A WISH for International Women’s Day

Last Wednesday evening I travelled to Harrow to celebrate International Women’s Day with The WISH Centre. WISH provides support and opportunities for women, youth and children who are survivors of abuse, violence and neglect and also works with young self harmers.

It was a very swish affair with tasty Indian food and even party bags to take home! We saw some brilliant examples of the work that WISH do, including hearing a spoken word performance by one of the young men from the B.A.S.H. boys self harm group, and watching a video about self image, and how this is influenced by the media, created by the girls group. We also met some of the young people themselves who spoke confidently and articulately about why they come to WISH. Young women like Steph who was interviewed by BBC Sport Relief in 2008:



A lot of the work with young people involves using multi-media and video and the girls self harm group Girls Xpress have even made their own music video!



You can see more of the photos and examples of how WISH use multi-media on their website.

WISH are also very good at getting in the media with interviews on television and celebrity visits. In fact they are on Sport Relief this Thursday March 18th in the Million Pound Bike Ride documentary on BBC 1, 9-10pm. Comic Miranda Hart visited WISH and Girls Xpress and the documentary features one of the young women, who is now a WISH Trustee, talking about her self harm journey and the support she has received from WISH.

WISH are a great example of using innovative ways to work with young and marginalised people and to raise awareness about the issues that they face with a wider audience through new and exciting media.

WRC ‘wish’ them all the best in the future with their work!

Million Women Rise 2010

Say it once, say it again No excuse for violent men! Say it once, say it loud We are women, we are proud!

A gloriously sunny (but pretty chilly) Saturday lunchtime saw thousands of women assemble at Marble Arch to join the Million Women Rise (MWR) march, which celebrates and honours “women’s activism, courage and achievements and continued struggle against global male violence in all its forms”. Women had come from as far afield as Cornwall, Scotland and Uganda to take part and all ages were well represented, from babies in prams to women in their nineties. It truly felt like the diversity of the women at the march reflected a wide spectrum of women’s experiences. As we marched down Oxford Street, to chants, songs and whistles, we drew support from the watching crowds of Saturday shoppers, with some smiling, others waving and some even joining the march itself.

Now in its third year, the march always has a fantastic atmosphere, as it’s a rare opportunity for women and women’s organisations to take over the streets and to have their voices heard. It’s always great to see so many of our member organisations continuing the fight for women’s equality and freedom from violence. In the two hours or so that it took us to reach the rally at Trafalgar Square, I’d pretty much chanted myself hoarse, but it was well worth it!

At the rally itself, there was a great range of inspirational women speakers, including Sabrina Qureshi (Founder of MWR), Vivienne Hayes (WRC CEO), Cath Elliott (union activist and journalist) and many other representatives from the women’s sector, both in the UK and internationally. While they all spoke on different topics, there was one overriding message – only through working together, through being sisters, can we hope to start winning the fight to end male violence against women in all its forms. Can’t wait until next year!

HEAR network event: Personalisation - an equalities perspective

As I’m now sitting at my desk back at the lovely Women’s Resource Centre, the accountable body of HEAR, I realise that I can begin to exhale and breathe again. It has been quite hectic these past weeks to prepare for HEAR’s event on “Personalisation- an equalities perspective”. The entire personalisation agenda is still developing and is very new to a lot of the HEAR members and to the organisations who attended.

What is the entire personalisation agenda about then? Well, in short I would say that it is about choice - users have access to information and advice irrespective of whether they are ‘self’ funded or publicly funded.

It gives people choice and control over their lives, which are important principles that HEAR believes in.

Personalisation is also about finding new collaborative ways of working and developing local partnerships, which produce a range of services for people to choose from and opportunities for social inclusion.

The event went really well - we had a great turnout of people (more than double of the numbers expected), keen on learning more from each other and building on their experiences. I also received a lot of positive and encouraging feedback, which has made me think about what the next step for HEAR could be. It is very important that HEAR continues to stay involved and engages with our members and our stakeholders about how we can best contribute to their existing work.

I'd like to thank the chair, speakers and all the delegates for participating in the event, as well as a big thank you to all of those who assisted in organising this event, particularly Nick, Kate and Devrowe.

By Sarah Johansson, HEAR co-ordinator

WRC at UNISON Women's Conference 2010

Last week, Newcastle hosted around 600 women from all over the country, from Portsmouth to Orkney, for this year’s UNISON women’s conference. I went along with Kimcha, WRC’s Membership and Events Officer, to find out what conference is all about and to let women know about our why women? campaign.

UNISON is the biggest union for the public sector, as well as one of the unions for the voluntary and community sector. This meant that the women were all UNISON members, many were branch women’s officers and most work in either the NHS or in Local Government. The Women's Resource Centre itself is unionised and myself and WRC Policy Officer Charlotte are shop stewards, as well as being elected as joint women’s officers for UNISON’S Voluntary Organisations Branch. We were keen to find out how the union works and how we might be able to use it to take our campaign forward, for example by getting UNISON branches across the country to pledge their support for the campaign and to work to support their local women’s organisations.

The conference itself involves proposing motions on union and women-related issues, with opportunities for delegates to speak for and against the motions, which are then voted on by the delegates. Motions passed by women’s conference then have the possibility of being taken forward to the UNISON National Delegate Conference where they will be voted on by delegates representing the whole of UNISON’s 1.3 million members. The topics of the motions are varied, with the below an example of just a few that were supported by conference:

• Increased involvement of trade unions in equality impact assessments
• Lowering the age and increasing the frequency of smear tests
• Encouraging women to get cycling
• Free sanitary products for women on low pay.

On Saturday, conference voted in support of the decriminalisation of prostitutes and criminalisation of the buyers of sex, as Cath Elliott reports in her blog. This was the result of the Demand Change! campaign led by Object and Eaves and supported by UNISON Eastern Region. Another interesting motion, put forward by Davena Rankin from the National Women’s Committee, was around the fight against the BNP and the importance of presenting it as not just an anti-racist campaign, but as a pro-feminist one. A selection of the comments made by the BNP about women illustrate the importance of this motion.

Overall, it was a great experience to be at an event with so many women who ‘get’ what WRC and the why women? campaign is about. Having distributed 100 why women? DVDs, we hope that the invaluable work of the women’s sector and the threats it currently faces will be recognised and taken up within the union movement. In solidarity, sisters!

Take part in our survey - and win money!

Fancy winning some money, and in the process helping the women's sector?

With the economic downturn, rising, looming further cuts in funding and a general election due, the women's sector needs more than ever to show the impact it has on women's lives.

This is why here at the Women's Resource Centre we're putting together a report to demonstrate to the UK government the value of our sector and why it needs continued support.

But we cannot do this without you, after all it is the work you do that makes the women's sector such an indispensable asset.

This is why we need you to tell us all about the amazing work you do so that we can present an infallible case for support. Therefore, we have developed a quick questionnaire for you to fill in via the Survey Monkey website, which you can fill our online here

The main themes were are looking at are these:

• the impact of the recession on your work
• bidding for public service contracts
• the work you do to make change in your local area
• the support you get from us at the WRC

It should only take around 15 minutes of your time and would be a huge help. And now the money bit! All completed questionnaires, where full contact details are provided, will be entered into our prize draw. There will be two £100 prizes for your organisation or another not-for-profit or social enterprise of your choice!

Furthermore, the WRC aims to be accessible and inclusive, so if you would prefer, this questionnaire can be completed over the phone. To arrange this, please contact Sue Christoforou (see below for contact details).

Please also send on to friends and colleagues working in the women's sector for them to fill in as well, the more people take part, the firmer the case we can present to the UK government for further support to our sector.

The survey closes 28 February 2010. If you would like to respond to the survey but think you may have problems meeting the deadline, please contact Sue on her details below:

Sue Christoforou, Researcher, Women's Resource Centre
Email: suechristoforou@wrc.org.uk, Ph: 020 7324 3030, www.wrc.org.uk

Putting CEDAW into action: Global South/North exchange

Yesterday, around 60 people turned out for our WRC/ WOMANKIND Worldwide event on putting the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) into action.

The main attendees were from women’s organisations around England, including: Rise, Women @ the Well, Brighton Women’s Centre, Women’s Networking Hub, Sparkhill Asian Women’s Association, Her Centre, SERICC, FORWARD, The Fawcett Society, the Daphne Project, Sandwell Rape and Sexual Violence Support Service, WILPF, Women's National Commission and more.

Other attendees included human rights groups: British Institute of Human Rights, UNA-UK, Oxfam, UNIFEM UK… and even a delegate from the Metropolitan Police!

Speakers were women from front line (Rape Crisis, South Africa) and second tier (Institute for the Defense of Women’s Rights, Peru) women’s orgs from Nepal, Ghana, Peru, South Africa and Zimbabwe. These women have been using CEDAW to mobilise women locally and lobby their own governments for changes in women’s lives around sexual and reproductive rights, violence against women, sexuality, social and economic rights, political representation, and much more.

The participants extracted learning from these experiences for application in the UK – with a focus on making CEDAW relevant to women and actually being able to use it here. We looked at opportunities and challenges, and ideas for individual organisations, WRC, other partners and the government to take forward.

Key messages include:

• There is a hunger to learn more about CEDAW
• CEDAW is the framework within which all our work sits, in that it is soley concerned with women and has as its core equality, non-discrimination and obligation for state parties to eliminate discrimination against women
• Women’s organisations and government officials need training and information on CEDAW, especially in the regions (i.e. outside London)
• We need to think about some test cases, especially for future use of the Optional Protocol
• This needs to be properly funded work, both at an individual organisation level (e.g. orgs to include a budget line in each funding application for lobbying) and at a second tier level (i.e. coordination of shadow reports)
• The process of writing shadow reports needs to be truly democratised to allow for the widest range of input from diverse women and their orgs
• It is so important to mobilise, work and lobby together
• It is good that we have started NOW in preparation for 2012.
  

It was a very inspiring and humbling event – there is a LOT that we can learn from our sisters in the Global South. Maria Ysabel from Peru closed her speech by saying “we are here because your fight is my fight, and my fight is yours”.

Can celebrities help women's organisations to tackle violence against women?

Celebrities have a huge presence in our everyday lives, but should they be doing more to highlight the issue of violence against women? Do we, as women’s organisations, need their support?

Some of the biggest news stories of the past few months have been violence against women cases that involve celebrities, either as the victim or perpetrator. In the US, the conviction of singer Chris Brown for the assault of Rihanna has highlighted the issue of domestic violence with a younger audience. Roman Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland and pending extradition to the US for outstanding sexual assault charges has sparked debate internationally. Back in Britain, Katie Price’s claims that she had previously been raped by a fellow star have been widely reported.

Despite all these cases, and others, only a few celebs have explicitly spoken out against violence against women. Many, like Keira Knightley, have supported violence against women organisations by taking part in their advertising campaigns. It’s undeniable that having ‘celebrity endorsement’ of your work is really useful for raising awareness and encouraging donations.

However, there is a shortage of high profile women who are willing and able to talk about the underlying gender equality issues that are vital to understanding and tackling violence against women. Sometimes, when celebrities do talk to the media about violence against women they do more harm than good (Helen Mirren, anyone?!).

The only star I can think of who seems to really talk about violence against women as a human rights violation is Nicole Kidman (UNIFEM Goodwill Ambassador), who acknowledged the links between the film industry’s portrayal of women as sex objects and violence against women during an address to US Congress last month.

So, do we need a ‘Goodwill Ambassador’ for violence against women organisations in the UK? Who would be your first choice?