Women's Views on News |
- Street harassment: a gender hate crime not banter
- In Northern Ireland, women don’t matter
- Missing from the election coverage: war and peace
- Speaking truth to power at the UN
- IKWRO opens first specialist refuge
| Street harassment: a gender hate crime not banter Posted: 01 May 2015 12:17 PM PDT
A 23-year-old woman repeatedly wolf whistled by builders as she walked to work in Worcester has reported them to the police. She was, she said, faced with "disrespectful" comments and gestures every morning for a month and reached the point where she could take it no more, so she started filming the men on her mobile phone and then went to the police. The woman, Poppy Smart, told the BBC’s Newsbeat: “Every day I’d walk past and they’d wolf whistle. They’d even come out of the building site to wolf whistle as I’d continue down the road. “One of the guys got up in my face and all he said was ‘morning love’, but it was in a very aggressive way and the other one sneered. “They blocked the pavement and I had to walk around them.” “I started wearing sunglasses so I didn’t have to look at them. I started putting headphones on so I didn’t have to hear them.” “Eventually it got to the day where I had enough.” “It made me feel really uncomfortable and the fact it went on for so long was the main reason I reported it. “If it had just been an isolated incident – one, two, three, four times – maybe I could probably brush it off because these things happen and you have to kind of accept these people’s ignorance.” She had spoken to the owner of the building site, but “He just sort of apologised. He obviously can’t control all of his staff all of the time and I appreciated that. “I just wanted them to realise it is offensive and I wanted it to stop.” So she called the police and reported it. Smart told the Birmingham Mail she now hopes other women will speak out, and said the workmen should be named and shamed. She added: "I've experienced this kind of sexual harassment around Worcester a lot recently and it just makes walking through town an awful experience sometimes. "I definitely think it's still a big issue and that a lot of women don't bother to speak out about it because it's such a common occurrence, we've almost learned to live with it." Hollaback! Nottingham, commenting on this story after we posted in on our facebook page, said: 'If you are experiencing street harassment and would like to report this to the police request that it be registered as a hate crime. If that doesn’t work, try report-it, a website where you can report incidents of hate crime and ensure that they are taken seriously. ‘The website helps you find out what hate crimes or hate incidents are; find out about the ways you can report them; report using the online form; and find information about people that can help and support you if you have been a victim. 'Nottingham Police are not the best when understanding that sexist behaviour in public can cause those affected to feel sexualised, intimidated, embarrassed, threatened and/or unsafe in public. 'One Hollaback! Nottingham team member has successfully reported street harassment as a gender hate crime after a council contracted builder whistled at her. 'However she was initially told that it was not possible. The police sergeant said that ‘if we accepted a wolf whistle as a hate crime we would be inundated with calls’.' ‘So she reported the incident to report-it… ‘Within hours she had received a phone call to advise her that London Metropolitan Police had contacted Nottinghamshire Police and that the incident would now be taken seriously.’  |
| In Northern Ireland, women don’t matter Posted: 01 May 2015 12:03 PM PDT
Just as Scotland pledges a massive £20m to work with women the message from the Northern Ireland Assembly is clear – women are not valued and the effects of this on our already deeply damaged and divided society are colossal. With the recent shambles that was the Assembly and Executive Review Committee's report on Women in Politics in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which gives a pale set of recommendations for empowering women already in Politics and encouraging more women to get involved in decision making, it's no wonder that women in Northern Ireland are hitting back when every single part of Government seems to be actively attacking us. There was a bigger than ever presence of women at the 13 March Strike day in Belfast showing their concern over budget and welfare cuts in Northern Ireland, under which women are already bearing the brunt since they are the majority of the workforce in retail, care and part time low paid jobs. Worse still, the women's sector's education programmes have been almost entirely eliminated from accessing funding managed by the Department of Employment and Learning (DEL). The European Social Fund (ESF) is revenue that comes from the European Commission and is designated to provide training and skills development programmes that remove barriers to accessing the labour market. Women's groups and centres have been funding programmes for the past decade that have proven, year after year, to work for our most vulnerable and isolated women. However, new criteria set out by DEL has meant that the women's sector are unable to access this funding despite their record of running high quality courses and there has been a huge loss of services, jobs, crèche places, which allow women to work and some women's centres are threatened with closure. Although some lobbying has already taken place, DEL are reviewing their processes and many appeals are ongoing, even the delay in receiving this funding could mean the difference between having a job or delivering a programme and losing your entire education department. More than this Early Years funding, which is money invested in children and families to improve personal, social and emotional development, something seen as crucial in a post conflict society where parental trauma can be passed on from generation to generation. This funding which is fundamental to giving our children the best start in life and which helps change society from a very early age is also suffering massive cuts in what seems to be yet another barrier for women and their families. Couple this with the lack of adequate childcare provision and those with families are facing considerably higher barriers to growth and independence. The huge cuts to the arts sector also compound the general feeling within communities that it's our women and children who will suffer worst at the hands of funding and welfare cuts. It is highly recognised that in normal peaceful societies it is the arts that change attitudes, it is the arts that break down barriers and allow for more freedom of expression, the cultivation of free thinking and the enhancement of culture. This is even truer of deeply divided societies like Northern Ireland and the complete and utter decimation of the arts through funding cuts, an area where Northern Ireland actually excels and which bring in tourism and jobs to the region, is a damning testimony to just how short sighted our assembly really is. Instead of fundraising in order to make up the deficit in the budget or evenly applying the cuts across all sectors, so the most vulnerable do not suffer, our Assembly is consistently imposing more and more cuts to the most vulnerable groups and the long term effects will be huge. Children who do not take part in Early Years initiatives will be less confident in school and more likely to drop out under qualified to access the labour market, raising unemployment and putting even more strain on our crumbling welfare system. The total decimation of the women's sector means groups and organisations, who are providing community based services and programmes are at risk of closing their doors, and more and more women will suffer the legacy of the conflict through under confidence, fear, post-traumatic stress and low mental and emotional health and wellbeing. The knock on effect of this meaning less women will be fit to work and children of these women may suffer the consequences too not to mention the fact that cuts to healthcare mean the NHS won't be able to cope and women will go back to suffering in silence and struggling through deep mental and emotional trauma. There is an atmosphere of hopelessness and desperation in the air, people are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, to feed their children, to educate themselves and their families, to make ends meet and to keep their spirits high. More than ever racial hate crime rates are soaring in Northern Ireland as people desperately cling on to what jobs there are and blame immigrants for the lack of opportunities. The Conscience Clause consultation and proposal have incited more violence and hatred towards the LGBT community and Northern Ireland has been identified as one of the poorest regions in the UK. At the bottom of this seemingly endless pit of desperation lie the women who have kept our local communities going throughout the troubles and in the face of life threatening danger. Women who risked their lives to ensure childcare was available. Women who suffered massive levels of domestic abuse throughout the conflict. Women who provide care in their communities. Women who are the foundation of Northern Irish communities. Those same women, you and me included, are not being heard by our assembly who instead of implementing long term measures that create opportunities, jobs and improve mental and emotional health and wellbeing are cutting funding at every turn and it's the community and voluntary sector as a whole and more specifically women and children who are suffering the worst consequences. But there is hope; it's not called OUR Assembly for nothing and despite popular belief we can make a change by using our votes, by speaking up for the most vulnerable and by standing together across the sectarian divide to hold Government to account. Please: read the women's manifesto and ask political canvassers what they're doing for women. Please: turn up on voting day on 7 May and next year again for the Assembly elections with an open mind. It's evident that traditional voting lines are not working and nothing will change in Northern Ireland unless we change it for ourselves.  |
| Missing from the election coverage: war and peace Posted: 01 May 2015 03:42 AM PDT
By Jennifer Allsopp. ‘Three Guineas’ was published in 1938 but it remains startlingly relevant. War will not end while women are kept out of power and while power is governed on the historic terms that men established. ‘How essential it is that we should realize that unity the dead bodies, the ruined houses prove. For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions forget the private figure, or if we, in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world.' (Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas) There appears to be something missing in coverage of the UK General Election: war and peace. It's understandable, given the recession and subsequent cuts, that the nation's everyday suffering is in full focus, but watching the news you'd be forgiven for thinking that Britain is not in fact a military force with the power of life and death over thousands of women, men and children. Both the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and the Labour opposition seek to replace our nuclear missile system, Trident, for £100 billion (the same money could fund 1.5 million affordable homes see 4 million students though university). Meanwhile, as some 900 more refugees died in the Mediterranean last week, we were reminded that it was the UK Government that cruelly withdrew funding for search and rescue missions. Iraq Body Count tells us that post-military intervention, civilian deaths are almost doubling year on year. A documented 137,248 – 155,338 civilians have died from violence since the bloody conflict began in 2003, 211,000 including combatants. The prevalence of violence is also bleak domestically: two women still die each week because of violence from a former or current male partner. I carry this burden heavy on my shoulders as I head to The Hague today to report, with openDemocracy 50.50, on the centenary conference of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. 'We still live in a world where women's voices and experiences are excluded, bringing continued violence and war' reads the programme. I've just reread Virginia Woolf's iconic essay, Three Guineas, and it's made me hopeful for the event. It conjures up another image of politics, one in which the private and public spheres speak to each other. One in which the imagination can make the leap to see how struggles at home are linked to struggles abroad. It's not just me, there's a buzz among women's peace activists in Britain since recent TV debates showed for the first time three women party leaders speak against nuclear weapons, environmental degradation and xenophobia. There's a common sense that we might be moving forward if only more women could 'get in'. 9.1 million women failed to vote in the last election. That's one million women for each decade of freedom since women first won suffrage. Meanwhile, just 22 per cent of MPs are women. How can we convince women, in this context, of their power to change politics, stop war and forge new avenues for peace? Going back to Virginia Woolf is not an obvious choice. At a time when social media has taken centre stage it can feel indulgent to go back to the past in search of inspiration. Meanwhile Woolf has fallen out of fashion. Although some young feminists still read her 1929 essay, A Room of One's Own, many ask, what can her white, upper class, dated perspective contribute to the intersectionality of modern feminism? There are three main lessons that I take away from Woolf's essay which inspire me as a peace activist some 77 years on from its 1938 publication. The first relates to the relationship between culture, capital and war; the second to women's private and public experience of conflict and oppression; and the third to the relationship between conflict and patriotism. The essay reminds us that war cannot be stopped by the international actors alone, but requires a systematic shift in discourse and power in democracy domestically as well as abroad. Culture, capital and war In 1920, Woolf wrote in her diary that her 'generation [was] daily scourged by the bloody war'. The question that she seeks to answer in Three Guineas, many years on, is how are we to prevent war? She begins by locating the ubiquity of war in a society dominated by oppressive ideas of masculinity and commodity. Everywhere men are in power and the perspectives of women – rendered different by their experience of societal marginalisation – are ignored. Tackling culturally imposed grandiose ideas of manliness is at the core of Woolf's message for peace. Her analyses of the media, run by capitalist tycoons who have an interest in maintaining conflict and competition, is highly poignant for today's feminist audience. She captures the power of discourse, arguing that reclaiming the media from the monocles of the super-rich is imperative to restoring independent thought. Throughout the essay Woolf takes us back time and time again to a newspaper image of the Spanish Civil War, of corpses so badly mutilated they are undiscernible as man, woman or pig. We are conditioned to see that as justification for war, she explains, but a different sensibility has been repressed by patriarchy. Similar debates continue to surface, as in relation to recent media coverage of ISIS. Yes, the culture of war remains dominant in today's society, in our schools and in the public sphere. Though the British Empire has formally fallen, what Woolf calls its 'commodifying attitude' is now at the 'helm of modern capitalism'. Anticipating strategies of current activism against neoliberalism, she calls for public divestment from the arms trade. More money should instead be channelled into funding for women's organisations, she argues. This is a universal dilemma, for 'money makes it possible to speak without fear or flattery.' Woolf also answers a key dilemma of the modern feminist movement. At a time when we are telling young girls to 'lean in', how can women succeed in public institutions and in politics without becoming part of the dominant culture? 'We too can leave the house, wear wigs and gowns, make money, administer justice', as she puts it, 'but on what terms shall we join that procession?' In Woolf's universe, enfranchising women is an opportunity to reinvent the institutions according to a different logic, of collaboration and peace rather than of competition and conflict. 'We can best help you to prevent war', she tells men, 'not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new worlds and creating new methods'. Conflict in private and public spheres By linking women's domestic struggles to become educated and earn a living to the cause of challenging war, Woolf makes an explicit link between the private and the public spheres. For her, fighting for a living wage and paid care work are all part of the peace movement, a plan for enhancing democracy and liberty in the face of oppression and dictatorship. 'To help women to earn their livings…', she explains, 'is to help them to possess that weapon of independent opinion which is still their most powerful weapon. It is to help them to have a mind of their own and a will of their own which will help you to prevent war'. Although it is now widely recognised that women and men experience conflict and peace differently, as spelled out in instruments such as CEDAW, at the time of writing Woolf was bold to put the social segregation of men and women at the heart of her analysis. In 1938 the navy and army were closed to women, as were the diplomatic service, clergy and the stock exchange. Woolf felt, as many others have, that this exclusion from public life gave women an advantage to see a 'new world' free from the 'untrue loyalties' imposed on men in the public sphere. Woolf also draws on poetry by Wilfred Owen on the 'unnaturalness of weapons' and the 'foolishness of war' to explore how men experience war in different ways, challenging the idea of 'the ideal solider'. And women too, she explains, are embroiled in propagating ideas of military masculinity. 'Give not the white feather of cowardice not the red feather of courage, but no feather at all', she asks us. One can imagine that Woolf would have been an avid contributor to the Everyday Sexism project, because she saw the culture of violence as very much an assemblage of everyday experiences. Patriotism and war Women's 'Outsider perspective', contends Woolf, not only gives us a unique vision of what peace might look like, but allows us to empathise with the oppression of others. 'Those who would keep women in the home are no better than Dictators', she decries. In a particularly bold passage, she asserts that 'the monster has widened his scope', tracing a historical genealogy of oppression that spans the family home and Nazi Germany. It is the Outsider experience which prevents women from getting behind the patriotism of war and the duties of war. What does 'our country' mean to women as Outsiders, she asks. How much of England actually belongs to us? 'Throughout the greater part, history has treated me as a slave', she concludes, '…as a woman I have no country'. Ending war then, for Woolf, requires women and men to rid themselves both of 'pride of nationality' and the presumed 'superiority of patriotism'. In almost a century much has changed in the nature of war and peace in Britain and abroad, leaving us to wonder what relevance Woolf's essay can still carry. Her letter, certainly, is remarkably forward-looking. She foresees many strategies of the women's peace movement, from sex strikes, calls to ban Page 3 and pressure on public institutions to divest in arms and fossil fuels. Her work was also, and remains, instrumental in placing women's, and to some extent men's, lived experiences of war and peace at the heart of analysis. As feminists we often struggle to articulate the dialectic between our work at the everyday and ideological levels. But what Woolf reminds us is that war will not end while women are kept out of power. And similarly, war will not end while power is governed on the same historic terms which men have established in the absence of half of society. Woolf concludes with a startling, leveling image. Under patriarchy, we are all, she posits, ourselves the figure of the uniformed soldier. Adopting this identity is a source of hope for Woolf, 'it suggests that we are not spectators doomed to unresisting obedience, but by our thoughts and actions can ourselves change that figure'. A version of this article appeared in openDemocracy on 27 April 2015.  |
| Speaking truth to power at the UN Posted: 01 May 2015 02:38 AM PDT
By Robin Lloyd. “This may be the last time our voice is heard here…” excerpt from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Statement to the UN’s Conference on Disarmament. “….this may be the last time our voice is heard here…” The UN has become a citadel of nations, ruled over by five nuclear potentates with veto power in the Security Council. Periodically the fortress is besieged by civil society organizations knocking on the door for entry, raising their banners for peace and justice. This is most observable at the meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women during the first two weeks of March. Women flood the Church Center across the street from the UN, overflowing into the Armenian Convention Center down Second Avenue, sharing issues, strategies and concerns. Members of each women's NGO share a limited number of passes to the UN building itself. This year, in a different UN body, on International Women's Day, something unprecedented happened. It was a David and Goliath moment. It's been a long time coming. The respected UN affiliated organization, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), took a stand in an environment that has become painfully at odds. More precisely WILPF resigned from monitoring and engaging with the Conference on Disarmament. WILPF is proud of being the first NGO to be affiliated with the UN through the Economic and Social Council back when the UN was getting started in 1946; they see – or saw – the UN as a feminist organization dedicated to saving 'succeeding generations from the scourge of war'; and they recognized it as one of the few places where small nations could have a voice. In short, they have tried for decades to engage with this body that has been hijacked since 9 /11 by corporate and nuclear powers, and finally they said enough is enough. For some background: The Conference on Disarmament (CD), made up of 65 member states, is the only body of the UN that meets annually to (in theory) negotiate disarmament treaties. Other UN bodies, such as the Disarmament Commission and the UNGA First Committee are only of a deliberative nature. However the latter has the "power" to adopt resolutions that can create a process like for the Arms Trade Treaty. The Conference on Disarmament has negotiated the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. But since 1996, it has not negotiated any treaties, or even agreed on which treaty to next negotiate, and it has put roadblocks in the way of any substantive conversation with civil society. These roadblocks, termed indignities in the statement issued by Reaching Critical Will (RCW), are not experienced at the other disarmament forums mentioned above. For the last few years, WILPF has been permitted to deliver a statement to the Conference on Disarmament to mark International Women's Day. This is the only time of year that any voice from civil society is allowed inside the conference chamber. According to Mia Gandenberger, staff person at Reaching Critical Will, who delivered the statement this year, "We made a point of starting every statement with 'We, women from many parts the world,' which was then read out by the (male, middle-aged) President of the Conference. "In 2010 finally one of our representatives was allowed in the room to deliver the statement." The statement she delivered this year stated "… this may be the last time our voice is heard here…This is a body that has firmly established that it operates in a vacuum. That it is disconnected from the outside world. That it has lost perspective of the bigger picture of human suffering and global injustice. Maintaining the structures that reinforce deadlock has become more important than fulfilling the objective for which it was created—negotiating disarmament treaties. "We can no longer invest effort into such a body. Instead we will continue our work elsewhere. There is much work to be done…." Indeed. WILPF is celebrating its 100th anniversary this week in The Hague. WILPF was founded in 1915 at a conference at The Hague dedicated to stopping World War 1, by women who were global activists even before they had the vote. Before any super-national organizations such as the League of Nations or the UN existed, they used grassroots diplomacy to reach the men in charge: travelling from belligerent to neutral governments and knocking on the doors of power. WILPF is still knocking on doors. Despite a UN resolution SCR 1325 that mandates women's role at the table when peace settlements are negotiated, Syrian women – the latest example – were denied a seat at the failed talks in 2013. Women are frustrated and impatient at watching wars metastasize around the planet, watching the elements of the sacred earth mined and melted into bullets and missiles. Nearly a thousand women have brought their energy together here in the Hague at WILPF's 100th anniversary conference on Women’s Power to Stop War. (April 27 to 29). Women from the USA, which is the largest exporter of bullets and missiles in the world, are meeting together with women from the front lines of violence, women living in communities that have been decimated by war and rape and dislocation. A source of inspiration at the conference will be the new Manifesto, the result of three years work by women from the 30 WILPF country sections from around the world: ‘We are renewing WILPF's commitment to eradicating war by addressing its root causes. ‘Among them we identify: ‘Militarism as a way of thought, and the militarization of societies, such that perceived –threats are likely to be met with weaponry rather than words; ‘The capitalist economic system, involving the exploitation of the labor and resources of the many by the few, wantonly harming people and the environment, generating conglomerates of global reach and unaccountable power; ‘The nation-state system as it is today, involving dominant states, imperialist projects, inter-state rivalry, contested borders, and inside those borders, all too often, failure of democracy, resulting in political repression and intolerance of diversity; ‘Social systems of racist supremacy, cultural domination and religious hierarchy; ‘Patriarchy, the subordination of women by men, in state, community and family, perpetuated by the social shaping of men and women into contrasted, unequal and limiting gender identities, favoring violent masculinities and compliant femininities. ‘We understand these as intersected and mutually reinforcing systems of power, all founded on violence and together productive of war.’ I encourage you to read the Manifesto. It ends with this challenge to the next generation: ‘Violence is not inevitable. It is a choice. ‘We will implement peace, which we believe to be a human right.’ Robin Lloyd is a filmmaker and a former board member of WILPF-US. A version of this article appeared in openDemocracy on 27 April 2015.  |
| IKWRO opens first specialist refuge Posted: 30 Apr 2015 11:09 PM PDT On 1 May 2015, the Iranian & Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (IKWRO) will open in London the first specialist refuge for Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) women. The refuge will accommodate and support vulnerable single women at risk of "honour" based violence, forced marriage and female genital mutilation as well as domestic violence. Women in the refuge will receive specialist support from IKWRO's expert team, who speak six community languages – Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Dari, Pashtu – as well as English, and be provided with advice, advocacy, training and counselling. Last year IKWRO assisted over 780 clients face to face and gave advice to over 2500 clients and professionals over the telephone. Diana Nammi, the founder and Executive Director of IKWRO, said; "We are thrilled to be opening the first refuge for Middle Eastern and North African Women facing "honour" based violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and domestic violence. "Over recent years we have seen severe cuts in refuge spaces as public funding has been slashed. "Vulnerable women with no place to stay have returned to violent partners and families or have been forced onto the street, making them highly vulnerable to gangs, prostitution and trafficking and further abuse from any man who will take them in. "It is common for our advice team to spend many hours and often several days, using up precious limited resources trying to find a bed in a refuge for clients who are in immediate danger, fleeing a violent partner and in "honour" based violence cases, often multiple perpetrators from the family and community. "The opening of our new refuge will provide desperately needed extra refuge spaces for women in danger,” she continued. "The impact of the cuts has been particularly devastating for minority women and many specialist services and refuges have been forced to close down. "Several of our clients have limited English, having been imprisoned at home and a number have been turned away from cash-strapped refuges which have prioritised women who won't need an interpreter. "We have also had cases of refuges using interpreters who have leaked information to the community, which has resulted in the women having to flee again for their safety. "In other cases, mainstream refuges have not fully understood "honour" based violence or forced marriage and have underestimated the level and nature of the risks involved, which has endangered women. "As "honour" based violence and forced marriage experts, who speak MENA community languages and therefore do not need to rely on external interpreters, we are perfectly placed to provide holistic, safe refuge support for MENA women and girls.” Opening this refuge has only been possible because of funding from private donors; in order to keep the refuge running support will be needed. Please donate by clicking here or by contacting IKWRO. If you need help or want advice, you can call IKWRO from Monday to Friday from 9.30am – 5.30pm on 0207 920 6460. For out-of-hours emergencies call: Kurdish/Arabic: 07846 275246; Farsi/Dari/Turkish: 07846 310157. If you are in immediate danger dial 999.  |
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