Webchat with Femicide Census co-founder Karen Ingala Smith, Wednesday March 4 at 1pm

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with Karen Ingala Smith on Wednesday 4 March at 1pm.

Karen is Chief Executive of nia, an East London charity providing services for women, girls and children who have been subjected to sexual and domestic violence, including prostitution. nia supports over 1000 women and girls in North East London face-to-face every year and as many through their helpline for East London Rape Crisis. Karen says: “As CEO, I have ensured that nia has maintained an undaunted feminist commitment to woman-centred service provision during an unfavourable economic and political climate. I have almost 30 years’ experience in the women’s sector encompassing frontline delivery, operational and strategic management and governance.”

Karen has been recording and commemorating UK women killed by men since 2012 in a campaign called Counting Dead Women. She is co-founder of The Femicide Census in partnership with Clarrie O’Callaghan, supported by Freshfields LLP and Deloitte LLP. Karen says: “The Femicide Census is a unique source of comprehensive information about women who have been killed in the UK and the men who have killed them. It enables analysis of men’s fatal violence against women with the aim of contributing to the increased awareness about the reality of that violence, a tool for research and policy, challenging impunity and state failure, and ultimately the reduction of the number of women harmed and harmed and killed by men.”

Karen is a doctoral candidate on men’s fatal violence against women at the University of Durham. She thought some of you might find it useful to know that she and her partner could not have children; she has written about coming to terms with that here.

Karen has also asked us to share the following with you:

“I'm very much looking forward to the webchat tomorrow and to discussing the Femicide Census, Counting Dead Women, men's violence against women with you and perhaps nia, the charity I work for/specialist women's services. I understand that there may also be some questions around transgender ideology and I'm happy to discuss that but hope that our main focus will be men's violence against women.”

“nia has a Prioritising Women policy. As an organisation we prioritise women and do not use the terms sex and gender interchangeably. It should not need saying, but in case it does, I believe in universal human rights. On a personal level, I refrain from using the terms transwoman or trans woman. For the purposes of the web chat I have agreed to use the term 'males who identify as trans women' for those to whom this term is applicable, should the need arise.”

Please do join the chat on Wednesday at 1pm or if you can’t make it, leave a question here in advance.

As always, please remember our guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil. Also if one topic is dominating a thread, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. (We may suspend the accounts of anyone who continues after we've posted to ask people to stop, so please take note.) Rest assured we will ALWAYS let the guest know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Many thanks,
MNHQ

Test 2

Hi everybody,

Made it here and I'm ready to go! Thanks for all the really supportive comments, it means a lot.

A few of you have asked about raising sons and daughters. The first thing I have to say is I’m not a mother, so I’ve done neither; I can’t claim any expertise at all. But this is what I’d like to think I would have done, or think I’d like to see for society.

I’d like children of both sexes to be raised to reject gendered stereotypes.

Do we really have to set out to teach our daughters different lessons to our sons? Isn’t that part of the problem? I think this might change as they get older but I’m not so sure it needs to be earlier on.

I’d like children to be raised to be socially critical and questioning, and for this to be part of the formal educational curriculum as well as parenting. The Tony Benn quote - “If one meets a powerful person ... ask them five questions: ‘What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?’ If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system” - seems a good adage to me and applies beyond the individual.

I like this one too: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

Teach your children words like patriarchy, misogyny, feminism, racism and what these concepts mean, and get them to identify ways that they can challenge discrimination.

I think one of the hardest things is that you’re fighting against most of the rest of society. Childhood is way pinker and bluer than it was when I was a child. Even though in some ways, it’s on the surface less sexist, girls are sexualised. Children should be taught to question this.

Again, against the messages that they get from the rest of society, I’d like young people not to see their self-worth in terms of a relationship and they need to have age-specific education about abuse and abusive relationships. A friend of mine, Onjali Rauf, has written a children’s book called Star Outside My Window; I loved how she dealt with an abusive father/dad through the eyes of a child and especially how the child had learned to view the abusive as normal. Reading a book like that together and discussing the almost hidden abuse when it happens would be good, I think.

Value kindness and empathy over competitiveness. Challenge your children when they treat others unkindly, talk to them about it and ask them to think about how that must have felt for the other person, don’t make excuses for them, and don’t let phrases like ‘boys will be boys’ come out of your mouth.

If boys are getting defensive, NAMALT, ask them to tell you how they are different and if they’re able to articulate something.

@SparklingLime

Thank you for up fabulous work and loveliness, Karen (we’ve interacted on twitter).

Can I ask how you manage to do this work without going under? I am in awe of your resilience. Is vicarious trauma something you experience, and how do you deal with it?

A couple of you have asked this. It's not something I take enough care of or think about - if I ever do start feeling sorry for myself I imagine what some women are living with now and think I have nowt to complain about and pull my finger out and get on with it. I'm very fortunate to have a lovely partner and nice home and I'm conscious of the fact that when I put my key in the door it's with happiness, which hasn't always been the case, and I know it's horrible when you're living in that situation. That gives me a lot of strength. I've got great friends, I probably drink too much wine, and comfort eat carbohydrates, and watch kitten and otter videos and baby goats in pyjamas...

On a serious level, at work we have group clinical supervision for staff so that they can deal with the psychological impact of all the abuse they deal with, and I think that's important, and I know I could avail myself of that if I needed to. In fact once I did - I saw a really nasty incidence of child abuse online that I couldn't stop thinking about and needed to get help to deal with.

With Counting Dead Women and the Femicide Census - and particularly Counting Dead Women for me because the Census data is collated by others - I've noticed the way I do the work has changed. I used to do it little and often - Googling every day for women who'd been killed - and now I might do it only every one or two weeks. What's been helpful now that the Twitter account has grown is that people will send me links to media stories when women have been killed, and that's useful.

Hi Karen,

I’m totally awed by your work and you have truly inspired me.
I’m currently finishing off my dissertation on Gender Neutral Pedagogy and agree with everything you have said— it should be part of the national curriculum

@crankysaurus

Hello Karen, big admirer of your work.

I work in a very male dominated industry and chances are there are male perpetrators of domestic abuse in amongst my colleagues. I would love there to be talk around this issue, but wouldn't know where to start with suggestions (or even if it should come from me/women). Do you know if any examples in industry where this has been talked about/addressed?

Get in touch with one of the men who do work on this masculinity. Michael Conroy for example. I think he delivers training and might be able to come and do a talk. Challenge your colleagues when they express sexist and misogynistic views. Does your equality and diversity policy deal with sexism and misogyny? Is there any room for that to be improved? I've always worked in women's organisations so I don't know if that has been addressed in male dominated industries.

@stumbledin

PS - wouldn't it be a sisterly act to name the women who actually do the work of collecting the statistics published in the annual Femicide Report. There is no reason this would distract from you having originated them.

I was a bit surprised to see this to be honest and I’m sorry if I’ve given the impression that I’m not part of a team. I can’t say it better than the acknowledgement in the front of the report (italics added for clarity of role)

Report authors
Dr Julia Long - Researcher and joint author
Heather Harvey - Joint author

With:
Keshia Harper - Researcher
Clarrie O’Callaghan – Co-founder, report editor

Acknowledgements
We are extremely grateful to Edie Eligator and Treebeard Trust for their support and funding which has greatly assisted in the development of the Femicide Census and this report. We also express our thanks to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP (particularly Zofia and Avril) and Deloitte LLP (Mary Beth and Katie) for their extensive support which has been integral to the project. We wish to thank Rosie Allen and Emily Wertans (researchers) at nia for their contributions to the report, and staff at Women’s Aid alongside whom we have worked on the Femicide Census.

I’ve thanked and named them on my personal Twitter and also the Femicide Census Twitter.

It’s wrong to suggest that I don’t collect data though. I still do Counting Dead Women and I’ve been doing that for more than 8 years; I do this contemporaneously, so I’m now working on 2020. The Femicide Census is done retrospectively, through FOIs to the police; Julie is preparing the ones for 2019 currently. The FOIs and media searches (which almost always have much more detailed information post-trial) then build upon what I’d collected in Counting Dead Women.

They’re all brilliant women and the Femicide Census would not be possible in the form that it is without our combined efforts, tenacity and determination to make a change for women by naming and highlighting men’s violence.

@OvaHere

Hi Karen

Thanks for the work you do and thank you for speaking up for women.

I know, like me, you originate from up north. Are there any orgs up this way that share nia's values and priorities or are you a lone voice in your sector? Any future plans to expand beyond London?

nia doesn't have any plans to expand outside northeast London. No matter how much I fantasise about opening another branch. I know some great organisations up north, but sadly none that I consider have taken the same political perspective that we have at nia, but I wouldn't say that stops them from giving good support to women. I do worry though that some organisations have a flexible approach to who can be regarded as a woman which might have an impact on other survivors that they are working with.

@EnormousDormouse

Thank you Karen.

What do you find is the most frustrating type of response to your work?

"Women can be as bad as men".

I'm not saying that women are never abusive, but for example if we look at the data around intimate partner homicide, about 80% of those who are killed by intimate partners are women and therefore 20% are men. The government definition of intimate partner homicide includes something called a "love rival". Women killed by intimate partners or exes are almost always killed by a man. Men are as likely to be killed by a man as by a woman, about half of these will be a love rival and about half of these are a partner or ex partner. And another critical difference is that when men kill women, they tend to do that after they've been abusing the women. When women kill men, not always but mostly, it's because they've been a victim of violence from the man. I'm not saying that that's okay, but I think it needs to be known.

A few of you have asked about red flags in early stages of relationships. The difficult part is that most perpetrators don’t reveal themselves to be abusive early on and the process of developing a coercively controlling relationship can look very much like love – and disguise itself as vulnerability. If a bloke makes you feel sorry for him, run a mile.

Attempts to isolate are a clear red flag and these can be disguised as love-bombing – in fact ‘love-bombing’ is a red flag. Adults/young adults moving through early stages of a relationship too quickly can be a red flag.

Other warning signs:

§ If you find yourself having to justify/explain/excuse what initially feel like one-off examples of abusive behaviour to yourself or others
§ If you find yourself having to justify or shift your boundaries and feel pressured to do something you don’t want to
§ If you find yourself having to endure violence or humiliation during sex, as a kink – or indeed outside it
§ If there feels like an imbalance in who does the giving and who does the taking
§ If they’re hyper-critical of their ex
§ If they put you down rather than pull you up
§ If something just feels wrong
§ If they make you question your sanity or recollection of things
§ If they check up on you, are possessive/insecure
§ Criticising your friends/family, making you question whether or why other people like you, putting barriers between you and other people

Thank you for the work you do highlighting femicide in the UK. I’m the same age as you and sad that this figure increased in 2019. Again, many thanks for the work carried about by you & your colleagues.

I think this has to be the best webchat I have seen on MN - and they are usually very good - but this is above and beyond.

@FeckTheMagicDragon

What is the most difficult thing for you to do, in relation to keeping Womens Shelters going? What (other than providing donations) can we do to help?

In terms of what you can do to help, please see this OP here.

From time to time I see consultations from local authorities and umbrella women's organisations. Please respond to these and let them know what you think. If you think that women-only specialist services including BME specialist services, made a difference, please let them know. I think your voices are the most powerful advocates for the sector.

Funding is sadly the most difficult thing. Any one time at nia we've got about 25 different contracts running which all require quarterly monitoring and we need to reapply every 1 or 2 years, sometimes 3 or more years for funding. It takes up an incredible amount of resources. I think there's this thing that when people donate to charities they want to give something and see it as a "thing" that has been given to a beneficiary of the charity, and I can understand that impulse, but the reality is that running a safe effective well-managed charity requires admin resources as well. So please don't just see admin costs as charities wasting money. At nia we can't even afford a receptionist to answer the telephone, it's just whoever's in the office at the time. And I don't think that gives anybody the best deal. I should point out that I am not talking about the Rape Crisis helpline here - that's always answered by specially trained women.

@TorchesTorches

Karen, thanks for your work.

Which women have you found most inspiring?

Pragna Patel from Southall Black Sisters; Julie Bindel; Harriet Wistrech; Bea Campbell; the women I work with at nia, in the way we keep each other going. I might come back to this!

@Sypha

Hi Karen, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you do.

One of the most frustrating things I find about talking about male VAWG is the whataboutery. “Women are violent too; what about the male victims; NAMALT”

What’s your tactic to deal with this? It’s like hitting my head on a brick wall sometimes with my brother, male friends and colleagues.

An early blog that I wrote was so that I could get my head around this, and the answer is getting your head around some statistics. So what I've already said about looking at the corpses, because they can't lie. There's been research to show that men are more likely to report abuse than women and to support a conviction then women. Which flies in the face of men feeling ashamed to make those reports. We know that police are more likely to penalise a woman for behaviour that they consider to be inappropriate and excuse it in a man.

There are a few questions about how to support women in abusive relationships.

§ If she’s telling you, she’s reaching out for help. Recognise this. With the Femicide Census report on 2018 femicides, we found that more than half of the women who had been killed by their partners or ex-partners had told someone.

§ Don’t lose patience with her, and get exasperated if she doesn’t move at your pace or do what you think she should. If you do, you’re starting to shut the door.

§ Don’t tell her what to do; ask her what she wants to do. If what she wants to do is unrealistic, gently suggest that might be the case and ask her what she’d do if that wasn’t possible.

§ Encourage her to get independent professional advice. Sometimes hearing it from someone else is easier. The National Domestic Violence Helpline is on 0808 2000 247; there’s also the Women's Aid Survivors online forum, Women’s Aid Scotland, Welsh Women’s Aid, Rights of Women if there’s a legal issue, Rape Crisis England and Wales, and Rape Crisis Scotland. Some of these organisations will talk you through supporting a friend or give advice for friends on their websites.

§ Be careful about challenging him. He’s more likely to take it out on her later than he is to listen to you and change.

§ If she says she’s in danger, believe her.

§ You might find useful things to think about in this safety plan.

@BeeWoman

Hi Karen

How can employers support women staff who are in coercive or violent relationships?

BeeWoman

Give them time off to take legal appointments or counselling and see specialist support agencies. If it's the sort of workplace where a woman can work somewhere else, for example if she has had to flee a partner, then to support that. Maybe have a known lead on abuse in HR or somewhere else in the team so that women know that there is somebody to go to. And if you know that somebody is being abused, be proactive about gently raising it and asking if there is anything you can do to help.

@ClitoriaTernatea

Hi Karen,

I'm particularly interested in issues around women and disability. As a disabled woman and mother of a disabled child, with disabled women friends, some who are mothering disabled children, I've seen how far too many have experienced domestic abuse. Disabled women and mothers of disabled children can find it especially hard to access services for women, and often need creative solutions and support that doesn't seem easy to come by, if at all. It's often harder for such women to end harmful relationships or leave abusive partners, particularly when a partner/husband is also her carer, and standard information and service provision often doesn't recognise the additional difficulties that come with disability.

My question is in 3 related parts:
a. Are there any resources or research links relating to disabled women and domestic abuse?
b. Is there any good practice guidance for organisations working in the VAWG sector for reaching, engaging and working with disabled women?
c. How does nia address this?

Thank you

Firstly, I agree – it is harder to find appropriate support. I think we need a mixture of more informed support from everyone and the ability to address every individual’s specific needs and specialist support. And in the first instance that’s how everyone in a supporting role at nia would approach their work with someone, through an individual tailored support plan drawn up in partnership with the women herself.

I’m afraid this is a bit old now but nia produced a booklet addressing disabled women and domestic violence and practical guidance for organisations; you can still download it here.
Here are a few of the disabled women’s specialist organisations I’m aware of – I’m sorry it’s not more: Beverley Lewis House – a refuge for women with learning difficulties; Deaf Hope; Sisters of Frida; nia also runs a number of specialist services (refuge and community based) for women who are being subjected to men’s violence and have problematic substance use; and Stay Safe East.

@MrsSnippyPants

Thank you so much for your work, you have my undying admiration.

You gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee last July and said what so many women concerned about sex self-ID have been saying: women need single sex services and organisations need clear guidance on what the law says.

I believe the conclusion was the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) should provide it. Has there been any progress on this, and will you continue to press the government to make the law clear?

The difficulty is I was lucky enough to be asked to speak at the Women and Equalities Select Committee and so that's how I got that opportunity, and it's not always clear when that sort of opening is there. For example, we submitted evidence to the consultation on the GRA and we would always aim to take up these opportunities.

On the question about the EHRC, I haven't seen anything since the response last summer, and I don't know what's going to happen next. Guidance would be useful, because without it we're at the mercy of organisations who push forward interpretations that are not correct. For example I hear time and time again that decisions about single sex exemptions have to be made on a case by case basis, ie each individual, and that's not true - the organisation can make a blanket decision on what's best for the users of their organisation if it's proportionate to do so.

Hello Karen, thank-you for your wonderful work. My question is why is there not more outrage in society that 2 women a week are killed by their current or former partner? It just seems that women appear to be almost “disposable” for want of a better word, as if they don’t matter.

@Germainedestael

Hi Karen Do you think the Labour Party has stopped taking violence against women seriously?

@GeordieTerf

Hi Karen

In your opinion, which UK based political party is the best for women's rights?

I would always say that the Labour Party is best placed for protecting women's rights. But I am massively disappointed in the calibre of the candidates for leader and deputy leader. Trotting out the line that "trans women are women" isn't helpful. It's fine to understand that men who identify as trans women have the right to be treated as women in some circumstances, they have protected rights around confidentiality and like anyone else, they should live their lives free of abuse, ridicule and discrimination. I don't know any feminist that would dispute that. I also understand that saying trans women are women is a way that some people choose to show solidarity and support. But that doesn't mean that people can change sex.

None of the leadership candidates have adequately addressed how women subjected to men's violence are to be supported if self-identification is rolled out and none of them have addressed how women in prisons will be kept safe. Nearly every woman in prison has been a victim of a crime of far greater seriousness than whatever she was incarcerated for and usually the man that did that to her is walking free. Regardless of what women have done to end up in prison, their safety shouldn't be jeopardised and they should receive support for the abuse they've had to face.

Right now I'd quite like to be Scottish because some women MSPs from the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Labour Party have shown courage and leadership on this in a way that I haven't seen a single MP in Westminster do.

I agree Beautifulbutterfly.
My question was brief, but based on cases I have read about where women have reported stalking, threats, coercive control and violence to the police and have been either ignored, or even fined for wasting police time.
I am also aware that police priorities seem very strange atm.

@Michelleoftheresistance

Thank you Karen

The MN repeated warning that the danger is highest when a woman is leaving is so often seen here, and it is awful to see in the statistics just how many women are killed in the first month up to the first year after leaving a dv relationship. I know it's a huge subject, but what do you feel are the most key things that need to happen to stop this? How do we help?

I'd never suggest a woman should stay with an abusive man, the important thing is to do everything possible to mitigate against the risks that he poses when she leaves. So I'd always recommend contacting a specialist women's organisation, and talking it through and developing a safety plan together. I think women are best placed to know when they are in danger but at the same time, women have often had to learn to minimise the danger they're in as a coping strategy. So that's quite a delicate balance.

@ColdAsIceCubes

Hi Karen,

Thank you for all that you and NIA do for women.

My question is, how do we fight back against sex game gone wrong or rough sex gone wrong? How can we make it so that this cannot be used by abusive men as a way of evading justice?

@theflushedzebra

Hi Karen, lovely to see you here, I admire your work so much.

I was coming on to ask about the "rough sex" defence when women are killed by male sexual partners too - as it seems such a clear risk to women's rights, safety and ultimately, justice, but I see it has already been mentioned.

So, as an extension to that question - I have great concerns about how mainstream and normalised choking is becoming, with many women reporting being choked without warning/consent during sex - and media using the euphemism "breath play." I'm an old married, but as a young woman I never experienced this. It seems society's idea of sex is increasingly involving more violence towards women?

We Can't Consent To This have done research on the use of 'sex game gone wrong' as a defence and whether it's successful or not. Speaking off the top of my head, I think they've shown that it's successful in about half of the cases - so when a man's got nothing else to lose, he's got nothing to lose by claiming that as a defence. I understand that Harriet Harman and We Can't Consent To This have done some specific work about getting this included in the Domestic Abuse Bill and whilst I haven't read that yet I'm sure that that will be useful. It's important that lawyers don't accept this and challenge it; women don't die by rough sex, they're killed by violent men, and whether it happens during sex or not it's violent men, not sex, that's doing the killing.

Karen,

Do you think the GRA 2004 should be repealed? (I do.)

And thanks - for everything you do for women and girls.