Thoughts on women...

A short post today. The care of pregnant women is at the core of my role as a midwife. Therefore the fact that pregnancy is a time in a woman's life when she is more likely to be affected by domestic violence is even more heart-breaking. It is both more likely to start and more likely to increase in frequency and severity. It is mind-blowing to me that this is even possible, and I am a person who is well informed and not altogether optimistic about the actions of men toward women. The consequences of violence against pregnant women include growth restricted babies, pre-term birth, haemorrhage and spontaneous abortion (miscarriage and stillbirth). The psychological impact is far reaching to women including a multitude of mental health disorders. The impact of children caught up in domestic violence include physical harm, poor self esteem, higher incidences of adverse childhood events, drug abuse in teenage, eating disorders, depression, self harm and suicide. Womens Aid published a ...

Numerous times in the Bible we see sexual violence used as a weapon of war. Women are taken as spoils of war and it's hands down one of those most uncomfortable things to read in there. One of the passages which deals with this is Deuteronomy 22:10-14. It first reads as legalising the rape of women taken captive in war. Women taken captive were to be brought into the house of the captor, then married after a month.  As abhorrent as it is to us in this era, taken in the context of the time it was revolutionary. Women were possessions (to man, not God), pawns in war, family and estate. In this scripture, men were forced to humanise the women they encountered and treat them as wives, given time to grieve, then married honourably. If they changed their minds, they couldn't be sold as slaves, only divorced as a wife with the onus being on the man as the one who dishonoured her. As with many of these ancient directives, this was a confronting law made to curb the sexual violence that...

One of the cleverest things society has managed to do is silence women on the subject of domestic abuse and violence. It has been orchestrated that women often somehow feel complicit in and shame for the abuse they have suffered. Over and over again we hear stories of the women who feel that they are to blame for their own abuse, by either causing it to happen through their own 'behaviour', or through staying with an abusive partner. Neither of these are true. The only person to blame is the perpetrator. A woman could cheat on her husband and still not deserve to be beaten. She may deserve the end of her marriage but never the end of her life. The fault lies with the abuser and the abuser alone. Women have been demonised for millennia to justify the atrocious acts of husbands over wives. Laws have been passed to keep women subjugated, some changing only as recently as the 1990s when in 1991 marital rape was finally recognised as a crime. Until then sex was considered the 'r...

Exploitation: "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work" The exploitation of women and girls represents the ultimate outcome of multiple layers of inequality. Women and girls are more likely to be in poverty, less likely to have an education, more likely to have suffered abuse at the hands of family members. Girls who have no access to school but need to work end up with no autonomy over workplace so are more vulnerable to being exploited by 'recruiters'. They are therefore disproportionately represented in modern slavery - 99% of victims of sexual exploitation are women and girls. One of the reasons modern slavery continues to proliferate is the gendered power imbalance which is upheld by patriarchal structures globally. Culture, some religious beliefs, laws, societal norms and gender roles all contribute to this power imbalance and this is clearly demonstrated in human trafficking where women are dehumanised to the extent t...

This week I heard about the Red Chair project. The idea is that you place a red chair somewhere public and put a sign above it. It is intended to represent the women who are now missing from the world because they were murdered victims of domestic violence. Read more about the project here and download the resources you need to join in. This got me thinking about how many women and girls are not alive due to gender based violence and honestly looking at those numbers and related information is even more chilling than you'd imagine. Did you know that men's violence against women is one of the leading causes of premature death globally? In 2022, just under 89,000 women and girls were murdered due to their sex. The number of gender based murders is actually UP when the overall global murder rate is DOWN.  The Femicide Census is the only project independently collating this data. By looking at the data they can identify patterns and risk factors and this targeted information is abl...

Today marks International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women. It triggers 16 days of worldwide activism to raise awareness of the many atrocities and oppressions suffered by women and girls globally. It also aims to provoke action by both individuals and governments. Things can change, we have to believe it, the lives and wellbeing of women and girls relies on it. This cause has been important to me for many years and my faith has only made me more committed and more sure that this is the right thing to be doing. In the Old Testament in the Bible, Micah 6:8 says "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God". This verse states really strongly that justice and mercy can co-exist. We can seek justice but still have mercy for a fallen world. The only way to do that well is to be humble, recognise the part we all play in upholding systems of oppression and how "th...

A couple of weeks ago we heard at the Covid Inquiry that a lack of female perspective at the heart of government had a significant and negative impact on policies implemented during that time. Helen MacNamara, former deputy cabinet secretary pointed to resistance within government to consider the gendered impact of the lockdown, including women and children experiencing domestic violence, childcare, unpaid carer roles and the impact on pregnant women's experience of maternity care. Many of the findings of the inquiry have been difficult to hear but they aren't surprising. When women's voices are not represented or listened to, the result is inequity between the sexes and women usually bearing the brunt of it. It is interesting to discover that globally, when women are in positions of government and influence, outcomes for all are improved, including healthcare, education and policies relating to inequality of all kinds. Governmental decision making is improved when women ar...