When women's services are corporatised is that the beginning of the end?

[stumbledin]

I realise that Women's Aid like a lot of long standing women's support services has moved towards a more corporate style (probably having to compete with Refuge's business model - but would never have imagined that WA new CEO spoke at a UKIP conference!!!!!
twitter.com/bindelj/status/1090381745348902912

But given recent threads about there being no problem with feminist working with right wing christain fundamentalists maybe I am just being a bit too old school.

And of course all women's aid refuges now have this issue, which of course means they aren't old school at all. www.change.org/p/katie-ghose-keep-out-of-women-s-refuges

Yes. Everyone working within a women's service providing assistance to women who have suffered male violence needs a radical feminist background and ethos. Otherwise they will never truly be working in the interests of women. It cannot be a corporate approach. It has to be political. The politics have to be rooted in the opposition of feminists to the oppression of patriarchal institutions and the resulting systemic male violence. Then the resistance offered to women to resist the individual male violence they have suffered. It is both collective and individual. But never corporate. Nothing else makes sense. It will always be an endless money pit. We will never be able to provide "value for money" in this. We will always need more. We will never be self sufficient.

Because men have shown no signs over all the years of women's services provided by women strapped and chained and shackled by lack of resources as they are and brave as they have ever been..., that those men will ever ever stop harming women.

When did Women's Aid start asking for degrees instead of experience and/or feminist analysis/understanding of dv in their workers?

Nearly always when they started to receive funding. Many women's groups were collectives, ie without heirarchies. But to receive funding you had to get a legally recognise structure and for many that many going down the charity route. Unfortunately legal charities are based on some sort of Victorian concept where the great and the good could just turn up at organisation and through the sheer wonderfulness of them being rich / educated could direct a group of people who had actual experience of an issue. So management committees / trustees are part of that elitist notion. Made worse by the fact that under Blair it became a "thing" that you had to show (boast) about how many worthy charities you had been part of (ie meddled and used up hours of workers' time preparing papers and things).

And also, in terms of salaries. If you are trying to secure decent salaries funders (being totally located in concept of elitism) would only give them for those educated enough to be thought to be entitled to them. The fact that many older women who have worked at, if not founded a project, are better qualified to do the job than a recent graduate with a degree in media studies just would not be accepted.

are you saying you recall that when women were appointed when there was adequate funding, that they didn't have feminist credentials or are you making another point?

Yes to your first point, see my post above.

And that the whole application process, which certainly in the early days, funders wanted to see, would work against women who had not necessarily had higher education, let alone university.

Although I am amazed to see the number of charity / not for profit vacancies that now only need a CV. Whatever happened to equal opportunities recruitment, where it was deliberately set up so that you did not have to show education level, age etc., but just what relevant experience you had for the post advertised.

So many groups have had mission drift because of funding, I suppose it should be a matter of celebration that there are any women run, women only refuges.

And in terms of mission drift, however bad parts of the charity and voluntary sector maybe, it is absolutely nothing compared to the housing sector which has become the exact opposite of what it was intended to be.

(sorry coming back to this much to late at night again).

Because men have shown no signs over all the years of women's services provided by women strapped and chained and shackled by lack of resources as they are and brave as they have ever been..., that those men will ever ever stop harming women.

So true, and worse have used the power of their finances to ingrain the male backlash against the automous organising of women's liberation politics, but actively promoting the queer agenda and given power to trans voices over women. This is a choice by male power to further derail and undermine women.

Nearly always when they started to receive funding. Many women's groups were collectives, ie without heirarchies. But to receive funding you had to get a legally recognise structure and for many that many going down the charity route.

At the time I worked for WA, (20-25 years ago) we were a collective (as was every other WA group in Scotland) and we were also a legally recognised charity, though tbh I can't recall whether each collective was individually registered or if "head office" Scottish Women's Aid was and the rest of us had some sort of subsidiarity. Refuge Workers were paid by the Council, Children and Young Persons Workers were paid by Children in Need at that time, I forget how we funded the Finance Worker. I think there was some sort of "overseeing" group but it was pretty much a rubberstamp operation as I recall (I could well be wrong...)
At that time, we definitely recruited with feminist analysis/principles at the fore and no job requirement or person specs for "qualifications", though I recall sitting on an interviewing panel where most of the actual candidates had degrees and "an understanding" of dv, rather than personal experience... maybe that was the start... hmm.

Just thought as I should add the link to the article by Julie Bindel that the tweet I posted is about.

www.thearticle.com/womens-aid-federation-is-vitally-important-it-cant-afford-to-forget-its-feminist-roots/

re how recruitment has changed, I see Solace is advertising for a new CEO and see the recruitment is via a commercial recruitment agency asking for a CV!!!

With the same woman having been in the post for a number of years it will be interesting to see if the ehtics of the organisation are shared or are dependent on someone with a history of involvement in women's aid / feminism

have posted a new thread about Katie Ghose standing down following complaints from Black and Asian Women's projects www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3502101-How-could-a-cheerleader-for-Ukip-ever-become-CEO-of-Women-s-Aid-she-has-now-stepped-down