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

@Beautifulbutterfly

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.

Firstly that statistic isn't right. What we've found with the Femicide Census to be more accurate is that a woman is killed by a partner or ex partner on average once every four days, alternatively you could say that a woman is killed by a man once every 3 days. Whilst these statistics are useful, they do create a barrier between us and the women who have been killed. It's far too easy to say a statistic like that but if we are confronted with women's names, for example in the way that we do in the Femicide Census or by the photos in the way that I do with Counting Dead Women, I think it feels more real and they feel more real. And we need to not lose that feeling.

If we look at the media, it's invariably the killings of young pretty white middle class women who are killed by strangers that get the most coverage. A 58 year old woman down the road who's been killed by a man who's been abusing her for 30 years just won't get the same level of interest. That doesn't help us. With Femicide Census 2018, we found that only 6% of women were killed by a stranger. We need to be as outraged by the normality of intimate partner femicide and domestic violence and abuse, as we do by women being attacked by strangers. We need to understand the connections between these forms of abuse of women by men if we are to adequately deal with the problem.

Politicians are more interested in what wins women's votes and quick fixes that they can demonstrate that their interventions had an impact. Dealing with men's violence against women requires a much more long term approach. And it's not so easy to demonstrate cause and effect so there's nothing in it for them, unless they happened to be a politician who is genuinely interested in men's violence against women, so it will always get de-prioritised.

@Campervan69

Hi Karen I love your work and often use your statistics to prove a point when arguing with people. Can I ask how you think this current conflation of sex and gender will affect crime statistics? If anyone born male can self identify themselves as a woman then surely this is going to mean that woman's crime rates are going to soar? How do you think this will affect your work and what do you think could be done to solve this problem?

There's often a requirement for evidence-based policy and we've got decades of evidence about men's violence against women, who perpetrates sexual and domestic violence, who thinks they've got the right to buy access to somebody's body, and who the victims are. If on the surface of it this patterns starts to change because victims and perpetrators are recorded according to their gender identity rather than their biological sex, there's a risk that policy interventions will be adapted and will not target the source of the problem. Plus we'd never be able to measure success - imagine if we thought the proportion of men's violence against women was discreasing but in reality it wasn't. I can't see how this would be anything other than unhelpful.

Of course, I think it's important that we need to monitor violence committed against people who identify as trans and so this should be recorded, but we've got to find a way of doing this that doesn't sacrifice accurate data about sexual and domestic violence and prostitution.

Thanks very much, I'm disappointed that no-one asked me about my favourite biscuit. For the record, it's shortbread. But more importantly, I'm registered with Sainsbury's Nectar and they've told me that I am the leading buyer of Penn State's sour cream and chive pretzels in Walthamstow. I'm quite proud of that.

Thanks for such well-thought-out, thought-provoking and interesting questions. Long may Mumsnet feminism continue.

Hi again Karen. I guess you didn't want to answer my question about lack of housing - so women, like me, are unable to get to safety.

Thank you, that was a really informative and worthwhile webchat. I'm only sorry I couldn't get to it till it was nearly over, but I'll read everything in detail again now.

The biscuit question NOT being asked is a massive compliment.

My question regarding compelled speech wasnt answered either. But I kind of knew that would happen.

Thank you to Karen for your time today. (Sorry for the lack of shortbread!) And thank you for all of the questions, comments (and praise). We're going to close this thread now.

MNHQ

Hello

Karen had pre-prepared a couple of answers that we didn't have time to post up during the webchat, so we're going to add those now.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Thank you, Karen, for all you do. The world could do with a lot more Karen Ingala Smiths!

My question is: Are things worse or better for women now than they were when you first started your career in the women's sector?

Both – some things are better, some things are worse.
There’s a wider general understanding that domestic and sexual violence and abuse are wrong and harmful and I think more women now know that there will be services to support them, and in some ways the generals standard of practice is better but other things have got worse.

§ The connection between feminism and services for women subjected to men’s violence is less clear
§ Services are less likely to be independent of the council
§ Services are less likely to be for women by women (and of course women only)
§ Rape reporting rates have increased but conviction rates are lower than ever
§ Men are still killing women, raping women, abusing women, controlling women
§ New technologies give the same sort of abusive men new ways to control women
§ Access to women’s bodies can be bought and sold
§ Women are less likely to stay in abusive relationships
§ It’s harder to get decent social housing if you become homeless through men’s violence
§ There’s a lot more monitoring and accountability for those that are providing services; the downside is there’s a lot less independence and you spend a lot of time doing monitoring and being accountable, and this detracts from spending time face to face with women
§ I think a greater proportion of women working in women’s services would identify themselves as being victim-survivors of men’s violence in the past; I think the ‘us and them’ between the helping and the helped was less
§ There’s more access to information now (in a good way)
§ There’s easier access to pornography now and pornography in general has got more humiliating and violent – and this is affecting what people see as normal and what they accept and expect to be able to do to someone
§ There’s the same old woman-blaming
§ People in general know that racism is wrong but that doesn’t mean there’s less racism, but perhaps it’s expressed in different ways and we know that Brexit has given some people a sense that their racism is acceptable
§ Education still bestows further advantage on those with advantages
§ Women and girls are still objectified and sexualised; the nature of the way this is done has changed but it’s the same old thing repackaged
§ Statutory services are expected to deal with MVAWG now
§ Specialist women’s organisations are still treated as if we’re unreasonable feminists and statutory services now assume that they know better; we’re still seen as not accountable to the same professional standards (which I think is untrue)
§ There’s more competition to run services and this might mean that you end up being supported by an organisation that doesn’t place itself in a feminist framework
§ It feels busier and more pressured
§ Salaries have frozen while rents and living costs have rocketed; this has affected our ability to recruit
§ Some local authorities/funders set unrealistic targets which put on a lot of pressure to have short interventions with greater numbers of women and only when they’re deemed to be at high risk. I don’t think this is good for victim-survivors and the staff providing the services

There are a few questions about how to end men’s violence against women. Please forgive me for cutting and pasting a short speech that I gave about this recently, but it addressed exactly that question.

Men’s violence against women and girls is both a cause and consequence of sex inequality. Whilst perpetrators must be held responsible for their actions and behaviours, men’s violence against women is not reducible simply to individual acts perpetrated by individual men, but is a key instrument of men’s domination of women, supported and normalised by patriarchal institutions, attitudes and social norms and values.

The notion that all forms of men’s violence against women and girls – rape and other forms of sexual violence, intimate-partner violence and abuse, prostitution, FGM, pornography etc – are connected in a patriarchal society has, over the last couple of decades, entered mainstream policy and service provision – and that’s good. In fact it now has its own acronym: VAWG. But before I continue, I have to say that I hate how ‘vawg’ has become a word and the way that it has illustrates what often happens when concepts that originated in feminist analysis move into the mainstream.

I hate how ‘vawg’ has become a word because it allows users to disconnect from VIOLENCE against WOMEN and GIRLS. It hides the violence, it’s no longer spoken. I hate how ‘vawg’ has become a word because it allows users to hide the agent – MEN. As Mary Daly, said, “naming the agent is required for an adequate analysis of atrocities.” I hate how ‘vawg’ has become a word because I am not particularly fond of acronyms and jargon. Acronyms make important information inaccessible to those not in the know. And this does not serve women’s interests. The feminist concept, the continuum of men’s violence against women, enters the mainstream and some of the critical aspects of the concept are cast aside.

The concept of a continuum of sexual violence was first outlined by Liz Kelly in 1988 and in spite of how much I despise the way that the term ‘vawg’ has evolved, seeing the connections between all forms of men’s violence against women and girls is an absolutely critical step in ending that violence. But it is an early step in a very long road and there are constantly drives to push us backwards. For example, in 2010, the then coalition government launched its strategy, the Call to End Violence against Women and Girls, but less than a decade later, the Conservative government was developing its Domestic Violence Bill and the clear upfront and acknowledged connection was overshadowed. I think this is a bad and backwards move, but I’m not here to talk about bad and backwards moves, I’m supposed to be constructively looking for solutions.

So, if we leave aside overthrowing patriarchy, the radical feminist solution - not because I don’t think that would provide the answer but because it feels out of reach to me and anyway, we can’t afford to wait until patriarchy is overthrown to make changes - we need to start with firstly, connecting the forms of men’s violence; secondly, naming the agent; and third, recognising the patriarchal context and the critical role of sex inequalities. For feminists, identifying this is the easy bit.

The next bit is harder. Carol Hagermann-White developed a model to explain factors at play in violence against women and girls (men’s violence, as I’d prefer us to say every time) that I find very useful. She groups the factors into four main subsets:

1. Overall structures in the social order, macro level
2. The social norms and practises that regulate daily life, meso level
3. Day to day interactions in the immediate environment, micro level
4. People’s individual life histories, ontogenetic level.

And so, if we accept this model, it follows that the interventions that we need to make will need to address all these levels simultaneously and in a consciously connected way. To expand on that, and I can’t do this justice in the time I have, but I hope I can give you a flavour:
Addressing overall structures in the social order, the macro level interventions, requires policy responses that tackle all formal and substantive forms of sex inequality, normative models of heterosexual masculinity and femininity, the sexualisation and objectification of women and girls, women’s rights – and also include intersecting structural inequalities around class, poverty, race.

To recast the social norms and practises that regulate daily life, the meso level reforms, we need to do away with male entitlement, we need to improve criminal justice responses, from the laws themselves to conviction rates, making sure most if not all perpetrators are held to account by the state,. We need to eliminate discriminatory practice, overhaul attitudes to pornography and prostitution, in fact abolish prostitution, and ensure all services and interventions are informed by a feminist approach – including those outside the core anti-violence agenda (for example, welfare reforms must also be considered from a sexual equality and anti-men’s violence against women perspective; it’s clear that for something like universal credit, this didn’t happen).

With interventions at the micro level, we need to look at how the media represents women and violence against women, abandon sex-role stereotypes, challenge myths around sex inequality and men’s violence against women and girls, break down peer support (at all ages) that enables men’s violence against women and girls and reinforces sex inequality, make sure our specialist services are adequately resourced, and look at employment and education practices.

And finally, with individuals, we need to look at the attitudes and beliefs of each individual, how they are formed and how they can be changed, how we rear children, how we deal with and address early childhood trauma. We must make sure perpetrators are held to account by their family and peers and make sure the emotional and cognitive abilities for reflection, critical thinking and taking personal responsibility for our actions are developed and nurtured in all of us.

Tinkering about piecemeal with any of the things I’ve pointed out will not make a long term or significant change. We need a visionary, brave, cross-cutting, long-term and unashamedly woman-centred approach. It will have to be multi-disciplinary; it will have to have cross party support because changes like this go beyond what can be achieved in a governmental term.

Do I believe it is possible? I don’t know. Do I believe it is likely? No. There just isn’t the will. Patriarchal societies, in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, authority, social privilege and control of resources, ensure that power stays with the powerful and advantaged; it’s the same with socio-economic class, it’s the same with race. Sure, there will continue to be steps to address men’s violence against women and girls. Mostly these will have originated from feminists. But as we saw with the continuum of men’s violence against women, usually they’re watered down if they become formal policy responses – and that’s if they ever do at all. As Audre Lorde said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

The best trick patriarchy ever played is convincing most people that it does not exist. Sadly, most people are not feminists – but we are and we see it. And we are not going away. And whether we realistically expect to end men’s violence against women, girls and children or not, it isn’t going to and we can’t let it stop us fighting.