Sharon Aitchison, Margaret Lynch and Dawn Fyfe, three Scottish sisters on the frontline of preserving the knowledge and expertise of the Specialist Women’s sector in Scotland speak to FiLiA trustee, Sally Jackson, after another service lost its contract to a generic provider.

It’s a frank, passionate and honest account of the situation, the causes and what we can all do about it. They discuss the history of the movement in Scotland, the importance of women-led services for women only and what survivors want and need from the services they access.

Listen here (transcript below):

Find out how you can support them and keep our services #WomenOnly

Sharon Aitchison - Monklands Women’s Aid

Margaret Lynch - North Lanarkshire Women’s Aid

Dawn Fyfe - Frontline Feminists

Transcript:

Sally Jackson from FiLiA in conversation with Sharon Aitchison, Margaret Lynch and Dawn Fyfe,

Sally: I'm really excited to actually be doing a Scottish edition of the FiLiA podcast today. It's Sally Jackson here in one of the FiLiA volunteers. I'm really pleased to be joined today by Sharon Aitchison from Monklands Women's Aid, Margaret Lynch from North Lanarkshire and Dawn Fyfe from Frontline Feminists, to find out what the picture is like for our Scottish sisters and some of the battles that they're facing.

It’s great to have some time with you. And perhaps if we could just sort of perhaps go through and talk a little bit about the services that you offer, maybe Sharon if we could start with you and just tell us a little bit about your service, the different services that are offered, how long it's been about and what's available from your organisation.

Sharon: We have been in an existence in many guises for I think on record it's about 40 years, but there were many women offering these services in an informal manner individually and in group settings decades before that.

We’re a grassroots organisation as a small organisation, we focus on the needs of the people that we serve.

We have had to, I suppose, adapt and respond not only to the changing landscape but also that we are in terms of policy context, where we sit for funding and doing that, what we've had to do is we've really had to professionalise the whole business element, you know, the backdrop of it so that we can engage with funding processes. And satisfying all of the people that we serve which is first and foremost, but also the officials who monitor the services.

So for Women’s Aid, for all the groups, what's important in Scotland to understand is all the affiliated groups in Scotland are autonomous.

So we had affiliated to Scottish Women’s Aid. We work to a national service standard, which is a basis, a minimum threshold, as a starting point, a spring board of a level of professionalism that people can expect when they come to us. And we are a feminist organisation, we offer a real integrated service, we work hard to find funding for children's services and women's services, and try to balance them in the recognition that you can't support a woman without supporting the children. If she has children, of course. And valuing women who don't have children, just as much as women who do have children.

We are our own entities as well and being recognised and respected for that, but equally you can't support the child without supporting the non-offending parent, which is generally the woman and there’s figures banded about. Some people say it's 95% of victim survivors, who identify as women and some say the figures relating to men victim survivors is rising.

What I'll say to that is as a feminist organisation, what we are constantly accused of or a suspicion roundabout is about beliefs that women's needs are greater than men’s needs. That's not what this is about. Violence against women and girls’ movement has been lost somewhat in the broader equality agenda.

And we abhor any form of violence regardless of who it is. Our core work is with women and children and young people. And I think sometimes that can be lost. It can be lost in the political rhetoric that is sort of bandied about out there. It's a convenient deflection almost and it's, unfortunately it's reflected in political spin. and all you’re really bothered about is offering those frontline grassroots services, that we know works when services are run by women and designed by women.

We have a Board, we had to move to hierarchal structure. In the past and the majority of women's organisations with collectives.

So there was that recognition of power imbalance within hierarchical structures and need for accountability across the board and shared. But as things progress, we were sort of, the word is forced, otherwise strongly encouraged, but sometimes you just have to say it, and for us to be able to enter into funding applications that was the model that was recognised and that’s what we had to do it.

Monklands Women’s Aid sits with a Board and that Board, the majority of that Board members have lived experience. And that's crucially important because, the person's voice is at real risk of being lost in this. And that’s as a group we have a shared experience. It doesn't mean the experience is the same.

We know as women, as people it definitely impacts on us definitely dependent on our personality traits or our financial resource, our personal agency and, our capacity, all these things.

So what we do, our aim is to: when a person walks through the door, is to envelop the individual unique needs with our service.

Now that can be very difficult to do when you are funded for different tasks. And I understand from a distant political view, that can be difficult to understand. We fought for a long, long time about, it should be about a models and outcomes model, so it should be about the individual person not about, only until very recently because that was the only thing or the nearest thing we fitted into, and it was really damaging to the service so what we would do is we had to diversify funding. So our funding, as it stands, just now at this point in time that that will change because of recent decisions.

The Scottish government, through the Violence Against Women And Girls Fund, fund our Women's Advocate service, and our children's service, and the local authority funding, which we've had historically, the funding mechanisms has changed over time and space. But for goodness, 20 or 30 years has funded what was a small proportion of a Women’s service at that time.

And that's naturally grown and that, to be clear, it’ll be interesting to hear the other participants here as well, but that is no fat to be cut in services, you know, in terms of this contract that was lost, that was based on £125,000 that we received in that fund.

There was a deficit in that. All of that went to staff funding. There was no money for management costs. There was no money, it shifted and changed over space and time as well on what that was originally restricted to spend on.

A prime example of that would be with the introduction of pensions. Women's Aid workers generally have not unless -  and it all depends on your relationship and how the organisations are supported within the local authority. So all groups are supported differently. They all have different funding sort of backdrops. but when the pensions came in as our legal duty, we had to find that money externally. The funding didn’t go up to it. So that's just an example of how we have to respond to that.

So, just to sort of wrap up my part. A small grassroots organisation who was effectively, there's 12 women who work together, but it's eleven full time posts because of these decisions and choices that were made, we have ended up with losing and 70% of our women’s service.

We are blessed actually and lucky that we still have a Scottish Government funding and we still have small pockets of ad hoc funding. We need to be able to focus on a proven, established model for making a positive difference for women and children. We don't want to be on this competitive monopolistic arena with national organisations who have procurement departments, we are just focused on the work.

We're not interested in the power element of that we’re interested in institutional advocacy on behalf of the women and children in terms of that power, but we will always be on the back foot by sheer nature of being a grassroots organisation and that's a difficult one because it's, it's really difficult to listen to how it’s been released or announced in the media.

And obviously we struggle through the process which is very difficult for me to get any sort of a detail at all. Counter narratives create confusion and what it does on the ground for the people in our services, it increases and exacerbates the anxiety that they're experiencing.

Our figures went through the roof which other a women's organisation will attest to, especially through the pandemic. We have to have something to be able to tell them that legally we have to be very careful, but Monklands Women’s Aid will survive in some guise. And we are blessed that we have the support of the women in our communities and across the board.

We’re chipping away here but there’s a balance between, you know, I suppose to being subservient and trying to sort it out quietly.  but also that's why we're in this position because you know, this is a woman's right, a child’s right to be safe and to live free of fear. So it's just trying to achieve that balance, which is not easy.

Sally: It's not easy at all. And relentlessly ongoing as well. It's a similar battle. we've been fighting and trying to persuade funders for far too many years. But, thanks Sharon. Thanks for sort of explaining a bit about your service.

Margaret, could I come to you and ask about North Lanarkshire and what sort of services are available, what the service looks like for women in that area?

Margaret: Well, we don't provide any services at all. We are a campaign group, and we were formed because the 3 Women’s Aid groups saw the local authority funding being removed them.

We are a very different group and we all came to the table for different reasons, most of the women in the group have had some prior involvement with Women's Aid, either as women who had benefited from their services. In my case I was involved in the early 80s setting things up.

I just knew that Women's Aid here is a trusted service. when women are in a really difficult situation, when their frightened for themselves and the same for the children, making that first phone call and making that first step, it's enormous. It's absolutely enormous.

And you need to know that the women you are going to, that you can trust them. And pretty much over the last 40 years. I would see every woman in North Lanarkshire. If she hasn’t received help herself, will know a woman who has. whether it's a daughter, a sister, her mother or a friend, we all knew somebody that has passed through the portals of a refuge or who's had the one-to-one counselling support that Sharon was talking about it.

And this is a really, really precious service. Particularly precious to the women who are still in the refuges and others, and they're still receiving support through Women’s Aid. And I just can't tell you the amount of anxiety and worry and fear and concern that that these women are living with, as if they haven’t had enough stress already. And this is piled on top of them.

That was my main purpose for coming to the table. I am a feminist and I do have an understanding of why this decision was made, you know, and I think that what's happening in North Lanarkshire is a microcosm of what's happening, not just across Scotland, across the UK it's happening in Canada, Australia, America, you know.

I suppose my disappointment as an older feminist is that a lot of the organisations that I was involved in setting up. I don’t know what they've done it's almost as if they have unplugged their brains when they're thinking about this.  The reality is you can't or simultaneously have a gender neutral and a feminist approach to anything.

Power in our society is not gender neutral, safety in our society is not gender neutral.  That's not to say that men, of course there are men who are on receiving it. And the fact that you have to take up time explaining this is part of what you have to do to prove you’re not a bad horrible person. I’m not a bad horrible person. I don’t want anybody to suffer. But when 94% or 95% of the victims of domestic violence are women, that's not accidental.

That's because of cultural and structural powers and systems that operate that ensure that women, particularly when they're having children and pregnant or rearing and particularly young children that they are much more powerless and much more vulnerable at that point in life because they're not economically independent, lots of other reasons, cultural reasons mainly, and that is not true of men because of biology are not similarly restricted and are not similarly penalised and are therefore not similarly vulnerable.

That’s not to say men who are affected by domestic violence don’t deserve compassion and support. Of course. You cannot have a gender neutral approach to something that does not equally impact or effect both sexes.

Gender is a social construct it’s sex we’re talking about men and women and it's women's biology that puts them into this state of vulnerability. That’s the kind of broader thinking that I'm doing. It’s not why I came to the defence of Women's Aid. Coming to the defence of Women's Aid in North Lanarkshire is phoning the fire brigade, that’s an emergency.

We have to act really urgently to try and build a coalition of support and we'll take support from wherever we can get it to apply pressure on the local authority, to make sure that the money that Women’s Aid needs is restored to them, because although Sharon says the service will survive. Thanks be to God that it will.

There's a problem here, we’re actually rolling back time about 40 years. I remember the days when all we had was a refuge where we didn't have any money for support workers. We didn't have money to spend time sorting things like women’s benefits, helping them navigate a really complicated benefits system, helping them and supporting them through getting the kids moved from one school and to another school, helping them emotionally find that balance after what is a horrific experience that has really deep seated, psychological impacts on women.

Sometimes it was about I mean, accompanying women to the shops for the first time, because she was too frightened to go on her own. All of that stuff is what goes by the board and what we are starting to see is a collapsing down of the service to the point where if we're not careful, we'll wake up one day and it will be gone, and I can tell you through bitter experience that back in the days when we were doing little beyond refuge support and an awful lot of women were forced back home.

That’s the big concern that I’ve got. The other concern I've got is SACRO and I don't have a beef with SACRO. They’re an okay organisation, they’re okay. But their whole core business is dealing with offenders, and I don't really understand why women who are victims should be, you know, violence against women is stigmatised enough without further stigmatising women, by making them go to organisations who deal with offenders.

I know that that's probably controversial and feels really harsh, but that's how women will see it, you know?

But also, I'm really unusual. The vast majority of women here have never heard of SACRO and don’t know who they are. Every woman here knows what Women’s Aid is. So from my point of view, the first fight is ‘let’s put the fire out’ and keep the roof there. but I think that needs to be a broader awakening I think feminists in Scotland have to start speaking up and speaking out. frankly. Scottish Women’s Aid needs to be told that they are partially responsible for creating a situation that’s ended up with groups being defunded because they've bought into this gender nonsense. The gender neutral rather than a feminist approach, but what's worse is that they’re calling it a feminist approach, when it isn’t.

You don’t want to be washing your dirty linen in public, you don't want to be saying bad things about other feminists and other women because that's not what we do, but we've always been really collaborative. The Scottish government who basically say to organisations ‘if you don’t accept this trans gender ideology that trans women are women, when we all they’re not, then you wouldn't get funding, you know’?

So there's that. But actually the reality is if we all speak out together, this stuff would stop overnight because the vast majority of the population don’t know it’s happening, they don't know what's really going on. And they would be horrified. You know, from my point of view as a feminist, I think I feel a moral obligation to speak out because I know that women in Contonvale Prison in Scotland have been sexually assaulted because the Scottish Prison Service has housed a man, who self identifies as a woman conveniently after he was nicked, who then went on to sexually assault a woman who was made to share a cell with him. And that woman herself, and most of the women in there, are there because they have suffered serious sexual abuse and violence at the hands of partners and others.

We’ve got Women’s Aid in North Lanarkshire losing their funding and I think the most ludicrous thing of all is that the week before last, I think it was, the Scottish parliament passed a Hate Crimes Bill but omitted misogyny and protects cross-dressers but not real women.

These things are all, actually part of the same thing and we need to start sorting it out. There is a generational gap here. Younger women don’t seem to accept these things but I’m done being quiet about it all.

Sally: Thank you, Margaret. I think you've raised so many really great points and it struck me, as I mentioned earlier, a couple of weeks ago, we were talking to Rise Violence Against Women and Girls services right down on the south coast in Brighton. Today, I'm speaking with you up in Scotland, facing very, very similar issues where the same kind of reasoning behind it with this kind of gender neutral stance that commissioners are taking, even though the commissioning guidance very clearly says about services for women, so it's not as if the information isn't there.

Dawn, in light of all this, Frontline Feminists is quite a new organisation. Can you tell me a little bit about it?

 How it came about and what you're hoping to be able to do?

Dawn:  Sure. Thanks very much Sally, for the inviting us on because we are fairly young so it's nice to be here. I wanted to thank Sharon and Margaret as well.

I think that we have a situation just now where in Scotland, I think the difference between Scotland and England and Wales and Northern Ireland, to some extent, as well as there's a political discussions going on separate from what's happening with a feminist analysis of violence against women.

And that's sometimes blocking for any discussion that we can have, we really want to move away, not necessarily from the debate about the constitution, but allow other issues to be raised as well. And I think it's really important that we're having this discussion. And I don't think it's shocking that it's women that are the first to really feel the bite from this.

And I think that's the bit that’s missing, in particular for women without resources and options. That's why with their experiencing this first we would see what's happening as definitely part of the wider political movement that's going on.

We're focused on women's services absolutely as Frontline Feminist Scotland, because we recognise that women will be the first to experience this.

We’re 5 founders who came together to look at, what we may want to do is to take forward and that was going to be a long-term project. So what we were going to do was we wanted to create baseline like red lines. So we're not going to any farther than this. 

The first of our demands are to protect and maintain women’s rights to specialist services and spaces, specifically single sex provisions that support recovery and ensure protection from male violence and abuse.

And it's no mistake that that's the first one because we recognised what was happening. All of the founders have been involved or are involved in front line services in some form with violence against women, and some of them have experienced the services in their own personal lives as well.

So it was very much coming from a backbone of both lived experience and also experience of providing services for women and children.

One of the things that we recognised is that the women's movement in Scotland was highly successful. In 1973 or something, it was the first Women’s Aid group.

And at that point it was a collective. So it was a very small organisation and recognised the impact of the hierarchies, things like that. Then about 2000 the Scottish Government approached Scottish Women’s Aid and asked them to do a consultation on structure because they were looking for access to Women’s Aid in Scotland, the actual local groups and they wanted answers quickly. So they asked to have a consultation. At the time, some of us who worked there recognised that this had major implications. Unfortunately, that’s been born out. So up until that point, 37 groups had been created, providing space and support for women and children.

And since then I'm not aware of any group that's been created or any additional spaces unless it's within local authority provision. So once that consultation took place, the hierarchy kicked in.

The challenge for Women's Aid at that point was that Scottish Women’s Aid was a national office. It wasn't the head office. Now we’re in a situation where, the groups were in charge of Women’s Aid, not the other way round. And we've now ended up in this situation where the Scottish Government appear to think that Scottish Women’s Aid is the voice of domestic abuse in Scotland, and sometimes I have to say, confuse it with other forms of violence, as well, with child sexual abuse, prostitution that Scottish Women’s Aid can be consulted on. They've definitely got an input to make and there's no debating that. However, that has got to be guided by the local groups.

It’s really concerning and telling that now, since about 2003, the breakdown of collective working and the introduction of a hierarchy, we’re now seeing the local groups having less control over Scottish Women’s Aid.

And also that the group are more individualised and more at risk from local authority decision making, especially considering that funding has gradually moved towards discretionary and the ring-fenced funding has been taken away. It’s so vital that core services receive ring-fenced for their core provision.

So that was the idea behind that. What happened then was our intention was to then open up to other feminists in Scotland, because we were thinking we would have the red lines and we wouldn't get into the debates about what was this and what was that. We had the red lines and those would grow and then North Lanarkshire we were so gobsmacked and I don't even know why because we knew it was coming it was why we created Front Line Feminists Scotland, but I think the speed of it on the back of Rise as well. I have to say particularly at a point at pandemic.

In my work and we are involved in social recovery discussions and strategic discussions. And one of the challenges is very little research of women's experience of this pandemic. Very little research of the reality around women's lives.

 We really wanted to start to think about how do we put women back on the political agenda? How do we ensure that women are being heard, and that not only they are receiving the services that they deserve, but also that we have a good analysis of how services are provided?

Women’s Aid has provided services in this country with different structures for a long period of time. And it works. The only thing that's wrong with Women's Aid at this point is that there's not enough spaces and women and children, sometimes get turned away. That is an appalling situation because when it works it works and being one of the ones that used that as a child, as a young person, I know it works.

So we know this system works. Scottish Women’s Aid came out in the defence of the services in North Lanarkshire and to say that, that it does work and it's appalling. So how we got to this position is a real question, but we do think that what's happened is that in Scotland the women's movement, we fought.

Margaret is a hundred percent right. And Monklands began with women taking other women into their homes as many Women’s Aid did, and we’re standing on the backs of survivors here. It was the survivors that created the services. And I think what happened was for many of us who then entered the services, it’s great honour to work with feminism, it’s fantastic. We get to do it every day, you're able to maintain a lifestyle. We’re very, very lucky.

For some feminist in that movement to then start to dilute that approach and forget what survivors said, is absolutely appalling and frankly, Feminist Scotland are committed to put that back on the agenda.

What I think is happening now is a re-politicisation and it's taken time because the feminists who work in the services were terrified that the women's support would be taken away because it was so linked to our funding. And now we've got to a stage that we really can't stay silent anymore.

What Frontline Feminist Scotland really want to do is provide a space where it doesn’t have to be individual services, they can come to us we can be the voice that it's a collective response that it doesn't put people's funding at risk. And we're also looking at can you have a safe space for feminists to come together to discuss what policy and strategies are actually a about in a safe space. So that we can analyse and think about what legislation's coming out, what policies, and strategies are happening and advise each other on what's the best approach and to take that forward on behalf of women.

At the moment, representation, I think struggled both from an understanding of the structures of the women's movement, and also from the fears that the individual services of losing protection for women, who let’s face it are at risk of being murdered. They're putting in all these structures round about. The multi-agency resource and things of that.

They’re putting in all of these things that are supposed to recognise the danger that is inherent from men and at the same thing, they've taking away the services that are meant to help women recover. It makes no sense whatsoever.

So, what we decided, when North Lanarkshire happened, we just launched. We thought there's no point now it's done. So we launched and invited women and feminists, it has to be feminists, we're very clear on that, to come together with other feminists to have this discussion. The hate crime legislation. Never has a piece of legislation highlighted the situation in Scotland as that piece of legislation.

We’re holding an event on the 14th of April to discuss that and I think what the hate crime legislation highlights is that this is much wider than women, but again, it's women that are going to be affected first.

So we want to bring feminists together to have that discussion, but we also want to reach out to other groups who have also been affected by some of these decision-making. And we have Jeanette Findley from Fans Against Criminalisation for the experience of the Offensive Behaviour Act. And we've got her coming to talk at that as well, which is fantastic because I think when you look at the line from the Offensive Behaviour Act legislation its clear what's going on here.

 And I think that's the same for things like, when you look at: As for services we originally changed our equality policies. We were asked, no told, asked, to change our equalities policy to be inclusive for the trans community, which is actually fine.

And then they introduced the Kite Mark, and the Kite Mark became more confusing and what that was meant to be was that you would show that your service was completely inclusive to the LGBT community. I believe that wasn't focused on the LGB community because they already the access the services, but it was very much the trans community, which again is fine. I have to say as someone who's managing it, we did get some training for it but it just didn't support what we were doing and then we went into the GRA so you had services with policy change, then approach change, and then the GRA and then introduced self-ID, which was where feminists then start to say, well, hold on a minute, what's going on here?

Now we’ve got the hate crime legislation. So you start to see a pattern of political movement within that. And again, women be in the very centre because of our unequal status.

The other thing I wanted to say was working class woman or women with very few resources and options are at the centre of this discussion. And we're seeing a lot of people and political movements where you would expect them to maybe have a bit more understanding and who are missing the point.

With the reduction of these services you are taking the opportunity for protection and recovery away from women who have few resources and options. And the majority of those are working class. And really, we need to seriously, seriously think about this.

 And I think as well that, someone raised it as a generational issue. And yes, I think that there’s some dilemma for young women as there is for other groups.

But I think that when you're in a position where you have options, if you're a young woman and you're lucky enough that your parents will be supportive and you've got that confidence and their support, sometimes it's difficult to see why services like Women’s Aid are so important.

So in Frontline Feminist Scotland we are looking to do a kind of mentoring project that's not about the biggies teaching the wees, but it's about how do we exchange our experiences and that understanding because young women have got a lot to bring to this discussion and we want some brutal honesty. We want to really recognise what's going on here.

And I'm absolutely fed up of listening to rhetoric that has absolutely no idea what women are actually experiencing.  We have to start using a language that exposes what's going on here because the reduction in these services means women and children are at risk of murder, long-term torture and murder and we have to take that into account as a society. And I really hope these discussions at FiLiA will take that forward and any contribution that we can make. We’re very conscious of people's difficult position. So we really don't want to over impose ourselves but anything that we can do at all, please get in touch and we are happy to do that and happy to affiliate with campaigns that are protecting women's services.

Sally: That's fabulous. Thank you, Dawn. And it kind of strikes me and I think Margaret said it earlier as well, that in some ways, we are going back in time as to where we were, but there's a bit of positivity for me in what you've said, Dawn, because actually we're going back to women organising, women getting together, saying, you know, our sisters are being murdered and I'm not going to take this shit anymore and let's get together and we'll band together and together we're much stronger in being able  to deal with whatever is the issue  that we're facing.

And as you said, Dawn, that we know the most disadvantaged women will have the biggest impact from it.

And that kind of makes me think perhaps Sharon, you could answer this if I'm a woman living locally and I'm experiencing or subjected to violence at home, and I'm thinking about, could I get some support. I'm guessing that I've heard of you, I've heard of the service. I will have known women that have accessed it. They will be, as fearful as that is, and as huge a step as that is, there will be some comfort and trust in knowing what's likely to happen, if I pick up that phone or if I go to a building and say, can I have some support.

 The anonymity of some strange corporate and what might be available for me there, I'm kind of really thinking of the women that are maybe about to use your services, or that are already in your services.

What's going on for them at the moment. How are they feeling?

Sharon: As you can appreciate, everyone's feeling something slightly different. and it's trying to manage that respectfully, because we really don't know who this is going to affect. And it was really interesting listening, to the ungagged voice because I'm not sure that politicians and indirectly involved people with power understand how this policy context is landing on the ground and how it's been misinterpreted and how it's been applied. and, and the impact that that's having on real people, real everyday people. And I think that's lost, you know, this is people who breath and who bleed and who feel.

 A misconception I just want you to touch on, it's how you identify.

But whether you identify as a victim wherever you are in your process or a survivor. They are the bravest, most courageous beings because every stage of that abuse holds its own risks and one of the peaks of that risk is when you find the ability – living and enduring it holds its own courage and bravery. It's generally, if you have children, when the children are put at risk, that is something we as women. I don’t know if it’s biologically, we are conditioned into these social constructs, politically and culturally, all these things, but generally if someone else is at risk, that allows us almost, it gives us a recognition that their need is greater.  I'm really clear here as well. We hold the same value, whether we have children or not. Some women remain in the relationship their whole life, you know, they give their whole life up because of protection, whether it's their children, whether it's their grandchildren, whether it's the wider family. So it's not just about if you have children either, you have the right to live free from fear even if you don’t produce children.

So that’s important as well.

 So what is it that's different about Women’s Aid? I think what you've said, you know, I can't argue with what you've said. I think its political teeth have been lost. I think they've been blunted.

I think we have been bound and gagged by a subtle process. I'll be kind and say, it was well intended, to try take your place at the table. What has actually landed is very different. I know that there's very little parity that I experienced in any sort of multi-agency group.

We have actually become overtly compliant with multi agency processes, all in the interest of the people that we serve. You know, Dawn touched on the MARAC.  I chair the MARAC on a rotational basis. We do that because of the woman's needs. We make sure that it's central to that.

The first question I ask is what's the women's desired outcome?  And then that's what we work towards. So within, we worked with the police, we work with everybody to do that but we want parity to do that.

What’s different about Women’s Aid?   Most women have experience in one sense or another of personal or structural inequality.  Some of us have experience, some of us have a developed understanding. Some of us have a learned understanding.

 What we can guarantee is that we see the person and we see the individuality of that. We are brave enough to say we don’t have experience in certain areas.

And we have access to additional support.

We know what it looks like to live as a female, as a woman. We know those nuances, the subtle unconscious biases. We know that this is compounded exacerbated and not be immediately obvious.

I keep going back to this.

We at a responsive service. So my job is to make sure that we are able to satisfy the people who fund this which is an in and of itself it grinds against each other because we should be able to, when a person comes in, just to fully focus on them, that should be what it's about.

But as it stands it's not about that in any way, shape or form. Whether we admit to part of it or not we have colluded in some sense to that, you know, we have allowed this dilution of who we are.

And I think that came about with this corporate arena, Women’s Aid are a non-profit organisation, but we've had to develop a business model so that we were respected in a sense. I have my own views on that as well.

We have to refocus, sharpen our focus on women and children when they come to us

So we will stand beside a person. We will recognise everything that's happened to them, what they’ve come in with, also recognise their personally agency as well. And what I mean by that is: we don’t all conform or display -  there are commonalities that will cross over, but we are individual people. So, we work to the strengths of that, but we will also recognise that it’s a time for healing and Margaret touched on that when she was talking about refuge.

I can only speak from my own experience. And as I said before all Women’s Aids are funded in different ways and different funding models in place.

 But whenever women come and it's identified that she needs, she wants refuge most importantly, then we will apply for housing benefit and to pay for that. And it's subsidised, but the local authority administers that money, but that money is the woman's money that let's be clear about that, and if that woman is sanctioned in any way, but we don’t receive funding for that, but we're still in that position where we have to find a way within that structure.

So, the political spin in this, is very, very dangerous. A dangerous precedent has been set in North Lanarkshire and it's the first domino to fall. And if we don’t stop this.  

When I was speaking before that, what was Women's Aid will survive in this? There's another two groups here who are not in the same position.

In 2018/19, which is this report that the local authority keeps referring to that they commissioned to look at the broader domestic abuse service across the locale, identified gaps. And those gaps were not pertaining to Women's Aid services. Can I just highlight that? Those were broader gaps, equality gaps. Looking at that report, just taking the report as is, there were anomalies were in the report in my view. If you just take the figures, you’re talking about a thousand women according to these figures in 2018/19 where are the women going to go?

Of course, you know, we are going to have to be restructure how we do things and those women, that's only the amount of women, not the amount of times they are seen. That's not reflecting their individual needs. We provide group work with thematic work. We provide one-to-one as much as we can and still do the services.

Dawn spoke as well. You know, it's not lost on me, this is not an austerity question, this is a choice. This is a choice that for the violence against women agenda to be lost, to be drowned amidst broader equality.

It's not my role to school other organisations. My focus is on women and children and it should be.

 We need, we need to organisations who are her not frightened to bare their teeth, their feminist teeth. But we will stand strong beside any woman or child that comes into the organisation and we will do our utmost to support them in achieving peace of mind and freedom of fear.

Sally: So thank you. And thanks for the work you do.

And I'm just struck as you were talking there and again, positively, nowadays, a lot more agencies are involved in supporting women to come to safety. So whether that's police or social care, or even within education, the school system and et cetera, But the reality is that when you're looking at a woman's life and her moving forward, there were usually two experts there. There's the woman who is the expert in her life because she knows she understands what has helped to keep her safe. And what has made her feel really unsafe. And then there's the woman's advocate, the specialist who has years of knowledge embedded in feminist philosophy that understands what's going on for that woman, but also the navigation of those other systems that enables her to be able to get the social worker to understand what her needs are and what would be helpful for her children to school, et cetera, et cetera.

Sharon: And can I just say domestic abuse for us is not a commodity, you know, domestic abuse is our focus.  I don't want to say our core work but we are not diversified. We do not chase ambulances. Our focus is on the recovery of that person and the safety of that person. That is really, really important because it's almost like, that's inconvenient to the bigger, national and statutory bodies, who don’t understand that it's doubling their work. But this is not about them, that’s the difference.

Our focus is on the person and real recovery. You can make a stat, saying anything you want it to say, I'm talking about some of the activities that Margaret and the group have been involved in. I've been invited to a couple of the meetings and I have been blown away.

Make no mistake, the only expert in the room is the person, is a woman. We take her lead. We may have honed skills on how to, I suppose, capitalise and optimise on the system round about that but the only expert in her experiences is her.  With the best will in the world, women tell us that that is not experience in it.

And everybody can have a course on domestic abuse awareness. That does not, cut it for the person, it's not good enough for the women and the children that we serve. And that's no disrespect to those staff members, wherever they are situated, who that has been imposed on so that the powers that be can tick a box and apply for domestic abuse funding. And that's a really cynical view.

Sally: As we've said earlier, what we're talking about here is it's not, you know, if you get it wrong, it might inconvenience someone. if you haven't got that level of knowledge and skill and you don't understand if you get it wrong, women are dying here, literally.

Those processes when we work together, when we're working in a way that puts the women front and centre and her needs front and centre, we can work towards her getting safe and importantly long-term recovery. When that process is messed up and you have people who don't have good learning and good understanding and as you say, most importantly, aren't sitting and listening to what that woman wants, that's when these mistakes are made, this is when we get the newspaper headlines, because unfortunately the end result of that often is women and children lose their lives because of it. It's not the idea that women are being reduced to a kind of unit cost price and where's the cheapest one.

Margaret: I was really struck listening to Dawn and to Sharon about what they were talking about in relation to the professionalisation or the normalisation of Women’s Aid.

I was part of that generation when there was a really vibrant women's movement in Scotland and elsewhere. We had a women's centre in Glasgow, which was an organising base. Feminism was a really powerful, really powerful force. And there were a lot of women involved and we were doing a lot. We were running feminist nurseries, set up Women's Aid, we set up the Rape Crisis Centre.

And it was great fun, it’s a wonder we survived with our livers intact. Cheese and wine every Friday night for either Women’s Aid, the Rape Crisis Centre, or to buy bolt cutters to cut through the fencing at Greenham.

But what hurt was because there were women who would also be involved in the political parties, there were women, feminists involved in the Lib Dems, Labour, SNP and all the rest, it kind of meant that the political parties’ policies were to some degree informed by feminism. I’m not for a minute suggesting that all the time but when it came to things like domestic violence and what not, that was how we got our toe in the doors of establishing women's services.

I went abroad working overseas for Humanity Aid, I came back to Scotland to have my daughter. So I was preoccupied.

Then somewhere about 2007 I could put my head up and see what was going on in world.

And there was a man, a nice person. It was a man chairing the Board of West Lothian Women’s Aid. Glasgow Women’s Aid had a CEO. The whole collective structure that - and it was a nightmare. My favourite book at one point was called Murder in the Collective.

The collective structure did work, it brought the lived experience that Sharon was talking about and was driving the decision making around the organisation, and how it provided its services.

From our business point of view our accounts were wee bit jingly sometimes, we had an accountant. We knew what we had to take care of, you know?

So then I came into this new world in 2007 with women saying ‘a chief executive, what the fuck are Women's Aid doing with a Chief?’

It was just mad. The whole culture had totally shifted.

Then I had a think about it and how did that happen? How in God’s name had that come about? And it was because my generation of women abandoned the field.

 We abandoned the field of feminist activism as we went into local government with the national government, I went into humanitarian aid, and we were delivering services, and we lost our voice, but we definitely lost a voice. And I think we lost our way.

So when I came back to Glasgow, the Women's Centre, it was long closed. There wasn't a flowering of new programs and new projects and new ideas.

Women's Aid was still there and the rape crisis centre was still there to say and there was work being done with survivors of sexual abuse. All that was really important, but what there wasn’t was a group of women who were actively involved in the outside world who were thinking about, who were applying feminist’s brains and analysing the situation that was in front of us.

And the one thing I think is kind of the only pearl that’s emerging at the moment is that I think that’s beginning to happen again, I think women of my generation are saying – how did that happen? We need to do something now.

You talked about the age gap, you know, the kind of intergenerational stuff. I think that's class based, middle-class women in universities and the universities are the places where the thought leaders are. But they are a million miles away from where my daughter is.

My daughter is a working class girl, training to be a nurse and I was really shocked when she said to me: ‘well, I'm definitely not a feminist.’

 I was really upset, I cried – what have I done wrong? Then I calmed down and thought - I need to talk to her about this.

I said – why are you not a feminist? And she said - I'm getting nothing but contempt for these social justice warriors that need a safe space to run to if you don’t agree with what they say. I didn't really know what she was talking about either because I didn't know the whole transgender identity politics. And also this authoritarian – if you don’t agree with us we’re going to close you down and cancel you or get me sacked.

She introduced me to all of that.

So, but she wouldn't call herself a feminist because she thinks that feminists and women that run about going on about trans women are women. She thinks that, she thinks that feminists are social justice warriors. You know, that cannot have a debate with somebody that disagrees. You know, and I think that there’s a real possibility to connect with those young women who are not middle class university feminists, who actually wouldn't have a feminist’s analysis and who are fed up with people stealing causes, we need to get them back.  

Sally: Absolutely. And I'm struck as well. I'm really pleased to hear about Dawn and what you're planning with Frontline Feminists. An oppressed group has the right to meet as that group to organise against the oppression.

And one of the very clever things about diminishing the amount of women only space that's available is it prevents women from coming together and doing that work as, as Margaret said, not just directly around service provision, but in our wider society, what is it as women that, that we feel is important? What do we want to get involved in? Where can we talk about this and decide what our priorities are, and then go out into society and enact that.

And it, it sounds very much like that that's the sort of space that you wanted to get vibrant again.

Dawn: Yeah, we definitely want what Margaret is talking about.

We want to allow women to re-connect with the feminist analysis of all areas in their life. And obviously we’ve got a particular interest in violence against women.

This is about how women engage with politics.  We’ve actually got another event planned. just before the elections in May and looking at women’s right to vote because women are saying ‘I can’t vote, I don’t want to vote for them’ other women are saying – you have to vote - and it's to have that discussion. It's not to shy away and say – you need to vote – why is it we feel like this?

To get those democratic juices flowing again from a feminist perspective.

So we definitely need debate, an optimistic debate about what women can achieve and

I was reading a quote the other day about a thousand women who marched to Greenham Common in the way that men marched to war –

And I just thought such a good, cool, and analogy of what's happened here is that women are getting hit worse because our society is moving under this corporate agenda. That's looking at, as you say, unit place, rather than How does it provide services and who would require services and the reality situation, and the problem for the feminist movement has been that the women's movement, the feminists who are involved in the women's groups spend that much time mitigating the policies, getting the work done is a problem never mind actually making any political gain in the community.

But what I would say it isn’t inevitable and Margaret was talking about Glasgow which has still got a lot of the services still quite well supported, and I think that's due to individuals with a commitment to the women's services and the way those structures are still there, just now, but are always at risk.

And we've got a Women's Aid group and wasn't closed or passed over to somebody else. The city worked with Women’s Aid in Glasgow to protect and preserve that. And that's what's happened. It's not inevitable. We can continue to provide services from a feminist analysis where we recognise that it has huge significant impacts on women's recovery and children's recovery, but also provides a vehicle for women have a huge influence and an impact in the society round about them.

So we're definitely optimistic. And we do think that Sharon is a hundred percent, right. The women are the experts, but we are the specialists in providing this service.  That is who has this experience. And if you're a social worker and you're working in social work you have a legal duty of care.

If you’re working in Women's Aid you prioritise that women. So you've got that opportunity to be more creative, more flexible, but also you've got the time and the understanding to recognise and develop your service so you can support women and children through social work.

Child protection is the one issue and I think that feeds into what Margaret's talking about as well. We have to look at education system. Working in women's services, young women, older women, everyone coming up for jobs have got two degrees, a counselling course, if that education assesses them in colleges with a middle class view of how we live in our society that is a major problem for how we provide our services.

And I don't think it's any mistake that we've now ended up in a situation where it's a struggle to get applicants to say the words child sexual abuse in an interview and never mind when they are working directly with survivors. So I think they might talk about things like trauma related. They'll talk about childhood experiences, which are all relevant, but at the end of the day, when you've got a survivor sitting in front of you, they want to be clear about what they're talking about. And we have to be able to do that. We can't hide behind new terms and corporate systems. So, definitely it's not inevitable we can move forward.

We think that feminists have got a core role in that. And we really want to provide those services, those spaces for both women who have experiences, who are experiencing, or who may experience in the future, male violence against women and children. We also want to bring together feminists from whatever sector they’re from together to really think about policy and we would welcome any politician who's a feminist to come into that environment as well and really have a real, honest and brutal discussion about what is going on here and how we can not only protect women and children, but how we can influence society moving forward, because we’re first. We’re the most vulnerable, the feminist movement can make such a huge contribution to that discussion.

Sally: Absolutely. Thank you. And I suppose, just to finish up that's a really positive outlook in that there's answers here. There's a way out of this, which it, which is, is really good to hear. And perhaps from Sharon and Margaret, just a couple of words about what, any woman listening, what can they do? What can they do to get involved and to help and be part of that solution and perhaps Sharon if you’d like to go first.

Sharon: I think every woman knows what their capacity is. We all have different pressures in our lives and we all have limitations, but we have so many more strengths, everything is proportional.

So anything you can do. I'm a great believer that you can roar in many forms. You can bare your teeth in many forms, we do it. And the most obvious relationship is with your children, you couldn’t be more loving in that relationship.

If we don't stand up for women, nobody else is interested to stand up for women. And I'm not talking about colluding. We have to regain and demand, a safe space to speak, because what happens is with the best will in the world you do the risk and reward exercise.

And ironically, I’m a qualified social worker as well and I wasn't when I started I was a young single parent and I had to go through the university route so anybody would take notice. I was able to understand the language of that, but I a lot of us done that because we were so under the cosh by those external forces, that dismissive and contemptuous relationship that was going on.

We took care as much as we could within the political context, because we didn't have those mentoring supportive roles. We were at the mercy of the systems that had been created. Now that sends a bit like a cop out. I don't mean it as such, but when you're at the front line in, you're just trying to survive it's very, very difficult to lift your head because you're constantly being submerged. You know that old saying ‘we're not asking for anything other than to take your foot off our necks’ we just want a chance.

 We have tried to be overtly like, combative a bit with demand and then the pendulum has swung for sure. We’re so subservient we're doffing our caps.

 What I would say to women is you have a responsibility to yourself, to your daughter, to your mothers, to your sisters, to your sons, to your partners. Ironically I have two sons, they're six foot five, both of them, they are both like the biggest feminist in the house, because that's what they’re condition to, but they will never understand. Margaret had said those uncomfortable conversations that we think because they are children of feminists they pop out as feminists.

Then when you have those conversations that are difficult unless we have those conversations in a safe space, we’re never going to get to the crux of the matter. And that is that domestic abuse is rooted in gender inequality, which is embedded in structural inequality, which is further exacerbated by political inequality and so we go on and on and on with the layers.

We need to take accountability. We need to stand up, front and centre safely for ourselves as well, but we have to be open. I’ve had conversations with colleagues across the network. There’s frustration, that's a frustration dependent. on your experience of working at Women’s Aid.

I work within a collective it is very, very challenging. I'll tell you why it was challenging, the only thing that that’s wrong with the collective model? It’s people.

Someone once said: you never work in a collective, you’re always striving to work towards, you know, how many workers does it take to change a light bulb? It depends if you're in a collective or not.

Within all that all humour, there's a real seed that we can make that work. What happened was the pressures to conform superseded the individual power within each group. And that's a problem here as well.

You're saying there is hope Dawn, there absolutely is hope. If we lose hope, that's one thing that women tell us that that's the thing that caused most harm to a person’s being, has been when they lose the hope, because that's what they’re holding onto the whole time, you know, the hope that they can make it better. It can be better, whatever it is.

It's a hope for the women and children in North Lanarkshire, this has happened. It's not about it may happen.

Margaret and ourselves, we're doing everything in our power to get it to, but the decision has happened has been wrapped up in a procurement process and it's happened.

We have to find another way. So again, we are submerged in this legal, political, and we’re trying to trying but perhaps there's learning from this and that's not all altruistic I would much rather somebody else was doing it on the basis of learning you know.

We have been set up, certain of the Women's Aids groups in North Lanarkshire have been combative with each other. We were set up in competition, the legal structures actually worked against us and that obviously has a certain ripple effect as well, if things don't change, we’re going to be wiped out that’s going to happen throughout and we're going to see the massive destruction for women's wellbeing and health that's happened.

I've been trying to keep abreast as much as possible, but I know that the decimation of services in England all started with one domino. North Lanarkshire are the domino. That's what I would say.

Sally:  Thank you. Finally, then to come to you, Margaret, and actually building on what you just said, Sharon, thinking of other domestic abuse or women's services that people might be working in.

What would be your message to them?

You are part of this group that's working so hard in reacting to what's happening in North Lanarkshire.

What should the rest of us be doing to prevent it happening elsewhere?

Margaret: I don’t think it's the responsibility of women in the refuges to be at the forefront of this fight. They've got a big enough fight on their own hands to get their heads together and build a life.

I'm going to follow up and find out a wee bit more about your organisation. I definitely think that the single most critical thing that feminists can do just now is to find each other and start to organise and start to talk. I mean, I'll laugh and joke about a collective and it was a nightmare, that’s how I learned as a young woman.

I learned more, because to be perfectly honest, Andrea Dworkin’s books has too many big words and I was asleep after the first half chapter, you know, so a lot of the feminism I have, came from listening and then being part of those discussions in Women's Aid and the Rape Crisis Centre and in different places.

And I think that's the big thing that we have to do, and we have to do it, not just for ourselves in the here and now we need to do it for our daughters and for the generation of women, young girls, that's coming up behind them.

So in terms of, we'll put the fire out if we can in North Lanarkshire but what I want to do after that in terms of my personal time and energy is to organise as a feminist with other feminists. So it's about finding them and connecting with them.  At the moment there's For Women Scotland, but they're not really an activist organisation, there more of a research group with supporters. They’re brilliant.

But we need to start all connecting again, you know, and we need to get a place where we can talk about what we're going to do. And so definitely I'm really glad I’ve had the chance to meet you in a definitely. Well, can we please keep in touch.

Dawn: Can I just reinforce what Margaret said because I don't, I never used to talk about this. I was in a refuge when I was 15 and going from a house where there was domestic violence, my entire childhood, into a space where everyone was equal, but they had the right to be equal, and it was women based and it was women organised and it was women who supported one another was a huge turning point in my life and has constantly informed everything I do

And I think that is a 15-year-old young woman, to then into the world I have to say when I was going into the refuge the school I started called me a Bolshevik which I thought was amazing. Up until then I had been good at hiding. And it's definitely the influence of the feminists and the collective that just turned my life around. I think that it’s so important what you’re saying, it’s so important for our daughters.