Routes to Solidarity for BME women

Charlotte (Policy officer) and I (Skye Sandhu) went up to Leeds a few weeks back to attend Oxfam’s Yorkshire and Humber Routes to Solidarity training session. We gave a presentation on how women’s organisations can make an impact locally using the Gender Duty and other tools, and also discussed WRC’s Power and Prejudice report which was launched on the day of our visit - mirroring what we were working on with our sisters in the North.

The session was well attended by women’s groups from Sheffield, Bradford, Keighley, Leeds and other surrounding areas. The room was buzzing with energy and had there was a clear sense amongst the women of a need for action. Speakers included empowering women such as Alison Lowe, CEO of Touchstone and a local councillor for more than 20 years representing the ward of Armley in Leeds.

It was good to hear Leeds Council talk about their inclusive and comprehensive Equality and Diversity scheme, demonstrating the good practices they have in place, which I think other local councils up and down the country could learn from and in turn improve their equality schemes by benchmarking against it.

During the course of the day, women fed back on their next steps and began forming networks with one another - promoting solidarity in an ever increasing competitive world is a key concern for us at WRC. The women-led sessions I have attended have been transparent and have provided a valuable space for all ideas, questions and issues to be discussed

On the whole, I have every confidence that these sessions, which sadly will draw to an end after the last round in Sheffield in October, are in fact making a positive impact for women across the regions, not only by giving them the tools and knowledge to engage on a local level but also in allowing women to enhance their leadership skills and helping them to build partnerships with other women’s groups.

NEP Assistant Heather Rogers reports from a recent event:

The 12th June inaugural UNA Forum was a rare opportunity to listen to a range of leading world leaders and thinkers on peace, development and human rights. It was refreshing to see a packed audience of different ages and backgrounds come together to ask questions about the strengths and the weaknesses of the UN and engage in workshops.

Mary Robinson’s impressive speech about the connection between climate change and human rights, gave accounts of the individuals she had met whose livelihoods had been destroyed by climate change. She stressed the importance of not buying into the climate sceptic’s agenda or general climate apathy, and her organisation, Realising Rights, runs a Climate Wise Women Project.

Dr Hans Blix gave an eloquent and thought provoking speech, reminding the audience that the UNA’s aim was ‘not to take us to heaven, but to prevent us from going to hell’. Other speakers included Helen Clark, Henry Bellingham MP, the FCO Minister (with responsibility for the enduring relevance of the UN and UK foreign policy) and Baroness Williams of Crosby.

Our own Policy Officer, Charlotte Gage, also spoke on a panel on Peace, Development and Human Rights - Pressing UN issues for women, about the UN CEDAW Convention and how this is relevant and can be used by women's organisations in the UK. You can see all the presentations here.

The forum was enjoyable, enlightening and enabled members to find out how they could become involved in UNA-UK at a local and national level. I very much hope that the forum will become a fixed item on the UNA’s annual calendar.

Making an impact locally - WRC in Accrington

Last Thursday both Charlotte (Policy officer) and I made our way down to Accrington for a WRC 'Why women?' presentation as part of Oxfam’s Routes to Solidarity project.

The project, headed by project officers Dr Archana Choksi and Sandhya Sharma, aims to support small BME grass roots women's agencies in the north of England to develop and strengthen their policy voice and encourage and enable lobbying activities.

We were invited to present to our sisters up north and engage on the topic of women in LSPs and to draw on our campaigns over recent years. Charlotte was fabulous, as always, with her comprehensive referencing to all the latest statistics and answering questions around how to influence LSPs.

For me, I relished this platform as a great opportunity to come out of London to meet and share resources with other women working in the women’s sector, who lo and behold have the same issues we do down in London (and with the classic, 'don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you' fear factor). Many of our sisters there hadn’t heard of us and so this was a good place to connect with them.

The day was definitely empowering, bouncing ideas around the room with potential solutions to various issues and also over the course of the day seeing them gaining valuable insight and support, in order to hold LSPs to account.

I hadn't expected to meet so many strong women all in one room, with so much potential to make change. It was an aspiring, gratifying and without doubt an eventful day.


The next session will be in Leeds for the York and Humber Region in July.

For more information, contact Archana on achoksi@oxfam.org.uk

Routes to Solidarity Newsletter Autumn 2009 Spring 2010

Fawcett Society election debate - what about women?

The Fawcett Society held its pre-election debate last night in London, as part of its 'What about Women' campaign ahead of this year's May 6 vote.

The auditorium at the London School of Economics, whose Gender Studies Institute jointly hosted the debate, was packed to the gills with women activists, students and the general public, and many of us from the Women's Resource Centre!

With the prospect of a hung parliament looming, women’s votes count more than ever, and those attending was keen to hear which party would deliver the goods so often promised.

Right from the start the women on the panel, chaired by Fawcett’s chief executive Ceri Goddard, were keen to get their message across that their party was the one for women.

Harriet Harman from the Labour party, Theresa May from the Conservatives and Lynne Featherstone from the Liberal Democrats all gave three minute briefings on their parties' agendas for women, and then the real debate began. (Incidentally, Fawcett is planning to put up a podcast later which we will link to on our @whywomen Twitter account).

By far the most contentious issue of the evening was the Conservatives plans for marriage tax breaks. May defended the proposals as a “recognition of commitment”, but both Harman and Featherstone dismissed the plans as “Victorian values” and “offensive” respectively.

On the issue of improving representation of women in politics, Theresa May said the Conservatives had worked to improve candidate selection processes, while Featherstone said the era of “gladiatorial” style politics had to end. Harman, meanwhile, said that all-women shortlists by Labour had changed the face of parliament.

One of the few questions where there appeared to be cross party consensus was the issue of violence against women. All stressed the importance of working in a non-partisan manner and the importance of education at a young age to prevent attitudes becoming entrenched.

May said women-only services and spaces remained crucial, while Harman said the issue of using DNA to improve conviction rates was important. Featherstone also reiterated the Liberal Democrat pledge to fund more rape crisis centres.

Questions on the Pope's proposed visit to the UK, concerns over the sexualisation of women, support for women's health, equal pay and other issues were also raised throughout the 90-minute session.

Perhaps most importantly, after the event, as attendees spilled out of the auditorium chatting excitedly, many noted now immensely gratifying it was to have such questions top of the agenda and to have key questions on jobs and the economy filtered through a women’s lens instead of being tacked on as afterthoughts.

The high level of interest on Twitter alone (and thanks to all of those who followed our tweets on the night!) showed that many women out there were extremely keen to know what was being set out for women by the parties.

Far too often in the current election campaign, despite all the talk of the "Mumsnet" election, women’s issues have been shunted aside. So it was gratifying to see a robust debate on core electoral issues both by us, for us, and about us.

Developing and nurturing that inspiration is so important not just for us but for future generations of women who want to enter public life. Let’s hope we in the women’s sector will see more of such events to keep the pressure on those who represent us. A big thanks to Fawcett for kickstarting that process.

Success! London local election hustings draws a crowd

Wednesday afternoon saw the Women's Resource Centre, HEAR and Voluntary Sector Forum’s hustings event for London’s Local Elections. The 60-strong audience was made up of representatives of the length and breadth of London’s voluntary and community sector, with an emphasis on the equalities and women’s sectors.

There were four councillors on the panel - Cllr Nilgun Canver, Labour, Cllr Lynn Hillan, Conservative, Cllr Stephen Knight, Liberal Democrat and Cllr Ute Michel, Green Party, and the event was chaired by Emma Scott, director of Rights of Women.

So, once everyone had arrived and found a seat, the questioning began…

“What future do you see for the London Councils grants budget and London Councils’ commitment to pan-London and cross-borough service provision?”

This opening question drew out the commitment from the whole panel to funding the work of the voluntary and community sector (VCS), with a cautionary note around the impact of inevitable spending cuts.

However, there was also recognition that some services are more suitable for being funded on a pan-London basis, whereas some which address more local problems need to be addressed on a borough level.

A question on the VCS’ right to campaign on behalf of beneficiaries and be funded for this work threw up the first major difference between the panellists. While the Liberal Democrat and Green councillors were keen to have this work funded by public money, and the Labour councillor emphasised that this work is not political, but a form of advocacy and so should be funded, the Conservative councillor was in support of lobbyists, but was uneasy about their work being funded through public money.

The equalities questions focussed on issues such as the Human Rights Act and how it can be implemented at a local level, how to balance the need for making services available to the whole community and maintaining specialist skills, and the role of equalities organisations in policy work.

The final section of the hustings focussed on the women’s sector, where we heard from the panel on their commitment to London Councils’ spending of 12% of its budget on the violence against women sector. You can read the full responses of the panel to key issues for the women’s sector in our Q&A sheet

There were further questions on women with no recourse to public funds (from the Women Together against Abuse partnership), licensing of lap dancing clubs (from OBJECT) and on addressing the needs of women ex-offenders (from Women in Prison), all of which elicited thoughtful responses from panel members. You can see photos from the event and some of their responses on video here and we will be putting up fuller notes later on.

All in all, it was great to have a space where London’s VCS could come face to face with councillors and there was a real sense of democratic accountability, as those affected by councillors’ decisions were able to question them directly. We’d like to thank the councillors for taking the time to take part in the hustings and all those who took time out of their working day to come along!


We strongly encourage women’s organisations across the country to organise similar events for future elections. After all, councillors represent you - and you need to both get your voice heard and get your sector’s issues on their agenda!

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!