Women's Fightback, Feminism

The murder of Sarah Everard, and police action at subsequent vigils and demonstrations, has opened a public discussion on gendered violence. The circumstances of the tragedy fit perfectly with the public imagination and conversation of the threat faced by women. A middle-class white woman, she was a model of female “respectability” and a “proper” victim. Many have commented that Sarah “did everything right” — wearing bright clothing, walking along the lit main road and calling her boyfriend. She didn’t know her attacker, and was snatched on a street at night. The focus on strangers as...

Around 100,000 joined March4Justice around Australia, in capital cities and regional towns, on Monday 15 March. Angry opposition to rape, sexual violence and cover-ups has erupted since the exposure of two high profile rape cases involving the national parliament. In the first case, former staffer Brittany Higgins gave a TV interview on 15 February, alleging that in 2018 she had been raped her in the office of her boss, Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds, by another staffer, and then was undermined when she reported it. Friends of a woman who suicided during Covid lockdown in 2020, wrote to...

Emma Rickman’s column, Diary of an Engineer, gives us a window into the male dominated workplace. And in her latest entry, 'A Nest of Vipers' (Solidarity 585), she gives us a window into the minds of the men who work there. Such a workplace as depicted here, and there are many of them, is a safe space for those men who are threatened by world events to air their prejudices. It is a place to exaggerate, moan, entertain their mates and laugh in the face of their own weakness. You know, reading Emma’s column, that S did not tell his wife to “fuck off” in bed. He’s an idiot for bragging to his...

On 3 March, Sarah Everard went missing from the streets near my house. The route that should have taken her safely home intersects with my walk to work, and passes the homes of my friends. Police knocked on doors in the area looking for more information and advising women to stay at home, or only go out accompanied. The call sparked an immediate reaction, with women complaining it amounted to de facto curfew and chaperone restrictions on women. At the same time, there was an outpouring of experiences, first locally and then nationally, of indecent exposure, harassment, and assault. These...

In the UK one woman in four experiences domestic violence at some point in their life, and one in four experiences rape or attempted rape. Yet in the face of this, refuges, rape crisis centres, counselling and advocacy services, which were already stretched, are being cut further. Other attacks, such as on housing benefit, will make it harder for women to leave violent relationships as they are priced out of housing. Stigma around the issue of violence against women means that much of it goes unrecognised. Reactionary, victim-blaming attitudes are still widespread, including in the very...

Loretta Marie Perera reports from Moscow. It was a cold day in Moscow on 8 March, 2021. A far cry from spring, the temperature hovered somewhere between minus 5 and 15, while snow intermittently fell and wind kept snowfall from the night before floating in every which way. It was Women’s Day, a public holiday in Russia, and a day of celebrating women – and one typically of overpriced bouquets, marketing promotion, and special menus. But for feminists and activists around Russia, this day has never been about roses and fancy dinners. Rather, it is a day to stand in solidarity, to create...

Work is depressingly slow. The fewer jobs there are, the more lethargic we become. L keeps suggesting: “We’ll do that tomorrow — spread it out. Our problem today was that we started too early, that’s why the morning’s dragging.” A trip to the control room turns into a drink in the control room, then long discussions that become increasingly awful to listen to. I offer to make a round of drinks and A says says to N — “It’s International Women’s Day, you should offer to make drinks.” N doesn’t offer. Instead everyone goes silent and looks at me, as if they expect me to make a speech. I feel...

The government has announced a £150m plan to create 500 new prison places for women. It says that the extra places are needed because an extra 20,000 police officers will lead to more female arrests. Prisons are filled with people whose lives have been made especially difficult by the brutality of capitalism: the poor, the homeless, those with mental health and addiction, those who experience racism. Two-thirds of women in prison are survivors of domestic abuse. Over half experienced physical, emotional or sexual abuse during their childhood. Coercive and abusive relationships can serve to...

Emily Kenway is a former adviser to the UK’s first Anti-Slavery Commissioner and the author of The Truth About Modern Slavery (Pluto Press, 2021). She spoke to George Wheeler for Solidarity. (The book is reviewed here.) Can you explain a little of what the book is about, and why you wrote it? The book is about how modern slavery is a particular narrative about exploitation, constructed largely by philanthrocapitalists, anti-sex work activists and anti-migrant politicians. It shows how calling exploitation “modern slavery”, and all that this entails, suggests a moral crusade but undermines the...

On 27th January, a near-total ban on abortion came into effect across Poland, three months after a ruling by the country ’s constitutional court. Poland already had one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, but the new law - which removed severe foetal abnormalities from the list of exemptions - was seen as totemic, and part of a more generalised assault by the ruling Law and Justice Party (or PiS - short for Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) against Poland’s democratic institutions and minorities. In response to it, over the course of October and November, gigantic demonstrations gripped the...