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Seeing
Double
| 2.3.08 January
seems to have swum away before it even really got started. After a very busy December,
my last month has largely been about gearing my Seeing
Double campaign back up again so that I don't lose too much momentum as a
result of the holiday period.
That has meant some heavy networking for
me: getting back in touch with key policy makers about our accomplishments thus
far and our aims for the year, coordinating with partners (and potential partners)
to make sure we are aware of what our respective programmes of work for the next
few months and the year are, building new relationships with people and organisations
that are working on my campaign's themes, and planning a couple of seminars and
some presentations on the key issues.
One of my main objectives throughout
this time has been to wrap up and promote the campaign's first year of work on
'power' - which is about ethnic minority women's access to decision-making positions
in society where they are able to set the agenda. Not surprisingly our findings
confirmed that ethnic minority women are under-represented in power positions,
which means their issues and priorities and voices are missing from the exact
places where the decisions that then affect them are made. Part of my job has
been to deliver this message and champion the solutions that are needed to transform
this problem. One way I've tried to do this is by publishing new research
on the topic.
My other main objective has been to launch this year's programme
of work on 'money' - which is about ethnic minority women's experiences living
in poverty. I've been developing a seminar on the issue and also thinking about
the evidence gaps that still exist: what we still don't know and how we can learn
it in a way that is empowering to the women living with the experiences. I'll
keep you updated of course on how we develop this work.
Meanwhile, the
backdrop to my 2008 of course is the fact that this is a pretty important year
for the feminist movement in the UK more generally. It's the 80th and 90th anniversaries
of the two Franchise Acts that gave women the right to vote, and it's also the
50th anniversary of the year that women were first permitted to enter the House
of Lords. As many of you will also be aware, it's also an important mobilizing
year for abortion
rights as key bills that could permanently re-set women's access to choice
and safe and legal abortions are working their ways through Parliament.
November
in review: a month in the life of a professional feminist activist
| 29.11.07 I'm
really pleased to be blogging for FEM SOC. I'll be aiming to contribute about
once a month on what it's like to be a full time feminist activist as a day job. I
work at the Fawcett
Society, the UK's leading campaign for equality between women and men, where
I run a national campaign on the experiences of ethnic minority women called Seeing
Double. Fawcett
campaigns on three main issues: power, money and justice. Power is about governance
and access to decision-making - in politics, public life, and organisations. Money
is about economic inequalities: the pay gap, poverty, access to pensions and assets,
and savings and debt. Justice is about women involved in the criminal justice
system as workers and offenders, and violence against women. My
work as a senior policy officer involves a combination of conducting research,
analysing policy, doing advocacy work, and developing campaigns on these three
issues. My particular campaign on ethnic minority women aims to ensure that the
needs, experiences and voices of ethnic minority women are heard and responded
to by decision-makers that can effect change. For
example, at the beginning of this month, I met one of the heads of department
at the Department for Work and
Pensions (DWP) to discuss what Seeing Double has learned about ethnic minority
women and employment. I was also at the meeting to learn more about the department's
agenda on ethnic minority women: what issues is it interested in working on, what
are its priorities, what work has it already completed, (how) does it incorporate
gender and race analysis into its work on unemployment and poverty? I
arranged this meeting because I believe that by learning what the Government is
thinking about these issues, I am in a better position to ensure that the findings
I produce from my project are framed in a way that speaks to priorities the Government
is already keen to work on. Why? Because I'm convinced that my recommendations
are more likely to be picked up if they can demonstrate that they will help the
Government meet targets it has set itself. Of
course the challenge for me is that the Government must not be focusing on ethnic
minority women enough since their needs are not currently being met as previous
Fawcett evidence has shown.
In this case, quite a lot of my job involves thinking about how I can convince
the Government to take on board those findings and recommendations that I think
are a good idea even when it hasn't prioritized related issues or, worse, it actually
disagrees with. Which sometimes means I have to have another meeting…
| 
zohra
moosa | The Fawcett Society