New article by Julie Bindel about Women's Aid

[userschmoozer]

''..the Tories are closing down women’s refuges, and the men’s rights movement is busy claiming that domestic violence is a myth. On average, one woman every three days dies as a result of domestic violence across England and Wales.
In the meantime, a key organisation charged with the hellish task of maintaining the little protection available to vulnerable women and their children appears to have lost its feminist principles.''

www.thearticle.com/womens-aid-federation-is-vitally-important-it-cant-afford-to-forget-its-feminist-roots/?fbclid=IwAR2OG4PYw5xhth8zC93H_CGwsg2ew-MD1OqRvkrE08wT0_Q9ww7WIkjFbkI

Bindel

@userschmoozer
Might you consider asking MN to edit the title of the thread to incluse the title /subject of the article please?

Julie Bindel has written many articles which have threads and this is such an important issue which might be missed by women interested especially when there's so much happening on FWR.

MN have been happy to do this in the past in similar circumstances with threads about articles.
If you want to ask, you can report your op and request there.
(apologies for the @)

OK will do.

I love Julie B anyway but I love her even more for putting this out there.

For context: I've been the manager of a WAFE membership women's refuge for 22 years, worked in refuges for 25 years and worked in organisations helping women overcome and recover from experiences of sex based violence for more than 30 years.

I live (and love) my work and I know that WAFE as an organisation lost their way a long time ago although I can't quite pinpoint exactly when. These days though, rather that fighting for services for the abused women they say they represent, the WAFE approach seems to be "how can we compromise" - with Government, with T/MRAs, with Commissioners, with Social Services, the DWP, etc. etc. That the CEO of such a fundamental grassroots organisation - created by women for women - applied for the job purely for reasons of her own "career progression" and is recruited, presumably on prior "performance" (obviously no-one Googled - or did they?) demonstrates that WAFE management are selling their membership down the river with little or no concern for the traumatised women and children I work with every day.

I totally agree with Karen I.S. - the CEO of Women's Aid must be a feminist - it's not rocket science is it....

there's already a thread about this here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3494902-When-womens-services-are-corporatised-is-that-the-beginning-of-the-end

Ghose is a former Stonewall trustee and a look at her history shows she seems to be one of elite uni trained lib lefty good women who are out of touch with the reality of male violence - so no doubt she calls herself a feminist but not one that I respect. I watched the UKIP video and frankly she came across as more like one of them - so attached to her proportional representation goal but uncritical of UKIP’s lack of ethics and morals and actually fawning and congratulating them - very inappropriate behaviour.

She said her mission at Womensaid is to get legislation through parliament and focus on funding stakeholders. In that case they need a real feminist COO to keep in touch with the operation and inform her work.

I fundamentally believe she does not have the credentials for the job of leading Womensaid - the question is why did the board who appointed her not recognise her lack of appropriate experience and why wasn’t Polly Neate instrumental in the appointment of her successor?

And please no more appointments of women who value their identity and brand and political alignment (ie undying labour supporters) above women and children. Appoint someone with a lived experience who’s a mother - it’s all about mothers and their children and their mistreatment by men, the patriarchy and sometimed by those good women who work in the services eg where was and are those women speaking about labour’s complicity in the gross ecomonomic deprivation of women and kids who have escaped abuse?

Watch for forked tongues and undeclared vested interests

Hi womanformallyknownaswoman

I know how much I hate it when someone suggests this to me, but would you consider adding your comments to the existing thread so they are all in one place. Its building up quite a concerning picture.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3494902-When-womens-services-are-corporatised-is-that-the-beginning-of-the-end

stumbledin

No probs - don't think I've been asked it before and it presents no issues - I wish we could consolidate more some of the overriding issues :)