Women's Views on News |
| Women’s safety manifesto launched Posted: 22 Sep 2014 03:34 AM PDT
Since the General Election in 2010 we have seen the horrors of the Jimmy Savile scandal, the Rotherham Inquiry and 'grooming' trials, more than 400 domestic violence murders, and the emergence of social media and online abuse. Now women challenge party leaders on women's support services facing cuts, failures in sex and relationships education, mistreatment of women seeking asylum, and pornography and prostitution. As the main party conferences get under way, a leading coalition of more than 60 women's organisations has published a Women's Safety Manifesto calling on all party leaders to pledge that if elected they will implement policies which aim to prevent violence against women and girls in the long-term – including a new law to guarantee the availability of support services to victims of abuse. The End Violence Against Women Coalition's 8-page document calls for clear commitments to protect women’s support services – including refuges, rape crisis centres and support for minority women – with a new law; to make sex and relationships education compulsory; to stop the detention of asylum seeking women who have suffered abuse; to tackle the impact of online pornography and to change the law on prostitution. The Women's Safety Manifesto refers to the storm of revelations of violence against women and girls since the last election which mean that rape and sexual assault, child sexual exploitation and domestic violence are never out of the news (see statistics below). Campaigners believe that the exposure of the scale and nature of abuse is shifting public attitudes towards more understanding of why many victims do not report abuse to the police, and that the time is right for political leaders to capitalise on this and implement policy to prevent violence in the future – there is a strong evidence base for how to do this. The EVAW Coalition's co-director, Liz McKean, said: "Ongoing revelations demonstrate the extent to which violence against women and girls exists in our society. "It is about time it had the high level political attention it deserves. "The view that some abuse is inevitable is changing. "We also have better gathering of information than ever before about police performance on some forms of violence against women, which lets us see that different approaches by different police forces really work better. "There is also a huge resurgence of women's rights campaigning – from schoolgirl Fahma Mohamed who convinced the Education Secretary no less to write to all schools telling them what they should be doing to prevent FGM, to the fantastic online projects Everyday Sexism and Counting Dead Women which are cataloguing the day to day abuse and violence women and girls continue to experience. "It is time for political leaders to really take this on. "We hope to see every party leader answer every part of our manifesto and tell us what they will do to end and prevent abuse of women and girls. "What will they do to ensure victims of violence have access to high quality, specialist women's support services even if they don't go to the police? "Will they make sex and relationships education compulsory in all schools to ensure attitudes that make excuses for abuse don't set in? "Will party leaders end the shame of the UK locking up vulnerable women asylum seekers who have suffered abuse in their home countries? "Will they look at our ever more sexualised media and regulate it as the public indicate they want? "Will they review the law and services for women in prostitution, because the spotlight on the sexual abused and exploitation of girls in our country confirms that many adult women first enter prostitution when under-age and it is not acceptable to criminalise them as adults? "EVAW Coalition members and thousands of women's rights campaigners are poised to ensure the general election debate includes answers to all these questions." The Women's Safety Manifesto has five key asks: 1. A new law which guarantees access to specialist women's support servicesfor all victim-survivors of violence against women and girls, whether or not they go to the police. Many of these services have suffered severe cuts since 2010, at a time when demand for them has risen. 2. Compulsory sex and relationships education – as the key long-term measure to prevent abuse of women and girls. It should be part of a broader programme to prevent abuse including teacher training, better school policies and broader community involvement. 3. Address harmful media images – women's groups want to see a consistent approach to the regulation of harmful images across television, film, music video, advertising and print media, based on harm-based criteria, and a comprehensive response to the harms of pornography. 4. Protect marginalised women – specialist support services must meet the needs of BME women, those with mental health needs, women with disabilities, and women with insecure immigration status; there should be an end to the detention of survivors of gender-based violence if they come to this country to seek asylum; we support the 'Nordic model' approach to prostitution so that those selling sex are not criminalised, whilst those purchasing sex are prosecuted. 5. Violence Against Women and Girls Action Plans- a new law requiring national and local governments to work with the women's sector to develop violence against women and girls strategies and plans, and ensure resources for frontline services. Violence against women and girls in the UK – The Facts: Around 1.2 million women suffered domestic abuse in 2012. 85,000 women were raped in 2012 and over 400,000 women were sexually assaulted. 18,915 sexual crimes against children (mostly girls) under 16 were recorded in England and Wales in 2012/13. In 2013, the government's Forced Marriage Unit gave advice or support related to a possible forced marriage in 1,302 cases. 82 per cent of cases involved female victims. At least 66,000 women in England and Wales have been subject to female genital mutilation (FGM). Sexual bullying and harassment are routine in UK schools. Almost one in three 16-18 year old girls have experienced 'groping' or other unwanted sexual touching at school. A Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the The Independent newspaper, published in August 2014, showed that more than 320 rapes were reported in UK schools over the past three years. Sixty per cent of young people are first exposed to pornography aged 14 years or younger (BBC/ICM poll, 2014) and research by the Children's Commissioner in 2013 found that young people's exposure to pornography is linked to sexist attitudes, beliefs that women are sex objects and negative attitudes towards sex. Want to help make sure your MP has seen this Manifesto? Email them this page’s link. Thanks.  |
| Posted: 22 Sep 2014 01:10 AM PDT
In her new role as UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador, British actor Emma Watson has called on men and boys worldwide to join the movement for gender equality. The actor, who built an immense global fan-base through her role as Hermione in the Harry Potter series, was co-hosting a special UN Women event for the HeForShe campaign at – and from – the United Nations Headquarters in New York on 20 September. The event aims to kick-start a global solidarity movement in support of women's rights and full equality between women and men. "I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too – reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete version of themselves," Emma Watson said. This was her first event at the United Nations and comes on the heels of her first visit as a UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador to Uruguay. HeForShe event will put men at the centre of activism and dialogue to end persistent inequalities faced by women and girls around the world. Over the next 12 months, the campaign intends to mobilise one billion men and boys as advocates and agents of change for gender equality. “We need boys and men working with us,” UN Women’s executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka explained. “HeForShe is a global solidarity movement to end gender inequality by 2030. “The goal is to engage men and boys as advocates and agents of change in the effort to achieve equality. When women are empowered, the whole of humanity benefits.” A highlight of the event was the activation of the HeForShe map — a real-time map with a geo-locator that will show men's engagement with the initiative around the world over the next 12 months and provide a tally against the campaign's one billion target. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the initiative's first goal, which is to mobilise the first 100,000 world citizens in this way. By activating the map, Ban Ki-moon will be counted as the 'number one man'. The event brought senior UN officials such as UNFPA‘s executive director Dr Babatunde Osotimehin and UNESCO‘s director-general Irina Bokova, along with actor Kiefer Sutherland and civil society representatives together to discuss the central role men and boys can play in the achievement of gender equality.  |
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