By Vivienne Hayes, WRC Chief Executive

SAFE magazine - Autumn 2007

The government now acknowledges the scale and severity of domestic violence. Real progress has been made, so are we now at a turning point in tackling violence against women? Vivienne Hayes debates the subject, including the issue of gender mainstreaming.

It’s been a long and arduous journey for the Domestic Violence (D.V.) sector. Its humble beginnings of feminist activists squatting in buildings to create safe houses for women escaping male violence has developed into what we now recognise as the Women’s Voluntary and Community Sector, within which the D.V. sector is arguably the largest sub-group.

The journey has seen the D.V. sector move from a position of self-help with no funding, to a status worthy of government recognition and financial support. What an achievement! So are we now entering the final stages of the journey? With the government acknowledging the scale and severity of domestic violence, will we see a real effort to change the damaging way some men behave in our society? To support and protect the women and children suffering because of it?

While celebrating the progress made, I feel less optimistic about the future: the gender mainstreaming; the shift in talking about “discrimination against women” to “gender equality”; a watering down of the debate to the point where we now see the government talking about D.V. in a gender neutral way. “It’s not about male violence against women, it’s about inter-personal violence, aren’t men victims of violence too?” Well yes they may be, but not usually at the hands of women. Men are far more likely to experience violence at the hands of other men. The Northern Ireland police obviously wouldn’t agree with this as they have launched a poster campaign about D.V. with two of the four posters depicting women assaulting men!

The current political climate of gender neutrality is having a devastating impact on women’s voluntary organisations. Increasingly, they are being asked to justify their women-only status to decision makers and funders, and we have already been made aware of some women’s D.V. organisations being asked to provide services to men. This was the main impetus for the Women Resource Centre’s (WRC) new research, which examines why women-only services are still relevant and necessary. Entitled ‘Why women-only? The value and benefits of by women, for women services,’ the report aims to answer the question asked increasingly of many women’s organisations by funders and the public: "Why are you women-only?"

Our research showed that women-only services provide a space in which women feel more comfortable about articulating their needs and delivering better outcomes than mixed spaces. Women can discuss personal and sometimes traumatic experiences in a supportive environment, such as domestic and sexual abuse, self-harm and low self-esteem. Many women feel they cannot discuss these in mixed-gender settings.

Crucially, the evidence shows that some women would not access support unless it was women-only. Therefore, many women in need of vital support services would not receive them. Without women-only services, there would be significant costs to the state as a result of increased demand and use of public services.

Our poll of 1,000 women overwhelmingly showed support for access to women-only services with 97% stating that a woman should have the choice of accessing a women-only support service if they had been the victim of sexual assault, 90% believing it was important to have the right to report sexual or domestic violence to a woman (such as a Police officer) and 78% thinking it was important to have the choice of a woman professional for counselling and personal support needs. And it’s not only violence and abuse that warrants women-only service provision. Respondents also valued women-only services in other areas such as training, education and leisure, with 56% of women choosing a women-only gym over a mixed gym if they had the choice.

Women-only services have a legitimate and vital role to play in supporting women within a system that marginalises them. The threat to the future of women-only services is frightening and needs to be tackled head on.

So where did it all go wrong?

Some commentators believe it started to go wrong from the moment we succeeded in getting the government to take up our concerns about the prevalence of violence against women. Others believe it went wrong when we started taking government money for our organisations. In our efforts to become pragmatic and get ourselves around their tables have we compromised so much that we have lost our agenda? The current state of the sector suggests it’s a dangerous game of footsie: how can we ever maintain our own agenda in a situation where we do not hold the bargaining power? The dilemma is how to remain true to our agenda whilst engaging with decision makers.

There is a saying - “who feels it, knows it” - which lies at the heart of services provided by and for women. Our sector is built on the foundation of decades of debate, discussion and theoretical analysis of the position of women in society, by women who have experienced and worked with all forms of violence against women: the experts. This distinct aspect of the women’s sector is picked up by service users in our ‘why women-only?’ interviews. They talked of the value of women-only services residing in the physical and emotional safety they provide, the sense of solidarity, and the framework of feminist empowerment by which the organisations work. Seeing violence or discrimination as part of a wider system of women’s oppression is crucial in incorporating the wider societal context in which violence is occurring.

Why is it, then, that typically in discourses today the crucial gendered analysis is missing? How have we, in the women’s sector, allowed this dangerous and insidious shift to occur?

The impact of this swing is that women’s voluntary and community sector organisations are no longer seen as necessary. At WRC we are constantly hearing of services being de- commissioned from women’s organisations in favour of generic organisations, which have no understanding or experience of working in this highly complex sensitive area. Don’t women and their children deserve better? Is it not enough that rapists and other perpetrators of violence against women are rarely brought to justice and then often given lenient sanctions without denying survivors adequate, holistic services provided by women who understand the complexity of the issues and actually care passionately about them?

The way things are going we will end up with no women’s sector. Women will receive second rate services, if any at all, and a deepening crisis will arise in our society as a whole. Then, maybe in another 30 years time, the powers-that-be will realise their mistake, especially when the millions of pounds our sector has saved the state every year is noticed by the Treasury, and we will be called upon again to do something about it as cheaply as possible. Does this sound like a blueprint for a healthy relationship?

The other issues I believe are impacting negatively on our sector are our fragmentation and lack of solidarity, or ‘sisterhood’ as I prefer to call it. I can imagine some of you recoiling at the word. Well what exactly is wrong with the notion of sisterhood? Or feminism? At its simplest it means us coming together to demand equality for all women. Saying enough is enough. One thing is definite: if we don’t, we surely will achieve nothing. All the gains made in the war on discrimination have been due to our campaigns and activism, not the benevolence of others. Rest assured that nothing has been obtained without a fight.

We need women everywhere to do whatever they can to challenge the increase in sexism and the discrimination of women. And in case you’re still wondering, no I don’t believe that men experience sexism or that white people experience racism. This inversion of discrimination is another part of the insidious drive to place everything in neutral terms as if discrimination by race or gender (to name but two) has simply disappeared.

What’s the answer?

Perhaps there is no answer, only more questions. Keep on questioning; and let’s find a way to focus on our commonality and respect our difference. If we can agree as a sector on some things then we have a better chance of influencing the change we want. Divide and rule may be an old fashioned slogan, but it’s as true as it ever was.

Oh and please, let’s stop talking about gender this and gender that; the women’s sector is not about gender; it’s about women. There is no such thing as gender inequality. It’s discrimination against women by and for the benefit of men and patriarchy. Our analyses of the roots of our discrimination, abuse and oppression should not be allowed to be ignored and buried under the notion of gender-neutrality and mainstreaming. Women-only spaces that grew out of a very real and pressing need within this context must to be preserved for as long as that need remains.

It is interesting and poignant that the most starved part of our sector is the sexual violence one: the one supporting survivors of the most horrendous and damaging form of oppression of women, challenging the very foundation of our discrimination and oppression: the control and abuse of female sexuality. What would a society without rape and sexual assault look like? Would women be too confident, too difficult to control and humiliate, and ultimately too free and too powerful? What a frightening notion that is for the men in power who want to stay there.

Well, I hope I have stirred your passions, whether you agree with me or not, because beyond my polemical style, I am deeply concerned about the way things are going for women and their organisations. As a woman over 40, I have the living memory of some of our activism, campaigning and achievements. I also remember when sexist advertising became a no-no and some of the things I see and hear today wouldn’t have got onto our screens. So I know we are losing ground and that will continue unless we take stock, challenge and re-assert our agenda.

Violence against women is both a cause and a consequence of discrimination and oppression against us and our efforts must remain focussed on just that. What will your daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters be left to deal with? And how many tears do our ancestral mothers cry to see their sacrifices all in vain? No wonder we have all this flooding around the world.

Download a copy of WRC’s Why women-only? report