Meet-ups near you
Barnet (street stall) - 4th November
More events being added over the next few days - check back in soon if there isn't one near you yet!
SUBMIT
Breakout Debates
Breakout Debates Saturday, 09.45 - 11.30
Joeli Brearley
Campaigner for Gender Equality, Producer and Project Manager, and Mother
@Joeli_Brearley
Joeli is a campaigner for gender equality, a creative producer and project manager, and a mother of two young boys.
Joeli founded the feminist project and campaign 'Pregnant Then Screwed' which exposes the systemic problem of pregnancy and maternity discrimination and gives women the tools they need to challenge discriminatory behaviour. She wants to live in a world where care giving is valued.
Joeli writes for the Telegraph and the Independent and she has made regular appearances on TV and radio. She advises MPs on how the Government can address the motherhood penalty and is part of the Parliamentary group for Women and Work. She is also working on a book and a documentary about the issue.
Role at Party Conference
Joeli will be speaking in the Film Breakout Debate.
Carole Easton PhD
Chief Executive, Young Women’s Trust
@caroleeaston100
Carole is Chief executive of the Young Women's Trust, a charity supporting and representing young women struggling on low or no pay, and who are at risk of being trapped in poverty. The charity offers free coaching and personalised advice on job applications, conducts research, runs campaigns and works with young women to build confidence and advocate for fair financial futures.
Carole has extensive experience in the voluntary sector, having been Chief Executive of Cruse Bereavement Care, ChildLine and CLIC Sargent. She has worked as a trainer and consultant in the UK and overseas, developing helplines and children’s services for the public and voluntary sectors. Previous senior roles have focused on extending advocacy services for those with mental health issues and learning difficulties and delivering campaigns and services for individuals with disfiguring conditions.
She is Chair of Young Minds, the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional well-being and mental health of children and young people. She is also Trustee at Depaul UK - the youth homelessness charity - and is currently a Commissioner on the Greenwich Fairness Commission.
Carole started her career as a Child and Family Psychotherapist and completed a PhD thesis concerning physical violence towards children.
Role at Party Conference
Carole will facilitate the breakout debate on 'A woman’s place: a look at affordable housing' at Conference.
Carolyn Kagan
Feminist, mum, grandmother, daughter and community psychologist
@CarolynKagan
I am a feminist mum, grandmother, partner, daughter and community psychologist, recently retired after working full time for nearly 40 years at the Metropolitan University in Manchester.
I have always been concerned with issues of social justice, working alongside, for example, women living in poverty, disabled people and public service workers seeking to make the world a better place. I am active in local community groups and in social enterprises concerned with sustainable communities, dementia action, intergenerational work, minority ethnic family well-being, and Steady State Manchester - a small organisation campaigning and working towards an economy that benefits all, within environmental limits.
I am passionate about ways of addressing climate change, which I see as the greatest threat to our glorious planet in all its complexity.
Role at Party Conference
Carolyn will facilitate the breakout debate on ‘Women and the environment: mind-mapping the world’.
Dr Sarah Marie Hall
Lecturer in Human Geography, Chair of School Ethics Committee, and Morgan Centre Member, University of Manchester
@Sarah_M_Hall
Sarah Marie is Lecturer in Human Geography at The University of Manchester. Her research sits in the broad field of feminist political economy: understanding how socio-economic processes are shaped by lived experiences, social differences and gender relations.
She sits on the Management Committee of the Women's Budget Group, is Treasurer of the Economic Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society and is a member of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives.
Role at Party Conference
Sarah Marie speak on the topic 'A man’s world: why the world is built around men and what we can do about it'.
Shakira Martin
Vice President (Further Education), National Union of Students, former President, Lewisham Southwark Students' Union
@shakirasweet1
Shakira Martin is Vice President (Further Education) of the NUS, and former President of Lewisham Southwark College Students’ Union. She has studied a number of courses including ILM Leadership and Management and most recently completed her Diploma in Education and Training (DET).
As a single mother, Shakira knows first-hand the power of education to transform lives. Further education has given her 10 years worth of chances to break the cycle of deprivation, be a role model to her children and develop the confidence to stand for a national role. Her passion for education has developed over the last four years through overcoming the adversity of her past experiences.
Shakira has particular interests in teaching and the quality of learning, the learner voice, college governance, education and politics. She aspires to become a Further Education College Principal.
Shakira hopes to share her journey to inspire, empower and motivate others to reach their full potential.
Role at Party Conference
Shakira will speak in the debate "A threat to equal education or business as usual: sexual harassment and sexual violence in universities".
Jack Monroe
Cook, campaigner, writer and blogger
@MxJackMonroe
Jack Monroe is an award-winning campaigner, cook, columnist, writer and blogger.
Jack’s blog, A Girl Called Jack, started as a local politics blog, and developed into budget food and recipes, which were picked up with interest by the national press as Jack detailed living as a single parent on a food budget of just £10 a week because of delays in unemployment benefits, which sometimes weren’t paid at all.
Jack ended up writing a cookbook for Penguin based on the blog, followed by another book which was more of a food diary through the roller-coaster year that took them from sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a bedroom in a shared house to having a food column in the Guardian and a book that sat at the top of the paperback charts.
Jack is an active campaigner, fronting a petition with Unite, The Trussell Trust and The Mirror demanding politicians debate the causes of foodbank use and hunger in Britain. Within four days the petition had secured 100,000 signatures, and the debate was held in the House of Commons three weeks later. Jack is a patron of The Food Chain, and supports The Trussell Trust, Child Poverty Action Group, and Oxfam.
Jack writes a weekly recipe column for The Guardian, and regularly contributes political bits to The Mirror, The Independent and The Guardian. Jack has commented regularly on food, politics, and current affairs for Sky News, Channel 4 and BBC radio.
Jack’s awards include a large bronze eagle from the Women of the Year award, Best Food Blog at the OFM awards, and Judges’ Choice Award at the Fortnum And Mason Food and Drink Awards.
Role at Party Conference
Jack will be participating in the breakout debate ‘A woman’s place: a look at affordable housing’.
Dr Ann Olivarius
Chair, McAllister Olivarius
@AnnOlivarius
Ann is the Chair of McAllister Olivarius, an international law firm that specialises in fighting discrimination against women. She was deeply involved in litigating a landmark civil rights case, Alexander v. Yale, which for the first time found that sexual harassment within a US university was illegal. In 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) included her on its list of the most influential people in the history of Title IX, the US anti-discrimination law. Since Alexander v. Yale, she has continued to break new ground in discrimination and employment law, winning major awards in the US and UK. Her firm was recently pivotal in getting a law against revenge and fake pornography passed in the UK, and has been working to improve legal protections for students sexually harassed at UK universities. Nelson Mandela once introduced her as “a lawyer who has advised me well and who has courageously advanced the cause of justice, and improved life opportunities, for hundreds of millions of women, blacks and disadvantaged, worldwide.”
Ann served on the board of National Alliance for Autism Research (UK), also known as Autistica, and OpenDemocracy USA. She is founder and Chair of the Rhodes Project, which evaluates the careers and life choices of women Rhodes Scholars. Ann is a Trustee of GenerationNext!, a charity which has supported over 100 students at the Vuleka School in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is on the board of Women Moving Millions (WMM), a network of women who have each committed one million dollars or more to advance women and girls.
Ann graduated summa cum laude from Yale College. After earning a D.Phil from Oxford in Economics as a Rhodes Scholar, she earned law and business degrees from Yale, normally a five-year course, in three years, receiving highest honours.
Ann is also the Chair of AO Advocates, a law firm that represents survivors of child sexual abuse, often against churches, boarding schools and other institutions that allowed the abuse to flourish. Last year AO Advocates won the first High Court case against the Jehovah’s Witnesses, on behalf of a girl abused from the age of four.
Professor Helen Penn
Co-Founder, the National Childcare Campaign, Visiting Professor, UCL
In the 1980s Helen was a co-founder of a feminist organization, the National Childcare Campaign (now metamorphosed into the Family and Childcare Trust). She ran services for young children in Strathclyde, Scotland, before becoming an academic at the Institute of Education (IoE), UCL. She became Professor of Early Childhood at the University of East London; and is about to return as a visiting Professor to UCL. She has worked for the EU, OECD, UNICEF and SCF on childcare policy. She believes it is the job of the government to fund childcare services, and to make sure all children have equal access to high quality childcare, whatever their parents’ circumstances. She is currently writing her work biography, entitled Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible.
Role at Party Conference
Helen will co-chair the debate on ‘How childcare will transform the UK’.
Cassie Raine
Actor and Co-Founder of Parents in Performing Arts
@PIPAinfo
Cassie is an actor who co-founded Parents In Performing Arts (PIPA) with Anna Ehnold-Danailov, a Theatre Director, in 2015. Now a Consortium of 18 major performing arts organisations PIPA is currently conducting its first major research project about Best Practice for supporting those with caring responsibilities working in the Performing Arts. Supported by Arts Council England, Creative Scotland and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama the project will investigate barriers and potential solutions to improve access to work for parents and carers. The outcome will be an industry-wide Best Practice Charter to be launched in September 2017 and embedded in the Family Arts Standards.
Role at Party Conference
Cassie will be speaking in the debate on Women in the Creative Industries.
Gudrun Schyman
Founder and Co-Leader, Feministiskt Initiativ
@gudschy
Gudrun Schyman is a founder and joint Leader of Feministiskt Initiativ, the ideologically independent, feminist Swedish political party.
Feministiskt Initiativ has a vision of a different society. Its ideological starting point is anti-racist feminism. Its members believe in politics being more than just money, and that the division between left and right is not irrelevant, but that discrimination, racism and sexism is present on both sides and doesn't necessarily disappear with socialism; nor does liberalism, with a focus on individual rights, solve the structural inequality in society. They believe that's why an ideologically independent feminist party is important. Feministiskt Initiativ is that party in Sweden.
Feministiskt Initiativ was started officially in 2005 and has since then developed into a feminist and antiracist movement that in the last election gained seats in 13 municipalities in Sweden and a seat in the European Parliament.
Gudrun is an educator and lecturer in the area of gender equality and non-discrimination. Her professional background is as a social-worker, and she has been active in both the anti-nuclear movement and the national and international peace movement.
Gudrun was previously a member of the Left Party in Sweden, representing the party as a member of parliament in the Riksdag, Sweden's national parliament, from 1988-2003. She was Leader of the Left Party from 1993-2003, resigning from the post and the party in 2003.
Since 2010, Gudrun Schyman has been a local politician in Simrishamn (her home town), a member of the national board of Feministiskt Initiativ and one of Feministiskt Initiativ's two party leaders.
Role at Party Conference
Gudrun will take part in the debate "Feminist foreign policy: full steam ahead".
Drífa Snædal
General Secretary for the Union for General and Special Workers, Iceland
@drifasnaedal
Drífa Snædal is the General Secretary for the Union for general and special workers in Iceland. She became active in the Icelandic Women’s Party at a young age and co-founded the Left-Green movement in 1999 after the Women’s party became history. She has been active in feminist issues within politics and the women’s refuge movement and now, in the past years, within the workers’ union movement in Iceland.
Role at Party Conference
Drífa will facilitate the Breakout Debate on ‘A threat to equal education or business as usual: sexual harassment and sexual violence in universities’.
In 2016, WE want to tell a different set of stories
Today is Human Rights Day. It marks the end of #16days of action that began on November 25, the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Some of the wonderful people working at service and advice centres across the country have written blogs for our website during this time that give an insight from the frontline of this fight.
The services in which they work - providing support and counselling and safe spaces for women and girls whose lives have been turned upside down by domestic abuse, sexual assault, FGM, forced marriages and other forms of violence - are constantly under threat because of inadequate funding and disastrously short-term commissioning processes.
That puts vulnerable people at even greater risk.
On top of that, the current housing crisis is making it increasingly difficult to find enough space to support women through the transition into their own safe, secure and permanent accommodation.
Today I am visiting Greenwich Domestic Violence and Abuse Services, whose staff contributed to our blog series. I am looking forward to meeting women for whom Greenwich DVA’s refuges provide a safe space in which to begin their recovery from trauma and start to rebuild their lives.
I will see first-hand how these spaces save lives.
The Women’s Equality Party is working hard to help these services, all around the country, continue to save lives.
We have set out our own policy commitments to bring about an end to violence against women and girls:
-
WE aim to ensure that all women and girls who experience sexual, domestic or other violence have access to specialist advocacy and support services
-
WE will create a fund – more than £800m by 2018-19 – to support the legal aid budget, restoring half of the cuts made in 2012, and providing ring-fenced funds to local authorities for VAWG services
-
WE will expand services to ensure we can provide a stable place to live for all women and children fleeing domestic abuse, starting with crisis and refuge services and moving into more permanent housing
-
WE will ensure that access to support services for women who have experienced violence is not dependent on their immigration status
And we think that all parties should unite in their commitment to end violence against women and girls by also committing to sustainable and secure funding that is not put at risk by different political priorities.
Our 16 blogs in 2015 told the story of poor funding, poor planning and poor provision for the women and girls in our country that need us the most.
In 2016, we’d like to tell a different story.
The future of secular BME women’s organisations is hanging by a thread
Over the last three decades and more, Southall Black Sisters (SBS) has consistently addressed the needs of BME women, in particular in the face of their experiences of violence and multiple or intersectional discrimination. This is a term used by the United Nations and statutory and voluntary bodies to refer to the specific ways in which multiple strands of discrimination overlap in simultaneous and complex ways to create heightened vulnerabilities and discrimination.
It is precisely because of the complexity of BME women’s experiences and the historical failure of statutory and other generic services to address them that specialist organisations led by and for BME women like SBS developed in the late 1970s.
We provide an important lifeline for BME women who remain one of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in our society. Just as importantly, we have often led the way to key reforms in areas such as forced marriage and honour-based violence.
Currently, through a number of cases, SBS is pressing for greater awareness and government effort to tackle the problem of religious, especially Sharia, tribunals and councils that discriminate against women and children and put them at risk of further violence.
We are also campaigning to highlight the emerging phenomenon of transnational marriage abandonment and violence against women. These are acts of violence committed against women in transnational spaces that leave vulnerable women without recourse to protection and rights simply because the offences against them occur in spaces that straddle a number of jurisdictions. Precisely because of jurisdictional problems, governments and states can and do abdicate their responsibility in bringing perpetrators to account and in upholding the human rights of such women.
A growing list of long-established secular BME refuges and advice centres based in Brent, Manchester, Nottingham, Leicester, Sheffield, Coventry, Rotherham and elsewhere have either closed or are facing the threat of closure in recent months. SBS is no stranger to these threats.
In July 2008, at the High Court, we won an important legal challenge affirming our right to exist and to continue our work as an organisation of, by and for BME women.
Despite our success, secular BME women’s organisations are being decimated across the country and this development is exacerbated by the state’s promotion of regressive religious forces that are filling the vacuum and benefiting from the democratic deficit that is created in the process.
The future of the BME women’s movement symbolised by long-standing BME women’s organisations like SBS is now hanging by a thread. This unfolding crisis needs urgent attention from all those concerned by the growing levels of inequality in our society.
But what is also urgently needed is the development of a progressive politics of solidarity between and within the women’s groups that recognise that what is at stake is no less than the fight for secular, progressive, feminist, anti fundamentalist, anti-racist and human rights values.
Day 9
The issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) might be front page news and the go-to policy success for the PM, but work to prevent it and support survivors on the ground is grossly underfunded, or not at all in some places.
When we started Daughters of Eve five years ago the issue had been neglected for years so the idea of funding for a survivor-led or focused organisation was wishful thinking. Years on this is still the case. Organisations working directly with those affected or at risk of FGM are mostly run on good will and commitment from some amazing people.
Integrate Bristol, which is the UK leading charity working with young people from FGM affected communities has since it was founded in 2008 till only months ago been staffed by volunteers. This an organisation that supports over a 100 young people, and has spearheaded campaigns on ending FGM and other forms of violence against women and girls within BME communities.
The practice of FGM is a reality in this country and those at risk need specialist support, which cannot be provided on the shoestring grants or funding pots currently out there. Nor can we keep relying on volunteers to deliver life-saving work.
The systems needed to help identify FGM have been successful and we are now more aware of the issue, but this also means that more young women will be coming forward for support that is currently lacking. I can personally tell you how painful it is to be on a phone for hours seeking a bed for a young woman who fears for her life because she needed medical treatment after an act of violence.
The lack of services and support for those affected by or at risk of FGM is only one part of a bigger picture, and we need to take a more reliable, thoughtful approach across the board.
Nimco Ali is the founder of Daughters of Eve
Housing women safely is an ever-greater challenge
Support services are only the first step to helping women to face a variety of challenges when they are fleeing violence.
Housing for Women have 80 years of experience in championing women to access suitable housing. We deliver projects that support women and their children through a number of the strands of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strands. These include our Re-Unite project that supports women who have been released from prison to be re-united and housed with their children, our Re-Place project that assists women who have experienced trafficking, as well as a range of Domestic Abuse services in Ealing, Greenwich and Merton.
Whether a woman loses her home due to domestic violence and/or abuse, exploitation or prison her life, and often her children’s lives, are plunged into uncertainty. Cuts to legal aid and welfare benefits and the threat of long term homelessness together with the potential of losing custody of her children exacerbate this.
Many of our support services provide crucial safe temporary housing, but with the current housing crisis there are less and less housing options available and it is becoming increasingly difficult to support women in their transition into their own safe, secure and permanent accommodation.
Local councils are under increasing pressure to house vulnerable women after they have been in temporary accommodation. It is challenging for councils without the means to take action to do so. The private renting sector can be almost impossible to ‘crack’ for those who claim any sort of housing benefits, and even for those with jobs rent levels are often unaffordable.
Support services like ours provide a crucial short term means to empower women into an independent and positive long-term future.
Many women report that the support we offer is life-changing. We want to ensure that this important first step to recovery and independence remains available to women in the future.
Roxanna Donald is a Support Worker for Housing for Women.
Eaves illustrates the threat faced by anti-violence services across the UK
As we start the 16 days of action opposing violence against women, the picture in the UK is bleak. Specialist women’s services up and down the country are seeing huge increases on demand for their services yet these self-same services are shrinking, closing or at risk of closure. One such sad casualty was Eaves which, after 29 years working to end violence against women, closed at the end of October.
The sorts of challenges that organisations face are linked to commissioning processes which favour large, generic, non-specialist organisations with economies of scale and significant reserves so they can subsidise tenders. This directly militates against small, specialist, women only services (which we know is what works and what women want) being able to win tenders. In turn this has a hugely negative impact on the quality of services that women receive.
Eaves managed to save some services, in collaboration with Nia, Gaia, Women in Prison and the Beth Centre. Sadly, the Alice project, which averted homelessness for 294 women in one year, could not be saved.
The big unknown is the Poppy project, which was the first British service to work with women trafficked into prostitution or domestic labour. They operated way over the minimum standards allowed for by the Government contract. They undertook outreach in prisons and detention centres identifying women missed by the system. They provided gender specific and victim centred support beyond the minimum of 45 days. They challenged wrongful decisions achieving a high success rate with women.
The fact that they built such trust and supported women for so much longer than is provided for, accounts for the fact that the Poppy project helped women to bring a total of 45 traffickers to justice achieving some 423 years sentences between them! However Poppy is not gone – it is trying to set up independently. There may be a break in service but they’ll be back.
Heather Harvey was formerly research and development manager at Eaves.
A cut to women’s services is a cut to equality and justice
Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality Party
Today marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. In an effort to draw attention to the scale of this human rights catastrophe, campaigners around the world will be raising their voices in protest and major landmarks in many countries will be lit up in orange.
One of them will be Niagara Falls, where six million cubic feet of water plummet over the crest line every minute. It seems an apt choice to mark the scale of the problem.
Globally, one in three women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. Some 20 percent of British women have experienced rape and/or sexual assault, according to the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales. And as a result, tens of thousands of women and children in the UK are forced to leave their homes and seek refuge and support in safe places.
Over the last year, Rape Crisis organisations, which offer everything from refuge and counselling to legal advice, responded to more than 3,000 helpline calls - a week. In total they received 165,000 calls between 2014 and 2015. Over the same period of time more than 21,000 women were supported by just 17 specialist organisations for black and minority ethnic women.
I am grateful to live in a society where the most vulnerable are cared for and protected. But I do not know for how much longer that will be the case.
Because today, when the government’s Spending Review lays out its plans for the disbursement of £4 trillion of taxpayers' money, not one Rape Crisis centre in England and Wales has funding fully confirmed beyond March 2016. In fact, 42 per cent of them have no funding confirmed at all.
This country’s sexual and domestic violence services are being drained by the current government. Last week, Rotherham’s Apna Haq centre was threatened with closure, despite being the only local specialist service for BME women and girls. Last month, London’s Eaves closed its doors after 38 years of support to women victims of violence.
Today’s Spending Review is a five-year projection of government spending. The five years it projects look bleak.
As life-funds ebb, the impact is being felt immediately. Waiting lists across the Rape Crisis network currently stand at 3,500. Women’s Aid turned away 320 women one day in 20111 - which they now describe as a typical day - due to lack of space. Over the last year, in London alone, 733 BME women sought refuge spaces in London. Only 154 were successful.
A loss to services is a loss to life.
On today’s international day of action it is time to call a halt to a funding model that is not fit for purpose.
Britain’s Violence Against Women and Girls support services are having the heart ripped out of them by budget cuts, short term contracts and crassly simplistic commissioning practices that push specialist units to one side in favour of bigger organisations that lack their expertise but can afford to undercut them.
Those services that do receive funding are often subjected to six month break clauses, so that government can continually assess their worth against other political priorities.
The Women’s Equality Party is committed to doing politics differently, and today WE call for cross-party commitment to do this funding differently. These services should not have to repeatedly face the threat of elimination, while the torrent of violence against women and girls continues.
WE think that specialist services should be able to plan and grow their services and not be vulnerable to the ebb and flow of changes in political thinking. And WE call on every other party in Britain to sign up to this model.
This week our members raised £31,500 in just six days to put candidates for the Women’s Equality Party on the ballot papers in Scotland, Wales and London next spring. They want every day to be a Day for Action. They want to prioritise equality for women regardless of other political battles.
Today, WE call on all political parties to unite in their commitment to ending violence against women and girls by uniting in a commitment to sustainable and secure funding.
Our policies are here:
The Women’s Equality Party is committed to ending violence against women and girls.
-
WE aim to ensure that all women and girls who experience sexual, domestic or other violence have access to specialist advocacy and support services
-
WE will create a fund – more than £800m by 2018-19 – to support the legal aid budget, restoring half of the cuts made in 2012, and providing ring-fenced funds to local authorities for VAWG services
-
WE will expand services to ensure we can provide a stable place to live for all women and children fleeing domestic abuse, starting with crisis and refuge services and moving into more permanent housing