A bloody problem - Why and how is Poland’s richest woman trying to tackle period poverty

 

Dominika Kulczyk attends a lesson on menstruation in Nepal/ courtesy of Kulczyk Foundation

 

In India, 78%of women cannot afford menstrual products and between 6% and 43% say they missed school or work due to menstruation. Even in the UK, a recent report by Plan International UK revealed that 3 in 10 girls struggle to afford or access sanitary wear.

 

Globally, around 500 million people lack complete menstrual health and hygiene, something the world calls period poverty, according to UNICEF.

 

Harmful stigma, lack of access to toilets and water, lack of education or not being able to afford tampons and pads cause millions of girls and women worldwide to miss out on education, job opportunities and quality of life. And Covid-19 is making things worse.

 

Yet, despite growing attention over the past few years, period poverty remains massively neglected.

That a fundamentally basic need can be so challenging in 2020 is astounding. Why is more not being done?

This is a question Dominika Kulczyk wanted to address. She is a philanthropist, entrepreneur and a journalist – and also Poland’s richest woman.

 

“As a journalist and film director, I have seen the devastating impact of period poverty first-hand. If you are made to feel ashamed of your body, struggle because of the stigma, if you cannot attend school or go to work because your clothes are red, then you cannot participate fully in society,” Kulczyk says.

“Access to complete menstrual health and hygiene is a basic human right. Without it, women and girls cannot pursue full lives with dignity and confidence. It is deeply unfair that girls in all parts of the world miss out on better education, and women on work, because they were too poor to have a period.”

After filming in Nepal earlier this year and seeing women and girls asked to hide in caves and cowsheds while on their period, Kulczyk decided to act.

As a first step, she partnered the KulczykFoundation (her family foundation) with Founders Pledge to produce an extensive report reviewing the current state of funding and solutions to ending period poverty. 

 

One of the report’s shocking findings is that global spending on period poverty amounts to less than 20¢ per woman per year. “It means that the issue is not taken seriously by anyone,” Kulczyk says.

 

The report highlights eight organizations providing outstanding and cost-effective solutions in different parts of the world, and and what are the next steps for the international community in terms of funding.

 

 “The Kulczyk Foundation’s report highlights this fundamental gendered inequality that persists globally – and serves as a call to action to governments, donors and the world, to take long overdue action on period poverty,” says Marni Sommer, Associate Professor, Columbia University, who contributed to the report.

 

 

 

Hear Us – How refugee and asylum-seeking women experienced the pandemic

“Being destitute during a pandemic is the worst feeling ever. It makes you feel like you are just a box and if someone wanted to kick you, they could. It’s not easy relying on other people for food and shelter and it has caused me a lot of mental health issues,” says Edna (not her real name), who is living with no statutory support and relying on charities for her survival in Liverpool.


Edna is one of 115 refugee and asylum-seeking women in the UK who have shared their experiences during the pandemic for ‘Hear Us’, a new report by Sisters Not Strangers, a coalition of eight organisations. 

Most of these women have already fled violence and abuse. During the pandemic, they became more vulnerable: three quarters of them went hungry, a fifth of them were homeless, and most of them said that their mental health got worse, according to the report. 


The government’s research on the impact of Covid-19 on BAME communities found that Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women are almost three times more likely to die from COVID-19, compared to white women. The intersection of gender, race and immigration status, coupled with the trauma of their past experiences, means that asylum-seeking women are among those BAME women most affected by the consequences of the outbreak.


With charities closed, women have been unable to access meals and small hardship payments that have become so crucial both for women within the asylum system, who live in poverty, and women refused asylum, who are so often left destitute.


Three quarters of the women surveyed went hungry, including mothers who struggled to feed their children. A third of women were at high risk from coronavirus, reporting a serious health condition such as asthma, heart disease and diabetes. While the government emphasised social distancing, a fifth of women were homeless, relying on temporary arrangements with community members, and moving from one house to another. Self-isolation was impossible for the 21% of women who were forced to sleep in the same room as a non-family member. Frequent handwashing was a serious challenge for the 32% of women who struggled to afford soap and other hygiene products. A fifth of staff and volunteers had supported women who were trapped in unwanted or abusive relationships during the pandemic. 

Lo Lo (not her real name), an asylum-seeking woman who was homeless in London during lockdown says, “I have serious health conditions that mean it would be particularly dangerous for me to catch the virus. For a week during lockdown, I slept on buses. I went from one side of London to the other, because it was free to travel on the bus then.”

“Previous research has established that almost all women who seek asylum in the UK are survivors of gender-based violence. Even before this crisis, we have seen how they are forced into poverty and struggle to find safety,” says Natasha Walter, director of Women for Refugee Women.  “During the pandemic they have too often been left without basic support including food and shelter. It is now vital that we listen to these women and ensure that we build a fairer and more caring society.” 

In exposing deep structural inequalities along existing fault-lines of gender, race, citizenship and class, the pandemic is testing our society. We cannot simply return to normal, the report concludes. “We must seize this opportunity to build back better, and to create a society centred on solidarity and human dignity in which the lives of women seeking asylum, and women of colour, are fully valued.”

The Sisters Not Strangers coalition includes Coventry Asylum and Refugee Action Group, Development and Empowerment for Women’s Advancement (Sheffield), Oasis Cardiff, Refugee Women Connect (Liverpool), Swansea Women’s Asylum and Refugee Support Group, Women Asylum Seekers Together Manchester, Women for Refugee Women (London) and Women with Hope (Birmingham)

Women, Homelessness and Health

What do we know about the health issues facing homeless women? Of having no meal at all or eating five meals in one day for fear of having none the next day, of getting bed bugs and respiratory illnesses from sleeping on dirty mattresses and in damp places, of feeling too ashamed or exhausted to seek help?

Because homelessness is often seen as a male phenomenon, the experience of homeless women has been largely neglected by researchers and policy makers. We know far less about women’s homelessness than men’s – and almost nothing about health issues they face. Yet, homeless women have differing health needs to those of men and these specific needs are often overlooked in policy or service responses.

Women, Homelessness and Health, a new study by the homeless charity Groundswell and funded by the Greater London Authority, is focusing on these overlooked issues. The study is particularly valuable because it used researchers who have experienced homelessness, in all stage of the research process.
Groundswell researchers interviewed 104 women aged from 19 to 75 in London, using questionnaires, face-to-face interviews and focus groups.

They found that the trajectory to homelessness is often different for women and men: for women, the main causes are relationship and family breakdown, physical health issues and domestic abuse.  Not only is violence a cause of homelessness, but women also experience violence or harassment at homelessness services, day centres, hostels and on the streets, which is often a factor in perpetuating homelessness. Here is what one woman interviewed said:  “Being approached by men too often; being made fun of in the street; some guys take the micky out of you; guys touching but the tiredness from homelessness makes me let down my guard and get tired of fighting back. ” It is not surprising then that women are often reluctant to use services designed for and dominated by men, which can often be hostile places for women.

The research stresses that there is a clear need for gendered specific services, but they are not provided because homelessness is seen mostly as a men’s problem. “Women are not measured and counted – they are not as visible,” says Dr Joanne Bretherton, Co-Director, Women's Homelessness in Europe Network, University of York.  Rough sleeper statistics, for example, count people visibly sleeping rough.  Many homeless women sleep rough, but they make efforts to remain invisible – sleeping in hidden places or on buses - and so remain unknown to rough sleeper teams. 

“Often women will only access services when all other avenues, such as friends and family, have been exhausted,” adds Dr Bretherton.  “And they don’t seek help for fear that their children will be taken away.  They feel their mothering skills are judged all the time.”   Nearly half of the women in the Groundswell study are mothers and 22% of those women had children taken into care – an experience that was incredibly traumatic. 

Among the main findings, the study shows that participants have long and complex histories of homelessness, with 42% having been homeless more than once before and 70% having slept rough at some point of their lives. This suggests that women experience a cycle of repeated homelessness.

Three-quarter of the women interviewed have physical health issue problem compared to 37% of the general population. They mostly complain about joints, bones and muscles pain, problems with feet and stomach issues.  Many said that their health issues arose as a result of being homeless. This is unsurprising given the poor conditions women are sleeping in, the stress of homelessness and the amount of time women spend on their feet.

Sixty-four percent have a mental health issue- most commonly depression, anxiety/phobia and PTSD - compared to 21% of general population, suggesting that mental health conditions can develop and/or are exacerbated upon homelessness. In some circumstances, declining mental health can lead to addictions that where not present before homelessness.

Many participants spoke about how the stress and trauma of homelessness put pressure on their physical and mental health. “You are under stress constantly.  It means you are very vulnerable...in terms of illnesses and everything,” said one woman interviewed.  Stress causes headaches, hair loss, stomach pain, eye irritation, rapid heartbeat, panic attacks, chest pain and periods to stop.

Many say that the stress of being homeless and the lack of routine mean it is difficult for them to look after themselves or attend appointments.  Sixty-five percent say that they struggle to find the motivation and confidence to deal with their health issues. “I can’t make appointment, [I need to] wash first and eat first. Survival comes first.  Last thing we have as dignity is to keep clean.”  
 
“Until we have a larger body of evidence about women's homelessness, there is a risk that policy responses to, and services for homeless people will not adequately meet the needs of women,” says Dr Kesia Reeve, Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR), Sheffield Hallam University. “It raises issues about, for example, maternal and reproductive health and wellbeing issues that rarely feature in other research but are central to some homeless women's experiences and needs.”
 
The report concludes that in order to better support the health of women experiencing homelessness there is a need for:
- a deeper understanding of the health of women experiencing homelessness
- more flexible, considered and participatory commissioning 
- flexible, compassionate and consistent support centered around individual need 
-  focused approach on the health of women who are homeless within NHS services
- joined up working between services and sectors who support woman experiencing homelessness 

You can read the full report here

Women's Rights in the Arab World - Egypt worst country for women

Women were supposed to be one of the prime beneficiaries of the Arab Spring, but they have instead been some of the biggest losers, as the revolts have brought conflict, instability, displacement and a rise in Islamist groups in many parts of the region, according to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Thomson Reuters Foundation's third annual poll of gender experts gives a snapshot of the state of women's rights in Arab states three years after the Arab Spring and as Syria's conflict threatens further regional upheaval. Surprisingly, Egypt tops the list of 22 Arab states as the worst country for women. Yes,  Egypt!  Not Syria, Yemen, Somalia or Saudi Arabia as you might have expected, but Egypt. The country achieved such dismal position in the poll because of

sexual harassment, high rates of female genital cutting and a surge in violence and Islamist feeling after the revolution toppled long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

"We removed the Mubarak from our presidential palace but we still have to remove the Mubarak who lives in our minds and in our bedrooms," Egyptian columnist Mona Eltahawy says in an article about the poll by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"As the miserable poll results show, we women need a double revolution, one against the various dictators who've ruined our countries and the other against a toxic mix of culture and religion that ruin our lives as women."

Iraq ranked second-worst after Egypt, followed by Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. Comoros, where women hold 20 percent of ministerial positions and where wives generally keep land or the home after divorce, came out on top, followed by Oman, Kuwait, Jordan and Qatar.

The poll by Thomson Reuters' philanthropic arm surveyed 336 gender experts in August and September in 21 Arab League states and Syria, which was a founding member of the Arab League but was suspended in 2011.

The poll assessed violence against women, reproductive rights, treatment of women within the family, their integration into society and attitudes towards a woman’s role in politics and the economy.

Visit this page for full coverage of the poll and for more information, read this great article by RTF's Tim Large.

Women Farmers in Tanzania - I'm a farmer, get me out of there!

Women farmers at the Maisha Plus Village teach youngsters from the city how to grow and prepare their food/Sven Torfinn

I spent a few days in a typical African village in Tanzania with thatched huts, water well, goats and scrawny chickens scurrying about, but this village was actually built from scratch at a secret location in the Pawni region. It was the set for a Big Brother-type show organized by the international development charity Oxfam and the popular Tanzanian reality TV show Maisha Plus. Fourteen women who farm small plots of land in rural Tanzania and 26 youths from the cities competed for the titles of "Mama Shujaa Wa Chakula" (woman food hero) and youth food hero.
 
The idea was to give young contestants and millions of viewers a taste of what women in Africa go through to put food on the table with limited resources and in the face of enormous challenges. It was also a rare opportunity to celebrate them, put farming and gender issues on the agenda and force politicians to listen.

Here is a short blog post I've written for the Economist:

Farming in Tanzania

I'm a farmer, get me out of here

Dec 18th 2012, 9:57 by V.M. | DAR ES SALAAM

STARS of most reality television shows spend their time nibbling earwigs, sunbathing and bickering. Those taking part in a Big Brother-style show recently broadcast in Tanzania, however, had a more productive experience.

Fourteen farmers, all women, and 26 urban youngsters were thrown together in a specially constructed village under near 24-hour TV surveillance. The women set daily tasks from their own lives—growing vegetables, looking after cows or fetching water—which the teenagers had to complete in order to survive. The farmers were given farming tips and got to talk to politicians and policy-makers in the "diary room".

In Tanzania, as in many African countries, women produce much of the food that feeds their people, but few own their land. "Women are treated as tractors, but they have to treat their husbands like angels," said one of the contestants.

The Women Food Heroes competition, run by Oxfam and "Maisha Plus", a popular Tanzanian reality TV show, gave the young contestants and its viewers a taste of what women in Tanzania endure to put food on the table. It was a rare opportunity to promote women’s voices and celebrate their contribution, says Mwanahamisi Salimu of Oxfam. It was also a chance to push for them to have access to the same kind of support and rights already available to men farmers, she continues. It showed that small-scale agriculture is a sustainable way of feeding the country.

Broadcast nightly on the biggest national network and promoted on social media, radio and newspapers, the programme reached more than half the population. In the countryside, people gathered in community centres to watch it. Its popularity has forced politicians to talk about farming, a subject about which they are usually fairly quiet.

The winner, Sister Martha Mwasu Waziri from Dodoma, who won $6,300 to buy farming equipment, says she wants to turn her farm—which she built on a scrap of wasteland—into a demonstration farm to show others what they can achieve. "I learned so much here and that is more important to me than winning the competition," says Mary Kamwaka Maumbi, another finalist. "I’ve learned how to do a crop calendar, when to start breeding my pigs and when to inoculate them, how to get my produce to the market and what to do with my money.  I’ll put everything into practice and will show others how to do it.  It will have an impact on my whole village."

The Sun's page 3: 'boobs are not news' say protesters' video

                   

                   

          

Non-British readers might not know this, but our best-selling newspaper, the Sun (circ. 2.7 million), features daily a topless young woman on page 3.  When I present the Sun newspaper as part of an overview of the British media in my journalism class, my international students are rather incredulous and many are deeply offended. Here, people are used to it and no one raises an eyebrow at the men who slowly study their page 3. on the tube.  Young women apparently volunteer to figure there and boyfriends send pictures of their sweethearts to the Sun as a tribute to their beauty.  But many women resent this blatant sexism in our media and have campaigned against page 3. for decades. 

Last week, on the 42nd anniversary of the first topless woman appearing on page 3 of the Sun, the human rights group Object led a protest against the tabloid's sexism and objectification of women. Demonstrators prepared giant birthday cards – one with images of  topless women from the tabloids and one with fully-clothed professional men from the same papers – and delivered them in front of the office of the Sun's editor, Dominic Mohan, at News International's headquarters in London. 

Mohan defended page 3. as an "innocuous British institution" while giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry in February.  And previous Sun’s editors, including Rebekah Wade (now Brooks), have always maintained that page 3. is part of the DNA of the paper and that people who object could simply not buy the paper. But that’s not the point: even if we don’t read the Sun, the images are there. What is the impact of continuously presenting women as sex objects and men as doers?

By the way, when protestors put a photograph of the birthday cards on Facebook, it was swiftly removed without warning, because the explicit images apparently violate Facebook's terms. Yet these images came from our national newspapers, fully available to all, sold in supermarkets and newsagents.

And it’s not like pages. 3 are a blip in media portraying women as capable and respectable.   It would help if there were at least more positive images of women and more women's voices to balance this out. But as numerous projects have shown, this is far from the case.  A report by Women in Journalism last month showed that women account for just 16% of those mentioned or quoted in lead stories. And when they were mentioned, they were often presented as victims. (See my previous blog post about this.)

Women have campaigned against page. 3 all along without much success, but let’s hope the Leveson inquiry will help bring a new focus on sexism in the media.

It’s a Men’s World - Men still dominate British newspapers

Plus ça change…

I was shocked by the recent research carried on by Women in Journalism, a networking and campaigning organization I am a member of, showing that men still dominate not only the stories on national newspaper’s front pages, but the bylines as well.  They studied all the major UK national daily newspaper's front pages from 16 April to 13 May this year.

When you look around newspaper offices and TV stations today, there seem to be as many women as men, but when it comes to writing the news or appearing in it, women still can't quite make it up to a third of all contributions.

What appears on front pages is important because, despite declining readership and revenues, they still help dictate the day's agenda for both online and broadcast news.

The study found that 78 per cent of all front page bylines were male, versus 22 per cent female, with wide variance between titles. The Daily Express was the title with the most female bylines with a 50/50 split. The Independent had the least – a pathetic 9 per cent!

The content of the lead stories was also dominated by men, according to the WIJ research.  Eighty-four per cent of those quoted or mentioned by name in front-page stories were men. However, 79 per cent of those who might qualify as "victims" in front-page stories were women.  I guess the same might be said about the coverage of Africa news. 

But that’s not all. Across newsrooms, three quarters of news journalists are men while women make up just a third of journalists covering business and politics, according the WIJ research.  When I started as a journalist more than 20 years ago, the figures were similar. It is so depressing to see that nothing at all has changed after all these years. And it is not just the coverage of politics, business and sports that men dominate, but they also make 70 per cent of arts reporters and up 49 per cent of lifestyle reporters.  

Women were also found to be less likely to be in senior newspaper positions, with eight out of the top ten newspapers having almost twice as many male editors as women editors.

Sue Matthias, who is a Women in Journalism's committee member and edits the Financial Times Weekend Magazine, said: "Women's rights in the workplace may have improved, but this research shows that there is still a long way to go in British newspapers.

"The gender imbalance we have uncovered is shocking and it seems old attitudes are still alive and well in many places."

What surprises me is that during the eight years I have been teaching journalism, the majority of my students have been women. Yet, the jobs still seem to go to men. Why is this so?

Measuring women's empowerment

-->

Rina Begum, who participated in one of the SHOUHARDO women's empowerment programs in Bangladesh. Once prohibited from leaving her home without a male escort, Rina blossomed into a member of three school committees and the leader of an EKATA group that, among other things, stopped four child marriages.  EKATA groups are women's self-help groups formed as part of the SHOUHARDO project/ Credit: Akram Ali/CARE)

 I’ve read many inspiring stories about mothers’ achievements around Mother’s Day (celebrated last Sunday in the UK), but one particularly caught my attention. It is a story about the measurable impact of empowering women.

Many NGOs have shown the transformative ripple effects of women’s empowerment, but a recent report by the Institute of Development Studies actually measured it. 

In the poorest villages of Bangladesh, economists and nutrition experts were shocked at the results of a program designed to fight malnutrition and poverty among more than 2 million of the country’s poorest people.

Funded by USAID and implemented by CARE, the $126 million SHOUHARDO ("friendship" in Bangla) project included a wide array of interventions, from child feeding and sustainable agriculture to sanitation and climate change adaptation. But researchers discovered that another force had actually produced the greatest independent impact. The game-changer? Women’s empowerment.

Efforts to combat deeply entrenched disparities between women and men had reduced stunting (a measure of child malnutrition) even more than giving women and their children regular rations of wheat, vegetable oil and yellow split peas. 

These gender-equality efforts included promoting female entrepreneurship and supporting self-help groups where women could address taboo topics like early marriage, dowry and violence against women. Once reluctant to leave their homes, the women of SHOUHARDO started travelling to markets to buy and sell goods. Detailed surveys revealed that their influence over household decisions — from the use of savings to what foods to buy — increased too. At the same time, their children were growing healthier — and taller. This was empowerment you could measure with a yard stick.

This is a poster hanging in the room where Rina's EKATA group meets. It describes key elements of an empowered woman. The phrases, translated roughly from Bangla, include "able to speak anywhere with courage" and "participates in the general election process."/Credit: Akram Ali/CARE

“Women who participated in the empowerment interventions were getting better antenatal care, eating more nutritious food and getting more rest during pregnancy. They and their children also had better diets,” says Lisa Smith, a senior economist at TANGO International, the firm hired to evaluate the project.

The report’s results underscore why CARE and other NGOs believe that “greater gender equality is the key to fighting poverty, hunger and injustice around the world,” says Dr. Helene Gayle, CARE president and CEO.

Women in the media – who is running the show?

-->

I belong to a group called Women in Journalism  (WiJ). We work across all the written media, from newspapers and magazines to the new media. We network, campaign, train and party. It is fun and it is needed.

I am often asked – especially by male colleagues - why do we need such an organization in this day and age. Well…Where do I start!

Kira Cochrane, a WiJ member and Guardian feature writer, trawled newspapers, radio and TV shows looking at the gender of writers, presenters and guests over several weeks. The results, published in a Guardian article this week, are even worse than I suspected and it is so depressing.

From Monday 13th June to Friday 8th July – before the school summer holidays started, to avoid any skewing effect – Kira and a group of researchers carried out a simple count of newspaper bylines. They went through seven daily newspapers in their entirety each day, counting and recording the number of male and female writers, and then calculating the percentage values.

They found that in a typical month, women journalists accounted for just 22.6 per cent, as opposed to 77.4 per cent for male reporters, and there wasn't a single day, on a single newspaper, when the number of female bylines outstripped or equalled the number of male bylines.

During that four-week period, they also logged the gender of reporters and guests on the BBC radio 4 agenda-setting Today programme and the BBC TV political show Question Time.

72% of the BBC political show Question Time contributors are men and 84% of reporters and guests on Radio 4's Today show are men.

Where are all the women?

Does it matter who reports the news and appears on current affairs programmes?

According to the most recent survey by the Global Media Monitoring Project (March 2010), women feature in only about a fifth of the world’s news headlines and just ten percent of all news stories.

“Literally thousands of stories about, by and for women are never told.  This sends a message that women’s experiences and opinions are just not as important or as valid as those of men,” says Alison Clarke, who created Women’s Views on News, a women’s daily online news and current affairs service, to redress the imbalance in women’s favour. (The site is down at the moment because of technical difficulties).

Women's Views on News

 At a recent Women in Journalism seminar, I’ve met the founder of WomensViewsOnNews.org, a women’s daily online news and current affairs service.

Alison Clarke founded WVoN in 2009 because she “was fed up with the male domination of the news.” She wanted a platform where all women’s voices and experiences could be heard by all.

According to the most recent survey by the Global Media Monitoring Project (March 2010), women feature in only about a fifth of the world’s news headlines and just ten percent of all news stories.

“Literally thousands of stories about, by and for women are never told.  This sends a message that women’s experiences and opinions are just not as important or as valid as those of men. We challenge that approach and aim to redress the imbalance in women’s favour,” Clarke says.

The site provides up-to-date news on all the major national and international stories of the day, in much the same way as any newspaper or online news service, but the stories they feature are always about women.  They also run feature articles and opinion pieces from time to time, but the focus is on news. Topics covered include arts and entertainments; business/employment;  feminism;  health; politics; science/technology;  sport; violence and world.

WVoN gives women a voice in two ways – by publishing stories that the mainstream press ignores; and by acting as a central point for stories that they do publish about women.

They source their stories from a range of online global, daily newspapers, press agencies, charities, magazines (weekly and monthly), social justice organizations and assorted blogs.  And they publish exclusive features by WVoN co-editors, as well as external guest editors who have a particular expertise.

Today’s featured articles, for example, include stories on growing protest against New York cops rape acquittal (sourced from Change.org),  women noticing other women’s weight first (sourced from the Daily Express),  the pitfalls of teaching abstinence (sourced from The Guardian) and Kandahar girls risking everything for an education (sourced from The Canadian Press). There are also original pieces on women urban planners and on living dolls written by WVoN co-editors.

WVoN is a volunteer collective made up of women journalists from different parts of the world including the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland and India.

They work on a rota basis with at least one journalist allocated to post stories up onto the site six days a week (Monday to Saturday). They post on average between 15 and 20 news stories every day.

The “duty” volunteer searches the sites from an extensive list of sources, looking for stories about women (they steer clear of ones about celebrities). The volunteer then writes a short description of each news story that she (or he) has decided to post onto the site and then links it to the original source.

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer, click here, and if you want to find out more, get in touch.

No Women, No Peace – UK coalition calls for women’s participation in peacebuilding

All over the world, women are prime targets during conflict. Rape, displacement, torture and kidnap are common experiences of women. Whilst women are highly resourceful and are actively building peace in their communities, this is not recognized in formal peace processes. Despite international promises, women made up only 1 in 40 peace agreement signatories over the past 25 years.

No Women, No Peace is a campaign run by 14 human rights and development organisations in the UK,  calling for women’s participation in peacebuilding.  The campaign marks the 10-year anniversary, on October 31, of UN Resolution 1325, the pioneering UN Resolution on women and peace and security.  The resolution recognises the devastating impact of conflict on women and states that women must be involved in building peace from the earliest stages. 

Yet, 10 years after Resolution 1325, the international community is still failing to protect women. Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) continues to be used as a strategic weapon of war.  SGBV, which includes rape, forced impregnation, forced abortion, trafficking, sexual slavery, and the spread of sexually transmitted infections, such as HIV/AIDS – is one of the defining characteristics of contemporary armed conflict.

No Women, No Peace campaign recognises that unless women participate in all stages of building peace, the issues faced by women can’t be addressed and peace will fail to meet the needs of 50 per cent of the population.

Wazhma Frogh, an activist with the Afghan Women's Network said: "If a reconciliation and re-integration plan is about bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan, half the population should not be left out. Bringing peace is not just about the end of fighting, but has to be an enabling environment for men, women and children of this country to access education and rebuild their country.”

The UK, as an international key global player and major donor, has a key role to play in supporting women to participate in decisions made about peace and security.  No Women, No Peace wants to use this 10th year anniversary of UN Resolution 1325 to create the momentum necessary to move the issue up the public and political agenda and call on the UK Government to honour commitments made to women in conflict.

 No  Women, No Peace is a campaign by Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS UK), a network of peace, human rights and development organizations, including ActionAid UK; Amnesty International UK; CARE International UK; IANSA Women's Network; International Alert; Widows for Peace through Democracy; WOMANKIND Worldwide; Women for Women International UK.