News & Campaigns

All the latest from HER-itage and our affiliates

European Women’s Lobby cosigns text calling for the abolition of surrogacy

The European Women’s Lobby (EWL), the Center for Bioethics and Culture (USA), the French « Collectif pour le Respect de la Personne » ( CoRP), and several associations backed by European and American personalities are calling for the abolition of the baby business called euphemistically « surrogacy ».

In a text made public today, the signatory associations joined together to involve themselves in the works on transnational surrogacy, which have been hidden from public scrutiny by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH).

The HCCH is a major actor in the making of international law. It will decide tomorrow whether its member states accept to work on a future text for shaping international law in relation to transnational surrogacy, and particularly, legal parenthood and the legal status of the child in surrogacy. Its goal will be to try and facilitate the mutual recognition of parenthood from surrogate mothers’ contracts.

The signatory associations denounce this completely unacceptable way of promoting surrogacy without consulting the civil society. They recall that surrogacy is a practice of exploitation contrary to International Human Rights. They propose the writing within the UNO of a convention for the abolition of surrogacy made on the model of the abolition of slavery.

This text is signed by the European Women’s Lobby, the largest umbrella organisation of women’s associations in the European Union (EU), the American Center for Bioethics and Culture, the French NGO CoRP, a feminist association against surrogacy which has already launched an appeal to the French President signed by numerous French leading figures, Alice Schwarzer co-founder of the Feminist Liberation Movement in Germany, the Swedish Women’s Lobby (presided by Gertrud Åström), the Romanian Women’s Lobby, the feminist network ‘No To Surrogacy,’ created by Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a Swedish journalist and feminist, the Center for bioethics and culture (USA), Elfriede Hammerl an Austrian journalist and feminist, plus several French organisations: CADAC (Coordination of Associations for the right to abortion and contraception), The Lesbian Coordination in France, the Association of Elected persons concerned by violence against women (presided by Geneviève Couraud), l’Assemblée des Femmes funded by the former French minister Yvette Roudy, « Osez le Féminisme » a leading French group of young feminists, and « L’université des femmes » (Belgium).

French version of the press release: http://collectif-corp.com/2015/03/2…

Full text in English: https://collectifcorp.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/surrogacy_hcch_feminists_english.pdf

April 2, 2015

Women’s groups ask election candidates to sign up for “A Fair Deal for Women”

For the first time in anticipation of an election, 11 women’s organisations have come together to create a campaign asking politicians to do something about the gap between men and women.

We want them to sign up to our 7 election asks, in the hope that the next Government will ensure a fair deal for women.

The situation

We have collected a bank of research and evidence that demonstrate that Government policies over the last 10 years have created a drastic inequality gap between men and women. For instance, did you know that…

o   Women have paid off 79% of the deficit, while men have paid only 21%
o   1 in 4 women are in low paid and insecure work
o   44% of UK women have experienced male violence
o   Women are twice as likely to experience depression and anxiety than men
o   Almost 80% of news articles are written by men
o   Women still only make up 23% of MPs
o   Legal aid has been cut by £350 million

What can you do?

It’s really simple…

Step 1: read our 7 steps

Step 2: sign to pledge your support

Step 3: share with your friends

If enough people show that they care about the gap between women and men, we will be able to influence the next Government to do something about it

Please pledge your support for A Fair Deal for Women. Add your voice to a campaign that has real power to make a difference.

Live blog

We’re live tweeting the live debate!

On 2nd April 2015, we will be watching the 7 party political debate on ITV and listening closely on issues such as: welfare cuts, zero hour contracts, violence against women, mental health, media stereotypes, women’s representation and legal aid.

We will be fact checking them and adding an alternative view to the points they make.

Join us from 8-10pm at http://fairdealforwomen.com/live-blogging/

We are pretty sure that they won’t be talking about how their policies have affected women, so we will do it for them!

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

April 2, 2015

Women’s Groups Ask Party Leaders: What Will You Do To End Violence Against Women? – EVAW

A coalition of more than 60 organisations working to end all forms of violence against women has written to the leaders of the political parties asking them to set out their policies to end violence against women and girls in advance of the General Election.

The End Violence Against Women Coalition has written to Natalie Bennett, David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage and Ed Miliband, drawing attention to catastrophic levels of abuse of women and girls across the UK and asking them to answer the following questions:

Support services – If elected, what would your Government do to ensure that every woman and girl who needs the support of a specialist service to help her escape abuse, or recover from it, is guaranteed this no matter whether or not she reports to the police?

Sex & Relationships Education & Schools Policy – If elected, what would your Government do to ensure that young people learn at school about safe, equal and respectful relationships? Would you ensure that there is training and leadership within schools to ensure schools are able to respond to disclosures of abuse and to intervene when there is sexual harassment of girls?

Detention of asylum-seeking women – If elected, would your Government end the detention of asylum seeking women who have experienced abuse in their countries of origin?

Prostitution – If elected, would your Government make a policy priority of addressing the harms of prostitution, and examine the case for introducing a ‘sex buyer law’ in England?

Media sexism – If elected, what would your Government do to tackle the sexualisation of women and girls and to ensure that harmful images are regulated across all forms of media?

Local action plans – If elected, would your Government require local authorities, who make many of the policy and practice decisions in relation to abuse of women and girls, to develop violence against women strategies, as are already in place in Westminster, Scotland and Wales?

The letters also say that the last five years have seen enormous exposure of the scale and nature of abuse of women and girls in our society – not least through the prosecutions and inquiries into child sexual exploitation, and the exposure of Jimmy Savile and other high profile men as serial abusers – and that the public mood is ready for radical action to tackle and prevent this abuse.

Prevalence violence against women and girls in the UK

  • At any one time 16,000 girls are at risk of sexual exploitation (Children’s Commissioner, 2012).
  • Rape Crisis services are reporting increases of more than 50% in calls to their helplines; but women-led specialist services in the community struggle to be sustainable and stay open.
  • 85,000 women are raped and more than 400,000 sexually assaulted in England and Wales each year (ONS, 2012).
  • Asylum-seeking women who have been sexually assaulted in their countries of origin are held in indefinite immigration detention in the UK.
  • The needs of women in prostitution who are experiencing serious harm and who wish to exit are chronically over-looked, despite the early age of entry of many women into prostitution and its connections to other forms of abuse being well known.
  • British women who are survivors of FGM (female genital mutilation) have campaigned hard to expose this form of abuse and are urgently pushing for specific solutions in the health service and schools.
  • In 2013 the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit gave advice in more than 1,300 cases, more than 80% of whom were women and girls.
  • Domestic violence call-outs are a huge proportion of routine policing with more than a million incidents a year (ONS). The Counting Dead Women project, widely shared on social media, exposes the fundamentally gendered nature of this crime where 149 women were murdered by men in 2014 and where every one of those murders has lessons for what should be done to prevent this catastrophic level of killing.
  • Cuts to legal aid are putting women suffering abuse at further risk.
  • Cuts to domestic violence services have disproportionately affected BME women and many other women with extra vulnerabilities and special needs.

End Violence Against Women Coalition Acting Director Sarah Green said:

“We know that abuse of women and girls, which for so long was hidden behind closed doors, is higher in the public consciousness than ever before. Politicians with a vision for how to end these different forms of abuse have an historic opportunity to do so. The answers are not simple – we need a wide range of measures to be implemented in our schools, in our public services, by the police and courts, by local government. But it absolutely can be done – there is nothing inevitable about violence against women and girls – and we know that voters want to hear clear and credible commitments before 7 May.”

The full letters to each party leader are available to download here, where responses to the letters will also be published: http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/women-s-safety-manifesto-general-election-2015

Press Release at http://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/news/200/general-election-what-will-the-parties-do-to-end-violence-against-women-girls

April 2, 2015