End Violence Against Women
This week has felt like a roller coaster - what should have been major celebrations such as International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day have had running alongside them such sad and unsettling events it’s a bit hard to comprehend what the hell is going on right now in the world. The devastatingly horrific and tragic story of Sarah Everard was in all our consciousness, tapping away at our fears and collective experiences. We tried to celebrate women on Monday, I was incredibly proud that Olwyn helped host a webinar for Women for Women International and Brita Fernandez-Schmidt - but the noise from the Royals was so loud that it felt there was little space for women to discuss and talk about what is really going on out there for the rest of us.
A couple of days later there was great news that the House of Lords had passed the Centre for Women’s Justice amendments to the Domestic Abuse Bill that potentially offered new statutory defence for the survivors of domestic abuse who offend. (Not unsurprisingly the government does not support this - they think women might use being battered black and blue by their partner as a possible excuse for “getting away with it”).
You get almost fooled into thinking that equality is within our grasp but then you remember how women around the world have been disproportionately screwed by Covid. You begin to believe the false narrative that more women are in positions of power and we might be smashing though some sort of glass ceiling but then you realise that right above that glass is a roof made of lead and there’s no way we’re going to be allowed to get through that one sisters. You think we might at last be able to change the story of abuse of harassment and of powerlessness but then last night happens and you realise that while 50% of the worlds population is still murdered, raped, abused, ignored, spat at, trod on, sworn at and harassed then our world will be a very broken place.
Photo Credit Jill Mead/The Guardian