Role of Women

Wednesday 26th November 2008

Written by Talyn Rahman

"The Changing Role of Women in the 21st Century" - House of Commons, London

The title says it all really. The seminar had a nice variety of speakers who came from different personal and professional backgrounds with prominent things to say. Here is a summary of what I had gathered from their speeches, which made me think... "Yes, that's true and I agree!"

Theresa Villiers (Conservative MP)
- Highlighted major pay gap between the sexes still exist and must be narrowed down
- Evolution of the 'modern man': giving women the chance to have careers while men raised the family
- Responsibility of looking after the elderly still fall on women
- Women are under represented in the parliament but numbers growing SLOWLY
- Women feel the need to prove themselves more to men at work to prove their equality/superiority
- Apparently, David Cameron pressed a cross-party consensus to encourage women into politics
- As a woman, Theresa feels like her life is dominated by her career and has no time to start or raise a family

Janette Faherty (CEO of Avanta)
- There are no gaps in jobs between men and women across industries
- 73% women of working age are at work
- 58% of women with kids under 5 are at work
- 82% women earn LESS than men
- Suggested we need groups to support women reach the top
- Women have a DOUBLE BURDEN: working and raising the family so now have even more work to juggle than ever before. No policies or group sessions to ease this are in place
- Equality need to start at home: men need to do their share to make things easier for women

Dr Husna Ahmed (Chief Executive of Faith Regen)
- In her point of view, women in faith can tackle social inequality -> Domestic Violence was highlighted pretty strongly
- Faith is a form of identity, pursue the dignity of difference
- The need to build cohesive society within communities and be in a society where one is judged on skills, competency and nothing on the surface (Obama is a clear example)
- Question raise: Are we moving into a post-gender century???

Pauline Crawford
- Can we be post-gender? Pauline believes it is human nature not to be
- Equality Responsibility: In the last 6 years, women's role has changed but look at how conflict-areas are like
- Example of how the Titanic went down after believing it was 'unsinkable'. Lesson here ism don't build the same boat...metaphor reflected upon today's political society
- Need to create conversation between all sectors
- Good to see that women are taking responsibility for who they are!

Reclaim the Night

Saturday 22nd November 2008

Written by Talyn Rahman

This march and rally was organised by the London Feminist Network, starting off at Whitehall, finishing at

Euston. Central London was closed off to women protesting in solidarity to end violence against women. The march "Reclaim the Night" is a demonstration to show that women want to feel safe at night without the threat of being raped or attacked.

I met a few women who I felt increasingly disgruntled about, particularly women from English Collective of Prostitutes – who work against everything my group is trying to do, to criminalise men who buy sex and provide sex as trade. They want sex work to be decriminalised so that those working in the industry are treated like any other employee. I understand that being recognised as an employee will give sex workers the right o better health and pay, but I do not like the system of making sex a tool for finance. Tal says no!

From WILPF, only Diane, Deborah and I attended but we made noise by shouting chants and blowing our

whistles throughout the capital. It was cold, but it was fantastic to see so many young women like me in the crowd. It was even more amazing how many more people joined us. The march was massive and hope we made people think twice.

The march ended in a rally at Euston’s Quaker House. One of the guest speaker at the conference was one of

WILPF’s neighbour, a lady from Imkaan called Geeta. I think everyone was close to tears with Finn Mackay’s speech – she is fantastic in bringing out the message. We need the government to stop anyone buying sex, having women’s bodies plastered at the back of magazines, increase funding for emergency rape crisis, more policy protection and close down men’s clubs like Spearmint Rhino club not far from my university.

Having listened to those speeches, I feel determined to write a draft letter and petition to newspapers and magazines protesting and urging them to remove massage and escort services and dirty sex pictures from their print, having the back-up of other feminist institutions across England and the UK. This will be the next thing I bring up at my VAW WILPF meeting, but I will start to look into that before the turn of the New Year.

Voices of African Women

Wednesday 5^th November 2008
House of Commons, London

Written by Talyn Rahman

UK WILPF did an amazing job organising this event to get the voices of African women in conflict heard in parliament. Big applause having succeeded in booking every seat in the room - some even had to stand, which in itself describes how popular the event was.

Ten grassroots African women campaigner, who travelled from Malawi, Sudan, Namibia, Zimbabwe, DR of Congo and Nigeria highlighted their human struggle in surviving under conflict conditions, injustice and revolt. This was a good seminar in highlighting how the atrocities in Africa is impacting on civilians and how these situations came about. There was a lot of focus on businesses, government on all levels and African people in and out of the continent.

I learnt many things from this seminar, much of it emotional and moving in nature. African women made great emphasis on eradicating arms trade, which fuels war and escalate violence and how large corporations seem to have more power and authority with the governing of resources than their own government. One of the speakers made it quite clear how oil companies like Shell, Cheron, Texaco seem to have overshadowed the government, while the government take a back seat or focus energy on ethical cleansing like that of Robert Mugabe. This understanding has made me even more determined to look into Corporate Social Responsibility and the chaos that MNE seem to cause in host countries where they set their business up in.

Here are some questions they were asking that grabbed my attention:
*What can the Commonwealth and EU do with MNEs who have influence in Africa?
> Ask for certification of resources going out of the country and have regulations/ monitoring schemes so that resources that are exported can be traced to its final destination
> African government should have tighter control over MNE trading with rebels and direct some benefits toward host countries rather than home countries
*Who is the International Community and what are they REALLY doing?
According to the women, Africa has a very vague idea on who or what the international community is, agreeing that entity like the UN are not doing enough to prevent war from breaking out, just as we had witnessed in recent news (a war broke out not far from UN offices in the Congo). They also asked who these wars are benefiting because it isn't the people. War equals to high death toll, murder, genocide, rape, and sexual violence, of course among other things. Women and children suffer the most as victims of gross human rights. Women are continually raped, killed, abused, tortured and children used as soldiers or a tool for diplomacy (in other words, killed).
So - are men really benefiting from these war?

The issue in Africa has become complex due to human greed, insolent behaviour and desire for wealth. Governments across the globe need to work together to cease arms trade so that no more victims are innocently killed deliberately or in cross-fire. People need to be re-educated, government need tougher regulations and punishment for breaking the law (please, no more talk of death, yeah!), and need better communication with MNEs who are using their resources.

It is a huge topic and not something that can be solved or learned overnight. But considering I have no knowledge of African politics, this was a good insight to what has been going on - 10 different accounts of what is happening in each of their country, which I believe is what made this seminar a success. Women felt empowered and men wanted to join us in wanting to spread the word about their experiences.

Well done Marie-Claire Faray for your excellent facilitating and translating. It was admirable, continue all your good work sister. We're all behind you!!!!

Violence Against Women Workshop

Saturday 21st June, 2008

Written by Talyn Rahman

I've had an interest in human trafficking not so long ago and it intrigued me to attend WILPF's Violence Against Women's workshop on Saturday 21st June 2008.

Human trafficking leads to prostitution, rape, violence, murder etc. Surprisingly and unfortunately, an estimated 80,000 women (and men) are involved in prostitution in the UK alone, 5000 of them are young people. The aim for this workshop was to clarify misconceptions about violence against women, what this term actually means , different forms of violence, causes and consequences and how power structures needed sustaining. Women need to be taught to empower themselves so these atrocities would lower in numbers. If women knew they indeed had rights, many would be able to defend themselves at home from domestic violence, or being manipulated into the promise of work abroad when all the while are in debt to 'pimps'.

The workshop was an incredible source of information and statistics, and I walked away from it thinking of how women's rights isn't well and truly in today's society, not when you think of all the things that are happening in women right in front of your door.

Since this workshop, I have become an honourary member of WILPF's 'Violence Against Women' working group, thus researching into areas of interest, liasing with other organisations like 'Eaves' and 'The Poppy Project' to see how we can implement and put forward legislation to the parliament in strengthening women's rights in this country and how sex trafficking and prostitution can diminish out of our society.