Strengthening Women's Voices in Government

By Rebecca Veazey, policy officer

The Government Equalities Office (GEO) is currently consulting around women's engagement with government and the new gender architecture that will replace the Women's National Commission, seeking appropriate ways for the government and Ministers to engage with individual women and women's organisations and strengthen their voices in government.

In recognition of the importance of the GEO's consultation; the WRC hosted an event with its members on Friday 13th May, bringing together a diverse range of women’s organisations to discuss the GEO's plans and the key issues impacting on the women’s sector.

As part of the event; attendees discussed the key challenges affecting women's organisations and how we can address them together, along with strategies for engagement with the GEO and ways in which women's organisations could work collaboratively in the future.

In the morning session, organisations discussed the GEO strategy in detail and then compiled a set of questions to ask representatives from Government. In the afternoon Helene Reardon-Bond, Director of Gender Equality Policy and Inclusion at the GEO, kindly attended and took questions from WRC members for more than an hour and discussed their key concerns.

Members reported that the event was a real success as it allowed them to express their views to government officials and to come together as a sector. Participants commented that they hoped to engage with one another more regularly and support strong channels of communication with Government.

To that end WRC strongly encourages all members to respond to the GEO consultation, as it provides a vital opportunity for women's organisations to have their say about government engagement and key policies impacting on women.

The consultation is open until 10 June 2011 and can be responded to through an online survey or alternatively organisations can submit a more detailed response by emailing:
womensengagement@geo.gsi.gov.uk

The WRC is supporting consultation events in other regions in order to give a more detailed picture of the opinions of the women's sector in the UK. If you would like to feed into WRC’s response please complete our online survey or email charlotte@wrc.org.uk, the deadline for responses to the survey is Monday 23rd May

To support organisations to respond the WRC will be producing a template consultation response which will be available on our website from Thursday 26th May. To read our briefing on this topic please go here.

Also here are the links for further information on the GEO consultation and to view the consultation document in full.

WRC and our trade union sisters!

Women’s Resource Centre has been out and about around the country meeting and talking to trade union women about the why women? campaign and encouraging them to take information back to their regions, branches and trade union sisters.

We were at UNISON Women’s Conference in Harrogate in February where we had a stall and as delegates were also able to speak in favour of a motion on funding to violence against women services. It was great to see so many of the motions highlighting the impact of the cuts on women’s organisations and we urged everyone to find out about and support their local services through the campaign.

Next we had a stall and also ran a fringe event at TUC Women’s Conference in Eastbourne just after International Women’s Day. Over 50 women attended the fringe event which looked at how women and women’s organisations are already the real Big Society and had speakers from various trade unions, UNISON, GMB, PCS, and TUC, as well as Maternity Action and WRC. The speakers provided strong evidence on how the cuts disproportionately affect women and also spoke about the vital work that women’s services do, particularly during tough times. Ros Bragg from Maternity Action provided a perspective from a women’s organisation and spoke about the issue of maternity rights which are also at risk. The focus of the conference was ‘women against the cuts’ and again it was great to see motions addressing the cuts to services that women use and in support of organisations such as Abortion Rights and Rape Crisis (England and Wales).

Our last stop was at NUS Women’s Conference in Oxford where we ran a workshop on the affect of the cuts on women and how the why women? campaign can be used locally to support women and the services they use. It was great to see a new generation of feminist activists really engaged with the issues and ready to take the information back to their universities. Many were already involved in action around cuts in their areas and wanted information on how to ensure there was a gender perspective and facts and statistics on the specific impact on women.

At all the events we were able to give out our new trade union leaflet as well as various campaigning materials and had people signing up to stay in touch with the campaign. For more information on our work with trade unions see www.wrc.org.uk/whywomen/tradeunion and for campaign materials and other information for students see www.wrc.org.uk/students

Thanks to all those that we met and your support – hope to see you next year!

Using CEDAW in the UK

CEDAW is the UN Women’s Bill of Rights. CEDAW stands for ‘the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women’ and 186 countries have ratified it worldwide.

During February the Women’s Resource Centre worked with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and Rights of Women to present four events exploring ways CEDAW can be used in the UK. We held events in Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle and women came from across the UK.

Workshops were run by Rights of Women and the British Institute of Human Rights as well as by WRC and members of the CEDAW Working Group. The workshops included an introduction to using CEDAW and other human rights standards in work on violence against women, information on other international women’s rights instruments and international mechanisms in general, and how CEDAW and other tools can be used to lobby and make change locally.

The EHRC also talked about the Optional Protocol – a legal way an individual woman can bring her case directly to the UN if she has been discriminated against.

Every four years the UK Government have to submit a report about the steps they have taken to achieve real, substantive equality for women. Their next report to the UN CEDAW Committee will be published this summer.

Women's and human rights organisations and campaign-groups can submit shadow reports to have their voices heard by the UN. These events were a valuable opportunity to consult with regional women’s groups and offer them support to feedback into the next shadow report.

The women who attended offered important insights into the challenges facing the women’s sector and the women they support and they provided powerful case studies from their work. It was wonderful to meet so many women and we really enjoyed the training, but don’t just take it from us, see what the women who attended said about the events!

Facing Our Future - WRC conference a success!

After months of planning, WRC's annual conference for 2010 kicked off on 7th December at Cass Business School in central London - and a great day it was!

The aim of the day was to provide attendees with both valuable information on the current political and economic situation of the women's sector and to provide concrete advice on how women's organisations can best position themselves in the current environment.

To that end, we kicked the day off with some speed networking, to allow the 100 or so women present to meet others from within the sector, before moving to our first panel of the day on the future of the women's sector, where panellists from Navca, the Ashiana network, North East Women's Network and the EHRC spelled out what the next year has in store for the sector and what women working in the sector must do to ensure sustainability.

Following an excellent presentation by Belinda Pratten of NCVO on the Big Society, and what it means for the women's sector, attendees broke into groups for the first session of 'surgeries', on social media, social enterprise and partnerships, with experts from each topic available. The surgeries were a great success, as people got to grips with the big questions behind the topics, and we can't thank enough those who took the time to come and take part in them despite a hectic pre-Christmas schedule!

After lunch and another round of surgeries, WRC's National Equality Partnership (NEP) took to the stage for a one hour panel discussion on equalities and how women's organisations can best diversify. The audience were particularly interested to hear from Camilla Thrush, equality and inclusion manager for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) on how the Olympics had tackled the challenge of ensuring diversity on all levels of work on the games , although she joked that the role didn't mean she could get any Olympics tickets!

It quickly became apparent throughout the day that direct action was where women's organisations want to be. Tired of funding concerns, lack of support and continued gender disparity, throughout the day panellists, speakers and attendees spoke of the need to make the message clear to all - the women's sector must be supported in order for it to continue its invaluable work in helping women across the UK.

Our keynote speaker, journalist and author Bea Campbell, put it best at the end in her inspiring speech to the audience, where she told women present it was not enough for them to be angry about the situation of women in this country.

"You have to be dangerous!" she said, sparking applause from those present.

At the close of the conference and after a successful AGM in which two of our organisation's new trustees were successfully sworn in and we bid a fond farewell to both our chair, Helen Rice, and our treasurer, Lakshmi Raja-Rayan, the attendees spilled out into the main milling area of Cass Business school for drinks, canapes and a rousing performance by all female drumming troupe Foroyaa.


WRC would like to thank everyone who took the time to attend the event or to take part for their support on the day. The event was a great success, and while at times there were sobering reminders of the economic, political and social challenges ahead for the sector, we hope here at WRC that the day gave all those present some grounding in how best to help their organisation face the the future.

After all, that is what WRC is here for!

London Irish Women's Health Day

Stoke Newington’s Church Street has been the home of the London Irish Women’s Centre for almost 30 years and last week, I (Skye Sandhu) went along there to see what was happening for their health day.

London Irish Women's Network provides advice & information on a wide range of issues, including housing, benefits, domestic violence.

Catching up with Caroline from the centre, she described that the primary reason for the awareness, information and advice day was much needed because studies published have shown that joint with Bangladeshi men, Irish (men, women and children) are the ethnicity with the worst health records in the UK. The target audience for the event: mainly elderly women and mothers with young children.

It was great to see they had everything covered from free goodie bags, massages, advisors, health checks and crèche on board, so that women could really engage on their health.

It was a quiet start because of the wet weather conditions but gradually picked up to everyone’s delight! While there, I caught up with Barry from the Stroke Association and Sophia from Hackney Stop Falls Network who were some of the stall holders present and got to hear about the advocacy and support they provide in the Hackney community for elderly women.

Personally for me it was good to go and visit one of our members face to face to see and feed back on the great work they do for the community, so if you have an event or open day- let us know so that we can come to you!

Marching for Million Women Rise in Manchester

By Skye Sandhu

An empowered and energised bunch of women all met up at Stratford, London early one October Sunday morning to travel up to Manchester for the first Manchester Million Women Rise march.

Despite only having one toilet break on the way up there, we were all surprisingly still eager and at full steam to get moving with sisters in the North. We got there in fantastic time (thanks to our driver) to hand out all the banners to the hundreds of women and children gathered in the Castlefield Arena, in the city centre.

Weather was on our side, without a cloud in sight, off we all marched. It was great to see women joining in with us as we passed the streets and the applause from the public watching us as our procession passed.

The day was enriched with warm speeches, singing, chanting, applause, laughter and a strong feeling of uprising and empowerment (not forgetting good food provided by volunteers).

En route back to London if you heard singing amidst the service station loos by Wolverhampton that would have been us - bringing the energy up and down the country all in the aid to end all forms of male violence!

Overcoming barriers for Deaf women

By Skye Sandhu

Recently I was invited on behalf of Deaf Ethnic Women’s Association to attend their AGM as a speaker to talk about the WRC and what it is we do as an umbrella organisation to support the women's sector.

Following on from my presentation, Deaf Advocacy and Justice for Deaf People spoke about the communication barriers for Deaf women and the difficulties this has imposed on Deaf women having access to services, which is a significant issue for these women.

The session really made me stop and think how marginalised Deaf women are (those with various types of hearing impairment). These women still suffer violence and are oppressed by this further because they cannot access the services you and I can. Sadly, services catering for Deaf people are not so easily accessible.

I was delighted, enriched and really made to feel welcome by DEWA. If you are interested in finding out more, DeafSafe + Domestic, Sexual Violence are running a full day Deaf-led conference on the 25th November at the Learning Resource Centre, for further details please email deafadvocacy.justic@gmail.com