Women's Fightback, Feminism

Save the Women's Library

The Women’s Library, which has been housed by the London Metropolitan University for ten years, could be closed. The library holds the biggest collection of literature dedicated to the history of women and attracts around 30,000 visitors every year. In March London Metropolitan’s Board of Governors decided to find The Women’s Library a new home or sponsor, or to run it as a skeleton service from December, reducing opening hours to one day per week. Vice Chancellor Malcolm Gillies has said the university can no longer fund a service that is used by so many from outside the institution and that...

Reverse these cuts...and more

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...

Sex work, Trafficking and the Olympics: the case for a Moratorium

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...

Stop anti-choice harassment!

On Saturday 21 April, Feminist Fightback and other pro-choice activists tried to prevent anti-abortion extremists from marching to a Marie Stopes clinic in Woodford, Essex. A group calling themselves the “Helpers of God's Precious Infants” attempted to stop women from attending their appointment at the clinic. They held up images of foetuses and blocked one side of the road, handing out flyers which claimed that abortion will “damage your maternal instinct and ... bonding process with any other children you have” and can lead to “alcohol, drug abuse and eating disorders.” When feminist...

International news in brief

Islamist parties have taken to the streets to oppose the ratification of a law which would penalise domestic violence in Pakistan. Women’s rights campaigners confronted the bigots outside parliament last week. The Islamists’ arguments against the legislation include: preventing domestic violence is “Western”; and that the Bill is a copy of Indian legislation. A spokesperson for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl said, “We will not let these senseless women, who depend on American dollars, to work against the Constitution and Islamic Shariah,” The anti-violence Bill, first introduced in 2009, advocates...

Fight for women's rights in North Africa

On 10 March 16-year-old Amina Filali killed herself by swallowing rat poison. Amina had been badly beaten during a forced marriage to Mustapha Kellak, a man who had raped her. Although there have been some limited legal improvement in the position of women in Morocco, the state still allows a rapist to marry an underage victim as a way of avoiding prosecution. The law — known as Article 475 — says a “kidnapper” of a minor can marry his victim so that dishonour is not brought on her family. Legislation designed to outlaw all forms of violence against women, planned since 2006, has yet to appear...

Italian feminism resurgent?

Kate Devine, Erasmus student at the University of Turin, looks into the recent resurgence of feminism in Italy, and asks what has brought tens of thousands into the streets. On 11 February 2011 hundreds of thousands of women piled into the streets of Italian cities and towns to shout “Se non ora, quando?” (“If not now, when?”). For decades Italy has lagged behind the rest of Europe and much of the wider world when it comes to gender equality. The media perpetuates a damaging stereotype of women as nothing more than window dressing; so much so, that even though 60% of Italian graduates are...

Reclaim International Women's Day!

On International Women’s Day, 8 March, Workers’ Liberty women in London helped organise a meeting to celebrate the original, militant tradition of the day. What tradition? International Women’s Day — founded in 1911 as International Working Women’s Day — was first proposed by Clara Zetkin and other socialist women. It was a response to the 1907/8 demonstrations of women workers in New York demanding shorter hours, better pay, union rights and the vote, and to the “Rising of the 20,000”, a 13-week strike of women garment makers in 1909. By 1917 it was well-established enough in the...

Get active!

London Metropolitan University has decided to ditch the the Women’s Library and Trades Union Congress Library Collections — they are seeking “new homes” for the books, pamphlets and other materials. These are incredibly important collections, not stray dogs, and should be defended. Workers at both libraries were not involved in these decisions. The Women’s Library has been told that if a new home is not found by the end of December 2012, the library will move to opening hours of one day per week for a period of three years, with a further review at the end of that period. * Women’s Library...

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