Here’s a selection of pics from yesterday’s Million Women Rise march and rally.
Here’s a selection of pics from yesterday’s Million Women Rise march and rally.
As if Brian Paddick’s revelation yesterday that he had been “asked to “water-down” a report critical of the Met’s handling of rape cases” wasn’t bad enough, now comes news that police forces up and down the country are still disproportionately no-criming rape cases in comparison to other crimes of violence: “The study discloses that 2,131 reported rape offences were officially logged as “no crimes” in 2010-11 in England and Wales – nearly 12% of all recorded rape cases. It also shows there is still a wide variation in “no crime” rates between police forces, from 30% in Kent to 2.4% in Gloucestershire. The inspectorates say that a rape that has been reported and then recorded as a crime should only be “no-crimed” if the…
This is the text of a speech I delivered earlier today at UNISON’s National Women’s Conference. It’s on motion 7: ‘Women at risk – the danger of cuts to violence against women services.’ The statistics speak for themselves. Almost half of all adult women in the UK have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. Between 50 and 80,000 women are raped every year in this country. An estimated 70,000 women living in the UK have undergone female genital mutilation, and up to 7,000 girls remain at high risk of having it done to them. Thousands more women and girls are threatened with so-called honour crimes or forced marriage and, according to the UN, some 200 million women and girls are missing from the…
It’s International Human Rights Day today, which means it’s officially the final day of the 16 days of activism against gender violence campaign. But 16 days isn’t enough is it? Not when you consider that violence against women and girls continues to be perpetrated day after day after day, 365 days of the year. Sixteen days of awareness raising and speaking out isn’t enough, not when you consider that at any point, day or night, somewhere in this world, a woman or girl is being subjected to rape, or domestic violence, or FGM, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, or a so-called ‘honour-crime’. Sixteen days of blogging, tweeting, marching, chanting, shouting about this isn’t enough when at any moment you care to pick a…
I was sent the link to this video a few weeks ago and, having watched it a few times now, I’m still undecided about it. I’m just not sure it works. Here’s the text of the email I received introducing the artist and the video: “I wanted to introduce you to the new video from Billboard-acclaimed singer/songwriter, Sarah Fimm, for the song “Everything Becomes Whole”. The video was inspired by real-life accounts of violence against women; whose end result is a visually haunting and emotional short film. The video depicts a relationship that quickly turns from loving to abusive, with the male character overpowering and physically harming the female character. Sarah’s hope is to shine light on the issue, and create a call-to-action that…
