by Janet Veitch
The End Violence against Women Campaign was set up to bring together women working on this dreadful, invisible, issue. According to the crime statistics, stalking, domestic violence, and sexual harassment affect around half of all women, at a cost of £23 billion a year for domestic violence alone. Not a small problem, so why is it often ignored? Our members are working at all levels - grassroots service provision, public policy development and research - to change things for women.
Janet Veitch is the vice chair of the End Violence Against Women campaign.One of the ways we do this is by publishing "Making the Grade". This annual report assesses the progress the UK Government has made on ending violence against women, based on their own evidence. Using the answers every Government Minister provides to a standard set of questions, our expert members score each one on how they define, analyse, plan for, resources and evaluate their work on violence against women.
Does every part of government have some impact on ending violence? Yes: for example, the Ministry of Defence needs to consider the levels of domestic violence within service families, and sexual violence by troops in garrison towns. For the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, who champion employees' rights, a key issue is sexual harassment in the workplace. "Making the Grade" shows that some Departments are already doing a great deal to end violence against women. For example the Crown Prosecution Service is devising their own Violence against Women Strategy, and they use Making the Grade to look at key areas where they could improve their work. But some Departments are still not doing as much as they could, and overall awareness in government departments remains low.
Find the End Violence Against Women group on Facebook or MySpaceThe aim of "Making the Grade" is to help us see where things need to improve and to identify trends in progress. We hope eventually to see violence policies mainstreamed into every part of government - especially now that the gender equality duty makes this a statutory obligation. We think that the analysis in "Making the Grade" makes sure that violence remains a high priority even for those departments that do not see violence as a part of their remit. It also acts as a lever for learning - we offer to meet officials in every department during the year to help them identify further work they could be doing. Our long term aim is to see Government adopt a proper Violence Against Women Strategy, which would ensure that every department took this work seriously, and tackled it in a joined up way. Until this happens, women in this country will continue to suffer from high levels of violence.
The next "Making the Grade" report will be published in late February/ early March, 2008.
