Women v The State (UK) seeks case studies and evidence to support an inquiry into state noncompliance with the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The book will focus on abuse against women perpetrated by the state or its agencies in its devolution of responsibility to protect women and safeguard their rights, particularly in the private sector due to financial retrenchment disguised as austerity. This book gives a voice to those who have been damaged by cuts and inequality across all classes and social strata, all areas which affect women.
Anna is a Nigerian woman who was trafficked into the UK as a sex slave and fled her captors to seek asylum in 2010. She and her young son have been forced to move five times in six months as a result of the failure of a G4S subcontractor to pay their rent, electricity and utility bills. Privatisation is just one way the state removes risk and its responsibility for the most vulnerable, sometimes using financial retrenchment disguised as austerity, as the excuse to monetise social services and capitalise on trauma.Anna told The Guardian recently, "A lot of people are going through the same thing but they are scared to speak up. It's not right to treat people this way but no one listens to you if you are an asylum seeker."
Marion, running a billion dollar hedge fund is told that getting pregnant was not included in her employment contract and fired, with no recourse, for being no unfit to do her job.
A woman who is a former escort publishes a high profile book about partying and taking cocaine with some of our most powerful and prominent politicians. Her home is raided at dawn by 30 policemen, and the published book is heavily censored, removing embarrassing photographs of a senior minister taking cocaine.
A new project, Women v The State (UK), is gathering the stories of women like Anna, Marion and others – failed by the very systems that exist to protect them. Theirs are the stories behind the headlines, the stories of women let down by the state, which has so far failed to adopt CEDAW’s mandate to mainstream gender equality. Economists have found that women, particularly single parents and pensioners, suffered more than men from cuts to benefits and public services, particularly because women’s services are often the first to go.
Women v The State (UK) is the first project of Kazuri Minds, a new social enterprise think tank set up to examine and influence government and corporate policy and how it impacts women. The book covers state inadequacies in fulfilling CEDAW mandates across sectors such as health, employment, education, representation, social and economic benefits, sex role stereotyping, trafficking, and marriage and family law. It will shatter the silence around state abuse towards women across all social strata, particularly those who are marginalised for other societal reasons, such as race, religion, age, social class, or colour.
Creative Director, Farah Damji, believes it is vital to reveal the stories of women who have been traumatised as a direct result of the actions of the state and its entrenched institutionalised inequality.
"The increasing monetisation of welfare services is, in many cases, not only failing to protect traumatised and vulnerable women from further harm, but also frequently inflicting further trauma upon victims, survivors and their loved ones." says Farah.
Women v The State (UK) asks women and frontline organisations across the UK to come forward with their experiences of such failures, including in the criminal justice system, exile, secure hospitals, mental health services, the asylum system, children’s homes, and sexual assault referral centres (SARCs). A recent report showed that there are still severe gaps in the provision of services to help women escape and recover from violence and abuse. This is to be expected, since 2010, 31% of funding to the domestic violence and sexual abuse services sector was cut.
Editor Nanki Chawla said, “We want to collect as many stories as we can for Women v the State (UK), which is a powerful way of highlighting the failures of the state in mainstreaming gender equality. We will make sure all stories are presented anonymously to protect the identities of the women involved and to make sure they do not experience further distress.”
The Women v The State (UK) book will include a foreword by the former Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, Michael Turner QC, and will be launched at the House of Commons in March 2014. The launch will follow a dramatisation of several stories from the book at Women of the World 2014, written and produced by renowned writer, playwright and activist Farrukh Dhondy who wrote the groundbreaking film Bandit Queen, the story of the notorious Indian woman and gangster, Phoolan Devi. Penny Cherns, senior tutor at LAMBDA will direct a gripping dramatisation of the stories, which give a voice to these women's inconvenient truths in the patriarchal hierarchies which suppress a woman's dignity, her choices and her humanity.
Sarah Cheverton, co editor emphasises "Given the repeated failings of the state in mainstreaming gender equality, it is important to raise awareness of the deep-rooted patterns of gendered abuse in the UK. We need to look at safer options which take into account the health and wellbeing of our community and our economy and get away from this spiralling race to the bottom.
