Women's Fightback, Feminism

Push Labour and unions on abortion rights

On 17 June abortion rights supporters marched in solidarity with a woman jailed for two years for breaking abortion laws. The protest in London was sparked when a 44-year-old mother of three was given a 28-month extended sentence earlier in week after taking abortion pills after the 24-week legal limit. She was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant at the time. Protesters marched from the Royal Courts of Justice to Whitehall, demanding release of the woman and an end to the criminalisation of abortion. The same week people in Poland marched in at least 80 towns and cities to protest the death of a...

Motion in support of Iranian political prisoner Sepideh Gholian

Please help the campaign to free Sephideh Gholian by passing this motion in your union branch. This branch notes The extreme repression used by the Iranian regime in the aftermath of the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini by the so-called Morality police in September 2022. At least 537 people have been killed, over 20,000 arrested, and 7 executed during the women-led mass protests against the compulsory hijab law in Iran. Demonstrators have demanded “Women, Life, Freedom.” Women are heavily discriminated against in employment, custody rights, education and inheritance. The legal age for marriage, for...

Jailed for getting an abortion

On 12 June, a woman, Carla Foster, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for obtaining drugs to induce an abortion after the legal term limit. After taking the medication, she experienced complications and called 999. Police were called to her hospital bedside. Currently, the legal limit on having an abortion in England, Scotland and Wales is 23 weeks and six days, as per the Abortion Act of 1967. The maximum sentence under the The Offences against the Person Act, which applies in cases of illegal abortion, is life imprisonment. Compared to countries around the world like Poland and the US, it...

Lebanon’s crisis brings uptick of sexism

Dozens of women’s rights activists and journalists gathered in Sidon, Lebanon, on 21 May, in solidarity with a woman harassed by religious reactionaries for wearing a swimsuit at a public beach. Two men demanded Mayssa Hanouni Yaafouri and her husband leave a public beach because Yaafouri was wearing a one-piece swimsuit. “They said it’s their law — the power of the sheikh,” Yaafouri told Al Jazeera. When the couple refused to leave, the men returned with at least a dozen others surrounding them. They began kicking a football around the couple, and kicking sand at them. Lebanese law does not...

Iran's bans make illegal abortions soar

Iran’s dictatorship tightened restrictions on medical abortions and banned the free distribution of contraceptives in 2021 amid a moral panic around the birth-rate. Iranian women have been choosing fewer children in part due to economic crisis. This has led to public health alarm about numbers of illegal abortions. Government officials have said that each year between 300,000 to 600,000 abortions are performed in the country, and over 90% are illegal. Access to contraception and legal abortion is driving a dangerous black market. Until recently abortions could be legally performed during the...

The politics of emotional life

Alva Gotby’s They Call It Love: The Politics of Emotional Life is the latest contribution to a growing series of Verso books on the topic of Social Reproduction Theory, in which Gotby explores the concept of emotional reproduction. She defines this as, on the one hand, the work of generating certain feelings in those around us, and, on the other, the work of maintaining the social norms that are both “cause and effect” of emotional labour as we know it. Family The nuclear family, Gotby explains, remains the “proper place of intense feeling”; the source of emotional well-being and where we’re...

Women’s protests in the Balkans

In the Serbian capital of Belgrade, protests have been held since September 2022, when a pro-government newspaper published an interview with Igor Milošević, who had served a 15-year sentence for numerous rapes and physical assaults on women. The piece instructed women on how to protect themselves during sexual assault. “While I was raping and robbing, I felt freedom,” said Milošević. He reportedly threatened the female journalist who interviewed him, telling her, “If I decide to rape you, I will.” Ženska Solidarnost (Women’s Solidarity), a Belgrade-based women’s collective, began calling...

Putin moves to demonise feminism

A new bill has been brought to the Russian Duma that would recognise feminism as an “extremist ideology”. Oleg Matveychev, who drafted the bill, stated in his speech introducing the bill that “the network of feminist organisations in our country are soil in which extremist actions will grow.” In one sense, Matveychev has a point – if the anti-war movement is “extremist”, then it is certainly the case that feminist organisations have been leading that movement since the very first days of the war — most notably, Feminist Antiwar Resistance (FAR), now the largest anti-war organisation in the...

Abolish benefit sanctions

Jeremy Hunt has changed the benefits system for lead parents, most of whom are women. Hundreds of thousands of parents who rely on Universal Credit will be discouraged from providing day-to-day care for their children. The changes affect 800,000 parents or carers. About 300,000 people with young children will face a greater risk of sanction (having benefits docked), according to estimates from the Work Foundation. The government says it could dock benefits unless parents: • Are available for work up to 30 hours a week once their youngest child turns three, up from the current requirement of 16...

Iran: schoolgirls under attack

According to the US news station, NBC, 2,000 Iranian schoolgirls have reported symptoms of poisoning. One member of Iran’s parliament suggests that the numbers may be far higher, and that 5,000 girls have been poisoned. 800 girls from 58 schools across ten provinces have been hospitalised. Alireza Monadi, head of parliament’s education committee, has admitted that schools have been deliberately attacked and that 30 toxicologists in the Health Ministry believe the toxins are nitrogen gas. Girls have reported strange smells (chlorine or cleaning agents, or tangerines) in their classrooms and...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.