Women’s Rights Network imploding

[NameChangedWren]

WTF is going on? There are letters circulating with members alleging bullying, and anyone who asks a question is suspended and comments deleted. The leader calling everyone to urgent meetings with bizarre messaging: ‘there is no letter, and if there is it’s full of lies, and you can’t see the letter just trust us, and ooh look, something shiny!’ Should I cut my losses, cancel my standing order and just follow Let Women Speak?

Locally based, grassroots groups are much more effective for campaigning, and for supporting women. Central control only brings negatives.

To be honest I think that any supposed support and campaign network which develops a ‘leadership’ with women ‘at the top’ has gone sour. Thank you @HildegardP for the tip about Women of Wessex, they look very effective. Those who are active in my group feel very uneasy about WRN right now.

Deeply cynical about what's happening. Is anything happening or is trouble being stirred?
Ask questions but expect confidential matters to have to remain confidential.
Which must be frustrating. All you can then ask is have processes been followed to the letter.

It's very easy to throw mud and very hard to sit there quietly whilst it lands on you.

Who benefits from this type of story...mmm, let me think

Yep, I was one of them. It came out the blue and was a total shock to me. I just don't have any engagement with any women's groups now since that happened last year, which is a shame as I enjoyed being part of it at the time. There were a few vocal women in Scotland the leadership didn't agree with regarding certain topics but I and many others were on the sidelines but got binned as we joined another networking group, not realising it wasn't "allowed". I didn't even contribute to the group or anything, just one day checked my emails and I was no longer a member of wrn Scotland. I just use Mumsnet now for feminism news plus I follow For Women Scotland and any Sex Matters news. I'll potentially go to one of the Scottish women's events this year but will see as home life is chaos at the minute anyway.

Women of Wessex were a WRN group that left en masses for reasons very similar to what is happening now. And they weren't the only ones (Women of Surrey too)

I don’t agree - a central leadership group can lobby and access power on behalf of the membership. Which is whats happening with WRN being invited on to panels and committees to represent Womens’ voices. That doesn’t happen without a national leadership

^^this!

That is a shame. Without naming individuals can you say what the controversial topics were?

I don't know all the details as I was on the sidelines but I remember one woman being angry that she was being told (on the WRN main chat before it was disbanded into the three regional ones, which was a whole other issue) what not to bring to a LWS event.

Another woman wanted to raise issues about the rape gangs down south and her worry about the culture of men from these regions impacting on women, from their own communities as well as wider. I think it was a topic that they didn't want to explore, but it felt very much like the way our current Labour government are sticking their fingers in their ears about the rape gangs and the enquiries. As I said, I just saw this on the main chat before it was disbanded, I imagine there were probably other things happening behind the scenes with members closer to the leadership than me, I'm sure there was a thread on here when we were all kicked out. I'll try and search for it.

Thanks - trouble with this sort of thing is, that to have influence with power, the group has to be able to unite for collective benefit. That means there are certain priorities because there’s only a certain amount of time in the day. If individuals start affiliating with different causes or individuals in the name of the whole group then it undermines credibility. Im always surprised when people don’t understand that.

Im not saying that rape gangs aren’t important - it’s just not what WRN was set up to fight and to divert into many causes will dilute their ability to influence government on gender matters.

put yourself in the shoes of the leadership. You start a group with one or two key issues and you’ve got years, maybe decades, of fighting on that ahead. You’re doing this in your spare time. Then people start turning up with opinions about what to do and how to do it without understanding the wider context. They’re asked to stay on message. They get the hump. Some other volunteers are maybe a bit heavy handed in sorting it out. People fall out. It’s no different to any other type of volunteering that I’ve ever seen. The question is - are WRN doing good useful work on the causes they formed to prioritise? I think yes - others are obviously free to disagree

I think yes, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there. Both of those women MASSIVELY took the hump that (what they saw as very important) was being sidelined. I don't think the regional split thing was handled very well though, it came out of the blue and nobody was consulted, we were just told it was happening and to pick a region and of course it meant there were a few women who actually being where they were geographically, wanted to go across two regions, but it wasn't an option. Some (including me in the main chat) suggested keeping the main chat as we liked the national approach AND having the three regional groups but the leadership didn't want to do that and it had already been decided that it was being split, and that was that.

So when someone set up a different chat to ensure all of us could still talk to each other nationally, she added us all and I accepted then didn't really contribute that much, life chaos etc but it was nice that there was still the ability to have a national chat to connect with other women since that wasn't allowed anymore.

Then suddenly we were all kicked out of our wrn regional groups. I think (from what I can understand) that one of the women from the main chat or one of the regional chats had shared a detail on the unofficial national chat but then of course I think there had also been details shared back to the leadership too about us (as how would they know who to kick out, someone must have told them).

At this point I just gave up, as I do still feel that there was something else going on between members close to the leadership I wasn't party to. I just got caught in the crossfire of a situation I didn't fully understand and sadly it meant I was then no longer part of wrn. I also left the unofficial chat too as it just became somewhere for people to rant about wrn and it didn't feel right. I miss having a chat with like-minded women but hey, as I said, life is chaos right now for me so priorities have changed anyway.

Not involved at all but I think the issue is how you deal with it. You can let someone have their say on grooming gangs but say ' our priority needs to be this, we realise this is important to you and you can talk about it but it's not going to be our group's priority'. It went a bit beyond that with kicking women out who were just part of groups elsewhere.

From what HagsRule has said there were probably lots of women like her who got caught in the crossfire and have lost a place to talk to other women and get support as a result. Very unfairly.

This

Agree @KnottyAuty - I haven’t seen any issues in my local branch and I like the work that WRN do and enjoy the zooms. Frankly the more active GC groups there are out there the better.

I am an active WRN member and I've not noticed anything amiss, but I don't follow any of the goings on outside my group really. We're an active group (lots of WhatsApp chat, meet-ups and a fair amount of action too). We have a backlog of lots of new people wanting to join - there is only one volunteer that has access to our inbox and a handful of us available to do the vetting calls.

I personally get a LOT of value from the WRN and think it's a great and supportive network with a lot of good campaigns. The benefit is that you can get involved as much or as little as you like, and it's free to join!

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really see anyone benefits from 'some women in a group sometimes fall out' threads to be honest. No-one cares in the wider world. As far as I can tell the majority of the world thinks women shouldn't have opinions (or in many cases rights), so women disagreeing in women's rights groups is probably so far down their radar as to be completely insignificant.

I think it's good to be able to discuss these things on here though - this is what MN is for surely and one of its great strengths? Open discussion, anyone can speak not just a few? I tried to join WRN a while back but got caught up in a loop of trying but not managing to have a call to get vetted and much like HagsRule my life then imploded and I didn't have the bandwidth to deal with it. I understand why there are safeguards but sometimes if you're in a bad place it feels like a bit much to have to jump through multiple hoops. Which is why MN is so valuable IMO.

And I do think it's helpful for women to know what they're getting with the different groups and their approaches. So many women have so little free time, it must be disappointed if you've invested in a group only to get kicked off.

I'm not aware of any problems with my group, we undertake actions to raise awareness of all sorts of issues, unfortunately there are so many issues that need highlighting it's not possible for a group to cover them all.

It is inevitable that there will be disagreements in the groups, and I can certainly see issues developing where some members want to campaign on different topics to that of the groups focus. We have seen it time and again on MN especially round the election: ‘vote Labour because once they have sorted out other things they might turn their attention to women’s rights….’ I can see why there might be splits in groups where some want to follow another agenda. I don’t think that is bad. It is just how these things work when people come together.

No hint of anything amiss in my WRN group. Tbh I quite like it that wims have a big fallout every so often. It demonstrates that we are not just sitting around, painting our nails and waiting for a female Messiah to sort everything out for us.

To the women saying 'nothing amiss in my group' - that's great. Nothing amiss in my local group either.
Please read what I and others have said - it's to do with the overbearing, sometimes bullying, contemptuous attitude of WRN HQ. Any disagreement with them has to be eliminated. Lots of local groups chug along and that's fine, but do not come into conflict with our 'leaders'. Hundreds of women have left or been chucked out I'm afraid. Thankfully some have found new 'homes' or left with their groups.
Please also remember we are told WRN is 'grassroots'. What a load of medacious tosh.

Heather's gonna Heather.

She booted many of us out in June of 2023 for not agreeing to relax our "intake" vetting - just after a similar group had had a virulent TRA join and doxx members. This included some of us who had been in the WRN since before it was actually the WRN, which grew out of a "shoppers" network dealing with changing rooms in eg M&S and Primark. Many of us in the South West put our foot down and left/were kicked out rather than relax our security and safeguarding. It was a rather tense morning (!) out of which sprang the Women of Wessex.

If it's the voice of dissent I think it is, she could start a fight in an empty room. She does some good stuff I'm sure, but she doesn't half like to create a public ruckus.

I'm a very active WRN member, but have very little idea of what this is about. I can see several local groups have splintered off. If it's because they wanted to do non-WRN topic activism under the WRN banner, then fair enough to WRN HQ. But im not sure that is the case. Our local group also do our own thing, but not under the WRN banner. Whatever is happening, HQ saying trust us it's all lies is also unhelpful and creates distrust. Just be clear about what the boundaries are, give examples of good practice and encouragement for grey areas. Finally, WRN do good work, their research, press and policy work cuts through. It's making a difference. It's a new organisation, still finding it's feet. This is normal. But communication is essential.

And the Women of Wessex do great work. You can't just come on to MN, throw a load of mud around and then get cross because some of us haven't been involved and don't understand the issue. Make a clear case and, if we think it is significant, we'll go back to Heather or whoever and ask for their POV too