Vivienne Hayes, Director, Women’s Resource Centre
Notes for speech at meeting held on 26 March 2007 at Millicent Fawcett Hall, organised by the South London Fawcett Group. The theme of the meeting was a review of the Equal Opportunities Commission’s work over the past thirty years. Vivienne is responding to a speech given by Jenny Watson, chair of the EOC.
Introduction
Thanks to SLFS for inviting me to this evenings event. It’s a crucial part of Women’s Resource Centres work to maintain close links with our membership and women’s organisations in general, as our aim is to both support the work of and lobby and campaign decision makers on behalf of the WVCS. So thanks again to Susan for inviting me.
I absolutely agree with Jenny that the gains made for women have been a result of the partnerships we forge, whether as organisations or as groups of individuals, and I do think this is perhaps the most important issue for us to focus on; a strong collective voice for women.
It’s almost unbelievable to hear in Jenny’s speech that it was only in the 1970’s that women had to wear skirts to the office and couldn’t get a bank loan without a male guarantor! So it’s right that we remember and celebrate these victories, and in doing so remember that it’s we as women, who forced these changes and to continue to make gains for our equality we must continue the struggle.
Because it is a struggle and Jenny has named some of the battles still to be won.
As the leading infrastructure organisation for the WVCS WRC has a clear focus to support our sector. A sector which covers many issues and many vital services for women and their children, often life saving services. Unfortunately we are finding that many of our member groups are under increasing threat from a funding crisis; womens equality and continued discrimination is simply not high on the agenda any more. The language we use has shifted and we now talk of gender equality, when what we should be talking about is women’s continued discrimination. The gender equality duty represents a fantastic opportunity for women to make further in roads against discriminatory practices, but there are fears from within the WVCS that the language of the duty is gender neutral, and WRC are already receiving calls from womens organisations who are facing a gender neutral interpretation of this new law, which places their services in jeopardy. One example is women only services coming under threat, resources re directed away from women only services, because they are not available to men.
This is wholly inappropriate and completely ignores the continued discrimination women experience and WRC have been asking all public bodies to acknowledge that it is women who are discriminated against; we are not in a post feminist era where we are all equal, we still have a long way to go. This request is proving complex; and I have to wonder what message that gives to women???
Just in case we need reminding:
The British Crime Survey showed that 45% of women in the UK have experienced some form of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.
Two women are killed every week by a current or former partner and 12 per cent of all homicides in the UK are domestic homicides of women.
Despite an effort to overhaul how rape investigations are carried out in the UK, a report by the Home Office revealed that the proportion of rape allegations resulting in a conviction has dropped from 24% in 1985 to 5.6% in 2002, and by 2003 it was down to 5.3%.
One in four single women pensioners in the UK live in poverty
If poverty were measured on the basis of individual income, 52% of married women would be under the income support poverty line as compared to just 11% of men.
The gender pay gap in the UK is the highest in Europe: women who work full-time earn 17% less per hour than men and women working part-time earn 39% less per hour than men working full-time.
In the UK only 19% of Primary Care Trusts have women only community day services and only 31% provide women only wards.
Even though two-thirds of contact court cases involve allegations of domestic violence-often towards the children as well as their mothers-the number of fathers denied access to their children by judges is just 1%
Yet Fathers for justice received massive media attention and considerable support. We have to ask ourselves why when the statistics just don’t back up their claims; and in fact what we often see is the continued abuse of children as a result of courts favouring contact with the father when it is clearly not safe for the children as well as the mother.
This seems to me a manifestation of the general view that it’s still ok to violate and abuse women and children. The statistics for rapes and convictions also sends out the same message.
So although we have seen considerable changes to our lives as women, I would say we still have not addressed the underlying causes of our discrimination; the violence we all encounter along the continuum, from sexist remarks, to harassment on the tube, fear of walking alone at night to the extreme of actual assault and murder.
So I do hope Jenny that when you are preparing the gender agenda that the level of rape convictions is one of the indicators, and that the CEHR are willing to continue to work for an end to the endless and deeply damaging oppression we face as women, and stop this gender neutral discourse.
Similarly regarding the report on ethnic minority women and their unequal access to work; we should be talking about, racism, sexism and multiple discrimination.