"Thank you to the Women's Resource Centre for inviting me to deliver the keynote address at this conference. My apologies that I am not able to attend in person—I’m abroad in Canada on family matters. I do hope that this video will be able to compensate for my not being there in person. I will be covering three themes in my keynote: the roots of the women's sector—in about two minutes, so wish me luck on that one because that is close to an impossible task! The sacrifices made—and I’m saying this now—cannot be done justice in the time given, so I will focus on the compromises with government policy that were made along the way, specifically the sector's collusion with neoliberal policy. Finally, I will talk about what we need to do to create change.

I also thought I would be completely radical and address these themes in reverse order so that I can end with a reminder of our political and historical roots and how we must frame our re-emergence.

A note before I begin: the responses are not the same for all groups of women because our struggles are different and shaped by the politics of race, imperialism, and other oppressions. Likewise, these are difficult social, economic, and political times, and it is vital for us to be coming together to discuss the next steps in our revolution of many feminisms. There is no point in talking about a homogenous feminist movement.

Recently, I was sent an email requesting me to sign a letter to government. The letter asked the government to match-fund the amount of money they intended to invest in military spending towards funding for peacebuilding, sex-based justice, and human security. Reading the first line on military spending, I was taken aback. I agreed with peace and security initiatives that were based on decolonising ideologies, empowered and controlled by the affected global communities. I know this was not the intended interpretation, but I wanted to frame the message through an anti-imperialist lens concerning peacebuilding and human security.

I also agreed with increased funding for the whole of the women's rights agenda, including ending violence against women and girls, and funding for migrant women. What bothered me was the acceptance of increased military funding as an idea—and, according to the last budget announcement, one that will come to fruition—and using this increased military budget as a baseline to fund these rights and social justice-based initiatives. This draws a false equivalency between what should be opposing ideas: one idea—the military—suppresses the other idea—human rights.

I would have thought that, instead of supporting the government's £59.8 billion defence programme, the first line of the letter would have read something like: an end to defence funding and the redistribution of £59.8 billion to invest in the social sectors, including safe and sustainable housing for women, racial justice, followed by an end to the politics of economic inequality, imperialism, and the colonial legacy of the Global North.

Why would feminists align themselves with government to increase defence funding? Critical strategic connections were missing from the thinking here, and this speaks to the questions we are answering at the conference today. For example, the idea that feminists would agree with increased military funding in the first place—aligning with the far-right agenda—makes absolutely no sense. Using this funding toward the re-emergence of the great British military empire—which is the government’s rhetoric—well, it wasn’t so great the first time around. And I beg you to remember colonialism and its violent legacy: ignoring calls for state accountability for violence against women, rape, sexual assault, and not to mention the destruction of communities committed by militaries during war, conflict, and in post-conflict situations. In other words, perplexing.

It was perplexing that the letter would support the theatre of war and perpetual conflict—creating a wide range of insecurities against women and children—because this is precisely what increased military spending means. What about the human insecurity that has already been caused by the pumped-up, toxic, masculinised, far-right war machinery that led to mass migration and the failure of successive UK governments to support the human rights of migrant people in this country?

As this conference goes on, we must acknowledge that migrant women are still not included in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, or in any other protective legislation in this country. We must remember that they are criminalised instead, and that their accounts of abuse are ignored by government. This wrong must be corrected if we are talking about our movement moving forward.

Finally, the global condition of racism that is linked to the war machinery and increased military budgets: by not questioning increased military spending, an acceptance of the military presence—attacking the fundamental rights of women and proliferating a climate of fear, hate, and another imperialism—is implied.

I have three questions to address. I will start with the last one: how do we create change?

I have a few bullet points here:

• Stop the collusion with far-right and right-leaning government policy. Call this out for what it is.
• Develop a decolonial ideology to position ourselves in radical and revolutionary spaces.
• Allow Black, minoritised and migrant women into the space as equals in uncompromised leadership.
• Question the global operation of power and control through masculinised structures that are embedded in sexism, racism, misogyny, and the other ills of the far-right.
• Remember that we have a strong history of thinking outside the box, being imaginative about the societies we wish to create.
• Address the structural inequalities that affect so many of us and reinvent women-centred global connections.
• We must resist adopting the rhetoric of a government that is cutting social expenditure and reducing the rights of those subjected to vulnerabilities, including disabled women, migrant women, women of colour, LGBTIQ+ communities, and many others.

Shouldn’t feminists be standing against increased military spending? Or for an end to public procurement policy imposed on women's services? Or the reduction in social expenditure?

Now I will address the question concerning the roots of the women's sector. Before I continue, I have to say that there is no singular sector or historical rooting. This question is really about what we can learn from our past.

Again, because of time, I will focus on one example: women’s refuges in the UK, including refuges in the by and for sectors. I’m using this example because refuges have been under threat for many years, so it is a good way for us to highlight why we need to fight for them.

The first women’s refuge was opened in 1971 in Chiswick. This was followed by the by and for refuges: in 1984, opened by Usher Project in the London Borough of Lambeth, and in 1987 by Newham Asian Women’s Project in the London Borough of Newham. Today, this project is called the London Black Women’s Project. These were among the first refuges in the world that opened for women fleeing domestic violence, providing them with a safe space to rebuild their lives—to live free from violence and harm.

By and for refuges supported migrant women with no recourse to public funds. By providing support to migrant women, these refuges were able to link the global situation of women leaving violence caused by war and conflict and other social insecurities that discriminated against them. By supporting women with no recourse to public funds, they also made connections between violence against women, precarious migration status, and state violence.

These refuges had the following characteristics:

• They were women’s spaces, especially by and for refuges, which were always underfunded.
• Through the creation of women’s community and solidarity spaces, women could support each other and think about building their own resources, leading to their independence.

Questions regarding resources and redistribution inevitably linked to the creation of community, and this community was specifically defined as anti-racist, free from violence, challenging patriarchy and structural inequality—hence embedding a strong social justice feminist lens to the work they did.

This was different from neoliberal thinking, which was on the rise during the time that these refuges were first opened. In by and for spaces, social justice for women was not about being included in oppressive structures of state and society, but rather about recreating a sense of space and belonging, confronting a hostile and marginalising environment by positioning themselves outside the status quo—by challenging oppressive structures and institutions.

In the early days, women dared to speak, challenge, and be the critical voice. Women dared to reimagine a different kind of space built on solidarity, intersectionality, equality, and justice. Because they knew that the structures and the institutions of society and the state were not designed for them, they took radical and often revolutionary steps to safeguard refuge spaces and reimagine a different life constructed on strong feminist principles and values. They dared to be radical.

Today, refuges are affected by procurement, and many by and for refuges are developing independently funded models to protect their provision for women. However, they do this in isolation, because there has been no feminist movement rising against procurement policy. Instead, we have witnessed the opposite—participation in regressive policy designed to dismantle the social sectors and promote survival of the fittest.

The next question concerns the compromises that led to a shift. Again, for time, I will focus on New Labour and the neoliberal government of Tony Blair, which assumed power in 1997. The Blair government continued the Thatcher neoliberal project. Neoliberalism under New Labour had the following ideas:

• Market rationale taking over non-market processes like the social sector, including women's refuges.
• Reduced expenditure on social services.
• Reduction of social security, resulting in an attack on human rights and women’s rights specifically, particularly in reference to violence against women and girls.

Neoliberalism created conditions for women’s disempowerment due to the lack of rights-based protective mechanisms that negatively impacted social, economic, and political opportunities. The women’s sector embraced some neoliberal ideas by participating in commissioning and public procurement policy and also initiatives such as ‘one size fits all,’ which were designed to reduce the by and for women’s sector.

Bringing women’s refuges under public procurement meant engaging in competition with sister organisations, inviting non-specialist entities or generic organisations to take over specialist by and for provision, removing small grassroots women’s organisations from local economies, and replacing local economies with economies of scale.

The language of equality, justice, and rights-based work in the women’s sector changed due to neoliberalism. It began to sound like the following:

• Efficiency
• Effectiveness
• Competition
• Price over quality
• Economies of scale over social value
• Innovation (which was about scaling up non-specialist generic services)

This was all regulated by a regime reliant on rigorous monitoring, contract compliance, performance measures, and punitive mechanisms. It was transactional—based on the exchange of funds for services delivered—and engaged in distancing. Those making decisions were far removed from communities and community needs, therefore lacking an understanding of what those needs were.

Once this phenomenon was embedded in radical women's spaces, the space ceased to be radical, as it positioned itself in relation to government policy—not challenging it, but bargaining with it to get the best deal through procurement and by abiding by its regulatory functions. It created division within the women's sector. Through competition, rights-based language and feminist ideology were gradually replaced or displaced by the need to be competitive.

What we saw was a change in political positioning under New Labour. The women's movement became more closely aligned with the government agenda. The rationale was: if we do not align, we do not get funding. The consequence was: women were left behind, gatekeepers emerged, and exclusionary politics created the opportune conditions for the marginalisation of diverse groups of women.

This was further cemented by the hostile environment and the government regime, which became increasingly punitive—punishing organisations with contract breaches if they failed to meet institutionalised performance standards, using the hostile environment to exclude women’s rights and organisations working with migrant women, and through criminalisation of women—especially Black, minoritised and migrant women—by focusing on criminal justice responses rather than social justice.

I started with the disturbing thought that feminists could support increased military funding. I’m ending with the need to reclaim our political spaces—to be bold in our language and the interactions we have with the state, to identify the harms of neoliberalism and the far-right on our collective right to survival, to disrupt, to dismantle the continuum of violence and oppression that we see in military policy, in commissioning policy, and through the dismantling of the social sectors.

I really hope there is an opportunity for you to engage in productive conversation over the course of the day and to discuss these issues further. I’m really sorry I can’t be there to also engage in that discussion, but I do thank you so much for allowing me into the space to open the discussion, and I really hope that you enjoy the rest of this conference." —Baljit Banga