Women's Views on News |
- A random kindness project
- Gender and grant-making
- Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay at the Tate Modern
- A low wage is not a living wage
| Posted: 24 Jul 2015 03:00 AM PDT
What happens when your cause is ill-suited to campaigns that tug the heart-strings? A new scheme from the Random Kindness Project is poised to offer domestic violence activists an alternative way to reach potential supporters. Author Lucy Beresford has announced that from now until the end of 2015, Refuge for Books will collect second-hand books and donate them to women's refuges in London. Considering that survivors are often unable to pack before leaving their abusive partners; books may seem like an odd choice. Surely these women need clothing, toiletries, food and shelter, not a second-hand copy of Finnegan’s Wake? It's true that survivors and their supporters must consider the practicalities of day-to-day living, but in her announcement Beresford talks about something equally important—the emotional comfort and escapism a good book can offer. This emotional connection is frequently overlooked when dealing with survivors' immediate needs. But it is an integral part of supporting women who've experienced domestic violence and a neglected avenue for fundraisers hoping to reach a new audience. In his article What Is Transformation? leadership coach Robert Gass suggests that contemporary activists are the product of a society which encourages individuals to prioritize facts over feelings: "Patriarchal culture has overvalued thinking and denied the importance of our feeling selves. "We have been taught to devalue the inner intuitive wisdom, which is the birthright of every human being." Gass focuses on the need for activists to achieve balance within their own lives, but his conviction that emotions are mistrusted or undervalued can also be applied to the ways in which activists engage with potential supporters. "Activists have tried to win peoples' engagement with facts and analyses," Gass writes, "often failing to appreciate the human need for meaning and connection." The importance of emotional appeals to activism was detailed by Roman Krznaric in his recent essay for OpenDemocracy, ‘Welcome To The Empathy Wars’. Krznaric argues that throughout history, empathy has been a catalyst for social change, citing the campaign against slavery as an early beneficiary. But what about causes that are not naturally set up for emotional appeals, like campaigns that are rich in data but struggle to reach potential supporters on a gut level, or which can't find a suitably fluffy poster child? Grassroots activists have always been reliant on public donations. Unfortunately domestic violence campaigners are faced by an unusual set of challenges when it comes to engaging the hearts of potential supporters: privacy issues, accessibility and prejudice. The first priority for campaigners must be to protect the privacy of the women and children they work with, but this can frequently conflict with the need to raise awareness of their situations. A woman who has been targeted by her partner cannot risk becoming the poster-child for a domestic violence refuge. Abusive partners will often go to extreme lengths to maintain contact, so appearing on campaign leaflets or speaking in public is often too dangerous for survivors to attempt. That means that advocates are often speaking for women who are absent, placing a barrier between the people who need help and potential donors. A frequently used substitute is the shadowy silhouette, or anonymized first-hand accounts of abuse, but these techniques still leave activists reliant on statistics rather than the emotional appeals that other campaigns can utilize. Once issues around privacy have been dealt with, activists must find a way to stop lack of access to the women involved and the structures that support them from hampering their campaigns. Advocacy around other health issues can usually rely on the survivors' support systems: people organise fundraising events, marathons, sponsored silences and ice bucket challenges to help support family members and willingly post personal testimonials online about their own health battles. But in the case of domestic violence, people are usually removed from their original support network by their partners during the abuse. Isolation is a common tactic for abusers and once the abuse is over, survivors are often forced to move away to escape further contact. People unfamiliar with a survivor's situation are left unsure of what has happened, and there is less of an imperative to organise fundraising and other forms of support. This isn't the only issue about access: potential supporters are usually only able to interact with women's refuges via online platforms. For obvious reasons refuges cannot advertise themselves, relying instead on recommendations from doctors, the police and help-lines. This means that potential supporters are unlikely to come across regular reminders of the structures that support the survivors of domestic violence. If someone wants to donate clothes, toiletries or furniture to a women's shelter, they often won't know where their local shelter is, and the shelter itself is unlikely to have any formal process for accepting donations. The last issue hampering activists' attempts to engage the hearts of potential supporters is prejudice. Many people are unaware that the most dangerous time for someone who has been the target of domestic violence is immediately after they leave their partner. Women will often return to an abusive partner multiple times before leaving, and domestic violence has the highest repeat rate of any other crime—with an average of 35 assaults before the a person leaves. This frequently leads to cries of 'why didn't she just leave him?' 'Victim blaming' abounds, with a survey in 2014 finding that 10 per cent of the British public thinks it's ok to hit or slap their partner. Highlighting individual cases can help potential supporters to make an emotional connection with a cause, but in the case of domestic violence it can also lead to misinformed scrutiny of a woman's behaviour. This brings the conversation back to Gass' suggestion that the patriarchal nature of society has made people less likely to trust emotional, personal testimonies, as opposed to facts and figures. None of these barriers are new, and campaigners have found a variety of ingenious ways to circumvent them. In the UK, domestic violence charities have become adept at tapping into the online zeitgeist and subverting whatever cultural moment is currently engaging public interest. The viral meme Dressgate, for example, began when Twitter users started to speculate about the photo of a dress online, and what colour it was. Half saw gold and white, and the other half black and blue. This discussion was then co-opted by the Salvation Army into an advertisement that featured a beaten woman wearing the dress, and a tag-line that asked "why is it so difficult to see black and blue?". In a similar way, events like the 2014 World Cup have been used to highlight police fears of rising domestic violence during sporting events. The difficulties of using the survivors of domestic violence as spokespeople are frequently solved by enlisting celebrities and brands as refuge ambassadors. Successful campaigns have also been targeted at groups previously perceived to be unaffected by domestic violence. Love Shouldn't Hurt, for example, was an award winning campaign that worked with teenagers to improve messaging around abuse. The White Ribbon Campaign encouraged men to pledge their support for survivors. Refuge for Books stands out, however, because of the potential it has for local, grassroots activists who lack big budgets or media savvy but who still need to make emotional connections with supporters. By acting as the conduit for donations, collecting them at a separate address and delivering them herself, Beresford avoids putting the privacy of survivors at risk. The problem of accessibility is solved by offering an easy and effective way for members of the public to donate. Most impressively, Beresford undermines the victim blaming that can surround domestic violence campaigns by focusing on the need to help many women, rather than holding up one woman's story for scrutiny. The language Beresford uses is emotionally persuasive: she talks about the comfort that books can offer and the loneliness experienced by women who have left their partners and homes. But Lisa King, director of fundraising at Refuge, points out that this campaign is also designed to make supporters think about the day-to-day lives of survivors: "Sometimes women and children need to escape domestic violence in an emergency and arrive at our refuges with only the clothes they are wearing or their child's favourite toy." There is a tendency to think that leaving an abusive partner is the end of the story for women who've experienced domestic violence; that they are now safe and able to get on with their lives. This misses the point that the majority are homeless, and will be living in a refuge with other survivors who are battling post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression, anxiety and a variety of other medical conditions that can accompany domestic violence. Refuge for Books may be a small and local, but it's a campaign that can be easily replicated, and it offers activists an alternative way to connect with potential supporters. By focusing on their emotional lives and the comfort that a good book can offer, Beresford reminds everyone that these women are more than just survivors: they are human. You can donate a new book or one in as good-as-new condition to Refuge for Books, to PO Box 72287, London SW1P 9LA before 15 December 2015. A version of this article appeared in OpenDemocracy on 22 July 2015.  |
| Posted: 24 Jul 2015 02:30 AM PDT
The European Foundation Centre's thematic network on gender equality has published its first collaborative work, titled "Grantmaking with a gender lens". This is the first joint project of the network and is the result of a meeting that took place in Brussels earlier this year. The publication looks at a number of foundation programmes – criminal justice, climate change, migration, labour rights, workers' health and disability – and shows how including a gender lens leads to more equitable, impactful and sustainable outcomes. It also tackles a persistent myth about gender and how it supposedly refers only to women's issues. The word gender is often misused and misunderstood. Some people equate gender with women, and believe that gender issues refer only to women's issues. In all cultures, communities and countries a person's gender identity and gender expression are shaped by experiences, beliefs, personal aspirations, external attitudes and social pressures. Each society holds expectations about the characteristics, aptitudes and likely behaviours of girls and boys, women and men and people who identify differently, like trans and intersex people. These ascribed roles and responsibilities are "socially constituted", can change over time, and can vary widely within and between cultures. Established in 1989, the European Foundation Centre (EFC) is an international membership association of foundations and corporate funders. Its membership has grown steadily from an initial group of 7 founding members to more than 200 today. The EFC's work is about people, therefore it has to consider how gender norms affect women and girls as well as men and boys and people who identify differently. Any failure to recognise these differences would risk the EFC’s programmes becoming ineffective and not fully reaching their intended impact. A gender perspective is therefore not an additional burden, it is merely recognising how gender is already affecting the EFC’s work. Criminal justice, climate change, migration, labour rights, workers' health and disability are the foundation programme areas discussed in this booklet. These diverse areas, all equally important, have something in common: they were all approached through a gender lens which allows each foundation to fully understand the issues it tackles, and adapt its response accordingly. The European Foundation Centre is committed to promoting gender equality. In 2009 it supported the GrantCraft guide, "Funding for Inclusion: Women and Girls in the Equation". Together with a number of like-minded foundations, the EFC set up a thematic network on gender equality in 2014, as it felt the need for a space at the EFC to advance and promote work on gender equality. The network aims to facilitate mutual learning and a better understanding of gender, and to promote the use of a gender lens throughout its work as foundations. It has collected a number of case studies on foundation grantmaking programmes where using a gender lens made a real difference to the people concerned. "Grantmaking with a gender lens" addresses what a gender lens is and how a foundation can use it. And it tries to answer some questions you may have. These case studies describe how a gender lens was used and the impact this had on the people concerned, and also on each foundation's approach to its grantmaking activities. The hope is that the booklet will stimulate conversation, dialogue and reflection among the European foundation community. It helped the EFC to understand the complexities of the issues involved, and to adjust its ways of work to allow for more flexible and appropriate responses that lead to more equitable, impactful and sustainable outcomes. And the benefits of applying a gender lens come through strongly in all the studies. This booklet is the network's first collaborative piece of work, and states clearly that foundations cannot fully reach their intended impact if they fail to recognise these differences.  |
| Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay at the Tate Modern Posted: 24 Jul 2015 02:10 AM PDT
Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) was a key figure in the Parisian avant-garde, whose vivid and colourful work spanned painting, fashion and design. The Tate Modern is currently presenting the first UK retrospective to assess the breadth of her vibrant artistic career, from her early figurative painting in the 1900s to her energetic abstract work in the 1960s. This exhibition offers a radical reassessment of Delaunay's importance as an artist, showcasing her originality and creativity in the course of the twentieth century. Born Sonia Illinitchna Stern to a Jewish Ukrainian family in Odessa, at the age of seven she went to live with her comparatively wealthy uncle Henri Terk in St Petersburg, Russia, and received a privileged and cultured upbringing there. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe before moving to Paris and enrolling at the Académie de La Palette in Montparnasse. She, her husband Robert Delaunay, and others co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. Her work extends to painting, textile design and stage set design. Around the same time, cubist works were being shown in Paris and Robert had been studying the colour theories of Michel Eugène Chevreul; they called their experiments with colour in art and design simultanéisme. The Delaunays’ friend, the poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, coined the term Orphism to describe the Delaunays’ version of cubism in 1913. Many iconic examples of these works are brought together at Tate Modern, including Bal Bullier 1913 and Electric Prisms 1914. Her work expressed the energy of modern urban life, celebrating the birth of electric street lighting and the excitement of contemporary ballets and ballrooms. 'The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay' shows how the artist dedicated her life to experimenting with colour and abstraction, bringing her ideas off the canvas and into the world through tapestry, textiles, mosaic and fashion. Delaunay premiered her first 'simultaneous dress' of bright patchwork colours in 1913. She opened a boutique in Madrid in 1918. Her Atelier Simultané in Paris went on to produce radical and progressive designs for scarves, umbrellas, hats, shoes and swimming costumes throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Clients included the Hollywood star Gloria Swanson and the architect Erno Goldfinger, as well department stores like Metz & Co and Liberty. She was the first living female artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in 1964, and in 1975 was named an officer of the French Legion of Honour. This exhibition reveals how Delaunay's designs presented her as ‘a progressive woman synonymous with modernity': embroidering poetry onto fabric, turning her apartment into a three-dimensional collage, and creating daring costumes for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The diverse inspirations behind Delaunay's work are also explored, and range from the highly personal approach to colour which harked back to her childhood in Russia, to the impact of her years in Spain and Portugal where she painted The Orange Seller 1915 and Flamenco Singers 1915-16. This show also reveals the inspiration provided by modern technology throughout Delaunay's career, from the Trans-Siberian Railway to the aeroplane, and from the Eiffel Tower to the electric light bulb. It also includes her vast seven-metre murals Motor, Dashboard and Propeller, created for the 1937 International Exposition in Paris and never before shown in the UK. Following her husband's death in 1941, Sonia Delaunay's work took on a more formal freedom, including rhythmic compositions in angular forms and harlequin colours, which in turn inspired geometric tapestries, carpets and mosaics. Delaunay continued to experiment with abstraction in the post-war era, just as she had done since its birth in the 1910s, becoming a champion for a new generation of artists and an inspiring figure for creative practitioners to this day. The EY Exhibition Sonia Delaunay at the Tate Modern in London runs until 9 August 2015. EY refers to the global organisation, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited.  |
| A low wage is not a living wage Posted: 24 Jul 2015 01:09 AM PDT
IKEA has become the first major retailer in the UK to commit to becoming a Living Wage accredited employer. IKEA's accreditation will see all employees across the UK receive a basic rate of pay of at least £7.85 p/h and employees in the capital will be paid the London Living Wage rate, currently set at £9.15. The Living Wage Foundation has now accredited over 1,600 businesses, including nearly a quarter of the FTSE 100 and well-known companies such as Nestle, Nationwide and British Gas. Rhys Moore, director of the Living Wage Foundation, said: "A strong national minimum wage is a fantastic boost to the movement but the issue remains that for many UK employees, despite working hard, their rates of pay simply don't cover the costs of living. "The Living Wage," he added, "remains key to tackling in-work poverty in the UK." Responding to an hourly wage increase announced in the recent Summer Budget 2015, Moore said: "We are delighted that the announcement made in the Budget … will see over 2.5 million workers receive a much needed pay rise. "This is a massive victory for Citizens UK and those communities, workers and business leaders who have campaigned for a Living Wage since 2001. But while agreeing with the Chancellor George Osborne that work should be the surest way out of poverty, Moore pointed out that Osborne’s announcement regarding the introduction of "a new National Living Wage of over £9 an hour by 2020" raised several important questions. "Is this really a Living Wage?" Moore asked. "The Living Wage is calculated according to the cost of living whereas the Low Pay Commission calculates a rate according to what the market can bear. "Without a change of remit for the Low Pay Commission this is effectively a higher National Minimum Wage and not a Living Wage. "Secondly, what about London? "We have been working with the Mayor of London for seven years and there's a London Living Wage rate that recognises the higher costs in the capital, currently £9.15 per hour. "These changes will not help the 586,000 people for whom even the 2020 rate announced today would not be enough to live on now. "Thirdly, what about the 2 million under-25s who are not covered by this announcement? "To make sure workers in London and those under 25 do not lose out, we call on employers to join the group of 1,600 organisations that have already chosen to become voluntary Living Wage employers. "And, lastly," he asked; "do the tax credit changes announced today mean that the Living Wage needs to be higher to make sure people have enough? "The Living Wage Foundation, members of Citizens UK and the 1,600 accredited Living Wage employers look forward to an early meeting with the Chancellor to address these questions and help the millions of workers who deserve a pay rise." On the eve of the summer budget, KPMG calculated, for the first time, the impact of the universal adoption of the Living Wage in the UK. In a new report, "The Living Wage: an economic impact assessment," KPMG concluded that raising the Minimum Wage to the Living Wage would take just 1.3 per cent of the national wage bill, lifting six million people out of poverty. And early adopters report clear benefit to their businesses. Marianne Fallon, head of Corporate Affairs at KPMG said: "We firmly believe that voluntary adoption of a Living Wage policy by employers, over time, is one of the tools that will help improve social mobility in the UK as well as directly addressing in-work poverty. "As a firm who has paid the Living Wage since 2006, we have seen the benefits of lower absence and a more engaged workforce. "We understand that this is a complex issue for employers and policymakers, but our research shows that there is more to be gained by employers adopting a Living Wage strategy integrated within their broader business strategy."  |
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