[1] Let's talk about: Feminist issue policies

No it wasn't John Hemmings, it was definitely some member of the aristocracy.

Why is John Hemmings a danger to women and children?

No, the women who are eligible for help from the pause project have either already had multiple children removed or are already being abused, trafficked or prostituted and are highly likely to become pregnant in extremely bad, chaotic circumstances.

Of course there should be support for vulnerable women during their first pregnancy and afterwards but the women this project help have been there and done that and the help wasn't there so they fucked up and didn't get to keep their baby. Or they have repeated abortions. Again and again. Because nobody ever loved them.

sakura I think you're talking about John Hemmings. There have been a few threads about him. I think women should have nothing to do with John Hemmings. His interventions are harmful to women and children. @spero can point you at the details.

Oh I see sorry, she'd already lost her baby when you saw her.

Anyway just terribly sad all round.

Yes domestic violence often begins when the woman falls pregnant.

. The social workers had told her she had to chose between staying with him or keeping her child. Devastating.

It's a bit shitty that social workers say that, when there is a link on this thread proving that housing is not affordable to women.

So there is nowhere for her to go. Social workers know this.

And yet society (police, I assume?) think it's fine to leave a woman with such a dangerous man

f a woman received support to be a mother after her first pregnancy it would not only be cost effective, but would probably mean no more pregnancies.

Yes totally this.
There is a Lord, I forget his name, I will look.

What he does is offer financial support, through his own money, to young women who have been told their baby will be removed by the state at birth. He helps them escape to France to have their babies in peace, so they can keep them.

e. I think it is more about trying to tell women they shouldn't think getting pregnant again will stop authorities stepping in, rather than from the view point of the women concerned.

The young woman who was interviewed said she was told "you can always have another".

She didn't specify who told her this.

She said she'd never have another baby.

PencilsInSpace

Yes, I do see that, but what I was trying to say if maybe instead of allowing the same situation to repeat over and over again, if a woman received support to be a mother after her first pregnancy it would not only be cost effective, but would probably mean no more pregnancies.

^There is a group working with women who experience a repeat pattern of giving birth and then having their baby taken into care. I think it is more about trying to tell women they shouldn't think getting pregnant again will stop authorities stepping in, rather than from the view point of the women concerned. (but may be wrong) www.pause.org.uk/^

Yes I think you are wrong about this.

The women eligible for this scheme have extremely complex problems, usually a combination of a history of severe abuse, current domestic abuse, grown up in care, drug and alcohol problems, mental health issues, prostitution, gang abuse, trafficking ...

These are the most vulnerable women in our society. Services have been cut to the bone so if there's any sort of intensive help still going I'm glad it's going to these women.

Continually getting pregnant, having a baby, having it taken away and then getting pregnant again because life has carried on being just as shit is no good for either these women or their children.

Women's health care is dismal. Invisible Women really shocked me with how utterly ignored women are in society when it comes to research, health and safety and social strategy.

I am really horrified by the threads on here about maternity wards allowing all and sundry "partners/visitors" to camp out and abuse dwindling facilities at women's most vulnerable time. Staff seem entirely overwhelmed and unsupported in this new wild west. Every time I read one of these I am thankful I had my children in the olden days when visiting hours were strictly adhered to, phones had to be switched off in hospitals and woe betide anyone who argued with staff. It didn't seem great at the time but this new situation seems disastrous and incredibly dangerous.

Now at the other end of the cycle I find GPs are generally uninterested in women's health, symptoms are dismissed as lifestyle related with very little investigation unless seriously hassled by patient to refer to gynae. It's frustrating and I think life could be immeasurably improved for women throughout and following child birth and in later life by very basic improvements like routine testing, post natal physio, mental health support etc.

Medical research into menopause (HRT etc) and also education about its effects, particularly on mental health / sleep patterns etc.

Yes, women’s health care is a major issue for me and would include menstrual issues & endocrine issues including menopause, and medical research too.

% of women who are carers compared to men

Have now found this:

Women are twice as likely as men to be carers according to national poverty charity Turn2us. The charity is highlighting the gender gap as it calls for more support for carers. The charity is pointing to figures that have just been published by the Department of Work and Pensions which show that there are 803,670 people in the UK who are receiving Carer’s Allowance, and that 579,850 are female compared to 223,820 that are male. Turn2us says that most of the female carers would be women looking after a family member such as a parent, partner or child.
www.turn2us.org.uk/About-Us/Media-Centre/Press-releases-and-comments/Women-more-likely-to-be-carers-than-men

It is from 2 years ago but doubt it has changed much.

There is a group working with women who experience a repeat pattern of giving birth and then having their baby taken into care. I think it is more about trying to tell women they shouldn't think getting pregnant again will stop authorities stepping in, rather than from the view point of the women concerned. (but may be wrong) www.pause.org.uk/

re % of carers being men - I think the figures get a bit skewed because women caring for children are seen as the norm, so that isn't included. Haven't had time to check but I think the figures come from Carers UK who are campaigning for an increase in the Carer's Allowance. www.carersuk.org/news-and-campaigns/campaigns/fairer-for-carers

I think your unpopular opinion sakura has a lot of truth in it. The system is shit. Some great indivduals out there in it. However the imbalance of power between women and the state means it's open to structural exploitation and abuse.

Issues around education and how we broaden girls horizons. Women have been engaged with all new developments at the beginning only to be frozen out when there importance is seen. E.g. women were crucial in the development of IT but now it's been taken over by men.
The future of A. I. is game changing we need women involved not just in creation but establishing ethical guidelines. Same with engineering etc etc.

Another very unpopular opinion that I'm even scared to write because it's so taboo.

I believe that very young, poor disenfranchised women are still having babies removed to fuel the adoption industry.

A lot of mumsnetters are social workers and are highly invested in believing the system is fair but I just know it isn't

I listened to an interview with a young single mother who had her baby removed at birth, in a study carried out by a university, I think it was Bath University, I can possibly find it again.
Anyway, if she knew for a fact they wouldn't have let her keep the baby she would've aborted it. Social workers lead her to believe she could keep it. In week 37 of her pregnancy they announced that they would remove the baby after all. One of the spurious reasons they gave is that after surveilling her in pregnancy (dropping in at her home all the time unannounced) they felt she slept too much , especially in the afternoon, this being proof she was disorganized and wouldn't be able to cope. She said she had a friend, Amber, whom this had happened to as well, telling me these women are from the same social and economic backgrounds.

The state is failing women by not making adequate provisions for them to enable them to keep their babies, be that financial or emotional provisions.

The young woman said she was told afterwards that her inadequate lawyer could've done more to help her keep the baby, such as advocating for a mother and baby unit

In addition to having to lose her baby she was treated appallingly by the hospital and even though they let her have a couple of days with it to feed it colostrum she felt she was looked down on and treated poorly .

Most of all this woman was clearly very young, uneducated and way out of her depth. If feminism doesn't advocate for the poorest and most vulnerable women in society then what is it really for?

I think it's classist to say this is "for the good of the child". Just a coincidence that these women are poor?

On the subject of carer's allowance I would like to point out that the government considers these recipients EMPLOYED therefore reducing the unemployment statistics.

Scotland recently introduced an increase for carers, this increase is included as income by the UK government so U.C. is reduced accordingly.

Although there is an option of direct payments via social work to help with care costs for children too severely affected by disability to use mainstream childcare (usually home schooled for same reason), there are instances of families who pursue this money (as their legal right) being threatened with the removal of their children. This is a direct result of budget cuts leaving not enough to go around and a legal system that leaves no room for a "not enough money" response to being unable to meet state obligation. Obviously this is illegal but works immediately and means families are going without the meagre care they are entitled to as well as living in fear of state interference.

In Scotland the child risk assessment form completed by medical professionals etc lists risk tick boxes - the more ticks the higher risk deemed. The box "single parent" is next to "smoker in household". 90% of single parents are women. Disabled children are more likely to be in single parent families. The game is rigged.

1. I'm a mother's rights activist , I became one in response to fathers rights activists.

I want more awareness about domestic violence and wife/ girlfriend murder statistics and I want this to tie in with a mother's right to custody of her child upon divorce.
I have read too many news items of a battered wife losing custody of the kids, only for the father to then go on and kill the kids.

Also what happens a lot is a mother having to agree to some shared care agreement with the father, only for the father to palm the kids off onto his mother or new girlfriend because he can't do it himself, while the mum then has to sit around missing her kids

I want transparency in the family courts. I think these are microcosms of abuse of mothers , who are being accused of parental alienation syndrome and losing custody of kids for spurious reason - because a misogynist court is always keen to believe a Disney dad carried out 50% of the childcare , which is impossible anyway because the baby was carried inside the woman's womb for 9 months. And the courts are also too quick to disbelieve a woman's claim she was abused.

Yes I know NAMALT and WDIT, but those aren't feminist arguments.

2. Nuclear disarmament. Also Can men stop blowing people up with regular bombs please?

3. the food supply chain and seeds.
   This is a complex one and I can't go into detail here as it takes too long, but men have destroyed the food supply chain, it is unsustainable and can only continue with the enforced exploitation of women in the third world. That's literally the only reason we have food on our supermarket shelves. If the pool of exploited labor runs out our western governments are likely to wage war on other regions to ensure the continued supply

I was almost going to start a thread on economics. Ive just discovered the WBG and that they've just launched a commission on a gender equal economy. Why didn't I know this.
wbg.org.uk/commission/
We need to lend weight to this kind of thing by writing to M Ps in a more structured way

Medical research into menopause (HRT etc) and also education about its effects, particularly on mental health / sleep patterns etc.

Ditto periods.