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Women First…Prostitution as Male Violence
Women First…Prostitution as Male Violence

Here at FiLiA in the Women First team, we firmly challenge the notion of prostitution as being in any way empowering. We consider it another form of male violence. As part of the Women First project, we have interviewed sex trade survivors who collectively have over 100 years’ experience of being in the sex trade. This has included street, escort, sugar daddy and brothel work. Their experiences were all different but many of the themes were similar, namely that trauma and abuse served as a gateway into the sex trade and that it takes time and specialist support to exit and recover from the sex trade.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINSexual Exploitation Industries, Violence Against Women
Review of ‘Behind The Looking Glass’ - A film by Vaishnavi Sundar
Review of ‘Behind The Looking Glass’ - A film by Vaishnavi Sundar

‘Stunning and brave!’ That is how society likes to present transition to us. For example, the media was quick to put Bruce Jenner on magazine covers after his transition, with photographs taken by the likes of Annie Leibovitz and taglines including ‘Call Me Caitlin’, before naming him as woman of the year in 2015. What the media is less interested in is how these new identities depend on others upholding them by becoming ‘props’ in the charade. Behind The Looking Glass invites the viewer to listen to the women and children whose lives are impacted by men transitioning.

MICHELLE KERWIN
Unions and the Labour Party for Women - Kiri Tunks
Unions and the Labour Party for Women - Kiri Tunks

Kiri Tunks is a veteran trade union and women's rights activist @‌kiritunks

This blog is based on a speech made by Kiri Tunks on behalf of the FiLiA Trade Union Project at a Labour Women’s Declaration fringe at the 2024 Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. In it, Kiri argues that women need to be at the head and the heart of the labour and trade union movement.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINSexual Exploitation Industries, Violence Against Women, Class Politics, Reproductive Rights
Plaid Cymru Admit Unlawfully Discriminating Against FiLiA 
Plaid Cymru Admit Unlawfully Discriminating Against FiLiA 

Naomi Cunningham, Barrister, Outer Temple Chambers said:

‘Plaid Cymru’s tight-lipped and grudging concession implies that it thinks “the law as it stands” is unsatisfactory, and it is hoping for a change of law that will enable it to discriminate on grounds of “gender-critical” belief in future. Activists are free to work towards that change if they choose, but meanwhile political parties along with public authorities, service-providers and employers must all comply with the law as it is.’

StatementsMICHELLE KERWIN
Amnesty: denying women justice, freedom, truth and dignity
Amnesty: denying women justice, freedom, truth and dignity

One wonders how the world’s largest human rights organisation, whose main claim is to ‘work to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied’ has found itself in opposition to women - some of whom have been victim to the most egregious suppression of their rights and dignity - discussing what has happened to them and why.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINSexual Exploitation Industries, Violence Against Women, Sex-Based Rights
Psychosis and Sisterhood - National Schizophrenia Awareness Day
Psychosis and Sisterhood - National Schizophrenia Awareness Day

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness involving psychosis (loss of contact with reality), with many myths associated. Women experience it differently to men, and face specific difficulties associated with their experiences.

It's vital that the needs of Women with schizophrenia are considered, particularly around MVAWG. Sisterhood with Women affected by serious mental illnesses, although sometimes difficult, is desperately important.

MICHELLE KERWINViolence Against Women, Disability
Unions for Women by Kiri Tunks
Unions for Women by Kiri Tunks

Women are rightly critical of trade unions. Sexism and misogyny abounds and Women raising concerns about their sex-based rights have been, at best, ignored and at worst vilified and attacked. Many Women now feel that unions are working in opposition to our rights. But trade unions remain a powerful force within UK society and Women make up the majority of the membership. Can we make the union movement work for us?

MICHELLE KERWINSex-Based Rights, Class Politics
Supporting Children to Understand Porn-Influenced Sexual Abuse
Supporting Children to Understand Porn-Influenced Sexual Abuse

Porn and Porn-influenced culture is shaping the way children construct sexual behaviour and relationships. In this blog I outline a number of the harms of pornography and how teachers - as well as parents/carers and other professionals who work with children - can have clear and factual conversations with children about the harms of porn-influenced sexual abuse.

BlogDittany RoseSexual Exploitation Industries, Violence Against Women
Reflections on the 4th World Congress for the Abolition of Prostitution
Reflections on the 4th World Congress for the Abolition of Prostitution

This piece combines the reflections of FiLiA’s Anti-Prostitution Lead Luba Fein and FiLiA’s Spokeswoman Raquel Rosario Sánchez after participating in the 4 th World Congress to Abolish Prostitution. The Congress was organised by CAP International, Canadian-based organisation La Cles, Breaking Free, the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter and the EVA Centre. At the end of the Congress, the organisations launched the Montreal’s Call for the Abolition of Prostitution, which is signed by more than 60 organisations.

BlogDittany RoseClass Politics, Global, Sexual Exploitation Industries, Violence Against Women
The first female president of Mexico
The first female president of Mexico

Mexican women and men went to their polling stations, the overwhelming majority to vote for a woman to be the next President of Mexico. A woman in charge of a State, which has miserably failed, so far, to guarantee a dignified life for women. Despite national laws, and international treaties, in Mexico women are not free from violence. Every day, the lives of over 64.5 million women in this country are plagued by femicide, and all kinds of violence: sexual, political, economic, reproductive, institutional, symbolic and structural.

 

BlogDittany RoseGlobal, Class Politics
For Girls Like Us
For Girls Like Us

Gemma Aitchison is founder of YES Matters UK that supports children and young people who have suffered sexual abuse and exploitation. She also campaigns and works to prevent VAWG and improve victim rehabilitation including the compulsory PSHE curriculum and CSE Prevention Policy. She says ‘My mother died on Wednesday. As a survivor of CSEA and given that over 80% of perpetrators of CSEA are family members and family friends I figured my complex struggles around this are not unique. One that women who are survivors will relate to. It's a poem about that.’

BlogDittany Rose
Interview with Yasmin Morais, founder of project Vulva Negra
Interview with Yasmin Morais, founder of project Vulva Negra

Yasmin Morais is the founder of Vulva Negra, the first materialist feminist project ‘born from the desire to unite the materialist perspective of radical feminism with the narratives of black theorists and the lived experience of black Brazilian and Afro-Latin women.’ Yasmin travels around Brazil and the world with her itinerant lectures at the ‘Encontro Feminista Vulva Negra’ (Vulva Negra Feminist Meeting).

In this interview, Andreia Nobre talks to Yasmin Morais about the many pressing issues currently affecting Brazilian women, including femicide, domestic violence and the plight of black and brown women in a Latin American country, despite the country having been under a leftist government since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected for office in 2022 for the third time.

BlogDittany RoseSex-Based Rights, Class Politics, Violence Against Women
KURDISH WOMEN LEAD THE REVOLUTION
KURDISH WOMEN LEAD THE REVOLUTION

Lisa-Marie (FiLiA CEO) was introduced to the issue of the Kurdish struggle by Rahila Gupta. FiLiA recognised the potential of the Kurdish women's struggle to inform our understanding of the potential for liberation and has platformed Kurdish women's voices at conference, and in our blogs and podcasts, as well as attending in-person solidarity meetings. For this contribution, Rahila Gupta, author and activist, was invited to shape an interview with Kongra Star, the women's umbrella group leading the women's revolution in Rojava, North and East Syria. Kongra Star did what they do so well ‒ they used a collaborative approach and invited contributions from many women's groups in the region. The result is an extraordinary piece and one that we are very pleased to share with you on International Women's Day. 

BlogDittany RoseEcoFeminism, Global
RE-IMAGINE BRIGHTON AND HOVE
RE-IMAGINE BRIGHTON AND HOVE

On 29th January 2024 Lisa-Marie Taylor, CEO of FiLiA, attended an event organised by the local council and billed as one of a series, with the aim of ‘hearing your ideas’ to ‘create the positive change you would like to see’ in Brighton & Hove. What she witnessed during the course of the two-hour workshop left her shocked; silencing, intimidation and a lack of willingness to engage on what is one of the key topics within the VAWG sector currently.

StatementsDittany RoseViolence Against Women
Women Learning Manual Skills
Women Learning Manual Skills

On UN International Day of Education, Rose Rickford shares what she has learnt from researching women's skills sharing projects of 1970s-90s Britain. Across the world, women are still systematically excluded from learning and using a whole range of manual skills. Even in countries with relatively high levels of educational equity, vocational training is still almost entirely sex-segregated. While young women learn care and beauty skills, young men learn construction and manufacturing skills. When it comes to getting work, jobs in skills that men learn are much better paid, so this is an important issue for women's equality. Part of the solution is of course to pay higher wages for the skills that women train in. But another part is to increase women’s participation in skills they are currently excluded from. In the 1970s-90s, women set up their own courses and projects to teach one another these skills. For those who took part, it was a doorway to a world they were previously locked out from.

BlogDittany RoseClass Politics
Working women in struggle
Working women in struggle

This article highlights the importance of trade unions to Women throughout history up to the present day. The right to strike is being repressed by regressive legislation called the Minimum Service Levels bill and women need to organise within their unions to fight back

BlogDittany RoseClass Politics, Global