festival, at the Tristan Bates Theatre, in London, will showcase 40 projects including staged readings, performances, showreels and arts installations. Among them, performances of Request Programme, from the Siris Original Theatre Company of Sweden, starring Cecilia Nilsson and directed by Hedvig Claesson. The storyline? Miss Rasch loves to listen to a radio show where people request music for their loved ones, near or far away. But who loves Miss Rasch? Director Holly Maples will revive Rosanna Lowe’s adaptation of the 1866 novel ‘Madame Bovary’ by French author Gustave Flaubert, with a rehearsed reading from Sarah Lawrie. Both Maples and Lawrie said they were excited about revisiting and reworking this whirlwind of a script, which has such a well-drawn, complex female character, Emma, at its core. Lowe writes, "Emma is far from a feminist character, but in her riding boots she does kick against the constraints of marriage and motherhood. "She holds the reins at various points in the story, even if the story eventually carries her off to an ugly end which is, like her, messy, complicated, realistic." And there will be a performance of ‘Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt?’ by Claire Dowie, a comedy about sexual stereotyping, well, 'a fierce and subversive monologue about gender expectations and stereotypes, spoken by someone who doesn't want to be a 'girl', doesn't want to wear skirts, [but] does want to be John Lennon. ‘What begins as frustration at the impracticality of the compulsory school skirt becomes an articulate and passionate invective against obligatory femininity.' It was given SIX stars by the Edinburgh Evening News, which described it as "one of Fringe 2013 hidden gems … hilarious, angry, empowering, political, confused, tragic, subversive but most of all, human … Tour de force performances are few and far between. In this one-hour piece Dowie gives just that." Julie Ross will be performing her one-woman show ‘Don’t Ask the Lady…!’, celebrating female songwriters of the 20th century, and Funbags Festive Frolics, from Funny Women Award semi-finalists Gemma Layton, Jo Burke and Jacqui Curran, will add a seasonal twist with a daft, dark, fast-paced mix of sketches, comedy songs and silliness. The Women in the Arts Festival is co-produced by the So and So Arts Club, which is ‘dedicated to building an artistic community through a series of interactive events’, the The Actor’s Centre and the Tristan Bates Theatre. For details, keep an eye on their website. To purchase tickets, or reserve tickets for free but ‘ticketed’ events, click here.  |
| Anti-bullying projects up and running Posted: 06 Dec 2013 01:09 AM PST
The UK’s Minister for Women and Equality Jo Swinson MP, launched a project set up to confront homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools on 21 November, in the middle of Anti-Bullying Week. The project focusses on secondary schools and aims to get organisations to bid for funding to review bullying and any bullying prevention methods in schools as they currently stand. Describing the campaign, Jo Swinson said: "This new project will help us to fully understand the issues and develop effective, evidence-based tools and best practice that will help schools to stamp out this harmful behavior." Anti-Bullying Week was set up by the Anti-Bullying Alliance and was launched in 2006 to raise awareness of and work towards preventing bullying. Homophobic bullying is when someone is bullied because they are lesbian, gay or bisexual, or because people think they are – perhaps because they look or act a certain way that other people think means they're gay. It is also when homophobic words are used during bullying. This includes using hurtful words like 'dyke' and 'poof' to make people feel bad. Stonewall, a charity working for equality and justice for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, reported in 2012 that more than half (55 per cent) of gay young people had experienced homophobic bullying, and almost all (99 per cent) hear the phrases "that's so gay" or "you're so gay" in school. These phrases use the word 'gay' to mean the same thing as 'rubbish' or 'not as good', clearly offensive to people who are gay and those who care about someone gay like a friend or family member. Three out of five gay young people said homophobic bullying affected their school work and many have skipped school because of it. And recent polling by Mumsnet showed that 68 per cent of parents don't know if their children's school has policies to tackle homophobic language. In October Stonewall, along with Will Young and Mumsnet, launched a campaign ‘Gay. Let’s get over it’ using posters and guidance to address this misuse of the word gay. Stonewall's deputy chief executive Ruth Hunt said: 'We know that many people who casually use the term 'that's so gay' don't intentionally mean to be offensive. ‘But the reality is that their words cause hurt and distress. ‘That's why we're launching this flagship campaign so teachers and parents have the resources to tackle the problem head on. ‘We want every young person, teacher and parent in Britain to challenge this language and change the culture of our schools.' Transphobia also continues to be a problem in schools. The Gender Identity Research and Education Society, (GIRES), said: 'Despite the enactment of supportive legislation, transgender people continue to experience widespread discrimination in the education environment' and warned that bullying that is not ‘dealt with promptly and effectively can escalate in to criminality'. GIRES is a charity which works to improve the lives of trans people by changing the way that society treats them. They suggest that 'In responding to the challenge that transphobic bullying presents, schools need to understand the nature of gender variance, the biological factors involved in its occurrence and how it differs from sexual orientation'. The project Jo Swinson launched should supplement this and other aims by drawing profiles of those who bully or exhibit homophobic, transphobic or biphobic behaviour. This profile drawing is considered a necessary step towards better understanding why this bullying or behavior occurs and should therefore help with preventing it. BiMedia, a bisexual news and opinion website, responding to the project Swinson launched, said: 'We think this is the first time the UK government has mentioned biphobia in its LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] work. The LGBT work launched at the start of 2011 was notable for only referencing work to tackle homophobia and transphobia'. It is therefore imperative that biphobic bullying is not overlooked in this project. A Scottish research paper published in 2012 exploring the lives of LGBT young people in Scotland, showed that 69.1 per cent of all LGBT respondents had experienced homophobic or biphobic bullying in school and 76.9 per cent of transgender respondents had experienced homophobic, biphobic or transphobic bullying at school. It is – already – evident then that homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying occurs in schools across the UK. Therefore it is acutely important that the government does actively tackle bullying in secondary schools with this project.  |
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