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UK under international pressure over deletion of abortion commitments

by Narges Mohammadi

Open letter sent to Liz Truss after removal of commitment to repeal laws threatening women and girls’ rights from global pact

The UK government is coming under growing pressure from European countries and human rights groups to explain why commitments to abortion and sexual health rights have been removed from an official statement on gender equality.

Norway and Denmark have approached the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) “to protest against the substantive changes” that were made to a paper that resulted from a UK-hosted conference on freedom of religion and belief, opened by Liz Truss earlier this month, we learned.

More than 20 countries, including those now complaining, had signed the original text, which included a commitment to the repeal of any laws that “allow harmful practices, or restrict women’s and girls’ … sexual and reproductive health and rights, bodily autonomy.”

But those phrases were removed from a later version of the international pact, which is currently online and has been signed by six countries, including the UK and Malta, where abortion is illegal. The country had not been one of the original signatories.

In an open letter to Truss, the foreign secretary and Tory leadership candidate, published on Friday, more than 20 human rights, pro-choice, and international aid groups demanded the government reverse the deletions immediately and explain why they were made.

“At a time when abortion provision around the world is under serious threat, due to the reversal of Roe v Wade, it has never been more important for the UK government to stand up for sexual and reproductive health and rights and bodily autonomy,” wrote the organizations, including Humanists UK, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), MSI Reproductive Choices and Amnesty International UK.

Expressing “serious concern” about the changes, they added: “We urge you to reverse this move, and hope you could explain why the change happened in the first place.”

The international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) was held in early July in London. The prime minister’s special envoy on FoRB, the Conservative MP Fiona Bruce, was heavily involved in the event. Bruce is co-chair of the all-party parliamentary “pro-life” group of MPs.

The resulting, amended, statement on gender equality makes a commitment to challenging “discriminatory laws that justify, condone, or reinforce violence, discrimination, or inequalities on the grounds of religion, belief or gender and that restrict women and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of human rights”. It makes no mention of sexual or reproductive rights or bodily autonomy.

In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson for the Norwegian foreign ministry said: “Norway and Denmark have approached the UK and the Netherlands, who are the chair and co-chair respectively of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance (IRFBA), to enquire about and protest against the substantive changes to the statement and the way the changes were made.”

It added: “Norway has yet to make a decision on being a signatory to the amended version of the statement.”

The Danish foreign ministry declined to comment. Asked whether the Netherlands would be signing the latest version of the statement, a spokesperson for the Dutch foreign ministry said: “We are assessing the situation, together with likeminded [countries].”

Canada, which prides itself on its feminist international assistance policy, is not among the signatories, either. “Canada is seeking clarification on the process undertaken following the conference to modify the original statement and has not signed onto the new version,” said a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, James Emmanuel Wanki.

Marie Juul Petersen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights who was close to the process of drafting the first statement, said the second version of the text came as “a big surprise” and a great disappointment.

“I saw the original statement as such a big step forward because this has been a very conflict-ridden area – the relationship between freedom of religion and belief and gender equality. For so many years, there have not been many attempts at finding synergies and overlaps or at demonstrating how these two sets of rights are actually compatible and in fact intertwined and inseparable. And I thought this statement was really a big step forward in that direction, showing that these two rights are not in opposition to one another but can actually reinforce one another. So I was really disappointed.”

Petersen said she expected the UK, as host of the conference, to fix the problem, criticising the process by which the statement had been amended as “flawed and unreasonable”.

Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, also said the government was duty bound to withdraw the amendments.

“The government must surely be aware that, given the recent events in the United States, abortion rights are under threat. To amend an agreed statement in such a manner, omitting these rights, is therefore particularly poorly timed,” he said.

“Unfortunately, this supplanting of individual freedom under the guise of “religious freedom” is an example of the right to freedom of religion or belief being abused in order to infringe the rights of others.” Bekky Ashmore from Plan International UK, who has also sent a letter of complaint to Truss about the rewording, said: “The UK government has long been a supporter of SRHR [Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights] and gender equality globally, and we are concerned that with this move the government is failing to live up to its commitments to ‘boldy defend and progress SRHR for all”.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jul/22/european-countries-pressurise-uk-over-removal-of-abortion-commitments-liz-truss

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EuropeHealth

Women’s health: Plan to stop ‘sexist’ NHS treatment

by Narges Mohammadi

Doctors in England will be given mandatory training to better treat female medical conditions under wider plans to improve women’s health.

Free access to NHS fertility treatment will be expanded and there will be more funding for mobile breast cancer screening.

The government said the changes, part of its women’s health strategy, were based on responses from 100,000 people.

But critics said more must be done to close the “gender gap” in NHS services.

The government opened a call for evidence in Spring 2021 to collect views on women’s health from members of the public, academics, charities and campaigners.

Women in England live on average four years longer than men but spend more of their life in poor health, which can limit their ability to work and participate in day-to-day activities.

Sexism has previously been blamed for a disproportionate rise in genecology waiting lists and failings around the prescribing of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

“We heard from women that the system doesn’t listen to them when they come forward and ask for help with their healthcare needs,” Minister for Women’s Health Maria Caulfield told BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour.

“These are women often juggling jobs, young families and caring responsibilities, and unless we make it work from them they will continue to face barriers seeking help.”

The government said that individuals responding to the consultation felt there was a lack of understanding among some medical professionals about health conditions which only affect women.

From the 2024/25 academic year, mandatory teaching and assessment specifically relating to women’s health will be introduced for all medical students and new doctors.

The government said it also plans to:

  • Provide £10 million funding for breast cancer screening to pay for 25 mobile units in areas with low testing rates
  • Update guidance around the treatment of severe endometriosis, a debilitating condition which affects one in 10 women where tissue similar to the lining of the womb starts to grow in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes
  • Introduce a pregnancy loss certificate in England, providing legal recognition when a baby dies within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy
  • Encourage the expansion of dedicated women’s health hubs so maternity, gynaecology and sexual health services can be accessed in a single place

Miriam Levin, health and care programme director at the charity Engage Britain, welcomed “any steps” to tackle health inequalities, but said the government had to ensure that women’s concerns would be properly listened to.

“We hear stories of women suffering with a vast range of problems, from endometriosis to menopause, and often feeling as though they’re dismissed or not taken seriously by some health professionals,” she said.

“The only way this strategy can succeed is for the government to take a fresh approach – by hearing what female patients have to say, then putting their experiences at the very heart of delivering it.”

‘Postcode lottery’ for IVF

Under the plans, there will also be changes to the rules around fertility treatment in England:

  • In the future, couples considering IVF should be able to see how NHS provision in their local area compares with other parts of the country.
  • It will be possible to access NHS fertility treatment if one half of a couple has already had a child from a previous relationship, something that has proved difficult in much of England.
  • Female same-sex couples will no longer have to pay for artificial insemination at a private clinic to prove they are having difficulty conceiving before being able to access IVF services on the NHS.

Sarah Norcross, director of the fertility charity PET, welcomed the decision to remove some barriers to IVF access but said it was “incredibly disappointing” that there was no plan to tackle the “postcode lottery” of treatment in different parts of England.

“The commitment to improve transparency in relation to the availability of IVF does not equate to giving women the chance to try to have a baby,” she said.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay said: “Our health and care system only works if it works for everyone. It is not right that 51% of our population are disadvantaged in accessing the care they need, simply because of their sex.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-62221778

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EuropeSocietyWomen Pioneers

How women broke into the boardroom

by Narges Mohammadi

The 30% Club’s mentoring scheme, aimed at getting more women into board-level positions, is now 10 years old. How much has it achieved?

On July 13, a few thousand of the 16,200 alumni of the 30% Club — a campaign aimed at getting more women into board level positions — gathered at the London Stock Exchange at market close. They celebrated the 10th anniversary of the club’s mentoring programme: since its creation in 2012 with eight companies (EY took the lead) which is now the biggest scheme of its kind in the world.

More than 680 companies attended, across 30 sectors and in 50 countries. When Baroness Helena Morrissey launched the club in 2010 only 12 per cent of directors on the top boards of UK plc were female; now that figure is nearly 40 per cent. Progress was slow but steady — it took until 2019 to hit 30 per cent but less than three years to push female board membership to its current 40 per cent level. At the time Morrissey was chief executive of Newton Asset Management, part of BNY Mellon bank.

“I was at a lunch to discuss diversity at Goldman Sachs in 2009: there were a bunch of us from different sectors, but we all had the same issues with women leaving,” she recalls. “I went and read all the data, and was struck by a scheme run by Deutsche Telekom, which had a target of 30 per cent women at all levels to improve business results.”  Thirty per cent is the magic number where research shows there is sufficient presence in a group for women not to feel like tokens, which is why Morrissey used it as a target. In her day job she was “forever setting targets” and thought one was needed for diversity.

 “I focused on the male chairs in the FTSE as I thought they were the key to moving the dial.” Morrissey says she was lucky because in the aftermath of the 2008 crash greater diversity was seen as the answer to disastrous group think. “It was just when Lord [Mervyn] Davies was chairing his governmental review of women on [FTSE] boards, and he was threatening companies with quotas. The chairmen all said they would prefer a voluntary scheme and signed up to the 30% Club.”

It was not all plain sailing. One chair accused Morrissey of being out to “finish off British business”. Luckily others were more receptive, and before long the scheme mushroomed. Mentors agreed to see their mentee five times over a nine-month period, many did more; there were also training and networking sessions.

The key aspect was that senior men mentored more junior women from other companies, so they could hear the unvarnished truth. “From the beginning, male CEOs and chairs acted as mentors to mentees from other companies,” Morrissey says. “This gave them access to first- hand lived experience of what it was like to be a young woman or a person of color in a large UK business.

Many said to begin with that they didn’t understand what women were worried about; then after being mentors they would say, ‘I’m sorry I never knew how bad it is, I never heard about it within my own company’.”  This is borne out by the data; over a third of mentors reported being “motivated to create change in their organizations” due to having a mentee, with the majority describing changes to management style and a new commitment to removing bias in their organizations because of the programme.

Nick Owen said when he was chair of Deloitte: “It is such a privilege as a leader to listen to your mentee and not feel judged, because they are from another organization. I took back so many learnings and an increased motivation to support diverse talent.” It is not just the mentors who benefited; 47 per cent of mentees in the 2018 scheme — with more than 1,000 participants — were promoted over the subsequent three-year period, compared with several control groups, according to data from Moving Ahead, the company that runs and tracks the mentoring scheme. They also found that 70 per cent of mentees every year said they felt more confident and empowered.

Encouragingly, more than half the mentees agreed with the statement: “My career has been affected by far less organizational bias and impenetrable networks since I found a mentor”. Attempts to improve diversity now go far beyond a focus on women. In 2019 Ann Cairns, vice-chair of Mastercard and the 30% Club’s current global chair, introduced race and ethnicity targets for the campaign.

A new “Mission Include” diversity strand was added, led by Rupal Kantaria, a partner at Oliver Wyman, and Liz Dimmock, founder and chief executive of Moving Ahead, which provides mentor and leadership development programmes. Events include online speakers, mini-conferences and a monthly newsletter for diversity, equity and inclusion leaders. “Parity is a realistic prospect in the UK over the next couple of years but we are not there yet,” Cairns says.

“While women now hold more board seats, it is in Neds [non-executive directors] that we have seen the greatest expansion. Of FTSE CEOs and at executive committee level just 25 per cent are women. And when it comes to race, class, disability and wider diversity the numbers are far worse. That’s why we’re not changing our name to 50% Club anytime soon.” Cairns says this is now a global campaign, adding that the percentage of women on the boards of companies that are part of the scheme in some parts of the world remains in single digits. “We need to keep an achievable goal.

This is now the biggest campaign in the world around gender and inclusivity.”  So why is it so difficult to move the dial on more diverse executive appointments? “We’ve taken all the low-hanging fruit,” says Alison Kay, client lead for the UK and Ireland at professional services firm EY. “To get more women into CEO, COO and CFO jobs we have to break longstanding views.

These are difficult decisions which involve breaking strong male friendships and networks to push it forwards.” Cairns believes in vigorous succession planning, and insisting on balanced longlists and shortlists. She says: “Too often there is a plan that looks balanced but the women are always three years off being job-ready, while the men are always ready to go now and somehow the man always gets chosen. We need enlightened male CEOs to appoint women. They are the dominant group in power, none of this can shift without them.”

Sheryl Sandberg, the outgoing chief operating officer of Meta, which owns Facebook, and author of Lean In, will be speaking at the Stock Exchange launch. “The broken rung on the ladder is that men get promoted on potential whereas women are judged on experience so far,” she tells the FT ahead of the event. “That has to change at all levels, and mentoring and sponsorship is a powerful way to fix that. We all also need to pay careful attention to the experiences of women of color who experience far more microaggressions and setbacks at all levels. This has to be a broad conversation.” The final word goes to Morrissey.

“I worry that too many women join boards and then feel obliged to fit in,” she says. “Diverse voices on boards need to be exactly that: offer different opinions, speak up and bring their own issues and perspectives. But too often the people who get to board level don’t challenge the status quo; maybe that is why they get picked in the first place! Too often diversity of thought is welcome in theory but not in practice.” 

https://www.ft.com/content/488e1854-b9d0-4e63-9ea7-85f926248df3

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EuropeSociety

‘You CAN’T change your sex’: Fertility expert Professor Robert Winston says ‘mutilating ourselves’ changes gender but ‘we cannot escape our genetics’ – after Church of England said it didn’t have a definition of ‘woman’

by Narges Mohammadi

Human beings can change their gender but not their sex, a leading fertility expert said last night, as he waded into the fierce debate around trans and women’s rights.

Professor Robert Winston, of Imperial College London, said a person cannot change sex, ‘because it is embedded in genes in every cell in the body.

His comments come amid a row over the definition of a woman, which in recent months has become a major talking point in politics and sports – including whether trans women should be allowed to compete in female-only competitions.

Earlier this week the debate reached the top of the Church of England after a bishop said there were now ‘complexities associated with gender identity.

Last night Professor Winston, one of the world’s leading experts on fertility and a Labour peer in the House of Lords, gave his view on the debate, saying we, ‘cannot escape our genetics’.

He said: ‘There is no question that we can change our gender, we can do it by mutilating ourselves, we can do it by removing bits of our body and therefore change our shape and so on.

‘But you can’t change your sex, because that is embedded actually in those (a person’s) genes in every cell in the body, that’s the difference.

That really becomes a problem because occasionally you end up with somebody that is born a male, but then wants to become a female, so you can have that mutilating operation for example.

‘But then the question is should they be allowed to compete in a sport. That’s a major problem because of course they still have certain male characteristics which will likely give them an edge over other women.

So that is where the problem really, I think, lies. And of course also the issue of just social behavior, in different situations.

‘Using toilets, using bathrooms, a whole range of issues like this, which understandably worry women.’

Professor Winston, who was speaking about sex and gender during a segment on Piers Morgan’s Uncensored, also described a woman as a ‘female’ which he said was defined by ‘the genes she has’.

He said: ‘A woman has two X chromosomes normally. It’s probably easier to define a male, a male has specific masculine genes, which make us different from women.

‘The female position is the default human position, that is to say, that if there are no male genes there you are born as a woman.

‘I am a clump of about 8 billion cells at least, each of which has got my maleness in it. ‘I am defined genetically, every single cell has got those male genes, and that would apply to a woman that doesn’t have those genes. 

‘That’s what makes the difference. And we cannot escape the fact that we are genetically determined in this way.’ It comes after the Church of England earlier this week admitted it does not have a definition of the word woman.

A bishop said that the meaning of the word used to be ‘self-evident’. But he added that there are now ‘complexities associated with gender identity’ which a church project about sexuality and relationships is exploring.

The admission, in an official report prepared for the gathering of its governing body this weekend, stirred criticism last night. It comes despite Anglicanism continuing to oppose same-sex weddings – and only recently allowing women to be bishops.

Campaigner Maya Forstater said: ‘When the Government redefined women through the Gender Recognition Act, the Church of England could have stuck with its long-established understanding, which makes sense whether your starting point is biology or the Bible. 

‘It is shocking that they so readily gave up the definition of man or woman for the state to amend, as if this fundamental truth did not matter.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11009151/Fertility-expert-Professor-Robert-Winston-says-escape-genetics-trans-debate.html

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EuropeHealth

‘Being in a mother and baby unit saved my life’

by Narges Mohammadi

“My baby wouldn’t have had a mum to look after him had I not been here… this unit saved my life”; says a saved mother.

Like many first-time mothers, Kerry Nash was overjoyed when she became pregnant with her first baby.

However, when her son Arwyn was born in December, she soon became “completely consumed by sadness and depression”.

“I was so emotional and physically drained. I felt overwhelming sadness and emptiness,” she said. Kerry and her baby were given a place at Uned Gobaith two days before Christmas.

It is a specialist NHS unit near Neath that offers in-patient care to women across Wales who experience serious mental health problems during pregnancy.

‘Loneliest I’ve ever been’

“Even though you have this amazing bundle and have waited 9 months to meet them – I was completely consumed by sadness and depression because the tiredness took over,” Kerry added. “It was the loneliest I’ve ever been.”

The midwives who visited Kerry after she came home realised something was wrong, and after a discussion with the local mental health team, it was suggested she needed more specialised help. “They said ‘Kerry – you’re not well, you really need to bond with your baby.

“There’s this amazing new mother and baby unit – we really want you to go there’,” Kerry added. Kerry and Arwyn stayed at Uned Gobaith for 4 months.

“When I first came here it was really scary being in a place I didn’t know. But straight away staff were here to help with every need. “They cared for Arwyn as many hours as I needed so I could rest.”

Uned Gobaith opened just over a year ago.

It is the only specialist unit in Wales to offer in-patient care for mothers to stay with their babies.

They can be admitted between 32 weeks of pregnancy and up to 12 months following birth. It offers help for women from across Wales who might have previously had to travel to England for care for conditions like post-partum psychosis, depression and anxiety.

Uned Gobaith’s service manager Anita Rees explained that “prior to having the Unit here women experiencing severe mental illness during the perinatal period were forced to make really challenging choices”, such as travelling to England or being admitted to an adult mental health unit without their babies.

“This is giving women access to the right care at the right time much closer to home,” Ms Rees added.

Uned Gobaith is designed to be a “home from home” for mothers and babies, explained ward manager Kirsten Pearce. “When you walk into the unit it looks bright, colourful and appealing” said Ms Pearce.

“There is a rose-tinted glasses view that having a baby is the best thing you’ll ever do – it’s wonderful amazing and there’s nothing quite like it,” she explained.

“Whilst that often is true we also know it’s one of the most challenging and hardest things even for people who have a normal pregnancy.”

In the communal lounge, Sarah and her baby Anakin, and Lauren and her baby Dexter, are listening to a harpist play songs ranging from Disney favourites to Welsh folk tunes. As part of this weekly session mothers and babies also have the chance to compose their own lullabies.

“He is very much enjoying it,” said Sarah as Anakin waved his arms to the tune, adding: “Every baby seems to be drawn to music, he even sings along.

“This place gives me a sense of security where you can trust staff and make friendships with staff.” “Dexter adores the music and also the sensory room,” added Lauren. “This place gives you the space to focus on your baby and yourself. It’s given me back the joy of having Dexter.”

The unit looked after 34 mums and their babies on 39 different occasions in the year up until May 2022. A review of the service, provided by Swansea Bay University Health Board, is under way which will help determine its future

The Children’s Charity NSPCC – insists the service should be retained and strengthened. “The previous mother and baby unit closed in Wales in 2013. So we need to make sure it continues” said Cecile Gwilym of NSPCC Wales.

“If the review shows the number of beds isn’t sufficient to meet the need, we need this extended so more women are able to access the support they need.” Meanwhile Kerry Nash is no doubt of the value of Uned Gobaith.

“If I didn’t have that help our story would have been very different … I wouldn’t have been able to do it. “To be really honest Arwyn wouldn’t have had a mum to look after him. This unit saved my life.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-62141119

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EuropeSociety

JK Rowling slams ‘gender activist’ doctor for calling disabled women ‘psychotic’

by Narges Mohammadi

Rowling continues her campaign against transgender ideology

J.K. Rowling slammed a pair of doctors for arguing that it is “psychotic” and “disgusting” for disabled women to demand female doctors for their intimate health care Sunday.

Rowling weighed in on a Twitter debate regarding women’s care in which a number of individuals claiming to be doctors argued women’s rights advocates are “psychotically hung up” on fighting gender ideology.

“Intimate touching without consent is sexual assault,” Rowling wrote. “A self-proclaimed doctor says it’s ‘psychotic’ for disabled women to assert the right to female-only intimate care.”

“I’m praying he’s not actually an MD, just a standard misogynist here to troll, but either way,” she added, followed by a series of red flag emojis.

Many agreed with Rowling’s statement, however, weighing in to say it is perfectly reasonable for women to prefer female doctors for some of their care needs.

“How can anyone even have an issue with this?” one user replied to Rowling. “In my early adult life I worked at retirement homes. If certain old ladies only wanted females to shower them or help with post-toilet hygiene, then it’s just “okay ma’am lemme get one of the girls.”

Rowling has quickly asserted herself as one of the most prominent critics of gender ideology in popular culture, despite fierce backlash and even threats from the movement’s proponents.

The world-famous author of the “Harry Potter” book series continues to use her platform of 14.5 million Twitter followers to argue that biological sex cannot be ignored.

Rowling has raised eyebrows for weighing in on the touchy subject since before 2020 when she argued “it isn’t hate to speak the truth” about gender.

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction,” Rowling tweeted at the time. “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/jk-rowling-slams-gender-activist-doctor-calling-disabled-women-psychotic

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EuropeWomen Pioneers

Female pilots are finally celebrated for their crucial role in the Battle of Britain

by Narges Mohammadi

Pioneering female aviators delivered planes wherever they were needed in the second world war – armed with just a notebook

They flew together, died together, and are buried side by side. First officer Dora Lang and Flight Engineer Janice Harrington were killed on 2 March 1944 while delivering a de Havilland Mosquito Mk VI plane to an airfield in Hampshire. Their plane stalled as it approached the landing strip, and they crashed.

This is just one of the untold stories of the heroic young women who, with minimal training, flew thousands of aircraft around the country and risked their lives to keep British planes in the air during the second world war. Now, the numerous achievements of these women – and the remarkable courage they showed, often before resuming their roles as housewives in postwar Britain – will be celebrated for the first time in a forthcoming exhibition at Biggin Hill Memorial Museum.

Items on display for the first time will include the logbook, training manual and dark blue uniform of the decorated war pilot Dolores “Jackie” Moggridge, a pioneering aviator who – like many women who wanted to fly – joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force when war broke out.

In July 1940, at the age of just 18, she was recruited into the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), and after only some two weeks of military training, began transporting hundreds of aircraft to wherever they were needed for the Battle of Britain.

“She was the youngest ATA pilot to fly in the second world war and quite a groundbreaking woman,” said Kate Edwards, director at the museum, which commemorates the famous second world war fighter station and RAF airfield at Biggin Hill in the London borough of Bromley.

“She was flying planes up and down the country – she flew 82 different types of warplanes in total, and after the war she went on to become the first female airline captain to ferry passengers on scheduled flights.”

Some men were “horrified” whenever they encountered a female pilot like Moggridge during the war, Edwards said. On one memorable mission, Moggridge believed her plane was about to be hit, because just as she landed everyone outside suddenly ran for cover. “It turned out all the [male] pilots had been sunbathing in their underwear.”

The challenges women like Moggridge faced were extraordinary because ATA pilots were not taught to fly all the different types of war planes they were expected to transport.

Instead, after some “very limited training” in the air, they were handed a small book known as the “ferry pilot’s notes”, which contained all the technical data they needed to know to fly each different plane – and told to study it. “That was all they had. They might be flying four or five different types of aircraft a day by following these notes.”

One ATA pilot, Lettice Curtis, who famously became the first woman to fly a four-engined bomber, transported two light aircraft, a Spitfire, two medium bombers and a Stirling heavy bomber in just 24 hours.

“She flew them all in one day, with just these ‘ferry pilot’s notes’,” Edwards said.

Women were forced constantly to refer to the notes to figure out how to use the muddle of flying instruments they would find in the different planes.

“The throttles, the gauges, all those instruments in a plane – they had to work it out as they were flying or read the notes before they took off.”

A male member of the RAF once made a complaint about Moggridge after observing her reading while she was flying the plane he was on. “He reportedly said: ‘It was dreadful weather and I can’t believe not only was a woman flying me here, but she was reading a book’.”

According to the exhibition, Moggridge’s response was: “Oh no, I wasn’t reading a novel. Those were my ATA notes. I hadn’t flown this type of plane before” – at which point her erstwhile passenger “nearly threw up”.

Moggridge went on, in 1953, to become one of the first women to get her RAF wings, and died aged 81 in 2004. The engrossing “book” she was reading on that flight – her own precious copy of the “ferry pilot’s notes” – will be on display for the first time at the exhibition.

Over the course of the war, ATA pilots ferried 309,000 aircraft across Britain, flying 147 different types of planes in total. One in 10 of them were female.

These women played a vital role in the war effort, Edwards said, “and they did it without radios, with no flying-instrument instruction, at the mercy of the British weather, often in a plane they’d never seen. And at that time, without radio, once you were up, that was it. You were on your own.”

The reliance of female pilots on their “ferry notes” may explain why Lang and Harrington died so tragically while attempting to land. “The notes would tell you the stall speed for each aircraft – so the speed at which you would stall. Perhaps they hadn’t taken in that data,” said Edwards.

The two women are buried next to each other, exactly as they spent their final flight. They had no husbands or children to mourn their passing, Edwards said – they died too young. And as they didn’t get a medal or die in a blaze of glory, their sacrifice has, until now, been largely forgotten, Edwards said.

“Like a lot of ordinary people who were killed during the war, their story has gone untold. Until now.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/10/female-pilots-finally-celebrated-for-crucial-role-in-battle-of-britain?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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EuropeSociety

Abortion; UK women face protests by emboldened campaigners

by Narges Mohammadi

While the world focuses on US abortion rights after the overturning of the Roe v Wade ruling, women in Northern Ireland are still finding it difficult to access services. Those who do visit abortion clinics face protesters emboldened by what they view as success across the Atlantic.

The placards held resolutely by men standing at the hospital’s entrance are uncompromising.

“Abortion is murder,” they state, in large red lettering. “Global Holocausts,” says another, held by a protester from a group called Against Abortion NI.

On the opposite side of the road outside Newry’s Daisy Hill Hospital a different group, also mostly male, are holding rosary beads and praying, displaying pictures of the Virgin Mary. They recite verses in unison, repetitively, without pause.

These anti-abortion demonstrations by groups from both the Catholic and Protestant communities have become a regular sight outside some of Northern Ireland’s hospitals.

“What women have told us is it’s really intimidating coming up to these gates. It’s misogyny,” says Fiona, who volunteers as a chaperone to support women. She helped set up Supporting Women Newry in response to the regular protests which began after abortion was decriminalised in 2019.

The protesters feel they are doing an important job.

“We’re informing the public,” one man, who didn’t want to give his name, says. “Doctors aren’t gods, they don’t get the right to decide who lives and who dies.” They describe how one clinic closed down after their protest, which they consider a success.

More than 3,000 abortions have been carried out in Northern Ireland since the law changed. Despite this, last year 161 women flew to England to access abortions as there have not yet been sufficient services established to serve the demand. This is a significant decrease from 2018, the year before decriminalisation, when more than 1,000 women travelled for the procedure.

The delays to increasing provision have dragged on due to disagreements between the political parties. The DUP has blocked efforts to move services forward.

To try and resolve the stalemate, the UK government has given Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis new powers to compel the health service to set up wider services, which he plans to use within weeks.

The women who do manage to access the clinics often encounter anti-abortion protest groups.

Cara, another chaperone, says the group has been contacted by a wide variety of people who visit the hospital and object to the often very graphic protests.

“People are going in for counselling after having miscarriages and still births,” she says. “If you’re going in there to access any treatment, and this is a multi-use site, it’s intimidating and harassing.”

Efforts to address activity outside abortion services differ across the UK. Concerns over welfare led to the UK’s first so-called buffer zone being set up outside an abortion clinic in the London borough of Ealing in 2018. Pro-choice campaigners had hoped these would become the norm, but only two more have been created since then.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has voted to pass a law which would ban groups from demonstrating directly outside a heath facility. But it has been referred to the Supreme Court by the attorney general of Northern Ireland, to decide whether it conflicts with the right to protest.

The UK government says it is reviewing the issue in England and Wales. Meanwhile, earlier this week, Scotland’s first minister said legislation would be passed to enforce the zones.

The protests also take place at Craigavon Hospital, which Ashleigh Topley visited regularly during her first pregnancy. At one appointment she received the news her baby had a fatal foetal abnormality. She asked for an abortion but as it was prior to the law change, it was denied.

“Those appointments, some of them were very, very, difficult. Had I had to run the gauntlet of protesters, it would have made them even worse,” she said.

Having to continue her pregnancy to 35 weeks was extremely traumatic, she said, and it was very obvious she was pregnant.

“People would ask, ‘are you excited? What are you having?’ Sometimes I would tell the truth, that she was going to die. Other times I would just lie and pretend everything was OK,” she says.

Ashleigh says if she had been allowed an abortion, she could have had more control. “Waiting and waiting and waiting, that was just hardship, unnecessary hardship on top of one of the most awful periods of our lives.” Now, she feels deeply for the women who have to pass protesters.

“The grief and the experience they’re going through is so current and so recent, it’s just so cruel.”

Last week, the US Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v Wade decision, transforming abortion rights in America and allowing individual states to ban the procedure. This has re-energized abortion campaigns on both sides of the argument in Northern Ireland, with anti-abortion groups feeling encouraged by what is happening there.

“When a woman comes in they have a decision to make… some women in two years or 10 years’ time will be thanking us,” says a man outside the clinic.

He’s asked whether they are adding to the woman’s pain. “This is compassion,” he says. “Compassion for the baby”.

Northern Ireland’s health service is set to be compelled to provide more abortion services in future. What will now be decided by British Supreme Court judges is what kind of experience women will face when they come through the hospital gates.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62009477

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EuropeSocietyWelfare and Services

Black & South Asian Women Wait 2  Months Longer Than White Peers To Land First Job

by Narges Mohammadi

It takes Black and South Asian women at least two months longer than their white colleagues to find their first job after completing education, despite having greater career confidence, according to a new report.

The research, carried out by Totaljobs and The Diversity Trust, surveyed more than 3,500 people across the UK to assess the career journeys of Black and South Asian women.

It found that upon finishing education, it takes Black women an average of 5.1 months to secure their first job, and south Asian women an average of 4.9 months.

The figure was significantly higher than that of their white counterparts, with white men securing a role within 3.4 months and white women in 2.8 months.

Tinashe Verhaeghe, a race and ethnicity consultant at The Diversity Trust, said the findings point to some of the “structural and institutional barriers that Black and South Asian women face to succeeding in their chosen career”.

“Despite this, the women we surveyed and spoke to expressed confidence in themselves and a desire for employers to examine their structural and implicit biases for them to have improved chances to succeed and experience less harm in the workplace,” Verhaeghe said.

“There is sufficient evidence of the need for change, the impetus is now on employers and colleagues to act.”

While these women are likely to find a job later, 66 per cent of Black women and 62 per cent of South Asian women expressed the belief that they could “achieve anything” in their career after completing their education.

This confidence in their careers was markedly higher than white men, of which 46 per cent said the same, and white women, of which 38 per cent said the same.

When it comes to the job application process, almost two thirds of Black women (62 per cent) and 43 per cent of South Asian women said they had been discriminated against based on their ethnicity.

Additionally, 37 per cent of Black women and a quarter of South Asian women believe they have missed out on at least one job opportunity because of their ethnicity. To counter this, some women admitted they had changed key details about themselves to avoid bias.

Almost a fifth (18 per cent) of Black and South Asian women said they have adapted their name on their CV to improve their chances of being successful at application stage. Some women have also described a need to codeswitch and change their demeanor in a bid to appear more likeable during interviews.

Of those surveyed, 75 per cent of Black and South Asian women said they tried to be more approachable and friendly in interviews to counteract negative stereotypes.

Meanwhile, 59 per cent said they had been made to feel uncomfortable, atronized or initimidated due to their ethnicity during the interview stage. However, the problems also persist once women have secured a job. More than three-quarters of Black and South Asian women (79 per cent) said they had faced discrimination in the workplace.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/black-south-asian-women-job-discrimination-career-b2109372.html

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EuropePolitics

Why can’t women in the UK afford to buy their own houses? We ask an expert …

by Narges Mohammadi

Sara Reis, of the nonprofit Women’s Budget Group, says there is nowhere in the UK where an average-earning female can afford her own place.

It is well known that the UK’s astronomic property prices have locked many people out of home ownership – especially if you’re single. Indeed, there is no region in the UK where a man or woman on median earnings could buy on their own. But a damning report has revealed there is no region where a median-earning woman can even rent alone. I asked the report’s author, Sara Reis, why.

The title of A Home of Her Own borrows from Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay where she writes that a woman “must have money and a room of her own”. Woolf is talking about writing conditions, but I wonder if women have ever had the space they need.
I don’t think this situation is necessarily new. But we know that, say, 30 years ago, wages and house prices were much closer than they are now. So housing affordability has decreased for everyone, but women still earn less. And if you have a gender pay gap, you will have a gender housing affordability gap.

It can’t help that more than 3 million women have unpaid caring responsibilities. And some have high expenses, such as single mothers.
Absolutely – this group really struggles to make ends meet. Two-thirds of homeless families with children are single parents. So there are groups of women for whom housing affordability is even worse.

Who are the others?
Well, your ability to afford a home is linked to your income. Disabled women, on average, earn less and have the added challenge of finding an adapted home. And there are race disparities. Women from black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds have lower earnings.

Which was my mum. Single parent, too, so I’ve seen how those factors intersect. It’s like a really dystopian version of Power Rangers where the Race Ranger, Gender Ranger, Class Ranger and Ill-health Ranger, put their rings together. Mind you, I was a kid in the 90s and the situation seems worse now. Why?
It’s due to the lack of social housing. Before 2010, housing benefit was linked to the median private rental; now it’s linked to 30% of local rents. Some buy-to-let mortgages make not renting to people on benefits a condition, because it’s considered high risk.

How did you calculate the report in terms of rent?
For renting to be affordable, it needs to absorb no more than a third of someone’s wages, and we found nowhere in the UK where renting is affordable for the region’s average woman. That leaves women vulnerable to domestic abuse. If you can’t afford a home of your own, you may not be able to leave a relationship that is dangerous; it’s more dire when there are children involved. Yet rents made up less than a third of men’s median earnings in all regions, except London.

So is London the worst for women?
It’s actually not the region where you will find the largest gender housing affordability gap, though it is unaffordable for everyone.

Very 2022 for equity to be achieved by being crap for everyone. Where was the biggest gap?
The south-east. It’s where there’s the widest gender earnings gap, too.

What’s the best … actually “best” doesn’t seem like the right word.
Least bad?

Yes!
The north-east. Rent here absorbs 34% of women’s salaries, so just above the affordability line, and 22% of men’s.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jun/03/why-cant-women-in-the-uk-afford-to-buy-their-own-houses-we-ask-an-expert

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