Women's Views on News |
- Guerilla woolfare peace scarf
- Sexism and racism in music videos endemic
- International humanist conference
- The price of tribunal fees
| Posted: 08 Aug 2014 06:30 AM PDT
By Rebecca Johnson and Jaine Rose. Rolling out a seven-mile knitted pink peace scarf between the Atomic Weapons Establishment complexes at Aldermaston and Burghfield on Nagasaki Day may sound crazy. It isn’t as insane as letting the UK government spend another £100 billion on building a new nuclear weapons system to replace Trident. On 9 August – the 69th anniversary of the incineration of Nagasaki by a plutonium bomb code-named "Fat Man" – thousands of people will join the Wool against Weapons demonstration in Berkshire to link up a 7-mile pink knitted 'peace scarf' between the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) complexes at Aldermaston and Burghfield. It probably sounds crazy. Dreamed up by Jaine and Angie around a campfire at the Reclaim Hinkley camp in October 2012, this mad idea has led to 18 months of exhilarating, inspiring, and creative action that has involved thousands of people from all over the world. Wool against Weapons has got people all over the world knitting for peace – and talking again about nuclear weapons, and why we all have a responsibility to contributing to banning and abolishing them. Men as well as women, long time peace activists as well as craftspeople and Women’s Institute knitters with a spectrum of political affiliations (or none). The objective was simple: to put a much needed spotlight on the madness of nuclear weapons by linking the pink peace scarf between Aldermaston and Burghfield, the nuclear bomb facilities that design and produce warheads for Britain's nuclear weapons system,Trident. We decided that the peace scarf link up should be on 9 August, the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. This Saturday's family-friendly demonstration, jointly organised by Wool against Weapons, Action AWE (Atomic Weapons Eradication), and CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), will bring thousands of people from all over Britain. We will join up the sections of peace scarf and link eight 'milestones' along the route. From East to West, these are: Rainbow Burghfield (CND South East); Red (faith groups); Orange (Oxford and North-West); Yellow (Wales and borders); Green (Greens and women's peace groups); Blue (Scotland and Angel of the North); Purple (Reading Greenpeace, Berkshire, Hampshire); and Rainbow Aldermaston (Stroud, Bristol and South-West). It will be a fantastic day of guerrilla woolfare, possibly the world’s biggest ever woollen scarf. The link-up will be accompanied by music. We will ring bells when the peace scarf is fully joined, and then have some minutes of silence followed by bells, to honour the people killed by nuclear and other inhumane technologies of war. After the protest the peace scarf will be separated and made into blankets that will be distributed wherever they are needed – to the homeless and hospices in this country and to refugee camps and warzones abroad, ensuring that nothing is wasted. Wool against Weapons has already been using the scarf to demonstrate against the obscene prospect of spending £100 billion to replace the UK's Trident nuclear weapons. In Scotland, where over 80 per cent of people want to get rid of Trident, people stretched their peace scarf down most of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Knitters and activists have surrounded the Angel of the North, unrolled coils of peace scarf in town centres in England and Wales, draped bridges and war memorials, and photographed their sections of peace scarf in front of icons like the Clifton Suspension Bridge. And now all these lengths of scarf are being sent to Aldermaston and Burghfield for Nagasaki Day. It was Jaine Rose’s idea to make the peace scarf pink – a colour that seems embarrassingly girly to some, but has a political resonance too. In the 1980s Greenham women marked the cruise missile launchers with pink 'gloop' of sticky porridge when the cruise missile launchers went out on nuclear exercises. Gay people reclaimed the pink triangle that the Nazis used to persecute homosexuals. Women in the United States founded "Code Pink" to oppose military violence, war and weapons, subverting the system of threat codes used in the 'war on terrorism' after 2001. Pink brilliantly challenges the macho camouflage of militarism, including Trident submarines. For the past 18 months, people have been inspired to knit: in public, at meetings, during breaks at work or school, on public transport. In town centres people staged knit-ins, with placards inviting: "Ask me what I'm knitting". Jaine's daughters talked about Wool against Weapons in schools. They got friends to knit; and then their mums (and dads)! There have been knit-ins in libraries, churches, Friends Meeting Houses, schools, care homes, bingo halls, ice cream parlours, gardens and sitting rooms. It's very homespun, it’s very creative, it has huge power. As the knitting spread, so have the conversations – about Trident, about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and how other nations are pushing for negotiations to ban and eliminate all nuclear weapons, about what activism means today, and about fears and hopes for the future. Wool against Weapons has also stimulated the growth of Craftivism, an exciting new movement that combines craft and activism. It's been a lot of hard work, but we promised ourselves that it needed to be fun… which it has been – enormously! It’s not just the UK either: we have had peace scarf sections from all over the world – women (and some men) gathering in groups to knit in places as diverse as Scandinavia, the United States, Latin America, Australia, Kenya, and across Europe. Women in the Netherlands knitted so many pieces – literally hundreds – that they were rolled into pinwheels, loaded into a large vehicle and driven to Wool against Weapons to join into the peace scarf on Saturday. Our oldest knitter is 102, the youngest under ten. The hundreds of letters and emails we've received have told so many stories, including from people who have picked up knitting needles for the first time. Peace choirs have written and sung songs about Wool against Weapons, and will be singing on Nagasaki Day. Amidst the horrors of the shelling of Gaza, Palestinian and Israeli women have managed to knit sections for our peace scarf. This is a campaign that reaches beyond borders, cultures and differences. After Nagasaki Day, we'll be following up to make the scarf into blankets, while Action AWE goes forward with the next phase of our campaign. Called Act, Speak, Vote: Disarm, we now need to do even more to mobilise the public to talk to the politicians of all parties – candidates for the 2015 election as well as MPs. The British Ministry of Defence may have set the artificial date of 2016 for signing billions of pounds of contracts with BAE Systems to build new nuclear submarines, but the MPs can halt such a pointless, wasteful plan. Most of the world's governments will be meeting in Vienna in December to talk about preventing the catastrophic humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons. They will meet again in New York to address nuclear disarmament and the ongoing dangers of proliferation. As Scotland yearns to become a nuclear free country and the vast majority of nations now back negotiations on a global treaty to ban nuclear weapons, how can any UK government be so stupid as to commit taxpayers' money to getting more of these useless weapons of mass destruction. Crazy as knitting and rolling out a 7 mile peace scarf might sound, it isn't as insane as letting the government spend another £100 billion on building a new nuclear weapons system to replace Trident when we need that to be spent on our NHS, education and support for people who are hungry or homeless. The mad idea dreamed up around a camp fire in October 2012 turned into an inspiring Wool against Weapons campaign, poised to go even further after Saturday, to stop the horrible madness of mutually assured destruction and to ban and abolish all nuclear weapons. Rebecca Johnson, FRSA, is a feminist peace campaigner and academic author. She is the director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, CND vice-president, and a member of Women in Black. Jaine Rose is an artist and writer, and the founder of Wool Against Weapons. A version of this article appeared in OpenDemocracy on 8 August 2014.  |
| Sexism and racism in music videos endemic Posted: 08 Aug 2014 04:30 AM PDT
As songs with highly sexualised and racialised music videos including Calvin Harris' 'Summer' and Basement Jaxx' 'Never Say Never' fill the summer charts, a new briefing on the sexist and racist content of many music videos published on 8 August by three women's organisations challenges such portrayals of women. It also cites evidence that those who view such videos have been found to have an associated tolerance of racist, sexist and even rape tolerant attitudes. The briefing paper, 'Pornographic Performances', reviews available academic research on sexism and racism in music videos and finds the portrayal of women as sex objects, and especially black women as hyper-sexualised 'endlessly sexually available' objects, to be endemic. The End Violence Against Women Coalition, Imkaan and Object commissioned the paper as part of campaigning work in the Rewind&Reframe project to draw attention and stimulate debate on sexist and racist content in contemporary music videos. Dr Maddy Coy, deputy director and Reader at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit of London Metropolitan University, a recognised international expert on sexual exploitation and gender equality wrote the paper. It is being sent to music industry leaders, media regulators and politicians with recommendations for change. The government and regulators are asked to consider urgently the 'stick' of introducing compulsory age ratings for music videos, while music industry leaders are asked to take the 'carrot' of reviewing the evidence as presented, listening to young women's views on the content of many music videos, and changing what they choose to commission and portray accordingly. Research for the paper found that women are consistently portrayed as sex objects: Music videos consistently portray very traditional gender roles with men as the 'characters' with power and dominance, and women as passive recipients of their 'gaze'; and Frame by frame there is a much greater focus by the camera on women's body parts, especially those associated with sex, and many of the film conventions of pornography are used. Young women campaigning for change in the music industry highlight that sexism and racism are a problem across all genres of music video, including dance, metal and pop, not only those associated with black artists. Pornographic Performances also found that black women are exoticised and hyper-sexualised: Black women are commonly portrayed as hypersexual and with a focus and fascinated gaze on their bottoms, invoking ideas of black women as wild and animalistic; and The music industry seems to find it profitable to promote both female and male black artists in a highly sexualised way, whatever their genre of music – racialised tropes are deemed marketable. And Pornographic Performances also found that constant sexist-racist videos do real harm: Studies conducted mainly with students find that those who have viewed sexualised music videos in a controlled setting express more sexist attitudes towards women and are more tolerant of sexual harassment; They are more likely to endorse the 'sexual double standard' which sees men who have many sexual partners as admirable and women who do so as 'sluts'; In one study, viewers who watched sexualised videos and who were then asked to comment on an 'acquaintance rape' scenario were more likely to make excuses for the perpetrator. To date there has been comparatively little research on racialised sexism in music videos, but one study has found that white men and women who viewed highly sexualised rap music videos reported more negative views of black women. Dr Coy said: "This paper sets out what is known about music videos – that sexist and racist stereotypes are endemic – and that this can be related to harm in the real world." And Lia Latchford of Imkaan's Young Women's Team said: "For years young women have been telling us that they are not happy with the representation of women in popular culture, including music videos. "We are happy to finally see a briefing which reflects their experiences and the harmful impact of racism and sexism in music videos. "We believe in women’s right to self-expression and freedom of movement. "Our concern is how the music industry uses music videos as yet another vehicle to colonise and commodify black women's bodies. "We urge the music industry to consider what young women and the evidence are telling them." End Violence Against Women Coalition campaigner Sarah Green said: "Some forms of media, such as television and film, are well regulated and our society accepts and supports this. "Other forms like music videos are getting away with very little scrutiny and as such seem to be competing for who can most degrade and insult women. "If the 'creative' people who make them won't stop this, regulators should rein them in and implement age ratings. More than 18,000 people have signed a petition calling for this." And Betiel Baraki, Campaigns and Outreach Officer at Object, said: We need to address the pervasive sexual objectification of women and girls in music videos that are often based on racist stereotypes. "Women in music videos are all too often portrayed as mere props or sex objects, they are reduced to a sum of body parts, who are often faceless, and who exist for the sexual gratification of men. "Sexist and racist depictions of women in music videos undermine our equality. "It is high time we recognise sexist and racist objectification of women as harmful and regulate them as such." And while the EVAW Coalition, Imkaan and Object welcome the forthcoming pilot to voluntarily age-rate online music videos, they urge the government and the music industry to go further and make such a system mandatory and apply to all videos. EVAW, Imkaan and Object are recommending: Compulsory age ratings for all music videos, to ensure there is consistency in the regulation of music videos viewed online and on hard copy, as with film; That those working in the music industry – including artists, video commissioners, video directors and music company executives – should listen to the views of young women, especially young black women, and commit to eradicating sexism and racism from their work; and The government should ensure the Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) which deals with consent and equality, as well as media literacy, is taught in all schools. A petition calling for compulsory age ratings, initiated by Ikamara Larasi of Imkaan last year, has more than 18,000 signatures. Please sign too. To read the report, click here.  |
| International humanist conference Posted: 08 Aug 2014 03:22 AM PDT
Activists and defenders of freedom of thought and expression are in Oxford this weekend for the World Humanist Congress, hosted by the British Humanist Association (BHA). This congress is held every three years and is the main event in the calendar of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), which unites over 100 atheist, sceptic, and humanist organisations globally. The three-day gathering, which runs from 8 – 10 August, will bring together over 1000 atheist, humanist and other non-religious organisations and activists from over 60 countries from around the world. They will consider freedom of thought and expression, hear how these rights are being threatened, meet some inspirational defenders of these rights and explore how the humanist movement can contribute to their defence. The Congress includes delegates from many of the 13 countries which still carry a death penalty for apostasy and countries where the rights and the freedoms of the non-religious are increasingly under threat globally from religious violence and state persecution. To read the Freedom of Thought Report, an annual survey on discrimination and persecution against non-religious people in countries around the world, click here. With a programme of over 40 events with over 70 speakers, the Congress will touch upon subjects as diverse as history, politics, international affairs, science and philosophy. Speakers include award winning writer and activist Taslima Nasrin, known for her powerful writings on women's oppression and her unflinching criticism of religion. She will address audiences on her forced exile and numerous fatwas calling for her death. Another is Pakistani human rights defender Gululai Ismail who is running a project – Aware Girls, in North West Pakistan – challenging patriarchy and religious extremism. It was her organisation that Malala Yousafza was working for when she was shot by the Taliban. In her role at the Humanist Union of Greece and as a journalist with the Greek Helsinki Monitor, not to mention as an independent human rights activist, speaker Eliza Goroya has challenged against the Greek anti-blasphemy laws and religious privilege, fought prejudice with a same-sex kiss-in, fought neo-nazi groups, advocated for Roma rights, freedom of expression, women's rights and a plethora of other causes. And Maryam Namazie joins physicist, broadcaster and BHA President Jim Al-Khalili in a line up of commentators including Maajid Nawaz, Alom Shaha, and Kenan Malik looking at the question of whether current focus on Islam and freedom is bigoted or justified. Tickets are sold out, but look out for media reports on the weekend.  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2014 01:09 AM PDT
Alison Johnstone, Green MSP for Lothian and a member of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood’s economy committee, has secured a pledge from Scottish ministers that they will put pressure on the UK government and protest at employment tribunal fees. The UK’s coalition governement introduced fees of between £160 and £1,200 a year ago. Since then there has been an 81 per cent drop in the number of cases going before tribunals. And a 10-page TUC report published last week to marks the one year anniversary of the new charges. The report – At What Price Justice?– shows how since the introduction of fees in July 2013 there has been a 79 per cent fall in overall claims taken to employment tribunals, with women and low-paid workers the worst affected. At What Price Justice? analyses the latest Ministry of Justice statistics and found, among other issues, that: Women are among the biggest losers – there has been an 80 per cent fall in the number of women pursuing sex discrimination claims. Just 1,222 women took out claims between January and March 2014, compared to 6,017 over the same period in 2013; and The number of women pursuing pregnancy discrimination claims is also down by 26 per cent. The TUC’s General Secretary, Frances O'Grady, said: "Employment tribunal fees have been a huge victory for Britain's worst bosses. "By charging up-front fees for harassment and abuse claims the government has made it easier for bad employers to get away with the most appalling behaviour. "Tribunal fees are part of a wider campaign to get rid of workers' basic rights. "The consequence has been to price low-paid and vulnerable people out of justice." Johnstone raised the issue During Youth and Women’s Employment Questions at Holyrood with the Cabinet Secretary for Training, Youth and Women's Employment Angela Constance. Constance said in her response, that the Scottish government has consistently opposed policies that encroach on employees' existing rights, and that the Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism wrote to Jo Swinson MP in June 2013 outlining this government's opposition to the fees, and highlighting that, for many people, they would represent an unaffordable risk, regardless of the strength of the case. Constance also said that information that Citizens Advice Scotland published recently shows that seven out of 10 potentially successful cases are not being pursued. Remarking on the exchange, Johnstone said: “Access to justice and employment rights is incredibly important. "The TUC have said women have been among the biggest losers of the introduction of employment tribunal fees. “A year down the line we see equal pay claims have dropped and sex discrimination cases are down. "I don't believe there should be any fees, and I am pleased that Scottish ministers will make representations to the UK Government. “I support the Law Society of Scotland's call for a review of these patently unfair charges.” Stuart Naismith, convener of the Law Society’s Access to Justice Committee, told the Daily Record: “The effect of introducing fees, ostensibly to help meet the costs of running the tribunal system, has been drastic. “We believe the current system is highly unfair and is preventing legitimate cases being heard by a tribunal." Naismith continued: “The employment tribunal system has worked well throughout its history, offering an impartial tribunal to resolve workplace disputes. “The relationship between employer and claimant is often imbalanced and having a system in place which serves both parties effectively is crucial in the interests of fairness. “We believe that the introduction of fees has changed that balance to the detriment of access to justice. “Another impact of the introduction of fees is that employers no longer feel that they have to find resolution, believing that they can proceed as they wish in the knowledge that a member of staff or former employee won’t raise a claim against because of the cost involved. “It is an appalling outcome where the right not to be unfairly dismissed, which has been enshrined in statute for almost 40 years, seems now to have been completely undone following the introduction of fees.”  |
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