Women's Fightback 14, June/July 2012

Recent research highlights how badly cuts are affecting women, particularly those with children or other caring responsibilities. * Rising unemployment and underemployment, increasing unaffordability of childcare, and benefit cuts on top of the rising cost of living add up to a very bleak picture for all working-class people. But the cuts will mean huge regression in female independence and equality. Female unemployment is at its highest for 25 years, is rising and is growing disproportionately faster than male unemployment. 1.12 million women are “available for work” but are jobless. The...

The Stop the Arrests Campaign , a coalition of sex worker rights activists and supporters, is calling for a moratorium on arrests, detention and deportation of sex workers in London with immediate effect until the end of the Olympic Games. Prior to the Olympics run up it was anti-trafficking laws and policies were resulting in brothel raids, closures and arbitrary arrests, detention and deportation of people working in the sex industry. For many sex workers these laws have dire consequences. Such policing creates a climate of fear among workers, leaving them less likely to report crimes...