Right of Women
The Public Policy and Research organisation Rights of Women is conducting a series of surveys to try and find out more about the likely impact upon women of the proposed reforms to Legal Aid. As noted by the Legal Action Group Blog recently the impacts of the cuts will disproportionately hit already disadvantaged groups, including women.
There are three separate surveys, one for individual women, one for legal professionals and one for others working with women victims of domestic abuse. You can read the Rights of Women briefing paper on the reforms here and find a link to the surveys here (scroll down, left hand side). If you fit into one of these categories please fill in the survey – I have done mine and it took about ten mins. Particularly sought are responses from both male and female civil practitioners.
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Only women are allowed to respond or those working with women.
This kind of thinking is an anathema to those of us who wish to promote gender equality.
No. They are specifically asking for men to respond too. They have asked me specifically to ask for responses from both.
They are looking for women to respond to the “individual women” survey I imagine in relation to their direct experience.
I understand that but it is men who work with women (legal or DV).
They are confining it to women who say they are victims or who are victims than than both men and women.
We know that 40% odd of victims of DV are men, so this gender specific call to arms is abhorrent and is symptomatic of a perverse thinking that women are victims and men perpetrators.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence
Understand that, but they are a women’s rights group. men’s rights groups just as able to survey from a different perspective. And the Govt’s own impact assessments suggests it is women rather than men who will be particularly hard hit.
Women use most of the Legal Aid in Private Law and generally that is to stop or minimise the other parent from being involved in their children’s lives.
They will be impacted because they should not have these monies in the first place in Private Law (except in certain circumstances when both Parties should really have it in Public and Criminal law).
It is a righting of a huge wrong in removing these monies that prevent many times children having a relationship with both of their parents.
So men should have legal aid to apply for contact but women should not have it as resident parents? What about male resident parents and female applicants for contact?
This is the kind of thing dividing DV victims by gender leads to:
DV is a people problem not a women problem.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12126783
Some agencies “screen” male victims to authenticate their claims, unlike women who are automatically believed.
Agreed that DV is a people problem not a women problem (although on your own figures one which is disproportionately experienced by women as victims). But it is difficult to see DV without looking at the historical and sociological context, a big part of which is gendered roles within the family and society, where females were (and in many cases still are) the more vulnerable party.
The inadequate support for male victims of dv is a big issue, but is a separate issue from this survey IMO. I’m not able to comment on agencies that screen male victims – I would be surprised if they did not operate on the same ethos as support organisations for women, which do not generally seek to forensically analyse their service users’ given histories. The biggest problem for men in my experience is that many support agencies simply do not cater for male victims.
I don’t think legal aid is necessary for resident parents or applicants whether they are male or female in Private law (except where there are allegations of a certain type etc).
I understand your view but I believe that DV should not be used to advance one gender’s interests as we see continually.
DV concerns should be used to advance the interests of abused victims (male and female) together.
Separate lobbying groups based on gender is indefensible in a society that is supposed to believe in equality.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree – IMO there is a legitimate role for support or lobbying groups representing disadvantaged or minority groups, whether that be men, women or other category. For example I think it is quite legitimate for groups to deal specifically with the quite distinct issues faced by male victims of DV (stigma, being disbelieved, and lack of support in particular), although there are lots of areas of common ground where groups fighting to combat DV could and should work together more. I do agree that much of the anti DV movement has a tendency to forget (to use your phrase) that DV is a people problem and that it does affect many men too. But of course it is most often experienced by women and there will naturally be a preponderance of organisations focused on that client group.