Hello
Lots of you have been discussing the Femicide Census this week - the data for 2018 has just been released and has been getting some coverage in the media.
We asked Nia, the charity that supports the Femicide Census, what MNHQ could do to help support their work - and they sent us this email. Of course we at MNHQ will be happy to do what we can, so expect to see more about this from us, but for now it felt as though the most useful thing we could do would be to pass this on directly to you - so here goes:
"In terms of supporting our work – it is often just really helpful to have people talking about the issue, referring to the femicide census, retweeting etc – it’s about keeping the issue at the forefront of people’s minds and in particular using language that situates the blame clearly with the perpetrators and recognises it as part of the wider pattern of sex based inequality and discrimination.
As we said in our press release endless excuses and rationales are afforded to perpetrators – he had mental health issues, he was depressed, he was upset at the relationship ending, he had lost his job, he had been declared bankrupt, he was being investigated by the police, he couldn’t cope any more, he found it too distressing to see his wife/mother/child suffer yet all too often if you question it you find he had a history of controlling or abusive behaviour .
All these conditions apply to the millions of women who do not control, abuse, belittle or kill people. Even where the man kills his child somehow it’s her fault. We always scrutinise women’s behaviour and their conformity to some stereotyped, fossilised code of behaviour expected of women and benefitting men and blame her if she is not conforming to that fantasy. So anything your users can do to challenge such misrepresentations or misplaced emphasis or unreasonable rationales would be very helpful.
We also sometimes support relevant strategic litigation and in partnership with other women’s organisations we may attend Court hearings or raise a demo outside the court or similar. We know this makes a difference to the woman whose case it is – it shows her solidarity and we think it may also help build gravitas and credibility for the media and the judiciary so we sometimes tweet demos and welcome women coming along to that. We also undertake other activism – so we are usually present at Million Women Rise March or Reclaim the Night March and again we encourage such visible activism as part of a wider women’s movement.
Of course the other thing is that we always need donations so if women want to do fundraising activities, runs, swims, silences, cakebakes or whatever and raise money for us – we are delighted. We are not big enough to have a dedicated fundraiser role or a team supporting people in the way we would like but we can always provide information, logos, leaflets, links to relevant information about us or about the issue and we’ll support as much as we can – we retweet fundraisers who are doing activities for us and encourage it as much as possible.
Also women’s various workplaces or communities sometimes are looking for a charity to support or their workplace may match funds raised or encourage staff to do fundraising activities so it may be that there are other ways to multiply fundraising reach. Similarly if women are involved in organising or attending conferences and events where there may be demand for a speaker – within limited capacity and with enough notice - we may be able to come out and talk about our work or the femicide census or violence against women. The place to contact us for these sorts of things is [email protected] and we of course on Twitter - @nia_endingvawg
Thank you for all your support"