Monklands Woman's Aid lose contract - given to 'gender neutral' facilities

[ArabellaScott]

Statement from Monklands Womens Aid:

'We are devastated at NLC’s decision to remove funding from proven specialist women’s aid services.
Monklands Women’s Aid is a grassroots organisation that has been serving our community for 40 years. It is built on the premise of women supporting women, and as such we are a trusted independent local service which helps change and save lives. This decision undermines the availability of quality proven local independent specialist support.
Monklands Women’s Aid will survive because of separate funding and will continue to offer women’s, children and young person’s services, as well as offer specialist refuge provision.
Our core focus is supporting women, children and young people who have suffered domestic abuse and our approach, practice and understanding has been built up by listening to those we work with. We listen to those we serve and we shape our services accordingly. They know what they need and what works for them so we listen and respond in a manner that meets their individual need.
We are trusted by our community, and have grown out of grass roots movements in the area. This level of trust and understanding is not something that can be replicated by generic providers. Be under no allusion domestic abuse is a form of gender based abuse and women routinely lose their lives due to domestic abuse. This decision to award a contract to a non-specialist community justice organisation makes the mistake of seeing domestic abuse as gender neutral and will negatively impact on women, children and young people.'

From Neil Gray MP:

'Last night, North Lanarkshire Council revealed that the local Women’s Aid organisations had lost the tender to continue providing services to domestic abuse victims in the area.
This is an extremely disappointing move and means there is an unsecure future for Monklands Womens Aid, Motherwell & District Women’s Aid and North Lanarkshire Women's Aid services and staff. I also believe this decision has the potential to harm the confidence of women and children who have relied on the services of local Women's Aid groups because of the relationships and trust built over many years.'

There is a petition on change.org, 'Council to continue funding womans aid'.

Shocking news. I can't find much more about it, this is all on facebook posts, not in the news as far as I can find

While we build from the ground up again how do we then prevent being mugged and having the new needed resource snatched away because of the entrenched misogyny that anything existing just for females is wasted, selfish space and is doing no good unless it's being useful to male people?

I'm afraid it's the misogyny that needs dragging out into the open and sorting out properly. We've already got women's refuge workers supporting women who will not come into the refuges or services because they know males are there, women will die because of this dog in the manger attitude, and those pushing this political agenda are ok with this . In fact one particular male person working in these very services is on record as openly laughing about it.

They don,t care about women. Not in the slightest.

@artichokeleaves I see this as part of the fight against misogyny. Defending spaces where women can be safe, recover, resist. Sometimes misogyny comes back after battles we thought we'd won or places we didn't expect, I didn't guess that "diversity and inclusion" would be turned back against women. Keep on keeping on!

The Scottish govt form asks about examples of well run and inclusive services. So if you know examples of services that still run women-only groups, especially alongside services for transwomen and men (etc), that would help, or new ground-up services filling the gaps for women-only services, or examples of great women's services that have now been lost?