This is part two of an article addressing the cuts to the women's sector in the UK. Read part one.
The Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, which the UK has so far failed to ratify, obliges member states to adequately fund both general and specialist services. The delay in ratification quite likely arises from the fact that the spending cuts applied so heavily to this sector means that the UK will not be compliant with the Convention. It is important to be clear about what specialist services entail as the gradual de-recognition of the sector represents a tectonic defeat for feminist politics. ‘Specialist’ is defined as women-only services and within that it includes targeting of specific groups like BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) women and/or specific types of violence like FGM. The importance of women only spaces for women who have faced male violence has been central to feminist activism.
For Dr Liz Kelly, head of CWASU, (Child and Women Abuse Studies, Metropolitan University) the specialist women’s sector simply includes organisations with roots in the particular communities that they serve as that experience shapes the perspectives within which they deliver services. This definition has the advantage of excluding the large, generic, empire-building organisations which attempt to bolster their specialist credentials by employing a BME worker or two. But as Marai Larasi, Director of Imkaan, says there is world of difference between a BME organisation and a BME service. The identification of specific threats to BME women, be it forced marriage or immigration rules which trap them in violent marriages, campaigning around those issues, demanding more resources from government, changing policy and legislation have been initiated by BME led organisations such as Southall Black Sisters, at least where the above two issues are concerned.
