Learn about the causes we are fighting for and how you can get involved.

Narrow your search or read everything.

I want to learn about
Choose format
Reset filter
Equality Impact Assessment: An Underrated Tool for Lasting Feminist Change!
Equality Impact Assessment: An Underrated Tool for Lasting Feminist Change!

Many of the women we have spoken to feel frustrated with decision makers who seem blind to the female perspective or the impact their work has on women.

Behind our laws, practice and provision, workplace policies or budget cuts, there’s often an invisible bias ‒ one that disproportionately adversely affects women.

And the impact is felt even harder by those at the intersections of race, disability, class and migration status. Too often the needs of women with disabilities, ethnic minority and migrant women, lesbians and women living in poverty are ignored, their voices sidelined, and their struggles compounded by policies that never considered them in the first place.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINSex-Based Rights, Disability, Class Politics
Kakuma Update
Kakuma Update

When we started work in Kakuma in 2020, refugees were provided with rice, soya beans, maize and oil; now they are given sogrum, a product most often used as animal feed in the UK.

After a sleepless night, and with the local UNHCR clinic refusing to help lesbian families, she sadly died the next morning.

StatementsMICHELLE KERWINLesbian Rights, Violence Against Women
FiLiA’s view on the planned cuts to disability benefits
FiLiA’s view on the planned cuts to disability benefits

Then once they've grown into women, the medical model dismisses women as exaggerating pain ‒ simply walking hysterical hormone sacks fainting at the slightest breeze. 

Maybe they grow up and find someone to love and support them? But abuse and exploitation of disabled women figures show they are more vulnerable and have fewer services available for them. There are less shelters; they are less able to just quickly jump on a free train and escape and risk losing the services and medication they need. 

BlogMICHELLE KERWINClass Politics, Disability, EcoFeminism
Marching for Our Sisters - Million Women Rise
Marching for Our Sisters - Million Women Rise

As FiLiA volunteers, our group consisted of women from different parts of the world. Some of us grew up believing that sex-based violence was mainly an African issue, shaped by the struggles in our home countries. The UK, after all, prides itself on human rights and women’s rights. But as we stood among thousands of women, each carrying their own stories of pain and survival, we realised a harsh truth: violence against women knows no borders.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINSex-Based Rights, Class Politics, Anti-racism, Global
Fighting for the Forgotten Women in the UK's Asylum System: Accelerate Action Because They Cannot Wait Any Longer
Fighting for the Forgotten Women in the UK's Asylum System: Accelerate Action Because They Cannot Wait Any Longer

One of the most terrifying experiences women face is the Home Office Reporting System. For years, I had to report in person every single week, knowing that, at any moment, I could be detained.

The impact on mental health is devastating. The days before reporting are filled with anxiety, not knowing if you will come back, not knowing if that would be your day to disappear into detention.

The fear is relentless. Reporting is framed as a welfare check, but we must call it what it truly is: state-sanctioned psychological warfare. These women already live under strict controls, in National Asylum Support Service accommodation, barely surviving on limited financial support. The Home Office knows exactly where they are. So why force them to report? To keep them in fear.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINGlobal, Anti-racism, Sex-Based Rights, Lesbian Rights
FiLiA’s statement on the Bertin Review and the Government response to it
FiLiA’s statement on the Bertin Review and the Government response to it

FiLiA's detailed response to the Bertin Review published last week, in which we drew on the experiences shared by Women with direct experience of the industry, and we continue to push for them to be consulted in any further reviews. We welcome the Review and its recommendations and are reassured to see the Government recognise the urgent need to tackle the harms of pornography. However, we are clear there is no such thing as ‘safe’ pornography and more needs to be done to protect and support women and girls who are harmed by pornography.

StatementsMICHELLE KERWINViolence Against Women, Sexual Exploitation Industries
International Women's Day 2025 House of Commons Debate Briefing
International Women's Day 2025 House of Commons Debate Briefing

The House of Commons held a general debate for International Women's Day on Thursday 6th March 2025. This briefing, sent to MPs to participate in the debate, introduces FiLiA’s new campaign to urge the Government to better recognise and consider women in their policy making, including by consulting with a variety of women's organisations for all policy affecting the public, and consistently producing thorough Equality Impact Assessments.

BriefingMICHELLE KERWINSex-Based Rights
Letter to Chief Constable Gavin Stephens Chair, National Police Chiefs’ Council 
Letter to Chief Constable Gavin Stephens Chair, National Police Chiefs’ Council 

As a national organisation working for women’s sex-based rights, we are writing to express our considerable anger and distress at the news that the National Police Chiefs’ Council is reviving the discredited guidance allowing male staff identifying as women to perform intimate searches on women. The fact that this would bring all police forces into line with the recently-declared policy of British Transport Police increases the fury among women concerned about women’s rights.

StatementsMICHELLE KERWINSex-Based Rights, Violence Against Women
U.S. Mother Sentenced to Over Three Years in Spanish Prison After Escaping Domestic Violence
U.S. Mother Sentenced to Over Three Years in Spanish Prison After Escaping Domestic Violence

PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

U.S. Mother Sentenced to Over Three Years in Spanish Prison After Escaping Domestic Violence

A U.S. mother of two has been sentenced to three years and three months in a Spanish prison after fleeing to the United States with her eldest daughter to escape domestic violence in Spain. Despite returning under the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, she now faces an unjust conviction that violates fundamental human rights and international legal agreements.

StatementsMICHELLE KERWINGlobal
Sex and Gender in Trump’s America
Sex and Gender in Trump’s America

We all know how we got here. The failure of the left to address the gender identity activism gave this extraordinary open goal to the right. It was all predictable; we predicted it. Now we’re here.

This does not absolve us from thinking critically about the harmful consequences of working with Christian Right groups, including the ADF and the Heritage Foundation, which are coalition partners in Project 2025.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINGlobal, Sex-Based Rights, Reproductive Rights, Class Politics, Violence Against Women
Kakuma Update
Kakuma Update

On 20th January, Donald Trump took office as President of the USA. Almost immediately he suspended the US refugee resettlement program as part of a series of executive orders cracking down on immigration. Many of the refugees, who had been cleared to resettle in the U.S. after fleeing war or persecution in their home countries, already had plane tickets in hand when the suspension was announced.

StatementsMICHELLE KERWINViolence Against Women, Lesbian Rights, Global
Cricket and Women's Liberation Afghanistan
Cricket and Women's Liberation Afghanistan

We urge the England Cricket Board to withdraw the England team from the forthcoming match against Afghanistan on 26th February, which is scheduled as part of the International Cricket Council Men’s Champions Trophy 2025 tournament. To go ahead with this match, while the Afghanistan government further restricts women’s rights and the ability to have any social existence, implies that the Board and the team are unconcerned about the denial of the most basic human rights for female people.

StatementsMICHELLE KERWINSex-Based Rights, Global
Ten Years of Canadian Prostitution Law: Critique and Challenges in Achieving Equality
Ten Years of Canadian Prostitution Law: Critique and Challenges in Achieving Equality

The English version is followed by the French version.

La version anglaise est suivie de la version française.

This article marks the ten-year anniversary of Canada’s prostitution law reform, Bill C-36, also known as the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. This landmark legislation was a critical step in acknowledging the harms of the prostitution system, aiming to protect women and children from sexual exploitation while reducing demand and incidence. Over the past decade, feminist groups have actively evaluated and critiqued the law’s application, identifying both its successes and areas in need of improvement. This article provides a vital opportunity to understand the ongoing efforts to combat sexual exploitation, the challenges faced in implementing laws that prioritise equality, and the importance of relentless advocacy in the fight for a society free from exploitation.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINGlobal, Sexual Exploitation Industries, Violence Against Women
What does the fall of Assad mean for Rojava and the Women's Revolution?
What does the fall of Assad mean for Rojava and the Women's Revolution?

In North-East Syria, also known as ‘Rojava’ (the Kurdish name for Western Kurdistan), the Syrian state largely withdrew after the people's uprising in 2012. The majority Kurdish population in the region took the initiative and began to establish self-administration on the basis of communes and councils and empowerment of women. From the beginning of the revolution, women organised themselves independently, set up their own communes and councils, participated in all political decisions, and implemented a co-chair-system and gender quotas in all institutions as well as women's and family laws. A women's revolution began in Rojava.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINGlobal
FiLiA Trade Union Women’s Network - Join us!
FiLiA Trade Union Women’s Network - Join us!

Women have been key to the success of the trade union, and they have reaped huge benefits from the collective successes of the wider labour movement. However, too often, the movement has let women down.

We want to change that.

Join the FiLiA Trade Union Women's Network and help us make unions work for women.

BlogMICHELLE KERWINClass Politics
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