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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Some Good News: Migrant women's fight back against the hostile environment
Some Good News: Migrant women's fight back against the hostile environment

This article by Hannana Siddiqui and Selma Taha, members of Southall Black Sisters, brings into focus the stark reality of the plight of migrant and asylum seeking women escaping gender-based violence; and how the state traps them in abusive relationships or gender related persecution. It also highlights and celebrates the fight back by black feminists to these sexist and racist immigration laws and the wider hostile environment.

BlogDittany RoseViolence Against Women, Anti-racism
Women in Motion
Women in Motion

How does one start with women in motion and end up with a women's movement? I want to share one of my last bike trips with the audience. I'm a woman on the go, meeting women along the way. I want to share how biking helps me on a daily basis. For me, biking is not only a means of transport, but a way of liberation, giving me a sense of freedom. It is also about women taking up public space and connecting together. I've noticed that the women I meet on the road are often isolated, with a need and a desire to connect with other women. I'd like us to be able to meet up on the same road, women on bikes, and share a stretch of the road together, an episode in our lives. A women's cycling movement! I want women who read my piece to find inspiration, if not join the movement to help them break any of the patriarchal chains that oppress us.

BlogDittany RoseAnti-racism, EcoFeminism, Lesbian Rights