BLatent Potential

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BLatent Potential

• Karen Chouhan

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Peepul Centre

• From 60 - 16million
• Expansive and inclusive vision of humanity
• Central to the 1990 Trust and wider social
  movements

3
Women in equality work

• Shami Chakrabarti Liberty
• Dawn Stephenson - Black Londoners Forum
• Milena Buyum National Assembly Against Racism
• Commission for Equalities and Human Rights being
  driven by women's equality Unit

4
CEHR

• One of the difficulties was the whitewash
• Inadequate recognition of differences of need and
  rights of representation
• Uneven legislation argued for a gender duty
  important to mainstreaming
• EOC recently called a meeting of Black people to
  inform their race policy/ practice good
  initiative but needs to be much more embedded

5
CID

• Citizenship oaths of allegiance and English
  tests
• Cohesion multiculturalism is dead?
• Immigration and Asylum
• Incarceration/internment anti terrorist
  legislation
• Integration who has segregated who?
• ID cards
• Diversity equal value? Strength in diversity?
• Discourse Blaming the victim

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Educational achievement
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Employment
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Unemployment
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Other stats

• 2.35 million Black women
• 2 Black women MPs
• Female prisoners Black 23.9, Asian 0.9,
  Chinese Other 4.7

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Trafficking

• Women in particularly are at risk and victims of
  this trade, particularly migrant workers who may
  be employed in low paid jobs, with little
  educational skills and no access to basic
  employment rights including maternity or sickness
  leave.
• In March 2003, the Home Office launched a pilot
  scheme under which adult female victims of
  trafficking for the purposes of prostitution are
  offered protection and a range of support
  services, such as counselling and health checks
  in safe accommodation managed by the Poppy
  project, an NGO based in London.

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Criteria for support- problematic

• That the victim must have been involved in
  prostitution in the UK
• She must have been forcibly exploited to provide
  labour or services
• She must be currently involved in prostitution or
  have left in the previous 30 days
• She must come forward to the authorities
• She must be willing to cooperate with the
  authorities.
• In the following countries Jordan and Nigeria
  schemes have been developed in order to tackle
  the issue of trafficking in these countries.

12
Honour Violence

• violence or the threat of violence is used as a
  means of punishment and control. In the most
  extreme cases, this can result in permanent
  disfigurement and even death. So-called honour
  crimes are treated leniently in the legal codes
  of many countries.

13
Domestic violence

• Domestic violence is the major cause of death and
  disability for European women aged 16 to 44 and
  accounts for more death and ill health than
  cancer or traffic accidents.
• More likely to experienced by Black women but
  is perhaps more hidden

14
Racist and sexist violence

• Grace Patrick Akpan was stopped by police
  officers for an identity check in Catanzaro,
  Italy, in February 1996. When she told them that
  she was an Italian citizen, they answered that a
  black woman cannot be an Italian citizen, and
  described her over the police radio as a
  coloured prostitute. She was physically
  assaulted by the officers and required two weeks
  hospital treatment on release. In October 1999,
  almost three years later, the officers
  responsible were found guilty of abusing their
  powers and causing Grace Patrick Akpan injuries.
  They were sentenced to just two months
  probation.

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Refugee and Asylum seekers

• Amnesty International
• Women refugees and asylum seekers often find
  themselves caught in an inescapable cycle of
  violence, which is hard to get out of. One
  situation can lead to another and before they are
  aware they are vulnerable and swamped in a sea of
  violence, abuse and exploitation.
• Many refugees, especially women, are abused
  during their flight in search of safety. The
  abusers may be border guards, smugglers, pirates,
  members of armed groups, even other refugees.
• The pressures of life in camps for refugees and
  the internally displaced often lead to an
  increase in sexual and domestic violence against
  women. Community structures which might otherwise
  protect women have broken down.

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Health

• Multiple Identities and access to health The
  experience of black and minority ethnic women.
  Equal Opportunities Commission. 2003
• Cultural assumptions and preconceived attitudes
  about the women obscured their right to be seen
  as individuals. In the doctor's surgery they were
  defined through childcare or inability to speak
  English - thus they were seen as black single
  mothers or demanding Asian women before they
  were seen as a person.
• The womens difference in terms of language,
  diets, and ways of childcare framed how they were
  perceived in the health care system.
• The lower income and refugee women saw the
  health, housing and welfare services as obstacles
  to happiness and well being. The women who worked
  in the health service experienced equal
  opportunities as rhetoric, not practice

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Future

• Generational change
• Much more awareness/ communication
• More women's action
• UN and EU actions will have an effect
• Internationally there is some change
• But we need many more projects like this
• Representation, engagement, self organisation
  and working together must be fostered.