Women's Views on News |
- Goodbye, Feminist Times … for now
- Action Aid appeal success
- Reports of sexual violence in Scotland increase
| Goodbye, Feminist Times … for now Posted: 23 Jul 2014 06:06 AM PDT
By Sarah Graham, former deputy editor of the Feminist Times, which recently announced its closure. On 14 July, myself and the Feminist Times team announced the end of the website in its current form, with the following statement: ‘We simply cannot survive any longer without having to change our values. Other projects like ours allow themselves to be co-opted by a big brand or not pay contributors. We would not be happy to do either. Having already crowdfunded and made it clear that we need more members to survive, we believe the boldest and best move is to put the project on ice exactly 12 months since our naming ceremony; to celebrate 9 months of incredible agenda-setting content from exceptionally talented writers; and to acknowledge that we achieved what many others haven’t: we made a feminist online magazine that competed with the mainstream and we did it while keeping our principles intact. We want to publicly thank our Members. They provided a pluralist platform for the stories and women often sidelined by the major magazines and newspapers. Everything we did was done with them in mind.' It’s been an incredible but difficult journey that brought us from the website launch in October 2013 to mid May, when editor Deborah Coughlin and I decided between us to hand in our notices, unable to continue under the straitened circumstances we’d been working under. I’m so proud of what Feminist Times has achieved in such a short time. We’ve published some pieces that I’ve absolutely loved, and we’ve published some pieces that I’ve really strongly disagreed with but felt were important to engage with. More importantly, we’ve published women and subjects that have struggled to find a platform elsewhere, from Jude Wanga on sexual violence in the DRC, to Kat Lister on Blondie’s Goldlike Genius award. Ultimately paying contributors fairly, whilst spurning the commercial imperative to take advertising, was too expensive for our membership fees to sustain. In my final editorial for FemT, I wrote about our constant struggle for money and a room of our own – a problem that I know is all too familiar for feminist blogs and bloggers. The feedback we’ve received from readers, members and supporters this week has been so heartening and a really important validation of what Feminist Times has meant to the online feminist community. Tweets and emails from organisations like Refuge, and contributors like Bethany Rutter, brought tears to my eyes. Unlike my editorial, which was unexpectedly difficult to write, my highlight of our final week was putting together these two pieces: The Best of Feminist Times and What Feminist Times means to me. I don’t know what will happen to Feminist Times next - founder Charlotte Raven is keeping the project on ice while she continues consultations on alternative funding options - but I’m thrilled to have been a part of this phase.  |
| Posted: 23 Jul 2014 03:56 AM PDT
Earlier this year WVoN reported on the story of Mwanahamisi, a young woman trapped in a life on the Mwakirunge dumpsite in Mombasa, Kenya. Mwanahamisi told of how she scavenged at the dumpsite to collect bottles, bottle tops and scrap metal. She guessed at her age, around 16, and told us how she would often get very scared at night. ‘The men around here drink a lot and it scares me,’ explained Mwanahamisi. 'At night they roam around looking for girls to rape. It happens to many girls, the men are strong and can be very violent so the girls have to go with the men whether they want to or not.' She told us how at night she would try and stay in the house with her mother and siblings so that the men didn’t know she was there. Poverty meant Mwanahamisi had to stop her education: 'I don't go to school now and I only reached nursery level but had to leave because there was no money. She told us: 'All I really want is to go to school so that I [can] become a teacher. I want to learn things and to be able to teach others things that I know.’ This is not just the dream of Mwanahamsi, but the dream of many girls living a similar life, a life in which they feel trapped by poverty and can see no escape, no future, no opportunities to believe they can dream. In March, Action Aid launched their ‘SheCAN’ Appeal, based on the belief that the life lead by women and girls like Mwanahamsi is wrong and that they deserve better. WVoN published details of the appeal and asked for your support. The campaign itself raised an incredible £1.4million, and that then, thanks to the UK government’s aid match scheme, meant the SheCAN appeal raised in total an even more incredible £2.8 million for the cause. The money will expand Action Aid's work to enable thousands of young women to live a life free from harm and violence, a life where they can be educated and are able to work themselves out of poverty. Action Aid have said the money will be used to help girls like Mwanahamisi stay safe in after-school clubs in Kenya, train women's groups in slums to demand changes to the law in Bangladesh, provide sexual health and counselling services for rape survivors in Zimbabwe, fund telephone helplines to report violence in Myanmar, and to train women to run legal aid centres. The £2.8 million will go a long way to helping many, many women and girls realise their full potential, learn, live free from violence and be able to escape poverty. It will change lives. Action Aid would like to thank everyone who has supported the campaign. So would we. Thank you.  |
| Reports of sexual violence in Scotland increase Posted: 23 Jul 2014 01:40 AM PDT
Isabelle Kerr, manager of Rape Crisis Centre Glasgow, said the number of calls they are receiving year on year is increasing and has almost reached a 50 per cent increase over two years. Last year Rape Crisis Centre Glasgow received 3,700 calls from women who have suffered sexual assaults or abuse. And Kerr suggested that the recent celebrity sex abuse cases, such as Jimmy Savile’s, being seen to be taken seriously can be encouraging women who have been assaulted to come forward. However, Kerr said: "It is very difficult to see whether that is an increase in the number of rapes or sexual assaults happening, or whether it is an increase in the number of women who are speaking out about it. "We don't really know that." Kerr said that the statistics do show that stranger rapes are in the minority and someone is more likely to be raped by someone they know. The problem is not limited to Glasgow. According to the latest figures from the Scottish Government, there has been a 5 per cent increase in reported sexual offences across the country, standing at 7,693 in 2012-13 compared to 7,361 the previous year. In addition, reported rapes and attempted rapes rose by 15 per cent over the same period. Despite convictions for rape and attempted rape rising by 57 per cent in 2012-13 compared to the previous year, they amounted to only 77 in total. Online campaigning through social media, including the Everyday Sexism Project and #Yes All Women, has increased and has been described as a "fourth wave" of feminism. The internet, however, can be considered part of the problem, fuelling misogynistic attitudes through the skewed picture of women and relationships presented by the pornography it makes so widely available. Jan Macleod, manager of the Glasgow-based Women's Support Project, which aims to raise awareness of violence against women, told the Herald the problem with porn is not just that it is sexually explicit, but that it is often "women-hating". She explained: "A huge percentage of [pornography] is sexual violence or sexual assault." This has changed what people believe is acceptable and has impacted on the expectations of partners towards women and sex. Dr Jean Kilbourne, an international expert from the USA who has been working with Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), has suggested that women are often objectified in the modern media and the "brutal, violence and misogynistic" pornography available online exacerbates the treatment of women. Kilbourne believes that the issue should be tackled as a public health problem and compares the action needed to tackle sexual violence to the action that has been taken on cigarettes. She said: "By making cigarettes more expensive, by putting graphic warning labels on the packs, restricting the advertising … we have made tremendous progress with tobacco." She added: "We made progress with smoking once we took the focus off the smoker and put it on the environment because that is what makes the difference." Work is being undertaken to try to change attitudes. The Scottish branch of the White Ribbon campaign, a global movement for men who want to end violence against women, was launched four years ago. It has trained more than 150 speakers and led 4,000 men to take a pledge not to "commit, condone or remain silent about violence" against women. The campaign is based around "bystander theory", encouraging men to speak out if they hear a sexist joke or call the police if they witness threat of violences to women. Scotland's VRU is carrying out "bystander" work in schools to challenge sexist behaviours and "dangerous" attitudes. Chief Inspector Graham Goulden, of the VRU, said: "Without men on board we will always continue to have these issues. "I hold the belief that the majority of boys and men in Scotland possess healthy and non-abusive attitudes." He added: "Men's silence in the face of sexist behaviour gives the sexist men comfort and allows their attitudes to go unchallenged." The Scottish Government said it is tackling sexual violence by modernising rape laws and providing £34.5 million between 2012 and 2015. A spokeswoman commented: "The Scottish Government condemns all forms of violence against women and girls which has no place in the modern, inclusive Scotland we aspire to."  |
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