| December 2015 Awards | |
| Sexual violence in social movements in the UK | £4,434.90 |
| Salvage is a collective of survivors, activists and allies who aim to challenge endemic sexual violence and inadequate responses to sexual violence within radical social justice movements in the UK. There is currently very little known about the experiences and needs of sexual violence survivors and there is substantial backlash against survivor-led feminist activism (e.g. safer spaces policies, trigger warnings, consent activism, community accountability processes) within the radical Left. A participatory action research project ‘Salvage: Gendered Harms in Activist Communities’, the first with survivors of sexual violence in activist communities in the UK, is due for completion at the end of January 2016.With funding from the Feminist Review Trust, Salvage will deliver a public training and development project: a series of free and accessible workshops provisionally titled ‘How to Best Respond to Sexual Violence within your Organisation/Group’. This workshop series will be delivered in partnership with activist groups across the UK during June-September 2016. These workshops will address the information and practical needs of activists and effectively put the research findings into practice. Activists from a range of social movement organisations, will be enabled to develop more effective ways to prevent and respond to sexual violence tailored to the specific practices and cultures of their organisation or group.This action is crucial to maximise women’s political participation, particularly in a climate of deepening austerity that disproportionately impacts upon the lives of women from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, women on low incomes and in precarious part-time employment, women with disabilities and mental health problems, and women with caring responsibilities.
https://projectsalvage.wordpress.com |
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| Young women in West Sussex | £6,384 |
My Sisters’ House CIC is receiving funding to:
The ‘HEART Plus Club’ will be a structured youth led, extra-curricular programme for young women aged 13 – 18 years old, at a local secondary school. It will be available for any girl not just those chosen/part of the inclusion system and aim to build healthy self-image, body confidence and self-esteem while retaining individuality. In partnership with The University of Chichester’s Student Union, Women’s Officer, My Sister’s House will establish a local UK Feminista group. This group will integrate older young women university students with members of the working party and the ‘Heart plus’ Club – joining the local community together in feminism. |
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| Language exchange café | £4,000 |
| Paxton Green Time Bank (PGTB) and Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) will develop a co-produced language exchange ‘café’. Women will exchange language skills (Spanish/English) and get to know each other by sharing time and knowledge. This fortnightly hub will lead to the exchange of other skills and other co-produced social opportunities. Timebanking skills typically offered can include help with IT, sharing local knowledge, dressmaking, Recipe swaps, decorating, gardening, letter writing, befriending, fitness buddies, help with CV writing. In Timebanking, for every hour spent sharing a skill, you earn one credit which you can spend on getting help in return. This process of co-production redefines work, valuing the core economy of caring, home making and child raising as equal to more traditionally valued and defined ‘work’.www.pgtimebank.orgwww.lawrs.org.uk/en | |
| August 2015 Awards | |
| Therapeutic support for women refugees and asylum seekers | £12,000 |
The Women’s Therapy Centre which was established nearly 40 years ago, offers a high-quality gender sensitive service to women. The Centre aims to offer accessible therapy to all women, taking into account their needs and their linguistic, cultural and faith backgrounds.The Feminist Review Trust is providing funding for the Women’s Therapy Centre to meet core costs to enable therapeutic services to be offered to 100 refugees and asylum seekers who have experienced gender violence and abuse across London.The Centre will deliver:
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| Housing research project | £7,548 |
| Focus E15 is a housing campaign in east London led by young women from the borough of Newham. The campaign started in September 2013 when a group of young mothers were served eviction notices after Newham Council cut its funding to the Focus E15 hostel, which housed young homeless people. When the women approached the Council for help, they were advised that, due to cuts to housing benefit and the lack of affordable housing in London, they would have to accept private rented accommodation as far away as Manchester, Hastings and Birmingham if they wanted to be rehoused. This prompted the mothers to get organised and demand ‘social housing not social cleansing’ for all in London. Since September 2013 they have successfully fought the evictions of a number of people, organised a three-week occupation of a block of empty council flats, and have worked with other campaigns to build a citywide movement for housing justice.The Feminist Review award is for a research project to gather information that will ensure activists can better resist the removal of individuals and families from the borough and to demand the right to decent housing for all. Each week many Newham residents visit the campaign stall and tell activists the stories of their struggles to be housed and remain in Newham. This project will enable the activists, working in collaboration with two academics from the universities of Leeds and Sheffield, to capture these stories using questionnaires and interviews. This information will then be used by Focus E15, working in collaboration with a housing lawyer, to campaign for better social housing provision and to contest the displacement of residents from Newham. The research will enable the campaign to mount a legal challenge to the local authority’s failure to house people in the borough on human rights grounds.www.focuse15.org | |
| Art therapy for women prisoners from overseas | £5,000 |
| A Feminist Review Trust award will part fund the development, continuation and evaluation of the Onyx Art Therapy Group: A project for women from overseas detained in prison in the UK. Women prisoners from overseas – known as ‘foreign nationals’ – can face specific hardship in prison including; isolation, displacement and inequality of opportunity. They may have experienced abuse and trauma and be struggling to have their mental health needs met in an unfamiliar setting.The Onyx Art Therapy Group project will provide an important intervention for women prisoners from overseas who may have limited English language. Art therapy utilises art-making as the primary mode of communication and can provide a vehicle to express emotions. This innovative project will provide therapeutic support for women who have not often had access to intervention of this kind. The project will encourage group members to develop their creativity and visual language within a therapeutic space; creating a rich dialogue of cultural exchange. It will assist the women to support and improve their well-being whilst in prison and reduce the risk of reoffending upon release by offering a space in which women prisoners can process emotions and past trauma through art making and group processes.The project will be evaluated and the findings will help to inform and guide further arts therapy projects working with women from overseas in UK prisons. Ultimately the project aims to lead to the formation of a charity to deliver such programmes. Partnerships with services working with women from overseas in prison will provide an excellent opportunity to disseminate findings from the project and promote understanding and equality within the prison and beyond. | |
| Glasgow Women’s Library – archival training | £9,626 |
| Since Glasgow Women’s Library’s (GWL’s) inception in 1991, individuals and groups from across and beyond Scotland have donated their valued materials relating to women’s history, interests and activism. This has created a unique, donor-determined resource that reflects the diversity of women’s lives, from 1930s dressmaking patterns to rare 1970s Scottish feminist newsletters. The particular strength of the archive collection is in its charting of the growth of Second Wave feminism and its impact on subsequent gender equality issues and campaigning, as well as original items and primary sources depicting First Wave feminism and the Suffragette Movement. In addition, in 1995 the UK’s national Lesbian Archive collection, the most significant repository of materials of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movement, formerly based in London, was donated to the GWL collection.As well as preserving, conserving and interpreting this valuable collection for future generations, this project will involve volunteer and learning opportunities and provide a programme of associated public, in-house and outreach activities. |
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| March 2015 Awards | |
| Support groups for victims of sexual abuse | £4,978 |
| RoSA is a charity established 22 years ago to provide specialist support services for survivors of rape, sexual abuse and sexual violence throughout Warwickshire.The Feminist Review Trust award will help fund support groups for women who have experienced the trauma of rape, sexual abuse and sexual violence. Through creating a strong network of support, friendship and care, the women’s isolation will be reduced, allowing them time and space to begin to rebuild their lives. Facilitated by two experienced counsellors, the support group’s ‘closed sessions’ will run in a block of 12 weeks. The support groups will provide a non- judgemental, safe environment where women will be in a position to learn coping strategies other than self-harming behaviours such as, cutting, eating disorders, reckless behaviour, drug and alcohol misuse. Within the support groups there will be opportunities to learn assertiveness skills and life skills and to explore issues such as anxiety, managing anger, low mood and depression. Through group support the women’s confidence and self-esteem can grow enabling them to take back control of their lives. In many cases women who have experienced abuse are too afraid to attend routine health checks for example, breast screening or dental care. A support worker will accompany the women to appointments if needed or a health worker can attend group sessions to talk to the women regarding health checks.Together in the supportive atmosphere of a group the women will have the chance to discuss and gain understanding of the cycle of abuse so that they are in a position to take better care of themselves and their families. Women attending the support groups will experience improved mental health, a happier outlook on their future and feel more able to access further education, employment, leisure activities, experience improved relationships and become part of their community. | |
| Bishkek Feminist Initiative | £6,000 |
| This award will fund a community-building and storytelling project inspired by running Bishkek’s Collective’s House and open feminist school/library (supported by the Feminist Review Trust in 2013-14) when activists from various communities were sharing knowledge, mentoring each other, building skills, discussing shared causes and reflecting their own narratives together. Bringing community activism to their neighbourhoods emerged as a priority for young feminists in Bishkek city.The project will visualize and promote everyday activism, feminist practices, stories and voices. It will also initiate spatial dialogues with the city and communities about environmental and economic justice through direct community action and awareness-raising. Activists will build a mobile TV/multimedia studio to document, edit and post on our media outlets and in public spaces and organize bi-weekly storytelling, multimedia and art workshops. At the same time, there will be do-it-yourself and do-it-together workshops for underserved communities, mostly for women and transgender people (i.e. fixing bicycles, renovating furniture, using wood stove, fixing basic electric appliances around the house, using drill, fixing drains and so on) | |
| January 2015 Awards | |
| Adolescent girls’ migration in Ethiopia and Bangladesh | £6,000 |
| A research project, funded by the Swiss Network of International Studies (SNIS) explores the impact of adolescent girls’ migration on their own lives, on their families and communities, and potentially on national social development. It compares the internal and international migration of specific groups of working adolescent girls in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Sudan. The research fills an existing major gap in knowledge about the reasons adolescent girls migrate, their aspirations and experiences. It will provide insights into their agency and capacity to choose, their future opportunities, as well as the many constraints in their lives.The Feminist Review Trust is partially funding a documentary film – Time to look at girls: adolescent girls’ migration and development – which is the main dissemination tool of the research project. It explores the links between migration of adolescent girls and development in the Global South and contextualises adolescents’ and young women’s agency, choices and migration experiences. The film will portray the lives of adolescent girls’ migrants in Ethiopia and Bangladesh. It seeks to fulfil a feminist commitment of sharing knowledge beyond academia and contributing to better understanding of the conditions under which research participants live.The film will be character driven, with stories developing through the words of the main characters, with no over narration. The aim is to show the decision-making, experiences of migration, potential effects on the lives of the adolescent girls as well as on their family and household members. To break away from the dominant focus on trafficking and girls’ lack of agency in migration, the film will show resilience, coping strategies and agency of the girls faced with difficult choices of migration in the context of their everyday life, their obligations and struggles, and their dreams and aspirations for the future. | |
| December 2014 Awards | |
| Building foundations for women in business | £1,896 |
| Wayfinder Women are holding an event titled ‘Working your way’ for unemployed women of all ages, ethnicity, and abilities living in Eastbourne and surrounding districts. It is particularly for women living in areas of deprivation, and/or with limited or no local female support networks and/or no local education or employment centres. Lack of self-confidence is a major issue for women seeking work. They have limited aspirations and there is a lack of positive female role models.‘Working your Way’ will be a first contact engagement activity introducing women to positive role models, providing practical advice and support to start to build their self-confidence so that they then feel able to consider entering the world of work. Speakers will describe how they successfully overcame challenges to enter paid or voluntary work, or set up a business. They will talk about the skills and attitude required to overcome barriers. This will be followed by a training session giving insights and practical advice about building self-confidence as a first step to building self-belief. There will also be an opportunity to speak to the various support agencies/ organisations/ employers who will be staffing advice tables. The event will also showcase the continuing support services available through Wayfinder Woman, a mutual support organisation of women in business – women of working age who wish to, or are currently employed in/own any business/organisation in the private, public or charitable sector.The progress of participants will be tracked and subsequent analysis will hopefully provide evidence to support future applications to funding bodies to run continuing Wayfinder Woman support groups and gender specific training as identified by the women themselves. | |
| September 2014 Awards | |
| Gendering Asylum Protection Systems in Italy | £15,000 |
As indicated by the title of the project, “Gendering Asylum Protection System” and its acronym “GAPS”, this project seeks to fill serious gaps in the asylum system in Italy that has emerged during the lengthy experience of Differenza Donna, supporting and assisting women escaping from all kinds of violence, including gender based persecutions and domestic violence.T he authorities do not take into account or underestimate the severe persecutions suffered by women because they are women, ignore women’s specific needs and difficulties within the asylum assessment procedures and lack knowledge of the gender based issues related to each country. The project aims to raise awareness about how the gender blindness of the legal requirements and procedures makes women’s access to refugee status ineffective. In order to design an integrated and gendered system of services for women asylum seekers, Differenza Donna will collect data and information to submit to policy makers and public authorities and encourage funding of tailored initiatives.The project includes the following actions:
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| July 2014 Awards | |
| Crimean women seeking asylum in western Ukraine after the annexing of Crimea by Russia | £4,783 |
| The Ukraine crisis involves the Crimean Peninsula, a multi-ethnic region annexed by Russia as the Crimean Federal District, a status which is not recognized by the United Nations. The indigenous people – the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians were reported to have been persecuted and kidnapped. Since annexation, thousands of people have left the peninsula. Many of them have fled to Lviv in Western Ukraine. As on July 2014, Lviv and region hosted over 400 families from Crimea (3770 persons, among them 1362 children, 47 pregnant women). About 80% are Crimean Tatars with large families of 5-7 children.The Feminist Review Trust award will fund SALUS, a charitable foundation in Lviv, Ukraine to offer direct medical and social support for women and the newborn babies by providing access to services of the partnering medical centre, ASTAR (gynaecologist, paediatrician, nurse, ultrasound examination). Special attention will be paid to women settled in rural villages by outreach visits with the SALUS, specially equipped mobile unit. The representatives of the target group will be selected and addressed by community group “Crimea Wave” formed by displaced people. A data-base of the target group will be provided by Lviv regional state administration. Support will include medical examination kits, medical items, toys and nappies for children.www.salus.org.ua/en/abouten | |
| Launch of Eclectica Project in Manchester | £300 |
| In August 2014, KRAAK Manchester’s Northern Quarter will host a celebration of female strength in musicianship and live performance as the ECLECTICA Project launch event. Over two days, the Eclectica team will present live music, DJs and guest speakers from across the UK and beyond, to introduce the new ECLECTICA Project, designed to advocate equality for women and minorities in all industries.The ECLECTICA PROJECT is a new long- term non-profit project with a view to moving the project around cities and industries, holding activities for women to showcase their careers and talk openly about their industries, with the underlying goal of encouraging team-building and nurturing female leaders.This August launch will focus on the music and live performance industries. As well as inviting bands, DJs and performers to take to the stage, the Eclectica team will also hold onstage interviews with female artists.As a non-profit initiative, support for the launch has been opened to the surrounding business community to get involved, making this a rare opportunity for artists and businesses from the Northern Quarter and Gay Village to work together to contribute to the success of this event. The Feminist Review Trust award is for venue expenses. | |
| June 2014 Awards | |
| Evaluating the impact of alternative employment provided to ex-circumcisers | £1,500 |
GAMCOTRAP is the leading women’s rights NGO in the Gambia working on female genital mutilation and other harmful traditional practices. In September 2012, the Feminist Review Trust funded a GAMCOTRAP project empowering circumcisers to abandon female genital mutilation through a culturally relevant approach in The Gambia. Ending in 2013, the ex-circumcisers were committed to never cut any girl. The ex- circumcisers were then provided with an alternative employment scheme in exchange for the meagre sum of money or in-kind contribution received after cutting girls.Based on their commitment never to subject children to the practice, coupled with the provision of an alternative source of livelihood, this new award is for an evaluation project to appraise the alternative employment scheme after the project has ended to ascertain whether its intended objectives have been achieved and what lessons can be learnt. This project will assess the effectiveness of the alternative means of livelihood that was provided to the 20 circumcisers. It also intends to use the knowledge of ex-circumcisers and their communities to assess whether ex-circumcisers have maintained their commitment to stop the practice and what influenced its sustainability. Challenges faced will also be documented.Specifically, by the end of the project the following will be achieved:
The project will be located in the Central River Region and the 20 ex-circumcisers and their communities will be randomly selected. Open-ended questions and observation methods will be utilized during interviews and focus group discussions. |
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| May 2014 Awards | |
| East London Suffragette Festival | £2,000 |
The East London Suffragette Festival will take place on and around 9 August 2014 in London’s East End. The festival will celebrate the East London Federation of Suffragettes, which was established 100 years ago by Sylvia Pankhurst. Events will include talks, workshops and entertainment. Besides campaigning for women to have the right to vote, from their headquarters in Bow, the Federation launched a huge range of different social action projects:
The Federation also helped some of the people hit hardest by the First World War. In 1914, many poorer families in London’s East End faced starvation after male relatives were called to the front. The Federation organised distribution of milk and donations of food, and helped women to access the modest allowance available for the wives and children of soldiers. As well as marking the centenary of the East London Federation of Suffragettes, the aim of the Festival is also to bring the diverse communities of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney and Waltham Forest together by celebrating shared local heritage, and to build awareness of contemporary women’s rights and equality causes. |
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| Unclouded Moon: A play exploring the impact of migration on gender | £3,300 |
| Premiering in the Brighton Fringe in May 2014, Unclouded Moon tells the story of four generations of London Irish women and explores how the migration of the older generation to London has diluted their cultural identity in terms of religion and gender politics. It’s a character-driven piece with four complex and very different women: a 67-year-old Irish nun called Sister Bernadette, her two second-generation Irish nieces, Nuala, 47, and Geraldine, 39, and Nuala’s daughter Sinead, 15, who has just given birth to a baby girl. Nuala has followed the path of the traditional Irish matriarch but she’s frustrated because the sacrifices she made to be a mother has meant that she’s led a narrow life and she senses that her daughter, Sinead, is trying to break free of her control, which is her power. She is envious of her more educated sister, Geraldine, who has seen the world. However, she does not realise that Geraldine is upset because her latest attempt to conceive a child with her gay best friend has failed. Meanwhile, Sister Bernadette has mothered many young girls who have come to her for help because they are pregnant when they didn’t want to be for various reasons – including rape.The women come together for a family meal to meet Sinead’s new baby girl and, with the men out drinking in the pub, the family dynamics clash to reveal patterns of sexual abuse that have passed down through the generations. Can they break free of the past and what kind of world do they want to create for the new baby girl?The award from the Feminist Review Trust will help to support the wider dissemination of the play beyond the Brighton Fringe performance by producing a film of the final performance and discussion. This will be uploaded to a You Tube channel so that the play is accessible to a diverse range of women in community groups. | |
| April 2014 Awards | |
| Combatting partner violence in rural coastal Ecuador | £9,700 |
This project addresses culturally-specific dynamics of intimate-partner violence in rural Ecuador. Within Ecuador, the northwestern region of La Laguna is widely considered a lawless frontier. Violence against women is extremely common, in part because it is perceived as legitimate. Recent advances in knowledge of rights and access to state-based justice have offered powerful opportunities for some women in the region, but the empowering potential of these efforts is limited by women’s extreme social and economic vulnerability. Many suffer from increased violence and attempted suicide when their newly discovered right to live free from violence conflicts with the lack of means to change their circumstances. These findings underscore the importance of women’s rights interventions that are paired with economic empowerment and new types of social supports.Based on twelve years of research and activist involvement in this region, this project will implement linked interventions to mitigate the dangerous contradictions of human rights education and to encourage a more supportive and sustainable socio-economic environment for men and women seeking to diminish intimate-partner violence in La Laguna. The interventions will incorporate
The project builds upon and fortifies longstanding community resources (identified over the course of twelve years) through capacity-building and strategic community-owned investments in order to ensure sustainability and minimize dependency on external interventions. |
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| March 2014 Awards | |
| Sustainable farming for women with HIV/AIDs in Kenya | £2,400 |
| This project is for sustainable greenhouse vegetable and fruit farming for women infected and affected with HIV/AIDs in the Nyarach Community in Kenya. The project aims to train 162 poor women who are widows and living with HIV/AIDs to acquire simple and inexpensive skills of production of vegetables and fruits. The project design will involve the use of simple but highly yielding ‘soil-in-sack technology’ in the kitchen gardens and a greenhouse in the group farm for continuous production and to withstand harsh weather conditions. The women will be trained on land preparation, seed-bed preparation, seedling development, growing of vegetables and fruits as well as pest management and control. They will also be trained on crop management and simple entrepreneurship/business skills to be able to market their products locally and keep good records of the transactions.The Feminist Review Trust funds will be used for purchase of requisite equipment and training materials for the women. The funds will also facilitate the project to its full cycle. The skills acquired through training will enable the women to be self sufficient in the production of nutritious food and fruits for themselves and their children in an inexpensive and sustainable manner that also generates some income through sale of surplus production to the local market. | |
| Sexual violence in East Congo | €6,000 |
| The current situation in the Congo is growing more volatile. Humanitarian initiatives have increased in the afflicted areas but many have been rendered useless due to instability and corruption. There is little media coverage of the Congo and it is often written off as a hopeless state. The Feminist Review Trust has made an award towards the production of a feature length documentary by Dearbhla Glynn. It will examine the sexual violence perpetrated with impunity against women and girls in Eastern Congo, a country that has been torn apart by prolonged conflict over generations. It will explore the experience of the victims of violence as well as the perspective of the perpetrators, warlords and high-ranking commandants. The importance of the film and what makes it unique is that it will examine how violence is heightened to a level where complete brutality and sexual violence has become normalized and women are rendered worthless.To see The Value of Women in The Congo, a short film made in 2012 by Dearbhla Glynn, go to http://vimeo.com/67693454 | |
| Mobilizing community media to challenge discrimination and violence against women | £8,000 |
| This award will support a pilot initiative of Women Against Violence to address the complex norms and attitudes within Israel’s Palestinian minority that enact an environment in which violence against women is tolerated. The project seeks to explore alternative networks of dissemination as a complement to the organisation’s own awareness raising activities – specifically, the power and networks of the younger generation of Palestinian women. On the one hand, they still bear many of the traditional expectations placed on women; on the other, they inhabit a world where they are expected to matriculate and find a place in the job market. The vast majority are computer-literate, and have access to extensive social networks and websites.Women Against Violence seeks to develop a program, which, if successful, will become an on-going component of its work. The program will work to identify small groups of young women of the Palestinian minority in Israel. The program will provide them with a 5-segment (15-hour) workshop in which participants will explore and discuss the subject of women’s rights, women’s roles and the dimension of gender-based violence in a moderated setting; following this, participants will be trained in film-production and editing as part of a 30-hour course with a trained professional. At the end of the training segment, participants will break into groups to produce their own short films on issues of gender, status and violence, with free access to the requisite film equipment, editing programs and the organisation’s offices which – like the services of the program’s coordinator – will remain fully open to them throughout. Following production and mastering of their short films, the groups will arrange a public screening for their work, as well as uploading it to a wide variety of Palestinian youth websites and social media sharing networks. | |
| Hurried Steps Outreach | £6,500 |
| New Shoes Theatre produces powerful and inspirational work written by women. For the past five years, the company has performed a play called Hurried Steps in diverse venues across the UK. Hurried Steps is a hard hitting text written by Dacia Maraini from accounts given to her by Amnesty International. The hour-long play is performed starkly. Five actors stand without any theatrical distractions as they recount eight stories about violence against women and girls. Every performance is followed by a discussion with a panel of local experts and audience members. The Hurried Steps performances and discussions are used as a powerful tool to raise awareness both about violence against women and girls and the available local domestic violence services. The retiring collection and all Royalties are donated to the local women’s refuges.The award from the Feminist Review Trust will enable the company to support the outreach of the play by providing core support to develop education packs for a broad spectrum of workshops associated with Hurried Steps and the company will be able to license non-professional groups to perform the play themselves.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_jrwqleK-g http://www.newshoestheatre.org.uk |
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| December 2013 Awards | |
| Experiences of women during First World War | £2,000 |
| 2014 marks the centenary of the start of the First World War. In contrast to the emphasis on the fighting men during the commemoration events, Two’s Theatre Company has uncovered some less well-known stories. The plays demonstrate the extraordinary resourcefulness and practicality of women in wartime. Torn between the opportunities for doing “man’s work” and the demands of their families and their emotional futures, they are treading a path through unprecedented upheavals in society.Feminist Review Trust has supported Two’s Company production in January – February 2014 of What The Women Did – a triple-bill of plays which deal with the experiences of women. All three were written during the First World War, and have the immediacy that only a contemporary account, written in the thick of important events, the outcome of which the writers could not know, can achieve. In Luck of War by Gwen John, a young war widow has married again to protect her children, and the husband who was presumed dead returns, maimed but very much alive; Handmaidens of Death by Herbert Tremaine (the pen-name of Maude Deuchar, mainly a poet) is about munitions workers who, in a jokey attempt to keep status with the few young women who are able to find husbands, put letters to “Fritz” in the shells they make, only to find there are startling consequences; and in The Old Lady Shows Her Medals by J.M. Barrie, a childless charwoman, to keep up with her friends who have sons at the front, invents an absent son and is discomfited when a soldier with her name comes to call.www.2scompanytheatre.co.uk | |
| Abortion Support Network | £7,500 |
| Abortion Support Network is a charity that provides financial assistance, accommodation and confidential, practical information to women forced to travel from Ireland and pay privately for abortions in England. The cost ranges between £400 and £2000 depending on circumstance and stage of pregnancy. While other organisations campaign for much needed law reform, Abortion Support Network is the only group focused on providing women with practical help. Since its launch in 2009, the Network has experienced a five-fold increase in calls from women seeking help. Until early 2013, it was an all-volunteer organisation but demand exceeded the capacity of the volunteers.The award from the Feminist Review Trust is intended to enable Abortion Support Network to grow from a small grassroots organisation into a more efficient, effective and sustainable organisation. It will help fund a part time co-ordinator. This will in turn enable the Network to provide better services to women; proactively outreach to organisations that can reach women in the most marginalised circumstances (women pregnant as result of rape, women in or escaping abusive relationships and, if possible, women in rural areas and women with migrant or refugee status); increase fundraising activities; and implement better monitoring and tracking of their work.www.abortionsupport.org.uk | |
| Women and photography | £2,000 |
| In Praise of Unknown Women is the working title of a new research project and artistic commission that centres around the 30th anniversary of Pavilion, the UK’s first women’s photography gallery, and now a leading visual arts commissioning organisation. The project will result in a major new film commission that investigates Pavilion’s history, a series of public events exploring Pavilion’s history and relationship to feminism in the north of England in the ‘80s, and the development of Pavilion’s archive.www.pavilion.org.uk | |
| CCREAD Cameroon | £6,122 |
Having identified persistent violence against women and abuse of their sexual/reproductive rights in ten communities in the Bakossi forest region of Cameroon, CCREAD is establishing a community, anti-domestic violence against women campaign project. It seeks to put an end to the forcing of women to have sexual intercourse with men at all times, educate men on family planning rights of women, while organising women into action groups.Specifically the charity will
The project continues until 2017 |
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| Flying: an interdisciplinary conference on Kate Millett | £780 |
| An award from the Feminist Review Trust will fund a conference which takes as its focus the American feminist, Kate Millett. Millett became an iconic figure of second wave feminism after the publication of Sexual Politics in 1970. As one of the first pieces of academic feminism in the US, Sexual Politics was a handbook of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Moreover, after appearing on the cover of Time Magazine in the same year as Sexual Politics was published, Millett became one of the Movement’s most recognizable faces. However, Millett has since largely disappeared from the public eye as well as from contemporary feminism, despite the fact that she has continued to publish (Flying [1974], The Prostitution Papers [1975], The Loony-Bin Trip [1990], Sita [2000], and Mother Millet [2001]), make films (Three Lives [1971], Not a Love Story [1981], The Real Yoko Ono [2001]), and sculpt.In aiming to address/redress some of this silence, the conference is compelled on the one hand, by recent calls in feminism to re-imagine the second wave and to re-visit foundational feminist texts. Moreover, it is also influenced by the way Millett is a central figure in how the Women’s Liberation Movement is produced and remembered. It is now perhaps timely to create a larger dialogue about Millett and, in particular, to ask questions about Millett’s role in feminist history and to discuss how her work is situated in and amongst more contemporary feminist concerns. The conference aims to consider new frameworks for approaching Millett’s past or ongoing work; interrogate the politics and possibilities of the second wave; and, critically reflect on the potential difficulties of some of Millett’s past work ‘travelling’ into the present. | |
| August 2013 Awards | |
| Domestic abuse and gender inequality: informing the current debate | £500 |
| The Gender Based Violence Research Network promotes research and develops links between academics and practitioners working in the field of gender based violence. Existing feminist research confirms that domestic abuse is primarily perpetrated by men, and to a greater extent in terms of severity and impact. However, this body of research and work to support women who have experienced domestic abuse is increasingly challenged through claims that men and women perpetrate and experience domestic abuse at equivalent levels.The funds received from the Feminist Review Trust allow the Network to disseminate and launch a much needed research briefing paper to highlight the continuing importance of a gendered analysis of domestic abuse. Twenty places were subsidized for participants at a one-day conference to launch the research briefing paper titled ‘Domestic Abuse and Gender Inequality: An overview of the current debate’. This highly successful event was attended by 88 participants from academic, voluntary and statutory organisations. Keynote speeches were delivered by Shona Robison, Minister with responsibility for Equalities and Professor Evan Stark. The briefing paper launched at this event will provide an accessible evidence-based reference resource on domestic abuse that can be used by academics, practitioners, policy makers and the media. As such, it is anticipated that it will be used as a valuable reference to inform current and ongoing debates in the field of domestic abuse. | |
| July 2013 Awards | |
| Sexual and reproductive rights of women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities | £5,000 |
The Feminist Review Trust has given an award to a project which addresses sexual and reproductive rights of women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities within Romanian social care institutions. Sexuality and the reproductive life of women with disabilities has never been specifically addressed by Romanian authorities. The project will look in particular at sexuality education, contraception, procedures for abortion and sterilization, privacy, parental rights and relevant available complaint mechanisms. The project has two main components:
To complete the project, matched funding has also been secured from the Euroregional Center for Public Initiatives. |
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| Tools4Life in Africa | £8,500 |
| Tools4Life is a pilot project that delivers training in non-traditional trade skills to vulnerable women in Africa. Positive Women UK is taking six talented young British women – all carpentry students – to rural Swaziland. Over a four-week period, they will be teaching a group of rural women on the basics of carpentry in a series of intensive workshops. A carpenter and teacher with more than 30 year’s experience, will supervise the UK women and Swazi trainees. A programme has been designed to enable the students to pass on sufficient essential skills to enable the Swazi women to set up a small on-going woodworking business. The emphasis is on achieving proficiency in the use of hand tools. The project is ambitious and challenging but realistic and attainable within the limited timeframe.The Swazi women in the Tools4Life programme are all HIV+ and many are heading large extended families decimated by the disease. HIV is feared; those who are infected are stigmatised. Positive Women UK through its local partner, SWAPOL has been working with HIV affected women and children for over ten years. Some of the severe health and nutritional needs have been addressed to a degree. The imperative now is to facilitate sustainable income generation schemes.Tools4Life will benefit the British women too. In the UK, the rate of rising female unemployment is nearly double that of men. The UK also has a disproportionate number of young people ‘not employed, in education, or in training’ (NEETs). This scheme offers the British trainees an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the competition and develop their confidence and communication skills in an unusual and challenging context. | |
| Sexual violence against young women in Poland | £8,000 |
| The Feminist Review Trust has made an award to Feminoteka for a project to break the social taboo surrounding sexual violence against girls in Poland – date rapes and other forms of sexual abuse – as well as combating the stereotypes justifying the perpetrator and victim blaming. The project will also raise awareness and spread knowledge about the issue of sexual abuse among girls aged 15-26 and among society. This will be achieved through two social campaigns (16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign 25.11-10.12.2013 and One Billion Rising campaign 14.02.2014), TV and radio advertisements and information posted on a dedicated website. The goal of the project is to bring the social taboo into light, calling public opinion attention to the problem of sexual abuse of girls in Poland. Feminoteka want girls, their mothers, fathers and friends to stand on their side and speak out about the problem and oppose victim blaming. | |
| Ensuring a safe future for women in Romania | £5,100 |
The Centrul FILIA Center will implement between 1 October 2013 and 30 September 2014, a project titled Ensuring a Safe Future for Women in Romania – Through the Lens of our Past (Un viitor sigur pentru drepturile reproductive ale femeilor din Romania), funded by the Feminist Review Trust. Partner organisations within the project are E-Romnja and Transcena Association.The project aims:
The Filia Center will recruit and train new volunteers, organise workshops and meetings on reproductive rights, develop strategies against pro-life discourse with other NGOs and launch a comprehensive campaign for recognising the banning of abortion as a historical injustice, demanding that reproductive rights always be respected and safeguarded. The project will use an online campaign, public debates, exhibitions and workshops, flash-mobs and performances and video materials. |
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| Kurdish Women’s Liberation | £3,345 |
| The volume of research on Kurdish women’s liberation is very limited. There are however some studies of the Kurdish women’s movement, mostly in Turkey. Topics covered include the challenge in tackling different systems of oppression and in denouncing patriarchy within its ranks, the contradictions between their struggle and some feminisms (particularly those that denounce the alliances between militarism and chauvinism), and the opposition of other women’s rights defenders who don’t recognize Kurds as an ethnic nation. An award from the Feminist Review Trust will support an action research project by ROJ Women’s Association to analyze and build on such literature with a view to contribute to the current review of their own praxis within the Kurdish women’s liberation movement, both in Turkey and in Europe (where hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people now live in Diaspora). The process of self-examination within the Kurdish women’s liberation movement is not new, but it is only recently that women in Kurdish regions of Turkey have started to claim a new feminism has been born: ‘Kurdish feminism’, an ecosocialist feminism.The objective of this project is to find out whether Kurdish feminism really exists as a differentiated body of theory and praxis and, more generally, what theory underpins the practice of the Kurdish women’s movement both in Turkey and in the Diaspora (in the United Kingdom and in Germany). Ultimately, the goals of this project are to build and transform the movement through collective learning and action research and to build bridges between international feminist movements and the struggle of the Kurdish women’s liberation movement. |
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| Partner Violence in the Nigerian Immigrant Community in the US | $2,026 |
| The purpose of the project is to engage Nigerian immigrant women in an intervention against intimate partner violence in immigrant Nigerian families. The project was precipitated by the series of intimate partner homicides that have occurred in Nigerian immigrant families in parts of the U.S. in recent years. The project, which will be carried out in Houston in Texas, will take the form of a one-day group meeting of a sample of Nigerian immigrant women aged 21 and above, from differing ethnic, religious, socioeconomic and marital backgrounds, and whose collective role is to devise formal and informal ways of tackling intimate partner violence against women in the immigrant Nigerian community in the United States.Underlying the project are three interrelated objectives: to identify causal factors of intimate partner violence against Nigerian immigrant women – as a prelude to tackling the violence in the Nigerian immigrant community; to identify formal and informal preventative and protective measures for tackling intimate partner violence against women in the Nigerian immigrant community; and to identify ways of implementing the identified measures in policy and practice approaches.A one-day meeting with a sample of immigrant Nigerian women, will be structured in thematic sessions to meet the purpose and objectives of the project. The Feminist Review Trust will fund the organisation of the meeting. Data collected from the project will hopefully lay a foundation for attracting additional funding to advance projects and research studies in the area of intimate partner violence in the immigrant Nigerian community in the United States. | |
| May 2013 Awards | |
| Bishkek Feminist Collective | £6,000 |
| The Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ is one of the very few feminist organisations in the Kyrgyz Republic, as well as all of Central Asia. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, access to free and equitable resources and education practices has been sharply curtailed. Furthermore, mainstream civil society organisations mainly work in the area of formal and institutional issues of gender equality, human rights and anti-violence. There is a need for cultural and political interventions and support for grassroots organizing, engaged education and safer spaces.With the Open School Project, Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ aims to offer a safe, autonomous and non-commercial space for people and groups living and working in Bishkek to come together in solidarity. The Open School Project will provide space for women, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transexuals, ethnic minorities, youth and other disadvantaged people to learn from each other by emancipatory educational process through both formal classes and ready access to a curated library. the Open School Project will also encourage creative artistic expression through free and open workshops aimed at increasing proficiency in A/V and photographic skills. Participants in the Project will participate in reading and media discussion groups, while simultaneously being provided space and support to display and discuss their own work.Feminist Review Trust funds will cover expenses associated with setting up and maintaining the library and the A/V workshop space. Through the Open School Project, the Collective hope to bring together different communities and individuals in solidarity of diversity. Providing safe and non-commercial space to voices who would otherwise be unheard will help build self-esteem and expressive ability among participants, while also creating a more tolerant, just and vibrant society in the Kyrgyz Republic. | |
| Lithuanian Feminist Internet TV program | £3,000 |
| Žibutė (Violet) is a Lithuanian feminist internet TV program, initiated by a collective of women artists in December 2012. Broadcast on You Tube, currently it is the only regularly updated grassroots feminist media project in the country. The long-term goal of the project is to become a sustainable English-based feminist media platform with a focus on Eastern Europe’s extensive feminist scene and history. Due to language and institutional barriers, feminist initiatives are often undocumented or short-lived. The vision is to network with artists, activists, and scholars across the area to to illustrate the breadth and the potential of feminist thought. The production is named after the first Lithuanian feminist periodical, published in 1911.The funds provided by the Feminist Review Trust will help to purchase additional equipment, set up a website, and produce a series of instalments on local artists who explore questions of dis/ability. The award will ensure the program continues to be produced regularly and with English subtitles throughout the year 2013. | |
| Sisterhood Street Poland | £2,000 |
| Feminist Summer Action is a 10-day feminist summer camp organised in Poland by women from an informal feminist group called Sisterhood Street. The main goal is to create a place where women who are sometimes outside of the feminist movement can speak about their problems, learn, and share their opinions and experiences with women with different backgrounds. The activities provided are often inaccessible or difficult to attend in participants’ cities of residence and include anti-discrimination and gender awareness workshops, WenDo training (form of self-defence and assertiveness), sport classes, bike and car fixing workshops, discussions on health, maternity, and ecology, drag-king workshops, art classes, academic lectures and meetings on feminism and women’s movements. The camp is also run on ecological values. | |
| The London Violence Against Women and Girls | £10,000 |
| A grant from the Feminist Review Trust will support the development of a unique feminist, anti racist model of consortia: The London Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Consortium. The consortium is a partnership of 22 organisations in London which work across all forms of gender based violence including programmes for perpetrators. The consortium has successfully bid for funds to deliver much needed front line services along with an element of training for staff working in the organisations. The consortium has a strong vision to improve the way partnerships and consortia are developed.The Women’s Resource Centre (WRC) will be documenting the consortium’s processes and decision making and compiling this into a ‘how to’ best practice guide for feminist and inclusive organisations to adopt and implement. A case study describing the approach used and the learning gained together with template documents for others seeking to do similar work will be disseminated widely including on the WRC website and published in the WRC Source magazine which reaches over 500 organisations nationally.The Women’s Resource Centre hopes this work will pose a viable feminist alternative to competitive tendering, and could be one of the key factors in determining the continued survival of a diverse women’s sector. | |
| Digital Desperados | £4,000 |
| Digital Desperados runs a free film-making course for women of colour (trans are welcome) and holds free public film screenings of films by or about people of colour. Run on an entirely voluntary basis, the group aims to empower the creativity of women of colour and break down the barriers which prevent women of colour making their own films.In the film making course each woman makes their own short film that is then publicly screened. The courses are run intensively over a two month period and teach basic camera skills, lighting and sound-recording techniques as well as desk-top editing using final cut pro. The aim is to leave each course participant capable of producing films independently and some have gone on to do so. The Feminist Review Trust grant will be used to purchase equipment so that more women can attend each course.www.digitaldesperados.org |
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| September 2012 Awards | |
| Hollaback! Edinburgh | £370 |
| Hollaback! is an international movement dedicated to ending street harassment, powered by a network of local activists worldwide. Hollaback! Edinburgh is the first local grassroots organisation in Scotland working solely on this issue, by educating on street harassment, encouraging public conversations, and developing innovative strategies for ensuring equal access to public spaces.Street harassment is one of the most pervasive forms of gender-based violence and one of the least legislated against. Hollaback! Edinburgh sees street harassment as a ‘gateway’ to other forms of sexism and violence against deprivileged or minority groups, and work actively to stop this. Their work is intersectional, and they work together with anti-racist and LGBT organisations (such as LGBT Youth Scotland, Scottish Transgender Alliance, The Equality Network, Shakti Women’s Aid), aiming to see a more diverse approach to social and political issues such as street harassment.With the support of the Feminist Review Trust, Hollaback! Edinburgh will hold a number of open-for- all, free events such as workshops, film nights and talks, during the first year of our existence. These include a day workshop in the spring, a film and discussion evening shortly after, and a one-day summer school. They will also continue political lobbying and online activism, and continue carrying out educational workshops with local community groups.
Blog/website: www.edinburgh.ihollaback.org |
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| Empowerment through Education | £3276 |
| Empowerment Through Education is run by the Prisoners Education Trust and aims to support the learning aspirations of 100 women in prisons in England and Wales by providing access to and support for vocational and academic distance learning. In the last 10 years the number of women in prison has risen dramatically from just over 1,000 in 1992 to over 4,200 today, the equivalent of 5% of the prison population. Around 78% of women in prison have a mental health concern (in the general female population, the figure is around 15%), and they are more likely to self-harm and more likely to attempt suicide. Educational achievement can offer a way out of the prison cycle but prison education provision targets those prisoners with little or no numeracy skills. Thereafter, there are few opportunities for prisoners to extend their education unless they undertake distance learning, and women particularly respond well to the commitment this type of study requires.Empowerment Through Education will help women identify distance learning opportunities that are right for them and help them get started. Prisoners Education Trust helps women to decide on the right course in relation to their experience, for some maximising employment potential and for others simply answering individual aspirations. Help will be provided in the process to apply for course funding, and once a course is completed, if the student wishes to undertake further learning, advice will be given on the best next steps, building confidence and self-esteem.www.prisonerseducation.org.uk | |
| Ending female genital mutilation | £10,000 |
GAMCOTRAP is the leading women’s rights NGO in the Gambia working on female genital mutilation and other harmful traditional practices. The emphasis of this project is towards empowering circumcisers for the total abandonment of female genital mutilation in the Central River Region – North. Specifically the project is intended to empower circumcisers with information on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and the health effects of female genital mutilation. This plays an important role in building their capacities to understand the need to protect women and children from female genital mutilation.The project aims:
During GAMCOTRAP programmes in 2011 with communities in the region, the need to respond to the economic circumstances of the circumcisers has been widely recommended towards sustainability of the campaign to end female genital mutilation. A multi-media modular which began in building consensus about ending female genital mutilation with strategic decision makers (community and women leaders) will continue into three phases working closely with circumcisers and their communities. They will be empowered with the relevant skills to manage small-scale livelihood ventures as well as serve as advocates for the total abandon of female genital mutilation and other harmful traditional practices and promote women’s health and the rights of the child. |
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| July 2012 Awards | |
| Education for choice | £3375 |
| Brook provides free and confidential sexual health services and advice for young people under 25. Their project – Education For Choice (EFC) – supports young people to make and act on informed decisions about pregnancy and abortion, through direct education work and training health professionalsThe project, funded by the Feminist Review Trust, will disseminate Education For Choice’s skills and knowledge to grassroots feminist and pro-choice groups to ensure wide-spread and sustainable support for women’s reproductive rights. The project will involve training for feminist activists and educators to carry out education and advocacy work in their local areas. It will build a well-informed and skilled network of educators and activists who will increase the resilience of the pro-choice movement and help it to be pro-active in improving women’s access to information and services as well as defending the status quo from attack.Following the training Education For Choice will continue to provide support and information with the focus being on the groups building their own sustainable network. | |
| British Sociological Association Gender Study Group | £300 |
| A grant from the Feminist Review Trust will provide free places for five activists and five PhD students to attend the conference ‘Forthcoming Feminisms’ on 26 October 2012 in Leeds. The conference is being organised by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (CIGS) at the University of Leeds and the Gender Study Group of the British Sociological Association (BSA). While costs have been kept as low as possible and the conference will not be making a profit, the registration fee is still beyond the resources of most activists/PhD students. The conference intends to bring together scholars and activists who are working with contemporary feminist activism, politics and theory. It will provide an environment that seeks to safeguard gender theory and activism in the face of austerity measures in and beyond academia. Moreover, it will capture a moment of renewed interest in, and invigoration of, feminist politics. Key themes will address feminist activism, politics and theory across the sites of the local and global, citizenship and recognition, belonging, agency, embodiment and intersectionality. A special edition of ‘Feminist Theory’ will be produced from the Conference.www.britsoc.co.uk/study-groups/gender | |
| January 2012 Awards | |
| Declaring the activism of Black feminist Theory | £2000 |
Funding from the Feminist Review Trust has enabled the grassroots feminist collective at Trafford Rape Crisis, Manchester to hold, ‘Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist Convention’ as a platform to launch their BME Women’s Service. The ways in which Black women are physically, emotionally and sexually violated and survive need to be understood in relation to racism and other weights of oppression that press down. Survivors of this racist patriarchy have specific issues that require particular knowledge and forms of action.The key objectives of the Convention are the
The convention will trouble the distinction between women who live theory but perhaps do not identify themselves as theorist and women who theorise the lived experience and identify themselves as theorists. In other words ALL Black women are key Black feminist thinkers. |
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| Justice for traumatised women seeking asylum | £1000 |
| Many women seeking asylum in the UK have experienced sexual violence, yet for a variety of reasons, many do not access the specialist support that is available from sexual violence organisations. And many specialist support services for survivors of sexual violence do not know how to reach out to women seeking asylum who need their help. To address this gap, the Centre for the Study of Emotion and Law has organised Facilitating Justice, a half day event in September 2012, to bring key women’s organisations and refugee organisations together. The event aims to not only discuss the issues, but to begin the process of designing practical ways to ensure specialist sexual violence support is available to women seeking asylum. Refugee women’s self advocacy groups can bring valuable expertise from the service user’s perspective to this event, and CSEL has designed a preparatory workshop and developed partnerships with a network of organisations around the UK to enable grassroots women to take part. The Feminist Review Trust grant will fund refugee women’s travel costs to attend. The event is funded by Comic Relief.www.csel.org.uk | |
| Candle making training for disabled women in India | £3000 |
| The project will be implemented in the Porumamilla block of Cuddapah district in India. The project aims to train 250 physically disabled women in candle making and provide a sustainable source of income for them. The project will train in both candle making and offer literacy classes. | |
| Violence, democracy and time: women living and reliving conflict | £1357 |
| This project of action, research, writing and photography, concerns women co-operating across conflict lines over a 15-year time span. Its aims include uncovering continuity and change in ethno-national wars; better understanding the challenges inherent in cross-communal alliances; and making visible women’s contribution to the long-term struggle for democracy and peace.Between 1995-8 Cynthia Cockburn carried out a project of action-research with three women’s organizations that were sustaining highly problematic alliances across conflict lines in Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Israel/Palestine. The result was a book, The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict (Zed 1998). It described the ethno-national wars afflicting these countries, their bearing on women, and the working methods developed by the Women’s Support Network, the Medica Women’s Therapy Centre and Bat Shalom.Now, fifteen years later, she has renewed contact with the women of the original project, and is making 14-day visits to each country to recall, review and reassess their experiences over the 15-year period since 1996, in particular trends in violence, shifts in cross-communal and gender relationships, and the pursuit of justice and democracy.
Photography and film will be a tool in this ‘revisiting’, as it was in the original project. As a prompt to remembering, she will use printed posters, a PowerPoint presentation, and videos of the women, their projects and places, in the earlier period, with quotations of women’s words at that time. Outputs from the project will include a presentation to an international conference on Gendered Memories of War, at Sabanci University, Istanbul, a journal article, shorter web-zine pieces, and an interactive Website to bring the women in contact once again. Inputs and outputs, as appropriate, will be in English, Bosnian, Arabic and Hebrew. |
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| September 2011 Awards | |
| The Caucasian Feminist Initiative: Equipment Purchase | £2495 |
The Trust is funding the purchase of equipment to support the development of the Caucasian Feminist Initiative. The project is designed to promote the newly established feminist centre in Georgia by organizing events such as workshops, film shows, art exhibitions, discussions, and talks that will open a new discourse between different generations of the feminist groups. The “Centre” aims to provide contacts and to create opportunities to exchange ideas and information, as well as provide mutual support. The Feminist Centre is located in Tbilisi, in the central part of the city, near the major universities. Over 2500 books on contemporary feminism and gender issues are available in the “Centre”. Activists from the regions of Georgia can participate in discussions through Skype.Over the next 6 months The Centre will organize:
The talks, Art exhibitions and Film shows will be open for general public. |
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| Asylum Aid: The Women’s Project | £2000 |
| Asylum Aid is a leading asylum rights advocate in the UK and Europe, with a demonstrable track record of securing protection from persecution for individual refugees, and of achieving significant structural improvements to the UK asylum process. Highly regarded for the rigour of its legal representation and the authority of its advocacy and campaigning, Asylum Aid is a prominent and respected voice on protection matters in the UK and Europe, as well as a strategically important NGO in the asylum rights movement.The Women’s Project at Asylum Aid has been instrumental in lobbying the UK Border Agency (and its predecessors) to adopt and implement gender guidelines and other policies that can benefit women seeking asylum. These cover the asylum determination process, support and accommodation, and detention.The Feminist Review Trust is supporting Asylum Aid’s work to raise awareness and increase implementation of the UK’s policies regarding women seeking asylum.
Research has shown that the UK Border Agency does not always fully implement its policies that could benefit women seeking asylum. The impact of this is wide ranging. Women may have to undergo the stress of an asylum appeal. Women may be made destitute and vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Asylum Aid is producing an accurate and current resource outlining all these policies and making it publicly and freely available. This would increase the chances of their being implemented appropriately. The Feminist Review Trust is funding the design, printing and dissemination of the report, development of the online content for legal representatives, consultation with legal representatives and with women asylum seekers. |
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| The Socio-economic Empowerment of Dalit Women Dairy Project | £3000 |
| This project will be implemented in Chemuduru Village of Badvel block, Kadapa District of A.P. India. 20 dalit women will be provided with a cow and the means to support it (including medical support). The cow will enable the women to generate an income by selling milk so contributing to their self-reliance. Overall the project aims to empower the dalit women and to eradicate the poverty and hunger from their lives. | |
| Women in Prison: Report on The State of the Women’s Prison Estate | £2000 |
| Women in the prison system are invisible and ignored. To shed light on their situation Women in Prison are producing The State of the Women’s Prison Estate, a report compiling and analysing information on each prison. This report will provide a vehicle for women to voice their experiences and provide evidence to inform debate and campaigns.Women in prison have no vote and little opportunity to speak out about their conditions. The lack of attention paid to their situation adds to their marginalisation and disempowerment.Women are just 5% of the prison population in England and Wales, as a minority within a marginalised community they are largely invisible and ignored. The Ministry of Justice releases data but this neither easily digestible nor broken down by specific prisons. The Prison Inspectorate visits each women’s prison, but only once every 3 years or so. Where data is compiled or annual reports are produced, women’s experiences are reduced to a few paragraphs and there is rarely any opportunity for women to have their say.
Therefore, whilst information is published, none of what is currently produced provides annual, accessible data that sheds light on women’s experience of prison and analyses it from a feminist perspective. This is the gap this report will fill. Women in Prison works to decrease the needless imprisonment of women and improve safety and respect for dignity in women’s prisons by making people, particularly policy makers, more aware of what happens inside women’s prisons. The evidence base the report will provide will underpin campaigning on this issue, offer a starting point for public debate, provide evidence to challenge threats to women’s safety, dignity and equality and highlight good practice that can be replicated in other prisons. |
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| Irish Magdalenes in the UK: A Restorative Justice Project | £7287 |
| The Feminist Review Thrust Grant will facilitate an oral history project of the survivors of Irish Magdalene Laundries who have made their homes in the UK. Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries were residential, commercial and for-profit laundries operated in Catholic convents by four orders of nuns. Between 1922 and 1996, when the last institution closed, an as yet unknown number of Irish girls and women were incarcerated in ten Magdalene Laundries and forced to carry out unpaid labour under extremely harsh conditions. Girls and women were placed in the Magdalene Laundries because they were perceived to be ‘promiscuous’, or the cause of sexual ‘temptation’, some were unwed mothers, some were transferred from residential ‘industrial schools’ in the care of the Church and State, or were otherwise in vulnerable situations due to poverty. These women were denied freedom of movement, never paid for their labour, and often denied their given names. The daily routine in the Magdalene Laundries emphasised prayer, silence, and work.Many survivors who were released made their home in the UK, often fearing re-incarceration should they remain in Ireland; it is these women who will provide the testimonies as part of this project. The ultimate goal is to contribute to understanding the lives of women who lived in the Magdalene Institutions. There is currently no reliable information on even basic data such as how many women were committed to these institutions and how many survivors still remain in Ireland, the UK and in countries such as the USA. These UK survivor testimonies are a crucial part of a larger oral history which seeks to collect participants’ and eye-witnesses’ accounts of the Magdalene institutions in the Justice for Magdalenes’ campaign to seek restorative justice for these institutionalised women from the Irish State and the Catholic Church. | |
| Rwenzori Women’s Empowerment Centre for Community Development, Uganda Community Fuel Briquette Project | £3762 |
| The Community Fuel Briquette Project is an initiative of Rwenzori Women’s Empowerment Centre for Community Development (RWECCD) that is intended to alleviate the suffering of many people, particularly women, in the Kasese district in western Uganda. Currently hundreds of women survive on gathering firewood for sale. A majority of these gather firewood from the nearby Queen Elizabeth National Park where they are often arrested and prosecuted by Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). When sentenced, often to long prison terms, the families they head and their children are left destitute.The goal of the project is to train 20 members of RWECCD (women) in the essential skill of producing biomass fuel briquettes. Fuel briquettes are biomass substances made out of raw materials including; rice husks, coffee husks, saw dust, G.nut husks and dry leaves. After these women have acquired skills in briquette production, they will pass these skills on to the rest of their community. In this way women will be not only enabled to earn money through selling briquettes but also less at risk of prosecution. And the demand on the resources of the forest will be reduced through fewer women scavenging for firewood. | |
| AZUR Development: Feminist Tech Exchange, Republic of Congo | £5000 |
The project’s objectives are:
The Feminist Review Trust funds will be used to produce the training curriculum handbook; the Feminist Tech Exchange ‘training of trainers’ workshop; the practical training in the field, and the purchase a video projector to screen images and digital stories of survivors. The project will train 25 trainers to reach out to 400 women and girl victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse in urban and rural areas. |
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| Women’s Development Welfare Society, India | £3286.29 |
| The Skills and Tailoring Training for Women Project will focus on women in the slums of Karimnagar, India. 25 women will be trained in tailoring and embroidery skills hence enabling them to earn money and achieve some economic independence. The women will be taught how to mange their accounts, be supported in literacy development and give basic hygiene and sanitation education. | |
| Women Living Under Muslim Laws | £3500 |
| Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) is a global women’s network that advocates for the promotion of human rights and gender equality in Muslim countries and contexts, led and supported by women from those contexts.WLUML develops and provides free e-publications to support women’s struggles, carries out research, offers analytical responses on gender violations and presents solutions from within Muslim contexts.The Feminist Review Trust award of £3500 will contribute primarily towards the production of Dossier 32: Sexuality in Muslim Contexts. The call for papers has been issued; the dossier will have a minimum of 10 articles. The likely e-publication date is early 2012. The grant may also be used towards the E-publications of: Making Gender Quotas Work for Women – Successful Steps for Effective Gender Quota use, an overview of global debates, use of quota’s in prominent electoral systems and for Women’s Charters – Strategic use in promoting women’s rights.
Making Gender Quotas Work for Women and Women’s Charters will form the basis of WLUML training for women advocating gender equality through more equal political representation of women and women’s increased access to policy and decision-making positions. WLUML has produced publications annually since 1986, a minimum of two publications a year. WLUML publications are available through the web shop or as free to download e-publications on the website www.wluml.org. |
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| May 2011 Awards | |
| Fawcett Society: core funding | £9811 |
| Fawcett’s new programme of work focuses on advancing women’s political rights and increasing the representation and influence of women in parliament.The general election saw a paltry 2% increase in the number of women MPs and the appointment of just 4 women to a cabinet of 23, yet evidence suggests that the knowledge and experience brought by increased numbers of women MPs would benefit everyday women’s lives, by ensuring that policy decisions are informed by their differing perspectives, concerns and needs.The under-representation of women in parliament is a major democratic deficit. A gender-balanced parliament would be more representative of society and would therefore be more able to serve the diverse needs of both women and men.
The Fawcett Society aims to
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| Lesbian Immigration Support Group: core funding | £2250 |
The Lesbian Immigration Support Group is an independent member and volunteer led support group which exists to provide support for women based in Greater Manchester who are either seeking to claim asylum in the UK, or who are refugees, and who identify as having a same sex orientation.The group aims to:
Members have all experienced trauma in their country of origin due to their sexuality including rape, imprisonment, forced marriage, domestic violence, physical assaults and torture. Now in England, members often suffer severe mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and self-harm, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts – including those members who have been given leave to remain here. The practical support offered includes finding ‘lesbian friendly ‘solicitors; accompanying members to solicitors appointments, immigration tribunals, Home Office interviews, appointments with MPs, etc; collecting signatories for anti-deportation petitions; and writing letters and statements to support members’ asylum claims. The Feminist Review Trust grant will pay for the core work for one year. It will also allow the opportunity to develop our group and establish other income streams for the group to become more self-sustaining. |
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| Abortion Support Network: core funding | £2500 |
| Abortion Support Network (ASN) is a new, all volunteer organization which assists women travelling to the England in order to access a safe and legal abortion, which they are denied in their home countries. Many of these women travel from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Women travelling to England for abortions often face very difficult and stressful circumstances, financial hardship and are extremely isolated. They must pay privately for their procedure, as well as other expenses such as travel, childcare and time off work, meaning the overall costs of their journey and procedure can run into the hundreds or thousands of pounds. ASN is the only organization currently working to provide these women with practical assistance and confidential, non-judgemental information.The individual circumstances of the women who turn to ASN for support vary greatly. Women ASN assisted in 2010 for example, included students, mothers, women surviving on benefits, teenagers, women facing severe foetal impairment, asylum seekers, married middle-aged women, and women who had experienced rape or domestic violence. ASN provides grants towards the cost of women’s procedures, offers accommodation in the homes of volunteers to those women staying overnight, as well as practical information on providers and travel and an understanding person to speak with at the end of the phone.The grant from the Feminist Review Trust will cover all of ASN’s modest operating costs in 2011, allowing ASN to use 100% of its donations from the public to help women pay for their abortion procedures and travel. Additionally ASN will use 80% of the Trust’s contribution to assist women in need with grants towards the cost of their abortion. | |
| Homeworkers Worldwide | £2000 |
| Homeworkers Worldwide (HWW) will coordinate a research project under the auspices of a new “Women and Work Network” being established in the North of England.HWW works specifically with homebased workers. In addition it has built links with other groups working on related issues around women and informal or precarious work, such as BME groups, asylum seeker groups and trade unionists. They are currently establishing a local network to bring together those working on these issues to build a common platform for advocacy and lobbying.The research project will explore women’s informal and precarious work; obstacles to decent work and income; relationship to unpaid family work and ongoing changes in welfare reform and public service cuts and services.
The aim is to support homebased women in undertaking research and formulating a platform and strategy for advocacy. The research findings will be fed back into the network, in the form of a final report, and inform future work and priority-setting. The network will provide a route for women to take up their concerns in a collective and ongoing way. |
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| January 2011 Awards | |
| Centre for Women and Democracy | £3000 |
This award will support research to examine the government’s legislative programme to establish the aggregated effect of the constitutional and localism agendas on women’s representation at strategic decision-making levels in England. Currently women are under-represented in parliament (22%), on local councils (31%) and in local leadership roles (14%), and the report on the research will also make recommendations for how new legislation could best be used to improve this position.There are at present a number of bills going through Parliament which will have a direct impact on the level and nature of women’s representation in public life. These include:
In addition, there are other structural changes such as the abolition of Regional Development Agencies and the introduction of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) which will impact upon women’s representation at the point at which key economic and social decisions about their lives are made. |
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| September 2010 Awards | |
| The Arbour Project | £3000 |
| The Young BME Women’s Social Inclusion Project provides a safe environment for newly arrived women with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) to receive accredited English language and life skills across Tower Hamlets. The vast majority of the target group do not work, have very limited English language skills, and little comprehension of life in the UK. Consequently many spend a considerable amount of time at home and are severely isolated.The project enables newly arrived women to participate and socially engage with their new community, make better informed life choices and have greater control over their lives. By the end of the programme beneficiaries feel more integrated within British society, feel more confident speaking English at home and when accessing local services and are able to independently utilise local services.The project accepts all women from outside of the EEA who have been in the UK for less than 18 months and have NRPF. This is the only project in east London that is specifically designed for this target group. Without this programme these women are unable to access an education or appropriate support system that addresses their needs until after their first year in the UK.
The project accepts all women from outside of the EEA who have been in the UK for less than 18 months and have NRPF. This is the only project in east London that is specifically designed for this target group. Without this programme these women are unable to access an education or appropriate support system that addresses their needs until after their first year in the UK. |
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| Young people in Ukraine | £2067 |
SALUS Foundation will develop interactive training for the 15-22 age group to raise awareness about problems of gender equality, HIV/STIs, stigma and discrimination; violence trafficking, violence and human rights abuse and to encourage more young people to seek assistance from state and non-government social and medical institutions.The project will provide a new interactive resource for educators working with this age group. An interactive exercise “When and how to say NO” will help to improve young women’s self esteem and assertiveness. The game will be distributed among educators providing training on sexuality education, gender sensitive issues and the prevention of violence. The training will teach young how to take decisions in complicated life situations. The main activities being funded include:
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| Decriminalization of abortion in Argentina | £2300 |
| Lesbians and Feminists for the Decriminalization of Abortion, has been working with the Network Against Unsafe Abortion in Argentina since April 2010. Network members are primarily in public community and primary health teams. The groups have been working in four municipalities to establish publicly available trained health care teams to prevent unsafe abortion in local communities and have been networking among community and health care professionals in the public system and through local social movements and organizations. In October 2010 they published a handbook on safe abortion.The main objective of this project is to prevent unsafe abortion practices at the local level by improving: access to information about safe abortion with misoprostol; access to and use of misoprostol and other resources; how to spot complications, when to seek medical care, and the legal framework protecting women’s rights in post-abortion care at the hospital.With the support of the Feminist Review Trust, the group will train 100 public community health workers in two municipalities and engage with municipal government officials to make these services publicly available through the Network Against Unsafe Abortion in Argentina; the municipal health care system, and local social organizations | |
| Internally displaced women in Northern Sri Lanka | £4000 |
| The project aims to initiate the “Internally Displaced Women’s Collective” in Northern Sri Lanka. The main focus of the project is to work with a local women’s group to create a shelter for women survivors of the ethnic conflict in the District of Kilinochchi.The intention of this joint project is to assist internally displaced women in overcoming their trauma and rebuilding safety networks, social relations and economic resources. This includes women’s personal security from violence or harm and access to the basic essentials of life and freedom from violations based on gender. As such, the project will help to enhance women’s human rights in the region by promoting gender equality as well as women’s dignity, personal (physical and economic) security. The project will assist women through the path of becoming economically self-sufficient by creating funds and giving meaningful assistance to build a safe shelter. This initial assistance will support the traditional saving system known as seettu for women to participate in income generation activities, which will provide jobs for their children and other relatives. And more importantly it will empower women, who have literally nothing left to live or look forward to being other than warranted salvation. | |
| January 2010 Awards | |
| Rights for Women : 35th Anniversary Conference | £1500 |
| Funding from the Feminist Review Trust to Rights of Women will enable 15 women from small grassroots organisations throughout England and Wales to participate in the 35th Anniversary Conference on 22 June 2010. The conference will be an opportunity for dialogue within and between the government and statutory sector and the community and voluntary sector on violence against women. The conference will also be a platform to put forward feminist analyses of international law and obligations incumbent upon the UK – an approach that many participants will not be familiar with. The engagement of smaller, grassroots women’s organisations with the experience they bring to this dialogue is vital to ensuring appropriate, sustainable approaches to addressing violence against women.Women’s organisations are increasingly under threat from funding cuts and changes to local funding for their services. With scarce resources channelled into providing direct services to vulnerable and disadvantaged women, grassroots and feminist organisations often do not have the capacity or finances to engage in conferences and events. ROW wants to ensure that women from smaller grass roots organisations from around England and Wales participate in the conference. They believe this is vital for two reasons: first, their presence will be essential in order to have a meaningful debate on the impact of national law and policy on individual women: and second, individual women from smaller and grassroots women’s organisations will benefit from increased awareness and capacity to engage in debates on international and domestic law affecting women, debates which can often be inaccessible and daunting. The conference will also give them an opportunity to develop their own understanding of the law and policy of violence against women and how they can actively engage in policy and campaigning work using national and international frameworks.www.rightsofwomen.org.uk | |
| September 2009 Awards | |
| Youth awareness training programme in South Africa | £1500 |
| The funds will support a youth training workshop which will form part of a group of activities during 6 days of ‘no violence against women’. The funds will support planning, production of materials, venue and transportation. The workshop will take place in Guguletu township. By hosting it in Guguletu the aim is to attract/target youth and young people from surrounding South African townships like Langa, Nyanga, New Cross Roads and Phillipi. The group feels it important that youth participate in initiatives by NGO’s, CBO’s and Government Departments that are in the long run going to benefit them. There will be 40 participants between the ages of 18-25 years including those who are currently attending school and those who are unemployed. Teenage violence in the relationships of young people has been on the rise in townships.Young women and men will be educated and sensitized to prevailing issues of domestic violence in young relationships. As an organization that assists in the role out of Protection orders at the Phillipi court, Ilitha Labantuh as been studying the large numbers of young women who have been applying for protection orders against their partners. They feel that it is important that the youth are equipped with skills to counsel each other and educate one another on their rights so that the cycle of domestic violence and abuse against women can be broken. Violence should not be viewed as a normal phenomenon. | |
| Engendering climate change campaign | £1200 |
‘Engendering Change’, Women’s Environment Network new campaign and research report, firmly places gender on the climate-change agenda. Our largest piece of climate change research to date, it will highlight women’s lack of participation in decision-making both generally and specifically with regard to climate change, and explore the links between gender and climate change in the developed and developing world.The research will show that while women are already being disproportionately affected by climate change, and have made a smaller contribution to the problem, they are poorly represented in positions of authority in general and therefore in decision-making at national and international levels.The campaign advocates action on three fronts:
The grant will be used for printing a climate change and gender campaign briefing to accompany the launch of the new campaign and report. The briefing will outline the arguments for effective, gender-sensitive climate change legislation in a user-friendly format, and will offer activists, and other interested parties, practical advice on influencing decision-makers and MPs. As an educational tool, the briefing will be disseminated in partnership with other women’s and climate change organisations. WEN’s local groups will be among the first to use this briefing to lobby MPs and improve awareness at a regional level in the UK. The campaign will initiate a wider public discourse on climate change and gender, and will shed light on a topic that has so far remained marginalised. |
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| The Sylvia Pankhurst Festival | £310.50 |
| Sylviapankhurst.com was developed in 2008. With an educational (and non-political) mission, this extensive site was created as an information resource for historians, students, researchers and anyone with an interest in women’s history or in 20th century history generally.Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960) is a formerly neglected heroine who, after rising to prominence as a Suffragette, devoted her life to campaigning for a fairer society – with ideology long before her time. Abandoning a promising career as a painter and designer, Sylvia carved an extraordinary life for herself empowering and creating self-help opportunities for women, helping the poor, opposing political oppression and racism, challenging world leaders including Lenin, Mussolini and Churchill, and promoting peace – all the while inspiring a new awareness and campaigning spirit in people all over the world through her writings, speeches and political demonstrations.As well as offering an overview of Sylvia Pankhurst’s life and times, Sylviapankhurst.com examines her influences and the impact of her work, from her importance as an artist and campaigner for the Suffragette movement through to her friendship with the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, whose invitation to spend her last years in Ethiopia she accepted. The creation of the site, plus maintenance for one year, was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, but additional funding from the Feminist Review Trust has enabled the continuation of the site on the web for four years – and therefore the possibility of further development. | |
| May 2009 Awards | |
| Film celebrating African American women | £2000 |
| The grant from the Feminist Review Trust will go towards the costs of a project to update the documentary film “A Place of Rage”. The film is a celebration of the contributions and achievements of prominent African American women and includes interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of civil rights, black power, lesbian and gay rights and the feminist movement, the trio reassess how women like Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Harner revolutionised American society and the world generally. The women interviewed in the film were instrumental in the US civil rights movement and their contributions impacted on equality developments and legislation across the world including in the UK. The project will release the film as a DVD to ensure wider access. We will add new material from updated interviews with Alice Walker and Angela Davis. Sadly, June Jordan passed away in 2002. However, some unused/unseen footage of June Jordan which was filmed before her death will be added to the DVD extras . This release with updated interviews will ensure that the valuable contributions made by three of the most inspirational Black women of our time are recorded for educational, political and historical purposes. | |
| The significance of menopause in everyday lives | £5000 |
| The dominant focus of research about the menopause has been upon medical management of ‘the change of life’, viewed as a ‘problem’ that requires drug therapy to remedy. There is little written that explores the everyday experiences of women and the meanings they ascribe to menopause in their lives. There are no holdings in the British Library Sound Archive of oral histories of the menopause other than brief mentions in the Wellcome Trust oral history of medicine. Equally, the majority of life course research is focused upon earlier life transitions, such as adolescence and family formation, and those in later life around illness and bereavement. There is also a lack of socio-historical literature that engages with menopause as a significant life event; the exception, albeit framed by biomedical developments, is Judith Houk’s 2006 historical analysis of menopause in the USA from the late 19th century to the present day. However, there is no equivalent work in the UK. This research project aims to address the absence of ordinary women’s (and men’s) voices in the debate, through the commissioning of a Mass Observation Directive that invites MO correspondents to specifically address issues of menopause and midlife transition, and to write about their personal experiences. As a life historian and adult educator, Teresa Cairns intend to draw upon the responses to the MO Directive to explore the meanings of menopause in people’s lives and identify the key issues that are reflected in correspondents’ narratives. The Directive responses will be archived in the MO Archive in Sussex University Library for immediate use by both academic researchers and others who wish to use the material. | |
| The Fawcett Society | £2000 |
The recession threatens to erode women’s equality of opportunity and economic rights. Progress towards closing the equality gap between women and men has been undermined with initial indications that pregnancy related discrimination is on the increase, whilst women’s representation as UK leaders is in decline, the gender pay gap is widening, and sex-object culture is creeping back into the workplace. Women in the UK are already at higher risk of poverty than men. The gender pay gap is 17.1%, women with children average 57% less income than men with children, and women are more likely to work part time and in vulnerable employment than men. Fawcett will deliver:
Fawcett will use this evidence to lead a lively debate on the impact of the recession on women, drawing on contacts in national, regional and local media. Importantly, this evidence will be used to call for specific legislative reform to promote and protect equality of opportunity, using the passing of the Equality Bill, lobbying across Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties in advance of the General Election as well as to raise awareness of the recession’s impact on women at a local level. |
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| Transnational Feminisms Conference | £500 |
| The Transnational Feminisms Conference will take place from the 4th – 6th of December, 2009 at the University of Manchester. It is being organised by two PhD students from the university’s School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, who want to expand on ideas of transnational feminisms from academic, artistic and activist standpoints. Drawing on the impact of postcolonial feminism and its enactments, this conference will examine how women are affected by political systems in a global climate, how feminism translates and moves across borders, and how feminism can be utilised as a methodology for understanding the transnational context. Here the transnational is understood to be a complication of notions of the ‘elsewhere’, highlighting the challenges of fluidity, movement and instability whilst also paying close attention to locatedness. This is a feminism that is engaged with the woman-as-subject without making universalising claims regarding women’s experience; it both considers how gender operates and critiques categorisation.
The aim of the conference is to share research on transnational feminisms between students, academics, artists and activists and to promote discussion on these themes and on future strategies/ research. The award from the Feminist Review Trust means that it will be possible to offer bursaries to attendees and thus allow a broader range of people to attend. It will also assist in displaying work submitted by artists to the conference. The money will also help towards the essential costs of room hire and publicity, keeping the costs of attending minimal. |
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| The Women’s Budget Group | £2000 |
| One of the key consequences of gender inequality in the UK is women’s poverty, evidenced by the persistent gender pay gap and an average post- retirement income that is around 57 % that of men. Poverty also has some specifically gendered impacts, such as an increased vulnerability to sexual and domestic violence. This project tackles a long-term cause of poverty: the inability of those living in poverty to articulate a public policy position and actively participate in the democratic process. Women in particular lack a voice in the UK’s democratic processes, being severely underrepresented at local, regional and national level. Voices of Experience is designed to develop the capacity of women living in poverty to engage with and influence government, and build women’s confidence, and sense of agency. In Stage 1, we worked with women with direct, current experience of grappling with the everyday problems poverty brings, and who wanted to develop a political voice to tackle these problems in practical ways. These women attended a series of workshops and training sessions with policymakers and parliamentarians, and based on their own experiences and priorities, developed an agenda for change. In Stage 2, the women will use the skills they developed in Stage 1. Working with members of the Women’s Budget Group, they will meet with parliamentarians, ministers, and government officials. The UK Women’s Budget Group lobbies for women’s perspective in economic policy-making, regularly meeting with decision-makers. This activity will be supplemented by a resource pack designed to be of benefit not only to the participants but more widely as a toolkit to increase the voice of women living in poverty. The funding will meet their expenses in travelling to these meetings and childcare; further developmental training; and the production of the resource pack. |
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| Southall Black Sisters | £4000 |
| The Trust funds will contribute to the costs of organising a 30th anniversary network for Southall Black Sisters (SBS) to be held in London in July 2009. The event will bring together approximately 150 – 200 invited guests from the women’s sector, service users, statutory and voluntary sector, funders and policy makers. It will serve as a platform to publicise and support the important and essential work of feminist based women’s groups throughout the United Kingdom and the tangible difference they make, at a time when such groups are under threat of closure and being mainstreamed out of existence. | |
| November 2008 | |
| Racialising organisational femininities and masculinities | |
| Funds from the Feminist Review Trust will support a conference to be held 8 – 9 July 2009 in Leeds. The conference will support the attendance of a broader range of postgraduate students and participants outside academia and through to raise the profile of the White Spaces network through conference dissemination to third sector organisations. | |
| September 2008 Awards | |
| 2008 Feminist Convention Coalition | £2110 |
| To support the a publication of a book in three languages (Arabic, Hebrew and English) which summarises and processes the data and knowledge accumulated during the 16th Feminist Convention which took place in Nazareth, 20-21-22 November 2008.Historically, feminist conventions have always been instrumental in the development and growth of the feminist movement in Israel. This was the place where Palestinian, Mizrahi (Oriental Jewish) and lesbian women challenged the “mainstream” feminism and gradually turned the movement into an inclusive and courageous movement, across the borders of race, nationality, ethnicity and sexuality between all women in Israel. The 16th Feminist Convention brought together feminist and women’s organizations and activist women and transgender persons for 3 days of intensive feminist in-depth dialogue and politics, information exchange, sharing of professional experience and coalition-building opportunities. The Convention focused on six major themes: (1) Accessibility to Social, Financial and Legal Resources; (2) Health, Body and Sexuality; (3) The Occupation of Palestine, Women and Peace; (4) Democracy and Citizenship; (5) Politics of Identity; (6) Lesbian Feminism.
The reason the 16th Feminist Convention is a potentially imperative contribution to the advancement of women’s rights is the new direction of, by openly linking women’s rights, civil rights and democracy, militarism and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. By raising the commitment of Israeli women’s organizations to openly advocate for peace and human rights we will be able to contribute directly and significantly to women’s rights in Israel and the region. |
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| Leadership skills for women in the voluntary sector | £4500 |
| This two day course will provide 20 women, from diverse backgrounds and from a spread of voluntary sector organisations, with training in leadership skills. Research indicates that the prohibitive costs of leadership training courses, coupled with a shortage of suitably qualified and skilled women leaders, are creating difficulties for the future of the women’s voluntary sector. This project attempts to address this by providing an opportunity for women to develop their leadership skills which they can then use within their own organisations and/or to seek leadership roles more generally in the sector. The course will enable participants to develop their leadership potential within a supportive environment. The training will examine the role of women leaders and will incorporate areas such as networking, assertiveness, team building, public speaking, problem solving and developing strategies to deal with the challenges of leading women’s organisations through the current political and economic climate. They will have the opportunity to discuss ideas and strategies with women who are already in leading positions within organisations. Participants will also be encouraged to create a peer support system. They will receive ongoing support following the training. | |
| Cine 25: Women in film and the media | £2370 |
| Cine 25 is a unique one-day event at City Screen in York and is part of the 25th anniversary celebrations for the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York. The aim of the showcase is to address the current position of gender in film and media and to create networking opportunities. We hope to inspire future events providing space for a community of artists and academics who work on gender and media. The day will include an academic panel discussion, featuring seven participants from institutions across the UK. These are experts in fields of film, television, sound, music and other media arts. A short film programme of 7 films exploring gender will conclude with the opportunity for the audience to speak with the artists. The screening of the feature-length film ‘The Viva Voce Virus’, directed by Kathleen Bryson and Kimmo Mokky, will be the UK premiere of what is already being hailed as a camp classic of queer cinema. Two of the film’s actors will be at the premiere to chat with the audience about the film. A low-budget filmmaking workshop will be led by a collective that organises multimedia nights by women artists. Participants will receive advice on funding and exhibiting media with representatives of the Arts Council, The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and several of the artists from Cine25.
The Feminist Review Trust funding is a contribution to the running of Cine25. Most importantly, it has enabled help towards the costs of participants attending the event and also to subsidise ticket prices, making the event as accessible as we could. |
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| May 2008 Awards | |
| Asylum Aid | £4000 |
| Asylum Aid is an independent charity working with asylum seekers in the UK. It exists because people seeking safety in this country from persecution and human rights abuses abroad, need specialist legal help if their asylum applications are to be fairly assessed. Asylum Aid established the Refugee Women’s Resource Project (RWRP) to advocate for the fair and non-discriminatory consideration of women’s asylum claims, using an evidence base provided by the Project’s dedicated legal casework, original research and policy work. The RWRP is the leading voice in the UK on gender and asylum, with a strong track record of achieving significant improvements to the UK asylum process for women seeking protection. The RWRP at Asylum Aid is promoting a Charter of Rights of Women Seeking Asylum. The Charter is a framework of principles aimed at persuading the UK Border Agency to take both a strategic approach to the needs of women seeking asylum and to put in place the operational procedures and safeguards that will remove the discriminatory barriers they face. A multi-level approach to promoting the Charter, encompassing strategy, operational policy and service delivery, will be adopted in relation to the UK Border Agency. You can see the Charter at: www.asylumaid.org.uk | |
| February 2008 Awards | |
| A Feminist Art Studio in Georgia | £5000 |
| The project aims to set up a Feminist Art Studio “Spero” in the capital city of the Republic of Georgia – Tbilisi. The project will promote feminist art in Georgia and enable women artists to work and become more visible. It will consist of three main components – feminist art studio “Spero”; workshops on feminist art and women artists; exhibition of the works by women artists working in the studio “Spero”. The studio will be equipped with all necessary materials for painting and drawing in order to create a pleasant and comfortable atmosphere for working. The studio will serve specifically to professional and amateur women artists, who are unable to afford expensive art materials and studios for working. Women will be able to use all the studio resources free of charge in order to create artworks. During the project implementation, three workshops will be organized, which will be devoted to the work of raising women artists’ consciousness about feminism and feminist art. In the last month of the project implementation an exhibition will be organized showing the selected works of women artists created during their work in the studio. The studio will ensure women artists’ access to expensive art materials and will enable them to exhibit their works, which will be documented in a catalogue. The planned activities will raise public interest in feminist art and women artists’ work. | |
| Abortion rights project in Israel | £2000 |
| The Women and Their Bodies (WTB) project focuses on Jewish and Palestinian women’s ability to have a basic amount of contraceptive autonomy, ability to access knowledge about reproductive options, and activate their right to choose the way in which to use state provided health insurance in the management of their reproduction. In Israel, women’s rights and education on issues of abortion and contraception remain extremely sensitive issues, raising very little public and medical discussion, thereby diminishing women’s freedom regarding their reproductive choices. The lack of public discussion is directly linked to current health policies: While all assisted reproductive technologies are heavily subsidized in Israel, long term and emergency contraceptives are not funded at all. Today, all women in Israel are required to cover the full cost of their contraceptives or abortions, regardless of their financial abilities. The two stage mini-project:
(A) Collecting the material: Stage A answers the immediate need for intensive critical research on policies, costs and available procedures of Elective Abortion in Israel. The research additionally focuses on grass-root levels, in order to present the experiences of Israeli women of all socioeconomic, ethnic and geographical locations. |
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| Rights of Women | £5000 |
| Rights of Women is a well established not-for-profit feminist women’s organisation committed to informing, educating and empowering women on the law and their legal rights. It runs two national confidential legal advice lines for women provided by women solicitors and barristers; one specialising in family law issues, including domestic violence and the other providing legal advice and support for survivors of sexual violence. It also produces publications and runs training and other events on key areas of law affecting women.This award will fund the distribution of ROW’s two most recent publications, From A to Z: a woman’s guide to the law and Pathways to Justice: Black, minority ethnic and refugee women, violence and the law, free of charge to individual women and key professionals and organisations working with women to increase their knowledge and understanding of their legal rights and remedies enabling them to access justice and attain equality.www.rightsofwomen.org.uk | |
| November 2007 | |
| Ladyfest London | |
| Ladyfest London is a volunteer-run volunteer feminist music, arts, and activism festival to be held on 9 – 11 May 2008. It aims to celebrate the wealth and diversity of women’s talents within the London Independent art scenes. A major par of the festival will be a workshop programme which aims to share practical skills, promote feminist discussion and challenge gender stereotypes. | |
| May 2007 Awards | |
| Lesbian generations in Cuba: An oral history | £1000 |
| Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, few issues have proven more controversial than the question of sexuality, and homosexuality in particular. The Castro regime’s early and aggressive policies against male homosexuals, as well as the political and cultural resistances of homosexual men to state-sponsored homophobia, have been the subject of much polemic and numerous academic studies. Within this wider debate, however, homosexuality has been defined almost exclusively in male terms, by the regime and its critics alike. Almost fifty years after the revolution, there are few public representations of the lives and stories of lesbians inside Cuba, and academic attention to this aspect of Cuban society has been negligible. While there is an important body of work pertaining to lesbians and queer Cuban women living outside Cuba (especially in the United States), there has been no sustained academic study of lesbian life on the island. The project aims to address this absence through a series of oral history interviews with self-identified lesbians of different generations living in Cuba. The interview recordings and transcripts will be archived as part of the ‘Memories of the Cuban Revolution’ oral history project at the University of Southampton. | |
| Abortion Rights ’Pro-Choice Campaign’ | £5000 |
| The award by the Feminist Review Trust will go towards the 40th anniversary campaign materials and events.2007 marks 40 years of safe, legal abortion in Britain. The passage of 1967 Abortion Act saved the lives and health of thousands of women and to this day remains fundamental to women’s autonomy and equality. In countries where abortion is criminalised, tens of thousands of women die every year through unsafe abortion, countless more suffer crippling injuries.However contrary to recent assertions proposed by an increasingly dominant anti-choice rhetoric, abortion is not available on request – it must be agreed by two doctors. And, although progress has been made in improving access to abortion services, women can still face serious obstacles in accessing an abortion, such as anti-choice GPs or lack of sufficient NHS provision.
This year, to celebrate 40th anniversary of the Abortion Act, Abortion Rights launched its new ‘ pro-choice majority’ campaign and website. The campaign, backed by many MPs, peers, doctors, nurses, sexual health organisations, trade unions and students, is calling for: • Abortion to be available at the request of the woman |
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| Rights of Women | £2000 |
| Rights of Women is organising a national conference focussing on the legal rights and remedies available to Black and Minority Ethnic and/or Refugee (BMER) Women who experience violence. The conference will be held on 26 September 2007 in London. The Feminist Review Trust grant will help meet the costs of attendance of 20 women from women’s groups, who may otherwise not have the resources to attend. The 20 conference places supported by this grant will be offered to small women’s groups, particularly those supporting BMER women, across England and Wales. Conference participants will have the opportunity to hear major speakers and experts in their respective fields. They will also participate in two workshops each throughout the day which will focus on particularly important issues such as violence against women, immigration, children, and forced marriage respectively. The workshops are intended to provide a forum for sharing ideas and discussing good practice. Conference participants will also receive a copy of our new book which addresses the legal rights and remedies of BMER women. The book will be launched at the conference.www.rightsofwomen.org.uk | |
| February 2007 Awards | |
| Rape Crisis, Scotland: oral history project | £1000 |
| Rape Crisis Scotland Oral History Project will play a vital part in ensuring that the collective memory of what many dedicated, imaginative and persistent women have achieved in supporting survivors of rape and sexual assault in Scotland is not lost, so that future generations of women working in this area can appreciate the scale of the achievement and the context in which they themselves are operating.The project will gather and disseminate primary evidence from women involved in the development of the movement across Scotland, which began in 1976 as little more than a telephone in a cupboard and is today a thriving national network. The project’s outcomes will provide access for the first time, to first hand accounts reproduced from interviews, and photographs both of participants and of events and locations of significance to their stories. | |
| 6+ Collective: ‘Secrets’ | £2000 |
| 6+ is a collective of U.S.-based women artists which invites other women artists from different cultural backgrounds to work together. It seeks to develop a supportive, creative network of women artists through a practice of direct engagement – including exhibitions, publications, and community collaborations. The collective believes it is possible to work together to create relationships outside the logic of the market, of commerce, of the media, and of the march of armies. “Secrets” is a self-organized project initiated by 6+ in collaboration with eight Palestinian women artists.Over the course of two years, “Secrets” has become a series of cultural and social exchanges, workshops, several publications, and an exhibition which has travelled in the Occupied Territories of Palestine and onto the United States. Most importantly, this project is an attempt to develop cooperation across enormous geographic and cultural distance, and to build solidarities in recognition of our deep interconnectedness.To continue the exchange between 6+ and the eight Palestinian artists, the second phase of “Secrets” will be to reproduce and transport the exhibition from the West Bank to the United States where it will tour several venues accompanied by lectures and a durational performance piece. The collective will facilitate further collaboration with the Palestinian artists through not only bringing their art work to US venues, but also by inviting the artists themselves to participate in the exhibition and the events surrounding the project. The participation of the Palestinian artists in the United States is imperative to continuing the challenging dialogue, artistic cooperation, and growth of this project. | |
| Improving reproductive equity: Trinidad and Tobago | £2000 |
| Patrice is a mother and professional who has survived teen pregnancy and rape. Deborah, a mother of four, had a hysterectomy after hiding two terminations from her husband. Tricia became pregnant during her first year of University. And a young man tells of how his 15-year-old girlfriend, Maria, died after a termination gone wrong.The Respect My Choice Campaign shares real stories from real people about abortion in Trinidad and Tobago. The campaign for abortion law reform in this Commonwealth Caribbean nation has been empirical and research-driven. ASPIRE has asked the people and politicians of Trinidad and Tobago to confront the fact that unsafe abortion is a leading cause of maternal morbidity. Every year 3000 to 4000 of women are treated at public hospitals as a direct result.But the predominance of sexist attitudes to women’s roles and responsibilities and a corresponding lack of empathy for their challenges remain at the root of resistance to law review. The Respect My Choice Campaign seeks to do what statistics can’t:… to generate compassion and inspire a search for common ground.
Through radio and newspaper placements people will be invited to the website (www.aspire.org.tt) where they can read the women’s detailed stories and contribute to a forum in which experiences and ideas may be shared. This discourse is a necessary step to accepting women’s moral authority to make decisions regarding their reproductive health and asserting the state’s ethical obligation to provide them with safe, free reproductive services, including abortion. |
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| November 2006 | |
| Andrea Dworkin Conference | |
| A conference to commemorate the work of Andrea Dworkin one year since her death will be held on 7th April 2006. Andrea Dworkin is one of the most influential and fiercely controversial contemporary feminist writers. Her work covered issues such as pornography, all forms of violence against women including rape and domestic violence, sexual intercourse, prostitution and anti-Semitism.The conference aims to bring together academics, journalists, practitioners and activists. Not all speakers will agree with all aspects of Andrea Dworkin’s work, but all agree on its influence and importance and are themselves focused on the issues she addressed. The conference is convened by Dr Clare Chambers and the Centre for the Study of Social Justice (CSSJ), University of Oxford. | |
| July 2006 Awards | |
| Bail for immigration detainees | £1420 |
Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) believes that asylum-seekers and migrants in the UK have a right to liberty and should be protected from arbitrary and prolonged detention by effective and accessible legal safeguards.It is an independent charity that exists to:
Bail for Immigration Detainees Yarl’s Wood fast track research project will carry out a focused analysis of the government’s fast track system for processing asylum claims at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre a detention facility for single women and families. The fast track is a key element in the government’s asylum and immigration strategy aimed at speeding up the asylum determination process, which BID believes potentially impacts on fairness and restricts access to justice for those caught up in this process. Through monitoring a sample of asylum appeal cases, interviews with women detainees, legal representatives and members of the judiciary, case studies, and information and statistics obtained from government, Bail for Immigration Detainees aims to highlight the gap between policy and practice and document the impact the system has on detainees’ legal rights, their well-being and their lives. |
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| The x:talk project | £1500 |
| The x:talk project involves the development, co-ordination and delivery of free English classes for workers in the sex industry in London.It is a conscious effort to make contact with migrant sex worker communities, offer a practical and needed service currently only provided for on a commercial basis and ultimately attempt to build political alliances and strengthen migrant sex worker networks.One of the main motivations behind the project is to put into action critiques of the current “trafficking” politics and debates. Under a racist and anti-feminist rhetoric of protection, the discourse and policies of trafficking that see women as victims of organised crime or of cruel men produces abuse, deportation, criminalisation and exploitation of migrants, in the sex industry in particular, and of sex workers in general. It also creates divisions between migrants’ and sex workers’ forms of resistance. Putting at the centre the dimension of autonomy of people moving across borders, and of people of every gender employing their resources in the sex industry, language emerges as being one of the crucial elements to directly challenge and change conditions of work and life, to come together, and to organise.
The x:talk project is being organised by a network of sex workers, sex workers rights’, and migrants’ rights activists, and is supported by the International Union of Sex Workers (GMB/IUSW). Each x:talk course will run for three months, with a two hour English class held once per week in London. The curriculum for the course is focused around the language needs of people who sell sex and the teachers on the course have experience and understanding of the sex industry. As part of the course local sex workers will participate in weekly question and answer session – to build networks, break down divisions and to offer advice and their expertise. |
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| June 2006 Awards | |
| Increasing skills of women in information and record keeping in Botswana | £1000 |
| The Department of Library and Information Studies, University of Botswana is responsible for improving the quality and expanding the quantity of the development and management of libraries, archives and information centers in general. The department recognises that there is a lack of linkage with the stakeholders through the provision of short term professional training programmes and service to the community.
The grant from the Feminist Review Trust will be used to fund a workshop for women Information Officers and Records Officers in Non-Governmental Organisation with information and records management skills. The workshop will address the role of information in organisations, the records life cycle, and introduce the participants to a classification system and accessing online information. |
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| March 2006 | |
| Interdisciplinary Gender Studies | |
| The Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies in Leeds will convene a conference for postgraduate students to critically examine recent, present and future research in an informal and collegial environment. The two day conference will explore cutting edge methodologies, theoretical approaches and practical applications.
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| November 2005 Awards | |
| Abortion Rights: to support a postcard campaign | £1000 |
| Access to birth control and the legalisation of abortion have transformed women’s lives and are central to women’s equality and freedom. Yet, under the 1967 Abortion Act, which governs access to abortion in Britain, women do not have the ‘right to choose’ per se, they still need the agreement of two doctors before they access the procedure. In addition, many women still face unnecessary obstacles and unequal access, including obstructive GPs, long NHS delays or hundreds of pounds in independent sector fees – one in four have to pay for terminations. Abortion is still denied to women in Northern Ireland.In spite of these restrictions, the anti-choice lobby is promoting a relentlessly sensationalist and misleading focus on the upper limit in a campaign to confuse public and political opinion on a woman’s right to choose and win support for the chipping away of legal rights.In fact, later abortions are extremely rare – less than two per cent are carried out between 20 and 24 weeks. Women who need to make the late abortion decision do not do so on a whim but face exceptional and distressing circumstances – e.g. some women fail to diagnose the pregnancy until late, some are victims of domestic violence, others have been delayed in the system by an obstructive GPs – whatever the reason, each woman must be trusted to make the best decision and, to do so, she needs the protection of the law.
Abortion Rights, the national pro-choice campaign (formed from the merger of the National Abortion Campaign and the Abortion Law Reform Association) is leading the campaign to defend the time limit. It launched a major postcard campaign at a packed public meeting in the House of Lords at the end of October 2005, which brought together a broad alliance of pro-choice activists. All those who support a woman’s right to choose are encouraged to contact Abortion Rights and get involved in the campaign. |
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| The Lileth Project: the needs of women who have survived violence | £1000 |
| The Lilith Project was established in 2002 as a pan-London, 2nd tier Violence Against Women (VAW) agency managed by Eaves Housing for Women. The project’s remit is to raise awareness of VAW, capacity build within the VAW sector, lobby government, share best practice and develop as a centre of expertise around VAW issues. In 2004, Lilith conducted a survey of the mixed sex hostels in London and their policies and procedures on violence against women. The information received was analysed in terms of specific issues such as self-harm, sexual violence, harassment, prostitution, domestic violence, and eating disorders.From this, a report has been produced which explores women’s homelessness, the responses of hostels to the gender specific issue of violence and recommendations for best practice in supporting women in the hostel sector.A seminar day will launch the report and the significant findings. A briefing will be provided on each issue on how to support women who have experienced violence, how the manifestations of this (such as self harm) can be addressed on practical and emotional level, and how to make mixed sex homelessness provision appropriate for women.
These briefings at the event will be embedded in the work of Eaves Housing for Women, who have 30 years experience of providing high quality supported accommodation for women who have survived violence and have complex needs. Partner agencies that Lilith collaborates with, who have expertise in the areas of self harm, mental health and other issues identified as training needs will be invited to deliver sessions and provide information that attendees can take away and cascade throughout their organisations. |
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| South Asian working class women’s experiences of higher education | £1000 |
| The grant will be used to finance a self-produced booklet, detailing the experiences of working class British South Asian Muslim women in higher education (HE).This project is primarily aimed at South Asian Muslim women considering higher education. The booklet disseminates some findings of research which involved interviews and focus group discussions with South Asian Muslim women at university. The women are all from working class backgrounds, and are the first generation in their families to attend university. The booklet demystifies the university experience by providing first hand accounts from the women. Particular themes covered are: university life; student loans and fees; plans for after graduation, and experiences of ethnicity, faith, gender and class at university. The booklet will also be of interest to students from other ethnic and religious backgrounds.The booklet is also designed as an information resource for educationalists working with South Asian Muslim women, such as teachers, careers advisors and youth workers. Dominant discourses perpetuate negative stereotypes of South Asian Muslim women as uneducated, meek or oppressed, or most recently, as fundamentalist. By encouraging greater understanding about South Asian Muslim women’s experiences at university, educationalists will be better able to advise, offer information and tackle exclusions. | |
| July 2005 Awards | |
| Zine archiving | £1000 |
| This project will undertake research into the ethics of zine archiving; interpreting feminist subcultures for incorporation into public institutions, and the creation of an on and off line Distributed Archive as part of Her Noise (a season of installations, events, performances and screenings by a wide network of artists whose practice involves the use of sound as a medium). | |
| Ladyfest Brighton: a weekend of feminist workshops and discussion panels | £1000 |
| Ladyfest Brighton is a non-profit arts and activism collective organising a multi-media festival – with art, music, film, dance, and workshops – to showcase the talent and vision of female and queer artists and to raise money for women’s charities.‘A Woman’s Place’ is a series of free workshops, panels and discussion groups, organised by the collective, taking place in Brighton and Hove (21-23rd October 2005) during the festival. The programme will address a wide range of issues, such as: Women’s History and Activism; Skill-sharing and self-empowerment; and Sex, Sexuality and Our Bodies.Over 20 workshops will take place, from discussions about ‘Racism, white privilege and feminism for all’ to drag king workshops; from learning how to d.j. to surviving sexual abuse. Workshops are a vital space in which to engage in discussion, overcome isolation, learn new skills, and to encourage women’s self-esteem and creativity through hands-on participation. Some workshops will be women-only, but Ladyfest Brighton is a community event open to all. | |
| FEM Conferences: FEM 05 | £1000 |
| FEM 05 is the second in the series of FEM Conferences, which aim to educate, inspire and motivate people to get involved in campaigns for gender equality. The conferences are unique in providing a central forum for the varied campaign groups and individuals involved in the feminist movement to come together and share experiences and knowledge. It will allow individuals – both experienced campaigners and relative newcomers to the issues of gender and feminism – to listen to and engage with leading women’s rights organisations and advocates. The four central conference themes will be violence against women, women in the workplace, multiple identities, and feminism. FEM 05 is being organised by a committee of 28 people, all of whom work on a voluntary basis. FEM 05 will be followed by an evening-based event entitled FemFest – a celebration of female art and music. | |
| La Eskalera Karakola, Madrid | £1000 |
| This award will be used to help equip an audio-visual studio in La Eskalera Karakola, a feminist social centre in Madrid.The two principal activities of this studio will be the transmission of an online streaming feminist radio program and the production of video material by various collectives within the centre.The principal objectives of the Eskalera Karakola are to 1) share mutual support and empowerment, 2) study and analyze the transformations of women’s situations, given the continual re-articulation of patriarchy, capitalism, racism, homophobia, the labour market, etc. and 3) on the basis of this analysis, produce strong and effective statements and interventions capable of impacting on public debates and images. In this latter objective, the capacity to produce quality audio-visual material is essential. The capacity to produce radio and video is both a research tool and a means of diffusion, a compelling way to intervene in public understanding and to challenge the terms of the debate. Providing access to these facilities for open collective learning and use by women is an important step not only towards women’s technological literacy but also towards the development of situated research methodologies, the production and circulation of new images and voices, and the weaving of a feminist community through shared use and participation. | |
| April 2005 Award | |
| Educational Programme on Prostitution Migration and Trafficking in Ecuador | £500 |
| The grant will provide support for attendance at workshops (funded by the Global Fund for Women) held for women likely to migrate abroad on the risks and dangers of so doing. | |
| December 2004 Awards | |
| Production of a catalogue to support the ‘Getting the Message Across?’ Exhibition | £1000 |
| This award will be used to produce educational material to support and extend an exhibition and conference challenging male violence against women and children.The exhibition – entitled “Getting the Message Across?” – presents nearly 400 public education posters from around the world, all of which seek to raise awareness of the prevalence and nature of men’s violence against women and children. It is being organised by the Glasgow-based Women’s Support Project who are also organising a one-day conference on the theme of public education, media and men’s violence against women to accompany the exhibition.The catalogue will be available to anyone attending the exhibition and conference. Beyond January 2005, the catalogue will continue to be used by the Women’s Support Project in our extensive programme of training on the issues of violence against women.
In expanding the work of the project, the exhibition and conference will be of interest to a variety of organisations and individuals including: schools and youth groups (special tours of the exhibition will be promoted to this audience); organisations working in the field of men’s violence against women and children in the statutory and voluntary sectors; educators; media professionals. The catalogue will be an accessible guide to the exhibition which will also contain information about successful public education campaigns and good practice guidelines for representing violence against women. The catalogue will also include training activities based around the exhibition with the aim of encouraging participants to think critically about the ways in which we represent violence against women in words and images, and the assumptions behind those representations. |
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| Documentary entitled The A Word | £1000 |
| The A Word is an independent video documentary that attempts to research and detail the current issue of abortion and abortion law reform in Trinidad and Tobago. The current law is one that was established in 1861 by British ruling parties and because of its ambiguous language, has proved to be ineffective and even harmful to women’s reproductive health. Recent research shows that there are as many abortions as live births happening in Trinidad and Tobago each year, despite the criminal law that calls for the penalization of persons who both obtain and perform “unlawful” abortions. A local advocacy organization recently proposed abortion law reform and the country has since been in a heated debate over the issue. Most of the public discussions of abortion that have and are taking place in Trinidad and Tobago have been rooted in religious ideologies and this project seeks to move dialogue about the issue away from a religious discussion to one of national policy, law and health.The documentary will make available factual information about the issue that has not yet been accessible to the wider public, as well as insights to all sides of the debate. It is hoped that interviews with various persons from different facets of society will help bring this taboo subject out of darkness and provide clarity on an issue that has remained under the veil of misinformation and non-action. There will be no attempt to persuade or guide viewers to take a particular stance on the issue. The goal is simply to present the issue as it currently exists with a hope that this information, in speaking for itself, will cause the public of Trinidad and Tobago to take an informed interest in this public health crisis and act for social justice as well as the improvement of women’s reproductive health in Trinidad and Tobago | |
| September 2004 Award | |
| Feminist Film Festival | £500 |
| ‘Independent Heroines 2005’ is a feminist film festival taking place at the Cube Cinema, Bristol in February 2005. The aim of the festival is to bring together a wide range of films by women reflecting some of the many issues, past and present, surrounding gender, sexuality, and politics.Workshops and seminars form a vital part of the festival, providing audience members with not only the opportunity to learn about and discuss the films they have seen, but also the chance to interact with each other as a group. We believe that feminist film theory should be made accessible and interesting to everyone, not only those with an academic background. The funding from the Feminist Review Trust will support these workshops and seminars, hopefully making the festival a more engaging and enjoyable experience for participants. | |
| July 2004 Awards | |
| Naz Project London | £1000 |
The project is to produce a report on the experiences and specific issues facing lesbian, bisexual and questioning women of particular ethnic minority groups living in the UK.The objective of the report is to:
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| Centre for the Implementation of Public Policies promoting Equity and Growth (CIPPEC), Argentina | £1000 |
| CIPPEC is a private, non-profit organization that strives to create a more just, democratic, and efficient State in Argentina to improve the quality of life for all Argentine citizens. It focuses its efforts on analyzing and promoting public policies that encourage equity and growth in Argentina. Our challenge is to turn sound ideas into concrete actions in the areas of Education, Politics, Fiscal Policy, Health, Transparency, and Justice.Seminar on Tools and Legal Strategies for the Access of Women to their Rights – Within the framework of CIPPEC’s Access to Justice Initiative, this project will organize a Seminar to improve women’s access to justice in the district of Moreno and its neighbouring zones. The objective is to strengthen the capacities of organizations working for the promotion of women’s rights by training them to increase their impact at a local level. | |
| Gender in Bulgaria’s migration policy | £500 |
| This grant will support a Workshop on the Gender Dimensions of Bulgaria’s New Migration Policy. The Workshop will review the emigration process in Bulgaria since 1989 and review policy implications of gender migration. | |
| April 2004 Awards | |
| The Women’s Therapy Centre | £2250 |
The Women’s Therapy Centre is carrying out a two year research project to highlight the need for psychoanalytic psychotherapy for women with mental health issues. The research looks at:- the profile of Women’s Therapy Centre clients:
The qualitative research design includes in depth one to one interviews with women whose therapy has ended at the Women’s Therapy Centre. The interviews last approximately 1-1.5 hours and are tape recorded. All interviews are transcribed for charting and analysis. The women who have been interviewed include women who have received individual or group therapy or a combination of both. The project started in April 2003 with the appointment of a research and development worker and is funded by the Community Fund with Feminist Review Trust providing additional funding for transcribing. |
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| Ladyfest Birmingham | £200 |
| The money from the Feminist Review Trust to Ladyfest Birmingham will go towards the hiring of projection equipment in order to show films by amateur and established women filmmakers in the region. It will also enable us to pay for a published author to run a creative writing workshop, and go towards promotion costs, which include posters, flyers and tickets for the event itself. | |
| Chinese women and economic restructuring | £1000 |
| The grant will support Jieyu Liuto attend two conferences to disseminate her PhD work on Chinese women and economic restructuring. During the economic reforms of the past two decades in China there has been an involuntary exodus of full-time women workers. Jieyu has collected life histories from redundant women to understand their experiences of this process. She also interviewed their daughters about the impact of their mothers’ changed circumstances on their own lives. Through attending two conferences, she will present women’s everyday experiences and explore the gendered impact of economic reforms in order to advance public understanding of the position of contemporary Chinese women. |
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| Femanagh Women’s Network | £1000 |
| Fermanagh Women’s Network is a countywide network made up of 26 community-based women’s group.The network is embarking on a 3 – 5 year piece of work to develop a Gender Equality Strategy for the County. Our starting point will be a baselining study to map where women are located in positions of decision-making on a selected number of bodies and to map where women are located generally in these same bodies so as to begin to draw attention to the gender inequalities which exist here at local level. The award from the Feminist Review Trust will go towards the study which will also be a basis for a visibility campaign around Gender inequalities. Without the support of the Feminist Review Trust it would not have been possible to lay the groundwork which will attract other monies to this work and ensure that gender equality in Fermanagh becomes a reality rather than an aspiration. | |
| November 2003 Awards | |
| Support for a ‘zine’ | £500 |
| The grant will be used to support the printing and distribution of self-produced booklets (‘zines) exploring the challenges to the construction of “feminist activism” and “feminist aesthetics” within contemporary female D.I.Y/’punk’ music communities. This project aims to create a dialogue between ideas of “feminism” and “feminist activism” circulating in academic and activist communities, and to re-present these ideas for wider audiences. The ‘zine will also act as a directory of D.I.Y, independent and individual cultural feminist activities in the UK. | |
| Health education workshops in Montenegro | £1000 |
| “New Horizon” in Ulcinj / Montenegro, will organize 12 health education workshops for young girls aged 13 –18 years old. The purpose of these workshops is to improve the level of health education and health culture of the girls. By offering the workshop to girls of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds it is hoped to facilitate more intercultural communication. Priority will be given to girls coming from rural areas who do not have access to much information health education. | |
| July 2003 Awards | |
| Development of materials on honour-killings | £1000 |
| RISE a non for profit, public Interest Organization working for promotion of Equity, Justice and Tolerance in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. RISE has conducted a community based research on “Evidence on Honor killings” with support of UNICEF Peshawar during 2001.To address the issues identified in this research, RISE with support of The Feminist Review Trust (UK) is focusing on changing the attitude of the community through promotion of community based dialogue through trained community activists. The Trust funds will be usedto support a project to change the attitude and behavior of the community leaders, religious leaders and Government agencies regarding violence against women by promoting dialogues and awareness at community level through trained community activists. | |
| The Fawcett Society | £1000 |
| The Fawcett Society and the Gender Institute at the LSE have been awarded seed funding by the Feminist Review Trust for a seminar series on ‘The Future of Equalities’. The seminars examine visions and future challenges for feminism and for equalities more generally, in the context both of global social changes and also of developments in equalities legislation and institutions in the UK. The partnership of Fawcett and the Gender Institute brings together the best of academic research, high-level policy makers and NGO practitioners in order to create debate and dialogue and encourage the development of new thinking. The seminars are running from November 2003 until summer 2004.www.fawcettsociety.org.uk | |
| Sexual & reproductive health teaching in the Philippines | £1000 |
| The grant will be used to draft a customized discussion framework that is part of a project on basic knowledge on sexual and reproductive health for women upland farmers, women survivors of prostitution, and women in urban communities in the Philippines. The project (Module Development: Basic Knowledge on Sexual and Reproductive Health) aims to advance public understanding about the position of women in this society. As such, it will result in a module on education that responds to basic knowledge on sexual and reproductive health. The module would be utilized in education and training involvements of WEDPRO, a feminist organization in the Philippines addressing women’s concerns in various community situations. | |
| Female leadership in Argentina | £1000 |
| Support to develop a workshop to generate knowledge, debate and reflection on women exercising functions of leadership in different communities. The objective is to allow the systematization and dissemination of good practice as well as the identification of obstacles faced by and the training needs of communitarian leaders. | |
| April 2003 Awards | |
| South Asian women and domestic violence | £1000 |
| Support to attend three conferences to disseminate Dr Aisha Gill’s doctoral work on South Asian women and domestic violence. | |
| Teaching materials in Macedonia | £1000 |
| Support for the compilation and development of readings and teaching materials for the Research Centre in Gender Studies, Euro Balken Institute, Republic of Macedonia. | |
| Taboos surrounding AIDS in South Africa | £500 |
| Support for work by Tentelini Project Volunteers in South Africa working with women to break down taboos surrounding AIDS. | |