Women and Community Action: Local and Global Perspectives 9781447341550

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedicaton
Contents
List of boxes and figures
Acknowledgements
Preface: actioning our futures from our pasts
One: Introduction: community, an undervalued women’s space
Introduction
Communities as complex entities
Conceptual framework
(Re)conceptualising communities
Mainstream models of community work
Emerging forms of community work
The book’s structure
Two: Creating and recreating communities as gendered entities
Introduction
Gendered social relations
Feminist challenges to traditional community work
Gendering key concepts in community work
Conclusion
Three: Women and social action: social change at the individual level
Introduction
Feminist approaches to women’s emotional well-being
Advocacy: a basis for individual and collective action
Feminist community-based social action on health issues: women challenge health professionals
Consciousness-raising groups
Conclusion
Four: Women and social action: social change through group activities and networks
Introduction
Changing the world for women, men and children by beginning with women
Challenging medical expertise
Characteristics of feminist groups, networks and campaigns
Collective organisation
Identifying which problems feminists address
Women organising across diverse boundaries
Organising aids, techniques and tips
Conclusion
Five: Social change through collective action: campaigns and mass mobilisations
Introduction
Feminist campaigns and social action
Childcare campaigns
#MeToo campaign against sexual harassment in the workplace
Greenham Common: women’s contributions to feminist campaigns involving political action on peace
The impact of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Movement on traditional community action
Making allies
Conclusion
Six: Feminist action in the workplace
Introduction
Waged work and domestic labour are interlinked
Women’s lot: unpaid domestic work and low-paid waged labour
Women’s unequal engagement in the workplace
Feminist workplace initiatives
Childcare campaigns connect domestic work and waged labour
Eldercare: work undertaken in the home
Recognition of caring work: organising around old age is a workplace issue
Older women’s organisations impact both the workplace and wider society
Women workers and women service users: shared interests
‘We’re all in it together’ – women against pit closures
Feminist prefigurative forms
Contemporary struggles for equal pay
Conclusion
Seven: Increasing women’s positions in parliament, governance and decision-making structures
Introduction
Feminist political action nationally in the UK
Feminists target the political realm
Feminist social action in British public relational space
Feminism and British municipal socialism
Autonomous feminist political organisations: lessons from Iceland
Feminist political action outside electoral politics
Ecofeminism and redefining economic and environmental issues
Conclusion
Eight: Sustainable community development
Introduction
Sustainability, modernity and globalisation
Poverty eradication is crucial to sustainable development processes
The focus on micro-level sustainability in community work
The Community Development Projects
Mainstream community work continues to monetarise sustainability
Sustainable income-generation projects
Microfinance schemes: micro-level sustainable income-generation projects
Empowering social capital
Facilitative factors in supporting social development
Conclusion
Nine: International policy changes and mainstreaming women’s actions in communities
Introduction
International attempts to challenge gender inequalities
UNWomen: a global initiative to improve conditions for all women
Meeting women’s welfare concerns: the general and specifics
The Millennium Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals
Country-based initiatives
Conclusion
Ten: Conclusions
Introduction
Supporting women: changing and transforming policies and practices
Organising women in the community
Feminist community action and the future
Feminist theory and practice: guiding principles
Contributions by feminist community work and social action to mainstreaming gender equality
Changing social work practice
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Back Cover

Citation preview

WOMEN AND COMMUNITY ACTION Local and global perspectives Third edition Lena Dominelli

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Policy Press North America office: University of Bristol Policy Press 1-9 Old Park Hill c/o The University of Chicago Press Bristol 1427 East 60th Street BS2 8BB Chicago, IL 60637, USA UK t: +1 773 702 7700 t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 f: +1 773-702-9756 [email protected] [email protected] www.policypress.co.uk www.press.uchicago.edu © Policy Press 2019 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested 978-1-4473-4154-3 hardback 978-1-4473-4156-7 paperback 978-1-4473-4155-0 ePdf 978-1-4473-4157-4 ePub 978-1-4473-4158-1 Mobi The right of Lena Dominelli to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Policy Press. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Policy Press. The University of Bristol and Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design by Andrew Corbett Front cover image: Getty Printed and bound in Great Britain by CMP, Poole Policy Press uses environmentally responsible print partners

To my mum and heroic women like her who struggle with the issues of everyday life to create a better world for others. Your love creates guiding stars in a vast universe of labour.

Contents List of boxes and figures ix Acknowledgements xi Preface: actioning our futures from our pasts xiii one

Introduction: community, an undervalued women’s space 1 Introduction 1 Communities as complex entities 2 Conceptual framework 4 (Re)conceptualising communities 7 Mainstream models of community work 13 Emerging forms of community work 23 The book’s structure 27

two

Creating and recreating communities as gendered entities 31 Introduction 31 Gendered social relations 33 Feminist challenges to traditional community work 38 Gendering key concepts in community work 40 Conclusion 48

three

Women and social action: social change at 49 the individual level Introduction 49 Feminist approaches to women’s emotional well-being 50 Advocacy: a basis for individual and collective action 61 Feminist community-based social action on health issues: women challenge health professionals 63 Consciousness-raising groups 73 Conclusion 75

four

Women and social action: social change through group 77 activities and networks Introduction 77 Changing the world for women, men and children 78 by beginning with women Challenging medical expertise 80 Characteristics of feminist groups, networks and campaigns 85 Collective organisation 85 Identifying which problems feminists address 87 Women organising across diverse boundaries 89 Organising aids, techniques and tips 93

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Conclusion 106 five

Social change through collective action: campaigns 107 and mass mobilisations Introduction 107 Feminist campaigns and social action 108 Childcare campaigns 113 #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment in the 116 workplace Greenham Common: women’s contributions to feminist 117 campaigns involving political action on peace The impact of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace 125 Movement on traditional community action Making allies 128 Conclusion 129

six

Feminist action in the workplace 131 Introduction 131 Waged work and domestic labour are interlinked 132 Women’s lot: unpaid domestic work and low-paid waged 132 labour Women’s unequal engagement in the workplace 135 Feminist workplace initiatives 137 Childcare campaigns connect domestic work and 139 waged labour Eldercare: work undertaken in the home 142 Recognition of caring work: organising around old age 146 is a workplace issue Older women’s organisations impact both the workplace 148 and wider society Women workers and women service users: shared interests 150 152 ‘We’re all in it together’ – women against pit closures Feminist prefigurative forms 153 Contemporary struggles for equal pay 157 Conclusion 158

seven Increasing women’s positions in parliament, governance 159 and decision-making structures Introduction 159 Feminist political action nationally in the UK 160 Feminists target the political realm 163 Feminist social action in British public relational space 164 Feminism and British municipal socialism 166

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Autonomous feminist political organisations: lessons 169 from Iceland Feminist political action outside electoral politics 172 Ecofeminism and redefining economic and 174 environmental issues Conclusion 176 eight

Sustainable community development 177 Introduction 177 Sustainability, modernity and globalisation 178 Poverty eradication is crucial to sustainable development 184 processes The focus on micro-level sustainability in community work 185 The Community Development Projects 186 Mainstream community work continues to monetarise 191 sustainability 194 Sustainable income-generation projects Microfinance schemes: micro-level sustainable 195 income-generation projects 196 Empowering social capital Facilitative factors in supporting social development 198 Conclusion 199

nine

International policy changes and mainstreaming 201 women’s actions in communities Introduction 201 202 International attempts to challenge gender inequalities UNWomen: a global initiative to improve conditions 214 for all women Meeting women’s welfare concerns: the general and 214 specifics 216 The Millennium Development Goals The Sustainable Development Goals 217 Country-based initiatives 218 Conclusion 219

221 ten Conclusions Introduction 221 Supporting women: changing and transforming policies 221 and practices Organising women in the community 222 Feminist community action and the future 225 Feminist theory and practice: guiding principles 226

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Contributions by feminist community work and 229 social action to mainstreaming gender equality Changing social work practice 229 Conclusion 231 Bibliography 233 Index 271

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List of boxes and figures Boxes 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 7.1 8.1

Organising tips: problem (re)definition Organising tips: advocating for change Organising tips: forming groups Organising tips: forming consciousness-raising (CR) groups Organising tips: support groups and alliances Organising tips: leaflets Organising tips: launching a community newspaper Organising tips: dealing with the media Organising tips: preparing a press release Organising tips: forming alliances Organising tips: supporting environmental issues Organising tips: self-empowerment

55 63 68 74 94 98 101 102 105 128 175 197

Figures 2.1 10.1

Gendered patriarchal relations of oppression Community engagement processes and practices

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37 231

Acknowledgements Women’s position in society remains contested. There have been gains since I first wrote on this topic, but there have been losses as well. Much depends on the country and its socio-political and economic contexts. However, a lot remains to be done internationally. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPFA) for women, which contained women-friendly policies for countries to follow, has not been realised as had been anticipated during the heady days in Huairou near Beijing where the NGO meetings were held in 1995 when the BDPFA was first promulgated in one of the largest gatherings of women globally. Meanwhile, China has since become a superpower with unparalleled economic growth and substantial improvements in the standards of living of all its citizens regardless of gender. At the same time, the growing popularity of Confucian cultural ideals has reinforced views of women that link them to family responsibilities, especially in its extended forms. While many Chinese women have been overseas and completed PhDs, like their male compatriots, these women now worry about whether they are too old to be married or whether any man would want them as ‘strong women’. This is occurring in a country where men considerably outnumber women. Their stories remind me of the continued fragility of feminist gains. I have obtained narratives from countless women across the world, having visited and undertaken research in all the five regions identified by the United Nations. I have been honoured by the numbers of women who willingly shared their accounts with me, letting me into their lives, much as they would a friend, although we had only just met. They made me aware of their many strengths; commitment to family and communities; and resilience in the face of countless hardships as we cried and laughed together. They made me realise the importance of including community development and women’s work in disaster situations in the third edition of this book, and for this I will be eternally grateful. I hope their heroism shines through my representations of their words and provides lessons for men, women and children seeking to improve their communities. I also thank the many women who have encouraged me in my work; they are too numerous to mention, but I thank them from my heart for their encouragement and support, given willingly and unstintingly. I also give unending thanks to specific women who have been there for me whenever I have needed them – my mother, Maria, Rita, Connie,

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Marilyn. I have lost many friends who helped form my ideas to the grim reaper. Of these, I give special recognition to Malvina Ponce de Leon, a great Chilean social worker who played an enormous role in developing social work in Latin America. She deserves the highest honours that social work can give, even posthumously. Malvina’s inspiration will always live in my heart. I also thank important men in my life – my dad, who encouraged me to see that men and women were equal from the moment I entered the world, and who I still miss despite the years since his passing; David, Nicholas, Nic, Sam, Dan, Al, Matt, Dayton, Joseph, Jacob and Marco, your love and support have been invaluable. And I wish to thank many cohorts of MSW (Master of Social Work) students who have inspired me with their questions and insights. I pay special tribute to the Durham MISWCD (Master in International Social Work and Community Development) students from 2016 to 2018 whose creativity and keenness to support people in need have been astounding. I take this opportunity to wish you all the best in building the better world you deserve and want for us all. Thanks also go to my social work colleagues, especially Janice, Josie, Jane, Sui Ting, Sarah, Roger and Simon; Susan, Nicole, Louise, Karen, Stefan; and Claire at Durham University. Your constant encouragement has seen me through testing times. Finally, I congratulate and thank Catherine Gray, now Commissioning Editor at Policy Press, for her determination and support in ensuring that the third edition actually got written. And to Jo Campling, responsible for the first edition. She would be proud of us both. Thank you everyone. I am humbled by your knowledge and encouragement.

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Preface: actioning our futures from our pasts Women and men occupy different spaces in their communities. Feminist social action has challenged the assignation of women to the private sphere of the home and their exclusion from the public arena, especially those elements involving paid employment, political representation and leadership in key global corporations and institutions. After several decades of feminist organising in all three of these domains achieving some progress, there remains a long way to go. Shortcomings include lack of equal representation in governance issues; lack of engagement in decision-making processes; and lack of political representation and leadership in large multinational corporations. Women have been involved in sustained action in their communities for centuries as they have sought to improve conditions for their children, wider family networks and themselves. Moreover, the story of gendered social relations varies from country to country, especially with regard to historical, social, political and cultural contexts. Moreover, progress has been uneven, with different countries holding pride of place in some areas – for example, parliamentary political representation is extremely high in Rwanda, yet this advance is accompanied by extensive levels of poverty, particularly among women. In the West, women continue to press for higher levels of political representation, for example the 50:50 campaign in the United Kingdom to equalise representation among men and women members of Parliament. Only a few women have broken the ‘glass ceiling’ in large corporations. Meanwhile, violence in intimate relationships bedevils social relations in all countries. Questions also arise about the international dominance of Western theoretical models of feminism, and the importance of responding to women’s concerns with linguistically appropriate, locality-specific and culturally relevant gendered understandings. Therefore, this book encompasses a critique of feminist theory including that of private patriarchy turning into public patriarchy offered by Walby (1990) which was influential in the West and utilised by feminists in the Global South including in Islamic countries. Women’s place in the world today differs from that which prevailed in the late 1980s when this book first emerged. The third edition updates some of the perennial questions facing women – governance;

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their roles in their communities, homes, workplaces, corporations; domestic work; and interpersonal relationships. It also covers concepts such as power relations and violence in intimate relationships; engages with newer issues like digital exclusion, empowerment across the life cycle, sustainable community development, environmental justice, and building community resilience following disasters.

Women’s commitment to community Communities are constantly changing entities with shifting and contested boundaries. Politicians, policymakers and practitioners like the term ‘community’ because they envisage this as a unitary fixed site where people share feelings of solidarity and belonging, and enjoy warm feelings of friendship. When a community ‘breaks down’, ruling elites see this as cause for concern. This is a partial view of communities that neglects their complex realities – who constitutes them; how they are constituted and operate; and what activities and people are included within them. Though touching on important elements of what holds people together in specific groupings, this conceptualisation of communities can be considered as out of touch with lived realities and discounted as essentialist. Different types of communities exist, but these are fluid and dynamic. Furthermore, people’s allegiances to these alter over time; many communities are transient; and individuals can belong to more than one community simultaneously. Communities have been thought of as being formed according to geographical affinities, identity traits or interests. Communities are self-defined and constituted to provide a sense of unity or belonging that leaves a warm glow of unification. Celebrated as inclusive, communities are simultaneously exclusive because the criteria for inclusion spurn those in a given locality or unit who do not meet these requirements. Additionally, barriers are erected around their borders to prevent those outside a self-defined community from entering. Consequently, communities are divided entities even if strategic decisions are taken to focus on one particular constituent element that binds diverse peoples together for a specific purpose, as occurs during the formation of a community called the nation state. Peoples’ experiences of the ‘community’ formed by the nation state as either a geographical entity or citizenship-based identity trait are diverse. Women, ethnic minorities and disabled people have complained about being excluded from being treated as equals within these, even when they are nationals (Williams, 1989; Dominelli, 1991b; Lister, 1997). A nation state can be home to people who are not nationals, but

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contribute to its socioeconomic and political well-being. Such people can feel excluded from the national community, such as EU nationals following the UK’s Brexit referendum of 23  June 2016 and those featuring in the recent scandal surrounding the Windrush Generation of Commonwealth citizens entitled to enter and live in this country as British nationals. They were wrongly refused services and subjected to deportation if unable to document their claims (Blake, 2018). Migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are also defined as outsiders in current European discourses (EUMC, 2005; Full Fact, 2016). These developments have been linked to the increased legitimacy of racist discourses in countries that had earlier promoted measures to abolish these in the public sphere. A further consideration is the exclusion of black and white women, disabled people and older people in national communities. Ironically, ‘the community’ at neighbourhood level is popularly acknowledged as women’s place and space. As the work that women undertake in the community on behalf of its members often remains invisible, women are excluded from its remit while being included within it. Community work has drawn on women’s struggles to gain voice and influence in their communities and foster social change within them. Often these have been downgraded as ‘soft’ issues focused on everyday life practices and of lesser importance than the ‘hard’ ones such as employment issues involving men. Women’s heroic efforts to reshape the world in more humane directions by working through the local level inspire both practitioners and educators, and challenge those of us who endeavour to record their stories to do so in ways that accurately portray their voices, concerns and achievements.

Challenging women’s exclusion Women had been excluded from traditional academic and theoretical discourses until second wave feminists challenged the status quo (Belenky et al, 1997). Initial responses included women as one variable. Later, feminists (re)theorised women’s knowledge as different from men’s. Gilligan (1982) argued that women based their judgements according to relational norms, while men favoured procedural ones. Men’s approaches were normalised and gave rise to patriarchal relationships (Jagger and Rosenberg, 1984) that privilege white middle-class men (Sultana, 2010–11) while excluding subjugated women and men. Subjugated manhood causes divisions within the community of men along various social divisions including culture, ethnicity, age, ability and sexual orientation.

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Unequal power relations typify patriarchal understandings of the world. In these, power is a zero-sum game whereby if one person or group has power, the others have none (Parsons, 1963). These create power dynamics that configure relations of domination and subordination whereby men dominate women. Feminists like French (1985) have reconceptualised power relations as fluid, dynamic and negotiated (Dominelli, 2002b). Other feminists have focused on the relationship between the public and private spheres that shape patriarchal cultural relations. Men dominate public relational space that features strongly in workplace, representational and governance structures, while women have been relegated to private domestic space in the home (Armstrong and Squires, 2002) where they reproduce daily life. Walby (1990) thought that relationships within the home composed private patriarchy while state policies, particularly those defining welfare state benefits and services, configured public patriarchy which then (re)shaped private patriarchy. Walby also contends that the welfare state’s public patriarchy became private patriarchy. Gilder (1981) had articulated similar views when complaining that the welfare state had ‘cuckolded’ men. Recently, Afzali (2016) has articulated a more sophisticated understanding of Walby’s paradigm by showing that in a Muslim country like Afghanistan public patriarchy is virtually non-existent while private patriarchal relations dominate both public and private spheres. Crenshaw (2012) introduced the concept of intersectionality to explain the multidimensional, interactive, though fractured nature of women’s lives as they faced exclusion according to diverse identity attributes. She maintained that women experienced different forms of oppression simultaneously in what she termed ‘intersectionality’. Black women’s positionality gave them common cause with black men (Collins, 1991, 2000). Shiva (2003) talked about ecofeminism as standing against multinational corporations that appropriated seeds from smallholding farmers in India. Mohanty (2003) suggested that the formation of harmonious alliances between black and white women that recognised all their contributions would produce a better world for all.

Celebrating women’s achievements This book celebrates women’s involvement in community action. It acknowledges the diversity of women who participate in making communities better places for people to live in and enjoy their

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physical environments. It also values the vast variety of activities and techniques that women use in realising their ambitions for sustainable, resilient communities. The book is structured around the idea that some elements of community work – its values, philosophy, skills and techniques – apply to all community work models, while others are gender-specific and need to be articulated separately for the recognition, appreciation and fêting of women’s contributions to community work as everyday life practices and forms of professional practice in making communities more humane places for people. This book advocates for both a specific model of community work – community action that is adapted well for women’s collective struggles; and a model that both men and women can use to promote egalitarian social relations. Gender is fractured along and interacts with a number of social divisions, in what has been termed intersectionality (Crenshaw, 2012) to incorporate the numerous dimensions of identity and social relations that structure women’s lives, such as age, disability, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. I refer to ‘women’ in the community, but this should not be taken as implying either a homogeneous or essentialist view of women, or of the sameness of their experiences of a particular community. Differences based on class, ‘race’, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation and mental ill health configure women’s experiences of gendered relations in different ways, each of which must be faced. These have to be specifically contextualised and addressed when organising any group of women. Furthermore, the dynamics that produce commonalities in women’s experiences of oppression should not be lost. Recognising similarities that can bridge differences among diverse women is critical in forming alliances between them provided that their disparate starting points are recognised. Celebrating diversity while working for unity can form the basis for collective action among women. This forms a diversity–unity nexus that may be instituted as a temporary alliance created through interaction and dialogue that bridges differences and diversities around agreed common goals. Some elements of community work, especially techniques and skills and some action goals, can apply to different groups of women, and men and women. In revising this book for the third edition, I retain those aspects of the first and second editions that have currency, update other elements, and make new additions. Its overall structure remains broadly similar. I consider the difficulties surrounding the (re)definition of communities, the processes of engaging people in community action and the bases for their coming together in collective action to do something about their

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living conditions. In the course of doing this, I focus on recent debates about the role and purpose of community work in contemporary British society, updating material from previous editions, highlighting themes that I elaborate in the remainder of the book and conclude that community workers have much to do in establishing inclusivity by using notions of citizenship, solidarity, social justice, including environmental justice and human rights, and exploring women’s differentiated experiences of these concepts. Ultimately, by improving the condition of women in society, community action with women will enhance the well-being of everyone else living within particular communities.

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ONE

Introduction: community, an undervalued women’s space Introduction Women have been involved in sustained action in their communities for centuries as they have sought to improve conditions for their children, wider family networks and communities and acquire gender equality. Women and men continue to occupy different spaces in their communities: women in the home in domestic relational space and men in the public sphere or public relational space (Mitchell, 2009). Domestic relational space may be an unsafe space for women because violence in intimate relationships bedevils social relations in all countries. UNWomen claims that, globally, one woman in three experiences violence from intimate partners, a ratio that rises to 70% in some countries. Moreover, 700 million women alive today were married when under the age of 18 (UNDESA, 2015). Feminist social action has challenged the assignation of women to an often unsafe private sphere and exclusion from the public arena, especially those elements involving paid employment, political representation and leadership in key global corporations and public institutions. Some progress has been made after centuries of feminist organising in all three of these domains. Gains have been uneven, with different countries holding pride of place in various arenas. For example, Rwanda scores high in parliamentary political representation but this is coupled with widespread levels of poverty. Women constitute 70% of poor people globally without this being reflected in political institutions. In the West, women continue to press for higher levels of political representation, and only a few have broken the corporate ‘glass ceiling’. Much remains to be accomplished everywhere. Gender is fractured along and interacts with various social divisions, through intersectionality. Crenshaw (2012) devised this term to incorporate the numerous dimensions of identity and social relations that structure women’s lives, including age, disability, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. I refer to ‘women’ in the community, but this does not imply either a homogeneous or essentialist view of women, or sameness of experiences. Differences 1

Women and community action

based on class, ‘race’, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation and mental ill health configure women’s experiences of gendered relations in different ways, each of which must be acknowledged. These have to be specifically contextualised and addressed when engaging any group of women in community action. Commonalities in women’s experiences of oppression and the dynamics whereby this occurs should not be ignored. Recognition of similarities that can bridge differences among diverse women is central to forming alliances between them provided that their disparate starting points are acknowledged. Celebrating diversity while working for unity can foster collaborative action among women. This forms a diversity– unity nexus that may be instituted as a temporary alliance created through interaction and dialogue to bridge differences and diversities around common objectives. Some elements of community work, especially techniques and skills and action goals, are relevant to men and women and different groups of women. Twenty-first century global realities highlight extensive inequality in key areas: intimate relationships; governance structures; engagement in decision-making processes from the household to international organisations; political representation; and leadership in large multinational corporations. The story of gendered social relations varies from country to country, to take account of historical, political, economic, social and cultural contexts. Questions arise about the global dominance of Western theoretical models of feminism, highlighting the importance of responding to women’s concerns with linguistically appropriate, locality-specific and culturally relevant gendered understandings. This chapter contains a critique of the universalisation of feminist theory including that of private patriarchy becoming public patriarchy (Walby, 1990). Other concepts I consider cover power relations and violence in intimate relationships. I end by describing the structure of the book.

Communities as complex entities Communities are constantly changing entities with shifting and contested boundaries. Politicians, policymakers and practitioners adhere to ‘community’ because they envisage a unitary, homogeneous, timeless site where people share feelings of solidarity, belonging and warm feelings of friendship. The state has a vested interest in communities, often structuring specific communities through social policies that influence inhabitants’ expectations of life. When a community ‘breaks down’, ruling elites become anxious because their partial view of

2

Introduction

communities neglects their complex realities – who constitutes them; how they are constituted and operate; and the activities and conflicts they encompass. Though touching on important elements of what holds people together in specific groupings, politicians’ unitary conceptualisation of communities is out of touch with lived realities and can be discounted as essentialist. Different types of communities exist. These are fluid and dynamic. People’s allegiances to these alter over time; many communities are transient; and individuals can belong to more than one simultaneously. Communities have been formed according to geographical affinities, identity traits and interests. Communities are self-defined and constituted to provide a sense of unity or belonging that leaves a warm glow of satisfaction grounded in their unity. Celebrated as inclusive, communities are simultaneously exclusive of individuals and groups who do not meet specific criteria. Additionally, barriers are erected around their borders to prevent those outside a self-defined community from entering. Consequently, communities are divided entities even when strategic decisions focus on one particular constituent element that binds diverse peoples together for a specific purpose, as occurs during the formation of the community called the nation state. People experience the nation state in diverse ways, whether as a geographical entity or citizenship-based identity trait. Women, ethnic minorities and disabled people have complained about being excluded from being treated as equals within the state, despite being nationals (Williams, 1989; Dominelli, 1991a; Lister, 1997). A nation state can also be home to people who are not nationals, but contribute to its political, economic and social well-being. Such people can feel excluded from the national community, as has been claimed by European Union (EU) nationals following the UK’s Brexit Referendum of 23 June 2016 (Isaac, 2016). Migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Europe are also defined as outsiders in current European nation-state discourses around their presence (EUMC, 2005; Goodman, 2009). Black and white middle-class women, disabled people and older people in national communities have been depicted as dependent, incapable burdens. Yet ‘the community’ at neighbourhood level is popularly acknowledged as women’s place and space. As the work that women undertake in the community on behalf of its members often remains invisible, women are excluded from its remit while being presumed to exist within it. Community work has drawn on women’s struggles to gain voice and influence in their communities and foster social change within them, despite their actions having been downgraded as ‘soft’ issues focused on everyday life practices

3

Women and community action

and of lesser importance than the ‘hard’ ones such as employment considerations involving men. Women’s heroic efforts to reshape the world in more humane directions by working through the local level inspire both practitioners and educators, and challenge those of us who endeavour to record their stories to portray accurately their voices, concerns and achievements.

Conceptual framework Women had been excluded from traditional academic and theoretical discourses until second-wave feminists challenged the status quo through feminist scholarship and social activism. These unpacked the taken-for-granted assumptions that normalised and privileged men’s status, positions and knowledges, while downgrading women’s (Belenky et al, 1997). The publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963) fired a powerful salvo that opened the Pandora’s box of ‘the problem that had no name’ in white middle-class America. The book explicated a white middle-class woman’s story of being a bored housewife – a situation unknown to black and white workingclass women who had double shifts of work, paid jobs and unpaid domestic labour. For them, work in the home was joined by that in paid employment, often for low pay. Black women also argued that white feminists were responsible for silencing black women’s voices and failing to build solidarity across wide diversities (Moraga and Anzaldua, 1981). Different voices covered the exclusion of Muslim women, for example, Women and Community in Oman (Eickelman, 1984), which provides a case study of women’s position in a country changing through oil-fuelled economic growth controlled by men. Others addressed women’s health issues (for example, Orr, 1987). These texts ignore subaltern women as subjects. Mayo (1977, 1982) and Dominelli (1990) were among the first to contribute a gendered perspective to debates on women and community activism. Later, Ledwith and Asgill (2000) explored gender and race sensitivity within UK community work. Women’s environmental concerns and involvement in disasters were covered in Enarson and Chakrabarti’s (2009) consideration of disaster management. Other community work writings describe ungendered activist relations in communities (for example, Perkins, 1996; Tarrow, 1998; Henderson and Thomas, 2002; Powell and Geoghegan, 2004; McKnight and Block, 2010). Butcher and colleagues (2007) consider critical approaches to community work, without introducing

4

Introduction

international examples or considering green/environmental activities in which women play crucial roles. The third edition of Women and Community Action celebrates women, centres their achievements and includes holistic approaches to sustainable community development with examples of practice from diverse countries including the UK. It examines international policies concerning women and gender mainstreaming from a critical theory perspective. It retains concrete advice for engaging women in actions that mobilise communities at all levels. Initial responses in second-wave feminist critiques added women as a variable, while ignoring unequal power structures and social relations (see Eichler, 1983). Later feminists re-theorised women’s knowledge to demonstrate that their standpoints were different from men’s, leading to different insights and understandings. Gilligan (1982) showed how women based their judgements on relational norms, while men utilised juridical or procedural ones. The normalisation of men’s views of the world is deeply embedded in cultures that give rise to patriarchal relationships. Patriarchy is the social system that privileges the male gender at the expense of women through sexist practices (Jagger and Rosenberg, 1984). Dominelli (2002b) argues that patriarchy operates at the personal level through individual biases and prejudices against women; the institutional level through policies and bureaucratic procedures that valorise men’s contributions; and culturally in socially embedded everyday norms and assumptions that devalue women’s work. Operating within the men–women binary, these three levels are interactive and dynamic. Patriarchal relations are not static despite being deemed natural and immutable by the majority population, regardless of gender. This seeming immutability assures the constant (re)production of patriarchal relationships in both public and private relational spaces. Unequal power relations are central to patriarchal understandings of the world. These configure power as men having power over women in zero-sum relationships producing one winner who holds power over others (Parsons, 1963). Men dominate women, engaging them in reproduction work through daily routines and activities, especially domestic housework and caring for others (Dominelli, 2002a). Feminists like French (1985) have widened understandings of power to include the power to do something and change matters through collective action, and power of women who pursue their interests by forming women’s groups. Other feminists have examined the relationship between the public and private spheres that shaped cultural relations within patriarchy. Public relational spaces featured activities and representational and

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Women and community action

governance structures dominated by men. Women, relegated to domestic relational space, reproduced everyday life and caring practices (Murdoch, 2006). Walby (1990) discussed how private patriarchy within the home was reconfigured by public patriarchy which provided women with a modicum of financial independence. Crenshaw (2012) introduced the concept of intersectionality in 1991 to explain the multidimensional, interactive, though fractured nature of women’s lives as their oppression incorporated diverse attributes including age, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation. Crenshaw argued that women experienced oppression on diverse social divisions, sought to avoid hierarchies of oppression, and theorised women’s lived realities as if occurring in intersecting universes, not parallel ones (Dominelli, 2002b). Women in the Global South adapted concepts of patriarchy, power relations, public and private patriarchy and intersectionality when defining their own experiences of oppression and devising their own concepts for gendered relations. Boserup (1970) exposed unequal relationships between women living in the Global South and the Global North and contributed to the creation of WEDO (Women’s Environment and Development Organisation) to promote human rights, gender equality and environmental integrity. This involved black women – or women of colour as they called themselves – critiquing Western feminists for universalising the experiences of white middleclass life across national boundaries and cultures, and replacing these with their own theories of reality. Black women often called themselves womanists because they associated feminism with antagonistic relationships between men and women (Walker, 1983). Womanists argued that black men and women shared racial oppression, which gave black women more struggles in common with black men than white women who oppressed them on ethnic and class lines (Lorde, 1984). Black women’s positionality, according to Collins (1990, 2000), enabled them to find common cause with black men, work with black women to criticise black men using a black perspective, and develop alliances with white women who understood and supported their struggles for liberation. Ledwith and Asgill (2000) and Ledwith (2001, 2005) wrote movingly about black and white women working in equal relationships. Shiva (2003) talked about ecofeminism as she resisted multinational corporations that appropriated seeds from smallholding farmers in India and converted them for genetically modified agricultural production. Mohanty (2003) urged the formation of harmonious alliances between black and white women to create a better world for all peoples.

6

Introduction

Black women have featured in public life throughout history in both the Global North and Global South. Sojourner Truth (1851) spoke and wrote movingly about suffrage for both black and white women in the USA when women struggled for the right to vote. Women in India, Sri Lanka and Israel had Indira Gandhi, Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Golda Meir as prime minister of their respective country long before Margaret Thatcher emerged in the UK. Having women in charge of a country does not guarantee equality for women. These women prime ministers did not identify with feminism, nor were they noted for advancing women’s causes during their periods in power. Their role as women leaders of their countries did little to enthuse other women to follow suit. All four were notable for their right-wing and hawkish ideologies rather than the care and compassion assigned to women. All four led their country to war – internally or externally or both. And women’s positions in their communities became objects of their interventions. Gandhi sought to control women’s fertility; Meir ignored the plight of Palestinian women, including those living in Israel; Bandaranaike ignored Sri Lankan women’s exclusion from governance structures; Thatcher undermined women’s rights at work. Even Theresa May, unexpectedly crowned British prime minister in 2016 following the resignation of David Cameron after he had lost the referendum over the UK remaining in the European Union, has not established a reputation for defending women’s rights.

(Re)conceptualising communities The many, diverse and contested definitions of community, the dynamics that create, destroy and rebuild communities, tend to politicise the concept and legitimate some discourses and not others. Nonetheless, several models of community have dominated the social landscape: community care, community organisation, community development and community action. Each model contains its own racialised and gendered assumptions, and flows for change or stability to achieve its specific ends. Community action models are deemed more transformative than others. Bell and Newby (1971) highlight 98 definitions for ‘community’ aggregated according to geography or location, identity and interests. Despite this variety, popular discourses define community ‘as the people living in one locality; a group of people having cultural, religious, ethnic or other characteristics in common; similarity or agreement’ (Collins Dictionary, 1979: 306), giving community a unitary and unchanging heritage. Töennies (1957), writing about

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Women and community action

rural communities, articulates a homogeneous view of community. He divides it into Gemeinschaft as a self-contained entity united by kinship and a sense of belonging that stands in counter-distinction to Gesellschaft, which involves a looser association of individuals. Töennies (1957) fails to explain how change occurs to initiate the rise, reformulation or demise of specific communities. He weaves a totalising Gemeinschaft discourse by ignoring fragmentation and fracturing within a community and treating it as an undifferentiated entity, regardless of the diverse divisions and social groups it encompasses. This approach idealises Gemeinschaft over Gesellschaft and visualises community as an exclusionary entity composed of insiders and outsiders. This is exemplified by a national community deemed as unitary, despite the diversity found within territorial boundaries depicting more differences between peoples than ‘common’ bonds. Unitary views persist in communitarian writings (for example, Etzioni, 1993). Etzioni’s vision shaped New Labour rhetoric (Blair, 2002), Putnam’s (1993, 2000) social capital theories, and Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ (Woodhouse, 2015). These notions decry the loss of traditional associational bonds in communities while devaluing new forms and neglecting concepts of community as an elusive entity that can mask differences and hostility among its constituents. These perspectives ignore gendered relations, as did community work discussions despite women’s participation in community activities alongside men until Mayo (1977) raised the issue. Community is the site where women live, work and ensure the survival of the species by defending families’ rights to enjoy decent standards of living, and acquire facilities enhancing their lives, dignity and respect (Wilson, 1977a, 1977b). Women mediate between local communities and the nation state. Wilson (1977b) called community a ‘portmanteau’ word stuffed with diverse meanings that lacked clarity, a point echoed by Abercrombie and colleagues (1994). Abercrombie and colleagues (1994: 75) also destabilised unitary and clear-cut conceptualisations of community by asserting that it is an ‘elusive’ term ‘without clear meaning’. Politicians use these features to offload state responsibility for the care of children and older people onto ‘communities’, namely women (Finch and Groves, 1983; Dominelli, 2013). Thus, community becomes a site of exploitation, especially of women’s caring capacities. This occurs in countries where public provisions have been reduced in favour of ‘community care’ without the necessary resources accompanying such moves (Orme, 2000; Dominelli, 2013) and where ‘family values’ are expected to meet welfare needs (Zheng et al, 2005).

8

Introduction

I have argued that community affiliations constituted by geography, identity and interests are multidimensional, interactive and fluid (Dominelli, 1999, 2002a, 2002b, 2004b) because individuals and groups belong to more than one community simultaneously despite emphasising one over others in specific contexts. These can be reformulated through social interactions of continuity and discontinuity, highlighting a community’s contested and ambiguous nature. Locational communities Traditional definitions of community are fixed on geographic localities associated with neighbourhoods where community workers regularly practise (Fellin, 2001). These form locational communities that are rooted in specific geographic terrains. Virtual communities in cyberspace have augmented physical entities by positing locationality as fluid and ephemeral. Physical locationality remains popular in defining communities because it has simplicity and easily identifiable borders. Its inhabitants share other characteristics including culture, religion and language to bind them further. The size of a geographic community can be very small, composed of a few streets or a neighbourhood; large or national if comprising the nation state; or global if encompassing the entire planet. People accepted within locational borders become part of a ‘community’, that is, they ‘belong’; those who are not, become excluded. Locational formulations make community inherently exclusionary except when a definition encompasses the global. Most definitions of community are limited by national borders which are increasingly used to define rights including universal human rights and access to benefits. Geographically based community discourses become totalising by constructing peoples within them as the same and reinforcing such views. National configurations of community ignore, deny or suppress differences, including those linked to gender, ethnic, cultural or linguistic attributes to create a unity that allows the nation state to be formed and persist. Unitary national practices are currently being challenged through demands for decentralisation and autonomy, for example people of Scottish, Welsh and Irish origins within the UK, Basque and Catalonian peoples in Spain, and First Nations and Québécois peoples in Canada. Gendered relations within national discourses normalise men as the dominant gender and ignore the specificities of women’s position and differences among them. The man-woman binary, a social construct,

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Women and community action

essentialises men and women by casting each gender category as homogeneous and oppositional for strategic purposes, such as nation building. Harding (1990) terms this ‘strategic essentialism’. This binary configures women’s bodies as gendered through their socialising, nurturing and caring capacities. Crucial to communal well-being, these activities are performed within private relational space and not valued like tasks men perform in public relational space. Strategically essentialised nationalist discourses portray women in subordinate positions while playing specific roles as ‘mothers of the nation’ (YuvalDavis, 1997), safeguarding its culture and traditions, passing these on to subsequent generations by socialising children at home and waged work. Women, excluded from national communities, and formulated as having the same characteristics and entitlements to services, power and resources as men, are prevented from exercising these by different working careers, expectations about their social roles, social policies and views backing patriarchal worldviews. Such policies are exemplified by the ‘man about the house rule’ in the USA and the ‘cohabitation rule’ in the UK, where women living with men were denied access to income support in their own right before 1986. Despite locational communities being segregated by class, socialists including John Ruskin, William Morris and Guild Socialists used class-based notions of community to forge unity across geographical, political, sociological and economic terrains by idealising ‘the workingclass community’. Depicting ‘community’ as a local space small enough for people to interact with each other, these signify definitions of community that render insignificant racialised or gendered relations and other social divisions like disability, mental ill health, sexual orientation and age that stratify communities and segregate members. Treated as homogeneous, class-based communities, these nostalgically describe close networks of support that people in pre-industrial times enjoyed by closely attuning their lives to the rhythms of nature (Williams, 1961). This conceptualisation allows adherents to lament its loss, as do Wilmot and Young (1957) in describing working-class communities that lost their kinship base through urban planning in London, and Etzioni (1993) in the USA. Blagg and Derricourt (1982) identify workplaces as sites of workingclass struggles. These emphasise the importance of men’s community work in employment and production over ‘reproductive’ matters deemed the prerogative of women (Cowley et al, 1977). These have been termed ‘hard’ issues within the remit of men and ‘soft’ ones addressed by women. Focusing on geographical locations, class-based spatial arrangements and kinship ties neglect the subordinate position

10

Introduction

of men inscribed with subjugated masculinities within them, for example disabled men (Shakespeare, 1999). Identity-based communities Communities formed through identity traits involve interpersonal interactions that revolve around who people are, how they identify themselves and how others define them. Identity-based communities use ‘othering’ processes involving gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion or other attributes to differentiate between people and create an ‘in’ group that belongs and an ‘out’ group that does not. Identity-based communities risk being cast as fixed by essentialising identity as natural or immutable. Gendered identities become totalising and unchanging through a man–woman dyad that configures men as superior. Some aspects of gender, like becoming pregnant and giving birth, are deemed as legitimately belonging to one gender. Other traits are usurped for one gender to create relations of domination and subordination, such as reserving assertiveness for men (Belotti, 1975). Gender is subjugated within other social divisions when endorsing the interests of broader communities, for example dichotomous gendered constructions of sexuality favouring heterosexual relationships between men and women. These have been challenged by queer, homosexual, bisexual and transsexual persons, a feature articulated in and reflected through various theories such as ‘queer’ theory (Butler, 2000; MacGillivray, 2000). Women’s subjugated identity within the men–women dyad has upheld men’s interests within ethnic or national groupings where the identity of the nation has been carved upon women’s bodies (Yuval-Davis, 1997; Shakib and Dunbar, 2002). These turn differences between men and women into timeless features of the broader community that expects women to suppress their personal interests. Ethnicity is prioritised over other identity attributes in such communities to enable women to represent the nation symbolically. This idealises women’s domestic strengths and affirms differences between women and men. Women are implicated in reproducing and upholding these constructions of their bodies. Women’s consent engages them in self-directed ‘technologies of governance’ (Foucault, 1980) that are predicated on accepting that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It also underplays women’s interests as women in order to affirm an identity that transcends community divisions. Consequently, women become members of their national or ethnic community while inhabiting the community of women, which is

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Women and community action

accorded lesser significance in defence of the nation. Sanctions are imposed on women who challenge racialised configurations of their identity, as occurred to women who did not wear the burkha under the Taliban in Afghanistan (Shakib and Dunbar, 2002; Afzali, 2016). Racialised representations can liberate and/or oppress women, according to specific contexts, purposes and mechanisms used to implicate women. Some of these link an entire worldview to ethnicity, and emphasise dichotomised social relations between the ‘majority’ ethnicity and a ‘minority’ one to safeguard its survival, for example reaffirming the uniqueness of First Nations cultures in Canada over the dominant Anglo-Saxon one (Fournier and Crey, 1998) or stressing rituals or religious observance to maintain the homogeneity of a particular culture. Depicting national locationality, these characteristics encompass identity and interest communities and blur the boundaries between the three approaches to community. Identity communities cross borders, especially diasporic ones (Brah, 1996). Conceptualising communities as unitary diasporas have been crucial in ensuring survival, such as for Jewish communities or people with African origins (Asante, 1987; John-Baptiste, 2001). Afrocentric theories (Asante, 1987) exemplify how African Americans have reclaimed their African cultural heritage to affirm their equal status and position within the broader national community currently evident in the United States. Transmitting cultural traditions and values across generations has been central to a strategy of maintaining a community’s continuity across time and space. Exchanges with others provide the context that produces discontinuities within an original culture while enacting continuities (Dominelli, 2000). Adapting to different geographic terrains and contexts introduces change in the culture, language and traditions of diasporic communities through negotiated or armed encounters with those already occupying these territories. Internet and email now transcend national boundaries and maintain ties among members of dispersed or diasporic communities. Embedded in homogeneous castings of ‘community’, this illustrates that change occurs in a group’s culture and values as members respond to exchanges with others. Interest-based communities People create interest-oriented communities according to shared pursuits that are often temporal. These include sports or hobbyrelated activities, campaigning networks and social action groups addressing specific issues. People’s interests alter as they undergo

12

Introduction

different experiences or become aware of other possibilities and so change their allegiances. Entry to and exit from various interest communities can be enacted at the individual’s or group’s desire. The inherent transience of interest communities suggests that these are held together by fewer bonds than identity-based ones. The departure of one individual or group is unlikely to have a devastating impact on an interest community’s organisational structures. An individual can hold more than one interest, join several interest communities simultaneously and participate in these while being a member of both locational and identity communities.

Mainstream models of community work Community work as collective action undertaken by groups sharing common objectives formed according to geography, identity or interests has a long history. Postulated as beginning when human beings first collaborated to maximise their capacity in achieving certain goals, its development has been varied. Today, it is recognised globally as a professional activity. Community work has been considered one of the three arms of social work alongside casework and group work (Younghusband, 1978), a position pertaining in England and Wales until the mid-1980s. Its radical potential has undermined its popularity as a state-funded activity in the West, while its capacity to mobilise poor communities has been promoted in industrialising countries where its link to social work has been removed (Kaseke, 1994). Community work became formally acknowledged in the heyday of imperialism. As community development, it drew non-industrialised parts of the world into capitalist industrial production (Mayo, 1977; Marsden and Oakley, 1982) and laid foundations for capitalist economic and political infrastructures that integrated colonial territories into a world capitalist system. These introduced Western industrial forms of production, transportation, communication, education, cultures, religions and institutions, including social services, the rule of law, judiciary systems and state administration to pre-capitalist social formations (Kwo, 1984; Dominelli, 1986a; Sewpaul and Hölscher, 2004). Community development initiatives incorporated traditional ruling classes into colonial regimes by according them privileged status in civil service and state bureaucracies in return for support of colonial policies (Halpern, 1963; Dominelli, 1974). By collecting taxes and upholding foreign laws, local elites utilised these structures to legitimate private ownership of property and facilitate the sale or expropriation of

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Women and community action

common lands. Thus, indigenous elites participated in the exploitation of indigenous peoples by their colonial masters. After the Second World War, independence movements secured the liberation of former colonies. Local elites then used community development to resist the spread of communism (Mayo, 1975; Marsden and Oakley, 1982) and control troublesome populations. The UK and USA utilised models developed and lessons learnt in ex-colonies in the imperial heartlands to control poor workingclass communities. In Britain, the Victorian techniques of population control, incorporation of local leaders and reliance on local resources through ‘self-help’ schemes were revised through philanthropic initiatives such as the ‘Model Dwellings’ to relieve ‘working-class housing problems’. These practices were subsequently refined to control social disorder and working-class militancy during ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland (Griffiths, 1974b; Lovett and Percival, 1982). These trends resonate today, while the ongoing struggles over the heart and soul of the profession indicate its contested and unresolved nature. In the UK, austerity measures have been responsible for reducing public funding for civil society and community-based organisations. Describing models of community work is problematic because these are arbitrary constructs that depend on which features theorists emphasise. There are overlaps between different models, especially in the techniques and skills associated with each. Rothman (1970) has identified the following models as central to mainstream community work: • • • •

community care community organisation community development community action (which I subdivided on an identity basis into class-based community action, feminist community action and community action from a black perspective – Dominelli, 1990).

Community care Community care draws on social networks and voluntary activities offering direct caring services to residents who are sick, disabled or aged. It is a locational model with a touch of identity trait because women undertake the bulk of its caring work (Finch, 1982; Finch and Groves, 1983; Knijn and Ungerson, 1997), for example Good Neighbourhood Schemes, Neighbourhood Watch, Meals on Wheels and tenants’ associations that simply pass on requests for improving

14

Introduction

dwellings. Community workers in these schemes are often unpaid volunteers. Volunteers in this care model are motivated by altruism and a desire to be useful during their spare time. They consider themselves ‘apolitical’ and reflect this stance in the services provided. They accept the basic soundness of the existing social system while recognising that it produces minor problems that voluntary work can remedy. This goal underpins their involvement in community care. By relying on unpaid volunteers, although nominal payments are occasionally given (Ungerson, 1990), community care provides opportunities for middleclass women not engaged in waged work and retired people to use ‘free’ time to meet other people’s needs. Not paying expenses incurred doing voluntary work assumes that volunteers have the wherewithal to cover these and can inhibit low-income people from volunteering. Recruiting unpaid volunteers can enforce paternalism towards others and impose racist, sexist and classist views of the world upon those being cared for. White and black working-class women who cannot afford to buy the labour of other women or are refused support from personal social services assume informal community care at home alongside their waged work and domestic responsibilities and sacrifice paid work to care for frail older parents and disabled adult children. Promoted by numerous investigations like the Barclay (1982), Griffiths (1988) and Wagner (1988) Reports, formal policies of community care co-opted women’s unpaid work under the National Health Service and Community Care Act, 1990. From that time, community care became the British government’s major policy for delivering services to older people (Orme, 2000). Despite state rhetoric on empowering consumers, increasing ‘choice’ and personcentred care, users and volunteers were excluded from (re)defining the nature of services delivered or determining the type and amount of resources available (Dominelli, 2004a). It formalised and intensified one of the model’s key problems – using unpaid women’s labour to cover gaps in statutory provisions caused by the state’s reduced role as a service provider; calling for increased voluntary participation in helping others; demanding more of the family – that is, women – in caring for its own; and commissioning services from voluntary agencies and commercial providers that pay women workers low wages (CPS, 2002; Dominelli, 2013). Initially articulated by the progressive Left, deinstitutionalisation (Scull, 1977) enabled governments strapped for cash to close down institutional provisions and place people in the community to receive the caring attention that institutions had failed to provide (Baldwin,

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Women and community action

1985). Hailed as a positive alternative, community care replaced institutionalised residential care blamed for dehumanising residents; enforcing powerlessness; and fostering neglect in places where people expected high-quality care. Formalised as a state service under various Community Care Acts, it has become critical in leading the demise of the welfare state as the provider of services. Now the state commissions or purchases services from providers located primarily in the private sector where women are poorly paid. The welfare state picks up the pieces when problems occur, such as when contracted provisions are closed because profits have not materialised (Davies, 2018). The architects of community care, including Griffiths (1988), failed to address sexism and racism, but cut costs and intensified managerial control over practitioners. Community care, legalised under the 1990 Community Act, isolates both the receiver and deliverer of care despite more efficient service delivery. Care is given individually, enabling people to remain at home longer; some receive considerable support even if they do not pay user fees. For those unable to cook, hot meals are served by Meals on Wheels. These gains, achieved at the expense of consumers, encourage industrial methods that mass produce food of limited nutritional value (Weinstock, 2004) and restrict multicultural and vegetarian options. Viewed holistically, managerialised community care is inadequate and has shifted the caring terrain away from symbolising institutional solidarity to profit making. Corporate managerial control in hierarchical institutions The restructuring of the welfare state returned caring responsibilities to ‘the family’, in other words, women (Glazer, 1988). Corporate management practices have significantly reshaped labour processes, social services (Cockburn, 1977a, 1977b) and training to reduce expenditure. The public sector has adopted business techniques to use labour effectively and shift resources and the balance of power in workplace relations towards management, thereby increasing managerial control over day-to-day decision making in areas once held by autonomous professionals. The erosion of professional power has not empowered service users but strengthened bureaucratic management, fragmented professional labour processes, transformed the nature of decision making and decimated relational social work (Folgheraiter, 2003). Decisions about resource allocation became technical questions rooted in budgets instead of political discussions about services and resources, especially their allocation in particular ways. Thus, workers consider how to

16

Introduction

distribute available resources to specific users within given constraints. Its impact intensified women’s labour within the home and workplace. Decision-making structures, controlled by white middle-class men (Howe, 1986; Coyle, 1989; Grimwood and Popplestone, 1993), whittled away frontline practitioners’ space for manoeuvre (Dominelli, 1997c, 2002a) and perpetuated ‘the patriarchal, conservative nature of the organisation’ (Dominelli, 2004a: 160). Many men managers have not worked with service users and lack appreciation of the complex realities workers handle daily. Losing autonomy in planning responses has made women workers party to bureaucratic and remote forms of service delivery that increasingly alienate users and workers (Dominelli, 2004a). Community care has demonstrated the significance of organising community services effectively to maximise service coverage within limited resources. British governments since the 1960s have used it extensively to realise managerial propensities, curtail expenditure, grow voluntary sector providers and divert the radical potential of community development models. Community organisation Community organisation models promote community interests by improving coordination between welfare agencies. These aim to avoid wasting resources by ending the duplication of efforts, facilitating interagency pooling of resources and managing services more effectively. Community organisation became popularised as a corporate approach to welfare. It formed a useful tool for managers making the best use of resources that required rationing. Community groups expected to be strengthened in securing their objectives through such initiatives. The community worker, a paid ‘expert’, was often a male professional with organisational knowledge who provided direct advice to people being helped. Residents perceived professional advice as paternalistic and reinforcing the status quo. Community organisation enables those in power to retain their privileges and control over resources. Working-class anger is channelled through approved structures and procedures (Dearlove, 1974). Both Conservative and New Labour governments favoured community organisation approaches in their interventions. Community regeneration projects promoted under New Labour’s New Deal for Communities, for example, drew heavily upon community organisation models that reinforced ‘professional power over residents’ (SEU, 2000) to tackle worklessness, provide employment opportunities, raise skills and educational levels, reduce

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Women and community action

crime, drug abuse and social exclusion, improve housing, enhance health and promote sustainable environments. Popularised under ‘Third Way’ policies, this model entrenched top-down private–public partnerships and technical rationalist management styles that excluded those unfamiliar with its jargon. It enhanced participation among established groups through highly regulated, regular evaluation and monitoring of their endeavours, usurped grassroots power (Jordan, 2000) and inhibited spontaneous group formation. Opposition to proposals in official town plans and road schemes during community participation exercises floundered against this type of locality-based community intervention, for it accords people power that lacks substance. Community organisation allocates resources by treating people as similar units and ignores the specific needs of women, disabled persons and black people among others. Community development Community workers formulated community development models to enable people to acquire self-help skills and improve their situation through their own endeavours. These rely on educational processes initiated by community workers using either directive or non-directive approaches to mobilise people around specific actions (Batten, 1967). Community problems are assumed to indicate that inhabitants lack the skills necessary for enriching their community. This pathological view of residents legitimises using expert ‘outsiders’ as leaders for mobilising people around specific issues and teaching them how to improve their circumstances. Action is collective. The community worker, often a paid male professional, helps people address the problems they have identified and reform the existing system through social engineering. His interventions target specific residential areas or geographic locations that the state considers require assistance in tackling social problems like poverty. Locality-based community development models draw heavily on women to provide grassroots support and resources to implement projects. This model integrates black communities more thoroughly into the capitalist system in subordinate positions (Ng, 1988) and rations accessibility to resources. Negotiation and discussion are tools for organising processes and actions based on the community development paradigm. It acknowledges conflict when those receiving residents’ proposals fail to tackle their demands. Protracted struggles with government officials or corporate managers that do not progress community

18

Introduction

concerns produce disillusionment with community development processes and an overwhelming desire to change the system. At this juncture, community development can turn into community action endorsing confrontational forms of direct action (Alinsky, 1969, 1971). The British Community Development Projects (CDPs) discussed in Chapter Eight depict one such example. Community action Community action, based on a conflict model of social organisation, can be locational, interest or identity-based. Community work following this model can be militant, bringing people lacking power together to reduce their powerlessness and increase effectiveness in promoting their agenda through direct action. The objectives of community groups using this model proclaim social change, expose social contradictions and demand a fair allocation of power and resources. Confrontation and negotiation are key means for achieving particular ends. The community worker may be either a paid professional or community activist, usually a man, who lives in the community being mobilised. Group members rapidly become activists when engaging in conflict with those in authority. The distinction between the community worker and the rest of the group is blurred when the worker becomes an active member of that community and works with others on an egalitarian basis. Dominelli (2006) added several variants to the model: class-oriented community action, feminist community action and community action from a black perspective. Class-oriented community action concentrates on working-class interests. It divides society between the ‘bosses’ who own the means of production and ‘workers’ who sell their labour. Class, treated as a unitary aspect of identity, is indivisible. This inequitable binary became amenable to social change through community action linked to class struggles involving working-class activists, community groups and trade unionists in achieving their goal of a better life. British working-class activists ignored gender, ethnicity and risks concerning the potential dismissal of trade union allies when engaging the labour movement. This model was practised by Claimants Unions during the 1970s (Rose, 1973). Class-based community action begins locally, and extends to regional and other levels to maximise effectiveness. Classoriented community action theory and practice are usually masculinist. Most paid community workers are white men who play key roles in

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Women and community action

identifying the processes and targets for action. In these initiatives, class interests supersede those based on other social divisions including ‘race’ and gender. Their methods, behaviour and analyses of social problems have alienated women (Dixon et al, 1982) and black people (Ohri and Manning, 1982). Initially involved in class-based action, women and black people created their own forms of community action to cater for their specific needs, the women’s movement and black liberation movement respectively. Working-class activism received a critical blow under Thatcherism through changes in trade union and employment law that reduced the scope for sympathy strikes and shows of solidarity. These critically undermined trade union mobilisation after the Miners’ Strike of 1984–85 and class became a taboo word. Feminist community action, initiated by feminists active in the women’s liberation movement, addressed quality of life issues that affected women, fostered equality, democracy, connectedness and inclusivity, and demanded transformative societal changes. They confronted masculinist community work on theoretical and practical grounds by focusing on gender as a crucial feature of collective community action and harnessed its energies to promote social change and gender equality (Mayo, 1977; Wilson, 1977b; Marchant and Wearing, 1986; Dominelli and McLeod, 1989; Dominelli, 1990, 2002a, 2006). Feminist community workers addressed matters that affected women’s daily lives to transform traditional community work theory and practice. Feminists achieved this by challenging capitalist patriarchal social relations between men and women, women and the state, and adults and children, and by rooting change in life’s daily routines and active citizenship. In providing practical resources to address women’s specific concerns, feminists developed community work’s theory and practice, produced new understandings of the concept ‘community’ and exposed the political power-fuelled nature of social relations. By revealing the problematic conceptual nature of ‘community’ from women’s perspectives, feminist community workers highlighted its reliance on exploiting women’s energies for the ‘common good’ (Finch and Groves, 1983) and questioned prevailing definitions of what constitute appropriate subjects for community action (Curno et al, 1982). While developing services for women, they undermined the politicised nature of power relations between men and women (Adamson et al, 1988) and transcended traditional community work boundaries through practice (Dominelli, 2002a). Feminists centred gender within dialectical processes of organisation (Brandwein, 1987) to challenge society’s public–private divide shared by traditional and radical community workers who deemed the private

20

Introduction

domestic realm as women’s place in the home and community beyond public scrutiny while the public social, political and economic spheres were dominated by men (Leonard, 1975; Bailey and Brake, 1975). Feminists redefined women’s lives, emotional fulfilment and physical needs as socially determined and public matters. This enabled feminists to explore domestic violence, child sexual abuse and other instances of injustice that affected women to develop forms of practice and resources run by women to meet their needs better (Mayo, 1977; Curno et  al, 1982; Hanmer and Statham, 1988; Dominelli and McLeod, 1989; Dominelli, 2002a; Westmarland et al, 2013). In tackling issues that community workers had previously shunned, feminists have: • developed new methods of organisation, such as consciousnessraising (Dreifus, 1973) and empowering approaches to emotional healing (Bass and Davis, 1988); • redefined private troubles as social problems requiring public solutions, such as men assaulting women in intimate relationships (Dominelli, 1990; Mullender, 1997); • demanded equal power relations between men and women (Dominelli and McLeod, 1989); • shared power using ‘win–win’ principles for everyone to gain from conflict resolution rather than have one group lose power to a more powerful one (Brandwein, 1987); • highlighted positive appraisals of women’s societal contributions (Janssen-Jurret, 1976); • made connections between the different responsibilities that women carry when providing unpaid domestic and waged work (Dominelli and McLeod, 1989); • created services run for and by women, and developed forms of community work that enhanced the welfare of women, men and children (Brook and Davis, 1985; Marchant and Wearing, 1986; Dominelli and McLeod, 1989); • devised community practice models that can respond to needs irrespective of gender. Some feminists have stressed the divisive impact of classist, racist, ageist oppression on women’s lives and among women in practice contexts (Lorde, 1984; Bryan et al, 1985; Doress and Siegal, 1987; Davis, 1989; Dominelli, 1990). Their approaches have enabled black feminists to identify the failure of the white women’s liberation movement with its rallying slogan ‘sisterhood is universal’ (Morgan, 1970, 1984;

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Women and community action

Adamson et al, 1988) to include all women (Lorde, 1984; Collins, 1991) and demand recognition of women’s differentiated experiences of oppression while calling for alternatives to mainstream responses (Bhavani, 1993; Ledwith and Asgill, 2000). Meanwhile, feminist community action elaborated feminist ideology, theory and practice under the slogan the ‘personal is political’ (Dreifus, 1973) and ‘politics is personal’ (Ungerson, 1987) while seeking relations of empowerment among women engaged in collective action (Adamson et al, 1988). Some black women rejected the term feminist in their struggles and replaced it with ‘womanist’ (Collins, 1991). Womanism is rooted in African-American traditions that emphasise strong women acting as agents who create their own destiny. Postmodern feminists question the relevance of the category ‘woman’ and feminist community workers’ emphasis on collective action in changing women’s lives (Nicholson, 1990), deeming this unitary, essentialist and incapable of altering existing power relations. By celebrating decontextualised diversity among women and individualising decision making, postmodern feminism has intensified fragmentation within the women’s movement and legitimated individual responses to social problems. Postmodernism remains a contested approach, critiqued for its inability to suggest solutions to problems women encounter throughout the world regardless of which identity attributes feature in their lives, such as earning less than men performing similar work; undertaking the bulk of domestic labour; being overrepresented among poor people; and being underrepresented in power-wielding positions. Community action from a black perspective was developed by black people to address racism ignored by community work organisations and overcome barriers to the development of services meeting black people’s needs. Criticising the inappropriateness of community workers operating from colour-blind approaches, they devised their own forms of community action (Mullard, 1973; Ohri and Manning, 1982) and incorporated the struggle for racial equality in their work. Black community activists created a range of provisions to meet black people’s needs while simultaneously tackling problems that various social divisions created in their organisations (Sondhi, 1982). Their activities established anti-racist and anti-ageist provisions for elders (ASRA, 1981; Patel, 1990); campaigns and networks to support individuals and groups facing state-institutionalised racism in social security and immigration regulations (Sondhi, 1982); services for women (Guru, 1987); and child welfare resources (Small, 1984). Generating ‘black feminist thought’ (Collins, 1991), black women made black perspectives in community work gender-sensitive (hooks,

22

Introduction

1990, 2000). They have developed facilities appropriate to their needs, including black women’s refuges (Guru, 1987), healthcare networks (Malek, 1985), childcare provisions (Farrah, 1986), refuges and workplace initiatives (Rogaly, 1977). Black women play significant roles in revising feminist theories and practice (hooks, 1984; Lorde, 1984; Bryan et al, 1985; Davis, 1989; Bhavani and Coulson, 1986; Collins, 1991; Wilson, 1993) and is particularly evident in the development of more inclusive forms of practice and critiques of racism within white feminist community work (Bhavani, 1993). Anti-racist feminist community work has drawn inspiration from black and white women committed to empowering people and creating facilities that eliminate racial and gender inequalities. These have eschewed the creation of hierarchies of oppression that prioritise one form of oppression over another and insisted that all inequalities are addressed simultaneously (hooks, 1984; Lorde, 1984; Davis, 1989; Dominelli, 1988, 2002b).

Emerging forms of community work Fundamental social, political and economic changes since the first edition of Women and Community Action have impacted heavily on communities and people’s responses to women. These include the increasing use of community action among middle- and upperclass residents to protect their quality of life and environment; deindustrialisation that has decimated black and white working-class lives; consolidation among the ‘new’ social movements, previous and current; growth of community action tackling environmental issues (Ife, 1998; Dominelli, 2012b); and subordination of social problems to global neoliberal economic exigencies. Such trends have been supplemented by concerns to address structural inequalities locally, nationally and internationally and transform social relations through community work. Thus, I have extended community action models into: corporate welfarist community work; protectionist community action; emancipatory community action; environmental community action; global social activism; and virtual community action. These emerging forms may overlap, support the status quo; be reformist or transformative. Corporate welfarist community work The state, private and philanthropic sectors utilise this to regenerate communities ravaged by deindustrialisation. It draws on private

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Women and community action

sector–local authority partnerships to rebuild local economies under lucrative state contracts for services, provide infrastructural amenities like roads, and tax exemptions for corporations; legislation that deregulates business activities while regulating workers; public–private finance (PPI) initiatives; and private sector bailouts that overburden taxpayers. This model conserves capitalist social relations by attempting to reduce unemployment or people’s reliance on welfare services during hard times, and exemplifies neoliberal workfare. Extensively developed in the USA through attacks on welfare (Zucchino, 1997), workfare was favoured in Britain under the New Deal to get people out of poverty through casual and poorly paid work (GMLPU, 2004) or workplace-based training (Blair, 1999), and the activation state in continental Europe. This encourages big business to add a ‘community’ dimension to its portfolio and use money to promote a kindly image under corporate control. This model can be tokenistic, for example sponsoring rubbish bins or providing free internet access to expand advertising space. It is used by private philanthropists to set development agendas with limited local input, for example Bill Gates in Africa and George Soros in Eastern Europe. Protectionist community action This model safeguards the interests of people privileged by existing social relations, such as white middle-class communities. It creates a binary dyad around belonging and entitlement that excludes and devalues difference and involves the strategic exercise of agency to retain privileges. Utilising this approach effectively on a range of issues, middle-class communities protect neighbourhoods from undertakings that might reduce property values, for example preventing people they deem ‘deviant’, like mentally disordered offenders, from inhabiting their districts; opposing unwanted facilities; and rejecting road building and other modernisation schemes that threaten their localities. Poor people utilise this model to exclude ‘outsiders’ from sharing ‘their’ limited social resources. The British National Party (BNP) and United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) have successfully exploited white working-class fears of deteriorating living conditions by occupying the vacuum left by mainstream politicians’ failure to deal with environmental degradation, job insecurity, inadequate public services, unequal distribution of power and resources including jobs and housing, and neoliberal globalisation. (Im)Migrants are

24

Introduction

scapegoated. Globalisation is ignored. By racialising and configuring difference as not belonging and disentitlement to services, they articulate the manufactured scarcity syndrome and reserve privileges for themselves. Competition for scarce resources is managed by excluding and scapegoating ‘outsiders’ rather than addressing their lack. Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump’s election as American president exemplify such initiatives. Emancipatory community action Rooted in identity politics linked to the ‘new’ social movements to realise autonomy, human rights, social justice and citizenship, it encompasses feminist community action, community action from black perspectives, disability community action and LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Queer) community action. These models of community action focus primarily on changing social relations to include groups usually excluded from sharing power, resources and entitlements to social benefits on an equal basis with the ‘normalised’ dominant group. For example, gay men and lesbian women have organised against discrimination and oppression on the basis of sexual orientation to argue for the same rights as heterosexual men and women, while disabled people seek enabling social resources. Promoting these goals in the UK has produced legislative changes authorising civil partnerships, same-sex marriages and the Disability Discrimination Act, 1995 (now in the Equalities Act 2010). A danger with state responses is that freeing an identity group from one specific oppression can leave an inegalitarian social edifice unchanged as radical demands become incorporated into mainstream assumptions. Environmental community action This challenges political, economic, social and cultural barriers to environmental protection and environmental justice. Traditional environmentalism neglects social divisions, so poor people rarely benefit from these activities. Yet environmental degradation often occurs in their communities, as toxic waste disposal units and polluting factories are located in their geographical spaces (Bullard, 1983; Dominelli, 2012b). Recent forms of environmental activism are transnational and raise awareness of damage that capitalist forms of industrial development, economic processes and lifestyles inflict upon the environment, for example, green social work (Dominelli, 2012b, 2018). Organisations like Greenpeace confront industrial

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Women and community action

processes and companies’ pollution of the earth’s land, air and water through genetically modified food, hydrocarbons and radioactive energy emissions. Its members undertake direct action that ranges from occupying trees to protect virgin forests and opposing the testing of nuclear weapons. Activist environmental groups operating in the margins seek to hold global corporations accountable for their actions and link local concerns to global ones. Environmental action on climate change has seen a modicum of mainstreaming after years of lobbying, for example the Paris Agreement 2015. Global social activism Activism on specific issues that cross borders via amorphous movements builds on solidarity and alliances involving civil society agencies like non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as the peace movement, Jubilee 2000 to Eliminate Third World Debt, Make Poverty History campaign, 2005, Porto Alegre’s World Social Forum and internet-based community action. Often overlapping with environmental movements, these initiatives espouse a broader remit that critiques neoliberal globalisation, promotes identity issues, seeks to eradicate social problems and engages a wider range of people. Such movements lack identified leaders; participants self-define as activists, redefine social power and unsettle hegemonic meanings (Escobar, 1998), such as ‘We are the 99%’, ‘Occupy Wall Street’. Connections between individual participants occur in autonomous spaces, are ephemeral and are mediated through technology. The internet and mobile phones become tools for mobilising people around key events that juxtapose marginalised people with powerful world leaders like the G8, e.g., the 1999 Protests against them in Seattle. Internet-based community action This draws upon mass communication devices to form digital, virtual communities based on shared interests locally and globally. Its tools of connectivity – mobile phones and the web – can be utilised by any community work model. Virtual communities can be transient, dynamic and online 24/7. They provide fantastic opportunities for connectedness, information sharing, mass dissemination of messages while simultaneously generating digital divides that can exclude women, poor people and disabled people, but can transform attitudes globally, such as #MeToo on sexual harassment.

26

Introduction

The book’s structure This book celebrates women’s involvement in community action. It acknowledges their diversity and engagement in turning communities into better places for people to live and enjoy their physical environments. It values the vast variety of activities and techniques that women use in realising their ambitions for their communities. The book is structured around the idea that some community work elements – values, philosophy, skills and techniques – apply to all community work models, while others are gender-specific and need separate articulation to celebrate fully women’s contributions to community work through everyday life practices and forms of professional practice that create communities as humane places for recognising and celebrating people and protecting planet earth. The book addresses twenty-first century challenges in considering difficulties surrounding the (re)definition of communities, processes of engaging people in community action and bases for coming together in collective action to address living conditions. It focuses on recent debates about the role and purpose of community work in contemporary societies, updates material from previous editions, highlights themes elaborated in the following pages and concludes that community workers have much to do in establishing inclusivity rather than assuming it by utilising notions of citizenship, solidarity, social justice and human rights while acknowledging the differentiated nature of women’s experiences of these concepts. Ultimately, by improving the condition of women in society, community action with women will enhance the well-being of all those living within particular communities. The text proceeds as follows. Chapter Two considers how communities are (re)constituted as gendered entities as social relations are contested and (re)created. Caring relations are embedded within and underpin everyday life practices in communities, although experiences of these are differentiated according to age, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion and other social attributes. Women’s community activities sustain daily community routines, usually classified as ‘soft’ issues, while men tackle ‘hard’ issues. Chapter Three examines social action at the individual level to promote equality, inclusion and social justice. At its heart lies feminist social action which has turned personal woes into public issues that everyone has a stake in addressing, for example domestic violence. And, it highlights how women-only spaces empower women by

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Women and community action

enabling them to understand their social positioning and enhance confidence and self-esteem. Women’s social action to achieve social change by building social capital through group activities and networks is explored in Chapter Four. It covers processes, tools for organising communities and community profiles useful for women embarking on creating communities in both geographical and virtual spaces. The collective bases of feminist social action as women endeavour to create sustainable and resilient communities form the substance of Chapter Five. These activities involve mass mobilisations of women and their allies to achieve specified goals. However, the communities where women live and work cannot be considered harmonious wholes. They can be riven by tensions and conflicts that fracture community solidarity and hinder women’s ambitions to realise a peaceful world. Women’s social action in the workplace is covered in Chapter Six. This features women’s struggles to achieve workplace parity and opportunities in various countries, including the up-and-down nature of their gains as different interest groups vie for the power to define women’s roles and places at work. Women’s full equality at work remains a goal for the future. Walby (1990) argues that workplace relations and their associated policies provide potential for private patriarchy to become public patriarchy. Chapter Seven examines women’s representation in diverse political and governance structures. Some countries in the Global South have excelled in women’s representation in Parliament, for example Rwanda. In contrast, the UK in the Global North, where the first woman representative, Lady Astor, took her seat in 1919, has only recently developed the 50:50 campaign seeking equal representation for women in Westminster. Sustainable community development forms the subject of Chapter Eight. Here, environmental issues and environmental justice are considered part of social justice. Women in devastated areas devise income generation projects usually based on traditional cultural activities. These can reaffirm patriarchal relations while simultaneously introducing elements of change in women’s position, particularly that of accessing finances to keep the family going. Chapter Nine explores policy changes including mainstreaming women’s action and gender relations. It covers the United Nations’ attempts to improve women’s equality from the 1970s to the present day. Of great significance was the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, where the Beijing Platform of Action on Women was agreed. It affirmed women’s concerns as human rights.

28

Introduction

The concluding chapter reiterates the view that communities occupy contested spaces and highlights women’s achievements since the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was ratified at the UN. Although women have made gains at many levels, much more remains to be done. Building on these foundations is women’s task globally for the foreseeable future. Men have roles as women’s allies in creating an egalitarian world.

29

TWO

Creating and recreating communities as gendered entities Introduction Communities as contested spaces are conceived as either warm, feelgood locations admired by politicians regardless of political hue, or conflict-ridden territories that defy rationality. For example, men in societies of armed conflict dominate women through patriarchal relations of control that suppress women’s autonomous action alongside controlling entire populations. Gender relations configure the categories of men and women in relationships revolving within a patriarchal binary dyad of superiority and inferiority. These relations are enacted within community spaces that favour men over women by propagating a deficit model of gendered relations to define patriarchal gendered spaces and suggest that women lack the attributes ascribed to men. Some of the spaces that perform gender (Butler, 1990) are defined as men-only or women-only. Women are not passive in performing gender. They exercise agency in multidimensional, fluid communities that undergo processes of affirmation, resistance and change as relations (re)form through complex negotiations involving diverse intersecting social divisions including age, ability, sexual orientation, class and ethnicity (Crenshaw, 2012). Through performance, patriarchal gender relations can be affirmed even as women resist the hierarchies of oppression that feature in their lives (Butler, 1990). Gendered relations in Britain assume a white, middle-class heteronormativity that privileges white middle-class men who subscribe to a hegemonic or ‘straight’ masculinity accompanied by a subjugated femininity and non-hegemonic masculinities. Men who are different – for example black men, gay men, disabled men – are configured as having subjugated masculinities (Connell, 1995). But they rank above women within wider social groupings (Whitehead, 2002). This arrangement between men and women is assumed to be natural, immutable and unlikely to be challenged by the majority population. Based on gender differentiation, relations of subordination deem divergence from heteronormativity or white heterosexual male norms as deficient, pathological and inferior. Defining difference as 31

Women and community action

inferior and acting upon this presumption creates oppressive relations of dominance. Gendered relations in Western societies are contested, contradictory and, sometimes, antagonistic, because these are centred on inegalitarian ways of organising social relationships between men and women. Patriarchal gendered communities presume that men and women are different and unequal. Men are ascribed the dominant role associated with being economic providers, capable of earning a living wage for their family and securing its material needs. A woman is gendered around domestic responsibilities linked to her roles as wife, mother and carer, undertaking the bulk of housework and caring within the household (Belotti, 1975; Walby, 1990, 1997). Women’s bodies are gendered around their capacities to satisfy men’s sexual appetites, give birth, raise children and care for others. Gendered relationships assume women’s passivity and victimhood within the low-status private sphere of domestic relational space to which the dominant ideology confines them (Dominelli, 2002b), despite women’s resistance (Butler, 2000). James (1992: 48) argues that women’s activities are ‘outside the political world of citizenship and largely irrelevant to it’. Women do not simply concede this particular definition of the world. Their responses include accepting this worldview, accommodating its injunctions to behave in particular ways while changing it at the edges, or challenging its precepts and putting forward ideas to emphasise their agency and determination to control their own lives in a world free from violence and fear. In this chapter, I consider how gendered relations articulate identity politics consistent with patriarchal ideological approaches to gender, and engage women in community action concerned with ‘soft’ issues linked to domestic social relations ensuring their reproduction while men concentrate on ‘hard’ issues like employment. Within gendered social relations, women’s bodies depict certain types of communities. These revolve around women providing traditional stability and continuity within social relations embedded in culture. Women can resist these and affirm alternatives by undertaking social action that subverts the existing patriarchal social order. Women’s desire to assert agency in community settings forms a significant part of this chapter. Gendered communities act as barometers of women’s place in society and underpin practices that men and women consider ‘normal’ within a given culture. Gendered communities expose the position of men and highlight how gendered power relations situate men and women in opposition to each other as well as exposing which opportunities are open to one group but denied to the other. Local and

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Creating and recreating communities as gendered entities

global community practices help to transcend Western orientations and locationality evident in many theoretical discourses about community.

Gendered social relations Gender, a crucial element of socially constructed identities, rests upon a binary dyad that constitutes and is constituted by men and women through social interaction. In Western and Eastern cultures, the dominant images of traditional womanhood draw on biological traits that are deemed fixed, immutable and linked to women’s reproductive capacities (Eisenstein, 1979). White Western feminists have argued that this situation draws upon a patriarchal system embedded within sexism or the oppression of women in a gendered society and firmly rooted in the family (Segal, 1983). Black feminists in the West have commented upon the family as a site of safety for black men and women living in white racist societies (Bryan et al, 1985). Feminists accept that women’s experiences of gender oppression are differentiated by a range of social divisions like ethnicity, class, disability and sexual orientation that configure their social positions differently, even within one place. Within this differentiation, gendered relations based on sexist views of the world (re)produce inequalities between men and women through a sexist dyad that privileges men. I define sexism as: a system of oppression based on the presumption of antagonistic relationships between men and women. In these, men exercise power over women and are privileged or deemed superior while women are cast as inferior. The system of organising social relations so that men can control and exploit women on the personal, institutional and cultural levels is called patriarchy. (Dominelli, 2002a: 31) Gender interacts with and cuts across other social divisions like ‘race’ and disability to produce complex differentiated experiences of gender that are unique to an individual while having elements shared by others with similar identity traits to provide women’s collective positionality. Sexism is an ideology that devalues women’s attributes and work while celebrating those associated with men and promoting inequality between genders. Equality is a key value for eliminating gendered oppressions that bar women from accessing opportunities that will improve their situation and control or eliminate oppressive processes and practices. Sexist social relations:

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Women and community action

• establish men as the norm; • define what is accepted as ‘normal’ behaviour for both men and women; • legitimate and validate men’s power over women; • focus on ‘differences’ between men and women within a deficit framework for women; • ‘other’ those who are different from white male norms; • have personal, institutional and cultural elements based on: –– attitudes and beliefs which underpin personal sexism; –– legislation, policies and routine practices that produce institutional sexism; –– taken-for-granted assumptions, values and norms that form cultural sexism. Oppression is the systematic denial of peoples’ individual and collective rights through relations of domination or inequality. These divide people into binary dyads in which one element is superior, the other inferior. These divisions are configured locally and specifically through everyday dyadic interactions that cast men as superior and women as inferior. Reproducing these dyads relies on the use of ‘power over’ others and ‘othering’ their attributes. I define ‘othering’ as: an active process of interaction that relies on the (re) creation of dyadic social relations where one group is socially dominant and the others subordinate. In gendered othering, women’s physical, social and cultural attributes are treated as signifiers of inferiority in social relations where social encounters perpetuate the domination of one group by another. During this interaction, the dominant group is constructed as ‘subject’, the oppressed group as ‘object’. (Dominelli, 2002b: 5; also see Dominelli, 2002a, 2004a) Subject–object social relations are interactive inegalitarian ones whereby the subject portrays their views of the world as a natural state of affairs that cannot and need not be challenged. This dynamic (re)produces oppressive relationships and forms a ‘technology of the self ’ that Foucault (1980) considers critical in the internalisation of dominant norms and securing the consent of oppressed people to their oppression (Dominelli, 2002a). In egalitarian relationships, interactions are based on both parties recognising their respective subject status. People behaving as subjects become creators of their own realities and are central to anti-oppressive relationships.

34

Creating and recreating communities as gendered entities

Othering is a process of distinguishing between groups to configure one as superior and another as inferior through a ‘them–us’ dyad of exclusion. This binary excludes those defined as ‘them’ while including those categorised as ‘us’. These processes become significant in social relations that determine roles, status and position within specific communities. They are inherent to the processes of social inclusion and exclusion in that they normalise particular values and patterns of behaviour and legitimate the allocation of social resources in a manner conducive to excluding ‘others’. Othering, therefore, becomes a distancing tactic for excluding people and rationing social resources and power. Othering processes: • establish relationships of inequality; • involve relations of domination, that is, the exercise of power over others; • create ‘them–us’ interpersonal relationships; • draw on processes of exclusion to deny access to social power and resources, and prevent individuals and groups from participating in public relational spaces as active citizens; • treat ‘othered’ individuals as less than human by depriving them of human dignity; • legitimate acts of physical, sexual or emotional violence against the person(s) who is(are) othered; • ‘othering’ may cross more than one social division, for example gender, ‘race’, age, disability and sexual orientation, and in any combination as these interact with each other; • ‘othering’ processes are replicated through social interactions and can be accepted, accommodated or resisted. Patriarchal social relations that give rise to sexism and ‘othering’ draw upon power relations that are rooted in zero-sum notions of power in which one party to an interaction has an exclusive hold on power while the other has none (Parsons, 1963). This conceptualisation rests on the formation of ‘power over’ relations that favour one party at the expense of another to create winners who grab all the power and leave losers with none. ‘Power over’ relations constitute a worldview that divides people into an unequal dyad that privileges one element over the other. These underpin relations of domination that privilege those belonging to the hegemonic or normalising group, for example men in patriarchal relations. Zero-sum views of power have been challenged by feminists such as French (1985) who, like Foucault (1980), claim that power is relational,

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Women and community action

multidimensional and formed through interpersonal interactions. French (1985) argues that there are other power relations, including the ‘power to’ do something and ‘power of ’ particular groups to undertake collective action to pursue their own interests. Women can transform their positions by coming together to empower themselves through their power to change their world or pursue their own wishes. In Dominelli (1986a), I suggest that women’s social action can expose the power of the powerless and the powerlessness of the powerful. Power can be both productive and coercive. Gendered relations of oppression are reproduced through social interactions in which men and women accept differences between them as signifying a hierarchy of value that privileges men. Women who accept men’s superiority are rendered subordinates with limited opportunity to challenge their lower position or status, compatible with the status quo. Men who endorse this worldview may use violence to enforce women’s subordination and perpetuate inegalitarianism when relating to women. Men employ a range of strategies to impose their dominance. Figure 2.1 depicts the various mechanisms men utilise, which include psychological strategies that disempower women, isolation and intimidation based on emotional, physical and sexual assaults, exclusion from friendships, social resources and institutions. A woman can situate herself, her partner, her children and close others at different points in Figure 2.1 according to their particular circumstances. Gender relations impact on community work through the: • ideology of caring as ‘women’s work’; • composition of the (un)paid workforce; • unequal access to political or governance structures and economic resources. An ideology of caring as ‘women’s work’ configures this activity in private relational space – labour in the home that is socially devalued while leaving those performing it in the background. Associated with tasks linked to the routines of everyday life, women undertake caring without pay in private domestic relational space. Caring work, considered second-rate even when performed for a wage, is dogged by low pay. Community workers tend to see ‘sociability work’ (Daniels, 1985) or caring and the routines of daily life as ‘soft’ issues that are the prerogative of women and dominate their energies in community action. Consequently, women community workers become involved in activities that promote personal and community well-being, such

36

Creating and recreating communities as gendered entities Figure 2.1: Gendered patriarchal relations of oppression

‘Othering’, sexist privileges, power and control ‘Subject to object’ social relationships

Normalising ‘technologies of the self’

Socioeconomic discrimination

Gendered patriarchal relations of oppression

Adultist relations and attacks on children

Isolation and intimidation Verbal threats and emotional abuse

Physical assaults and sexual abuse

as creating mother and toddler groups, setting up play schemes for young children, cleaning up neighbourhoods and worrying about quality of life issues. Men, considered natural ‘leaders’, manage projects (Grimwood and Popplestone, 1993) and engage with the important ‘hard’ issues that occupy public relational space, such as developing job opportunities in communities (Cowley et  al, 1977). They often take women’s contributions to daily community life for granted. While women are busy cultivating connections among community residents, promoting trust within networks of support, men are doing the ‘real’ business of the community. Women’s networks are forms of social capital (Putnam, 1993, 2000) that Lowndes (2000) suggests men appropriate to advance their own positions in the community. Men’s approaches to community initiatives are different from those evident in ‘women only’ spaces such as the Greenham Women’s Peace Movement (Cook and Kirk, 1983; Dominelli, 1986c). Men organise social action so that it requires people to take sides, undertake specified acts and obey instructions (Cook and Kirk, 1983). Feminist community workers sought to eliminate sexist social relations in the community work profession by identifying gender as a crucial feature in interactions between members of the community and professionals offering services to women. The alternative facilities

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Women and community action

women created contrasted to authoritarian professional ones by being inclusive of women, meeting their specific needs and being created and run by them. I define feminist community work as: A theory and a practice of community intervention that takes women’s experience of gendered oppression in community settings to challenge the lack of community provisions for women; poor quality of services women receive; unequal relationships between professionals and women; and unequal treatment of women workers. Feminist community work is collective action that aims to transform social relations in more egalitarian directions and alter both women’s and men’s behaviours alongside institutional policies and social norms. (Dominelli, 2002a: 5) In responding to women’s needs, feminist community social action has enhanced understandings of women’s and men’s positions in society; introduced institutional and cultural change; improved services for women; impacted upon the theorisation of women’s, men’s and children’s experiences; and enhanced professional interventions they undergo, especially in situations of domestic violence and child sexual abuse. In doing this, women challenged the privileging of expert voices over those of women as service users; rooted change in women’s experiences; led to the creation of women-only spaces; and created new services for women, children and men.

Feminist challenges to traditional community work The objectives of traditional community work range from controlling insurgent populations to promoting social change. Community work in Northern Ireland was an example of the former (Griffiths, 1974b). The ‘speak bitterness’ meetings of the 1950s that involved Chinese women in mass local campaigns that challenged men’s assaults in intimate domestic relational space epitomised the latter (Hinton, 1966). The mass campaigns that created the barefoot doctor system to deliver health services during the Cultural Revolution in China reflected the latter on a larger scale. Between these two extremes, diverse versions of British statesupported community work since the 1980s sought to improve the quality of daily life; foster the formation of local caring networks; encourage communities to take responsibility for their development;

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Creating and recreating communities as gendered entities

provide paid and unpaid work for groups and individuals; and foster community-oriented public-private partnerships. Women, central to these initiatives, relied upon voluntary and self-help initiatives that required traditional skills to support hard-pressed individuals, supplement state resources and replace those abolished due to cuts in public welfare expenditures. Meals on Wheels, Community Care and Good Neighbour Schemes exemplify some of these approaches. Traditional community workers accepting the basic soundness of society’s social relations and distribution of power and resources aim to reform the status quo. This view was challenged by the Community Development Projects (Loney, 1983) when they utilised community action to halt systemic economic decline and social disadvantage in impoverished communities. Acceptance of the general soundness of society continued under Labour’s New Deal for Communities (NDC) approach to community work. Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ sought to empower poor communities through self-help in the context of reduced public expenditures. His successor, Theresa May, shared this goal. Taking up the post by acclamation in 2016, May’s rhetoric endorsed social justice. Yet, under her premiership, cuts to community and youth work have severely undermined young people. Inequalities in British society continue to rise, and social care services in disadvantaged communities have been cut by 14% (JRF, 2015). Community action endeavouring to change economic realities in deprived communities has failed to acknowledge the specific needs of women in the community, their contribution to community activities and diversity among women’s experiences of community and disadvantage. Wilson (1977b) deplores the lack of recognition of women’s contribution to community life even when undertaken under the auspices of radical community workers oblivious of the specific forms of oppression women endure (Wilson, 1977a) and the multiplicity of these experiences (Dominelli, 2002a), a condition that remains. The privileging of ‘experts’ over community activists and downplaying of women’s skills have reinforced hierarchical and oppressive forms of top-down welfare endorsed by successive governments. Feminist insights into gendered relations have contributed to their critique of traditional community work, including its tendency to render women invisible (Mayo, 1977, 1982) and control populations (Dominelli, 1990). Feminist community work developed in reaction to community workers’ neglect of women and drew upon the prevailing women’s liberation movement.

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Gendering key concepts in community work Community work has various key concepts for understanding community dynamics and roles played by different actors including agency, empowerment, participation, social capital, capacity building and social exclusion. Feminist research and scholarship consider these concepts from a gendered perspective to highlight women’s strengths and resilience. Policymakers have drawn upon these concepts to promote unitary views of communities that ignore social divisions within them. Undifferentiated participation ideologies have mobilised residents through the idea that community groups can decide developments and undertake collective action within their communities without acknowledging diversities or conflicting interests that cause tensions which have to be resolved. Social exclusion Poverty, as the outcome of personal and social circumstances, is a central ingredient in processes that produce social exclusion. Social exclusion is a process of marginalisation and deprivation that involves poor people, who are disproportionately women. Community workers in deprived communities daily confront social exclusion in its many forms – individuals who feel demoralised and alienated from mainstream society; poverty; lack of social resources and poor physical environments. These signs of social exclusion expose women’s inability to participate actively as citizens in society’s decision-making processes in public relational space including representational forums, and accessing economic resources. Community work interventions mobilise those living in exclusionary spaces to assert their rights and entitlements to the same assets as men who are socially included. In their mobilisations, social inclusion is set alongside social exclusion. Social exclusion is a structural problem rooted in a particular type of social organisation, namely, the exploitation of social and physical resources for the profit of the few. Key definitions of social exclusion focus on its personal dimensions. For example, the European Foundation (1995: 4) describes it as a ‘process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which one lives’. Duffy (1995: 1) offer a narrower definition by suggesting that social exclusion is the ‘failure or inability to participate in social and political activities’. The personal dimension of social exclusion highlights its personal nature and underplays the structural inequalities and power

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relations that produce exclusionary outcomes. This is especially important for women who are structurally excluded from public positions by hegemonic social relations. Personal inadequacy is a mechanism that blames women for their plight and ignores structural deficiencies that matter. Initially, the concepts of social inclusion and exclusion formed central aspects of social policy making in France. They spread throughout Europe in response to the creation of a single market and concern to improve social cohesion and productivity within European economies. The social objective of enhancing social cohesion was tied to economic exigencies, namely those that facilitated the capacity of goods and services, including units of labour, to move about the continent without hindrance and enhance worker productivity. Linkage to the waged labour market and treatment of people as labour units to be deployed in the production cycle where and when needed disadvantages women who cannot participate equally in the waged labour market (ONS, 2004). This tendency has become more skewed by requirements that tie welfare benefits to people’s willingness to undertake paid work, the assumption being that only waged employment raises people out of poverty (David, 1999) and devaluing unpaid work in the process. Thus, women’s contribution to domestic labour and community activities becomes discounted as irrelevant to the grander project of participating in waged work, even if poorly paid, as advocated by neoliberal ideologues. The division of society into two groups – those who are socially included and those who are not – axiomatic in policy debates, further embeds women’s exclusion in low-waged labour. Britain’s social policy theorists worried that these two concepts would shift concern away from poverty (exclusion) and poor people’s integration into society (inclusion). Both inclusion/exclusion and poverty/social divisions were contested further when marginalised groups challenged their inclusion in mainstream society because workfare type assumptions locked them into low-paid jobs that did not meet their needs. Discourses about social exclusion draw upon different theories about poverty, social solidarity and structural and/or individual inadequacies. Although ignoring their specific impact on women, these discourses are gendered (Lowndes, 2000) and presume women are responsible for their plight. Social capital Social capital, a trendy word describing the social resources that individuals bring to a community, can be extended by collaborative

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relationships and interactions with others when lubricated by trust and reciprocity. Social capital was conceptualised in Hanifan’s (1916, 1920) writings and later picked up by Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1990). It was popularised in public policy and community development discourses by Putnam’s (1993) study on Italy which he subsequently utilised to describe the decline in civic responsibilities in the USA (Putnam, 2000). Putnam’s analysis has been critiqued by those who argue that it ignores the significance of ‘race’ and ethnicity (Goulbourne and Solomos, 2003), gender (Lowndes, 2000; Ginn and Arber, 2002) and the development of new forms of social collaboration (Ladd, 1999). Campbell (2000: 196) suggests that ‘our understanding of the role played by social capital in perpetuating unequal power relations is still in its infancy’. There is merit in looking at what the term encapsulates by considering its gendered impact and analytical force. Putnam (1993, 2000) suggests that social capital is embedded in trust, shared values, virtues, expectations, investment in social networks, selfhelp, reciprocal relationships and active connections with others. These he subdivides into two forms: ‘bonding capital’ and ‘bridging capital’. Bonding capital is a property of tightly-knit support networks among fairly homogeneous groups. It is ‘exclusive’ in maintaining a particular group and is inward looking. Bridging capital is outward looking, more trusting of outsiders and facilitates connections with those who are different. By developing reciprocal relationships, it enriches the cache of social capital among participants (Putnam, 1993, 2000). Woolcock (1998) adds ‘linking’ capital, or the capacity to develop relationships of trust and networks of reciprocity among community and external members, to Putnam’s classification. Women’s caring and ways of working, critical components of linking capital, form social networks that increase a community’s store of social capital beyond a given locale. Putnam (2000) blames American individualism for promoting solitary pursuits over social ones. Ladd (1999) asserts that people are participating in other forms of organisations, particularly informal ones that rely on women’s work. Putnam also ignores the neoliberal context within which this decline is occurring. People have become individualised as fragmented consumers approaching the marketplace to purchase goods rather than develop them collectively. Moreover, risks have been personalised rather than pooled or socialised, thus exacerbating individual isolation (Dominelli, 2004b). Putnam also ignores how women form groups through bonding social capital – for example, women’s groups, babysitting circles, playgroups – to create and utilise resources the marketplace denies them.

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The personalisation of social capital has significant repercussions for women, who have less access to formal social resources than men and whose stock of social capital is appropriated by men, including by individual men who reap the benefits of ‘gendered social capital’ (Fine, 2001: 123). Despite these structural inequalities, Sevenhuijsen (1998: 148) argues that women’s community networks are built on ‘trusting connections’ with others and caring for them. These enable women to engage more easily in transformative local politics and practice. Women’s skills and relationships form the social capital that lies at the centre of civic engagement, and creates the substance of community work. Stack’s (1975) study reveals that black women living in extremely disadvantaged circumstances use networking and caring skills to survive poverty and carve out better lives for their children. This involves ‘sociability work’ in forming and sharing bonding social capital in a community of like-minded individuals living in geographical proximity. Thus, poor people can be well networked and still denied their share of social resources through structurally endorsed unequal power relations. Goulbourne and Solomos (2003) argue that ethnicity, a form of social capital, is also gendered, giving women unequal access to such social capital. Structural inequalities along ‘race’, ethnic, age, disability and other dimensions provide differentiated experiences of and access to social capital (McLean, 2002), as a multidimensional, dynamic and socially constructed entity. Lowndes (2000) argues that women and men have equal amounts of social capital as associational activities, but have different profiles that constitute gendered social capital differently. Women’s are rooted more firmly in private domestic relational space while men’s are located in the formal public relational arena, particularly within organisations of representational politics in local government and the central state. Lowndes cites women’s relative exclusion from political structures as signalling this phenomenon. Women know and trust their neighbours to a greater degree than men, have more contact with friends and relatives and more frequently access informal networks of support that are embedded in neighbourhood sociability. This insight carries implications for professional community work with women. They have strengths and resources that are useful in mobilising communities. A stark division between the private and public domains can be misleading as their boundaries become increasingly blurred. More and more remunerated work is being conducted within the home as women participate more fully in waged work while retaining domestic responsibilities. ‘A community’, insofar as it exists, is configured by and configures both arenas. Women exercise agency within communities to

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mediate ‘private’ activities linked to the quality of life enjoyed (or not) by families because these are impacted upon by social policy developments in the ‘public’ sphere, while simultaneously treating the public domain as an object of community interventions. By intervening in communities, women use strong bonding capital to create bridging capital and enact agency in forming ‘a place of their own’. Their campaigns touch on all three spheres – the public, community and private – and build bridges between them. Through community campaigns, women exchange and extend bonding capital, engage in the processes of creating bridging and linking social capital and constitute public associational activities that transcend their specific locale. Caution is required when applying the concept of social capital to women, especially black women, because they have been pathologised for relying on family-based community networks of social capital (Innerarity, 2003; Zontini, 2004). Based on ethnicity, these are strengths (Goulbourne and Solomos, 2003) useful in resisting racism and ensuring survival. Strong bonding social capital promotes local identity that fosters mutual support and trust among people and their belief in the locality’s capacity to meet their needs and engage substantially in informal and formal networks (McLean, 2002). McLean (2002) contextualises the formation and use of social capital as multidimensional and sited in several spheres. He declares that black women are strong in bonding capital and weak in bridging capital. This view does not adequately represent their activities in the community because those with strong bonding capital use it as linking capital to reach other women not necessarily in their particular ethnic or social group. For example, women connect with diverse members of a geographical community in developing groups to improve the state of their neighbourhoods (Maly, 2005). Thus, men’s and women’s different profiles of social capital can be reformulated to highlight the strengths that women have in both creating and extending society’s ‘stock’ of social capital. Capacity building Capacity building refers to strengthening people’s ability to improve their quality of life (Dominelli, 2004a) through processes of interaction that develop people and communities. This includes acquiring skills, forming community organisations and systems that enhance participation, and engaging with more powerful others to create new resources or projects and self-manage them (Skinner, 1997), thereby growing a community’s cache of social capital (Henderson and Salmon, 2001). Neither Skinner nor Henderson and Salmon focus

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on the concept’s gendered nature. Moreover, development discourses conducted within the context of industrialising countries configure women as passive recipients of capacity-building initiatives, often to ‘educate’ women and girls to sustain a country’s future reconstruction (Mizra, 1997). Women’s role as active agents in the community is downplayed as skills that women harness for development are cast aside for deficit models of women’s social capital. Participation Participation is the act of engaging people in making decisions about matters that affect them and enabling them to control their situations. Participation can assume various forms and operate at different levels. A major component of Arnstein’s (1969) ‘ladder of participation’ is consultation, the process that state officials use to discuss proposals with community members. Consultative participation is a top-down approach that can exclude and alienate participants, for example regeneration boards that favour ‘upward’ accountability procedures to ‘downward’ ones (Phillips, 2004: 172). Top-down approaches skew power-sharing endeavours between official representatives and community members, adults and children to favour the status quo. Democratic participation is a key ingredient in empowerment processes aimed at informing people of their options and helping them assume responsibility for their behaviour. Lister (1997) sees these processes as essential to ‘active citizenship’. Jupp-Kina (2010) claims that in active engagement people become protagonists operating from solidarity at the grassroots level. Participation is gendered. Women are more likely to be involved in informal decision-making processes than formal ones that disparage experiential knowledge (Barnes, 1999) and enact bureaucratic requirements. Women face barriers to formal participation, such as stressful domestic circumstances, financial limitations, lack of time (Reitma-Street and Neysmith, 2000). Diversity among different groups of women requires diverse approaches to engaging them in formal initiatives (Mizra, 1997). Not all members of a given group can participate on a uniform basis. The notion of contingent participation or participation tempered by context and positionality would better suit their positions (Dominelli, 2006). Empowerment Empowerment is the process of developing people’s capacities to act on their own behalf. Wallerstein and Bernstein (1994: 198) define

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empowerment as ‘a social-action process that promotes participation of people, organisations and communities towards the goal of individual and community control, political efficacy, improved quality of community life and social justice’. Empowering practitioners treat users with respect and dignity, foster user self-confidence, allow service users to exercise power over their own affairs and understand complex social realities. Empowerment is the process of enabling people to act as subjects controlling their lives through relationships with others, to share power and work towards establishing egalitarian relations. Therefore, empowerment is interactive and negotiated, not a ‘good’ to be given (Oliver, 1990). Empowerment operates at both individual and group levels. Empowerment processes address ‘race’, gender and other social divisions when responding to the specificity of unique individuals developing their full potential in organising collectively to eradicate oppression. Empowering people in communities is integral to mobilisation processes (Dominelli, 2012c). Rees (1991) expects people’s empowerment to address structural inequalities by redefining the problems they tackle to prevent their being pathologised or disempowered by professionals. Empowerment involves real shifts in power relations, not a request that service users sign a contract that specifies their roles in an intervention, as occurs regularly in task-centred approaches. By engaging in power shifts, service users (re)define their own needs and identify how professionals can help them determine how to achieve their vision of their lives. Agreements between practitioners and service users address divergent priorities, power relations and ideologies and specify what employing agencies deem affordable. Empowerment is contested. Oliver (1990) argues that professionals cannot empower service users but should focus on how not to disempower them. Initially referring to the process of enabling people to take control of their lives within community settings, the term has been appropriated by politicians, commercial enterprises and bureaucracies. Community work managers practising the ‘new managerialism’ have bureaucratised empowerment. Bureaucratic empowerment discourses are articulated through legislative and procedural means that commodify service users by turning them into agents of consumption (Dominelli, 2000, 2004a, 2012) and deprofessionalise working relations through procedural controls and performance indicators (Dominelli, 1996; Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996b) to create technocratically proficient practitioners while depriving them of relational social work (Folgheraiter, 2003).

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Quality assurance is maintained through industry standards such as BS5759 and total quality management (TQM) systems that service providers utilise to signify quality assurance through bureaucratic means (Dominelli and Hoogvelt, 1996a). Commodified relations of empowerment create consumers who express power by exercising choices in the marketplace through their purchases. Resource restraints and lack of purchasing power severely restrict the options for poor consumers, especially poor women. Outside the marketplace, legal criteria of entitlement dictate the choices available to service users as citizens while formal complaints procedures operationalise their rights to specific provisions if those received do not meet expectations. Arrangements for processing complaints offer service users the possibility of refusing services that do not meet ‘industry’ standards. They are informed of their right to object through bureaucratic forms of empowerment like the Citizen’s Charters. Complaints are made only after the fact and are defensive rather than proactive. These are unable to address resource constraints and formal litigation is too expensive for service users on limited incomes. These systems do not legitimate service users’ wishes to plan and create different services. Bureaucratic empowerment cannot address the needs of people requiring services that improve their quality of life, but emphasise being asked to choose one product over another (Dominelli, 2000, 2012). Bureaucratic approaches cannot deal with structural inequalities, unequal access to organisational resources, legislative restrictions, resource constraints and power imbalances that pose formidable obstacles to the processes of developing capacities for empowering oneself and controlling one’s life. Empowerment can be experienced as tokenistic and disempowering, depending on the values of those involved (Dominelli, 2004a, 2004b; 2012). Empowerment requires the realisation of egalitarian power relations. Agency Agency is the capacity to act as a subject, determining the direction of one’s life and making decisions about it. Its enactment involves interactive processes whereby individuals are configured as subjects of an action, not objects at the receiving end of another’s behaviour. In egalitarian relations, all participants are subjects who interact with other subjects. In relations of domination, privileged persons are the subjects while the others are constructed as objects or subjugated persons. Agency also involves the creation of social structures that produce the possibilities within which human behaviour occurs.

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Berger and Luckmann (1967) argue that people use agency to give their world meaning and, when institutionalised, it becomes part of a meaning system that explains their world and shapes their engagement with others. Agency is also gendered. Women are assumed to lack it and so their capacity to become leaders defining the parameters within which action occurs becomes discounted while affirming their dependent victim position. Configuring women as lacking agency makes it easier for men to assume leadership roles without having to justify doing so. Questioning men’s right to be leaders would be deemed unnatural, a view that is integral to patriarchal relations.

Conclusion Feminist community workers launched initiatives which demanded that agendas for action included gender relations and called for more fundamental forms of change than those involved in a simple redistribution of social power and resources among undifferentiated people (Wilson and Weir, 1986). They expected these steps to yield new opportunities for women and enable them to create and work within different paradigms. They also demanded that community workers’ aims, objectives and techniques endorsed egalitarian principles throughout their actions rather than tacking these onto the end of a project’s process (Wandor, 1972) and acknowledged its relational dimensions (Gilligan, 1982). Feminist community work differs from community work undertaken by women. The latter accepts the status quo and refuses to address women’s specific needs by developing social alternatives to these. Community initiatives undertaken by the Women’s Institute are illustrative of community work undertaken by women. These endeavours contribute to community well-being but lack a feminist perspective and commitment to transformative change individually and collectively. They do not demand structural changes in society to ensure equality between women and men and are not embedded within a new vision of society. They simply rearrange players on a chess board. Moreover, feminist community action has a critique which demonstrates that community work is used to disguise the state’s failure to address the needs of declining, deindustrialising communities and social problems that inhibit a community’s capacity to look after its members’ needs.

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THREE

Women and social action: social change at the individual level Introduction Traditional community action has failed to deal adequately with individual need and respond appropriately to individual circumstances and personal expectations due to its commitment to collective action. Arguing that structural arrangements have a direct bearing on personal experiences, feminist community workers have addressed this problem by linking personal woes to structural relationships and theorising individual predicaments as reflective of specific constellations of social relations as stipulated in public relational space which impacts upon domestic relational space. This chapter examines feminist action on the personal level. It considers feminist ways of working that tap into the dynamics of identity formation, building confidence and self-esteem, raising consciousness, advocacy and counselling. It also explores services that women have developed to engage with these issues, including those involving feminist counselling and other therapeutic interventions. Each individual woman has a very personal experience of oppression, albeit one given meaning by engaging with social situations, institutions and structures. Feminists have developed theories and practices to reduce individual women’s suffering and eliminate collective hardship. Feminist therapy, including counselling, feminist social work and practice in feminist health collectives, has been central in developing feminist responses to individual women while at the same time locating their emotional distress within the structural constraints that impact upon their personal lives, lending credence to the slogan ‘the personal is political’ in linking individual concerns with structural considerations. Feminists have used consciousness-raising in individual work and small groups to highlight the connections between individual women’s plights and their social subordination (Howell and Bayes, 1981; Bondi and Burman, 2001). Feminist therapy, counselling and feminist selfhelp groups in the health field are major developments drawing upon feminists’ work with individuals and small groups in raising 49

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consciousness. These activities have increased women’s confidence in developing alternative facilities that better meet their health needs by challenging professions that have been bastions of male privilege, and providing women with community resources that they have created and control. These prefigured the egalitarian social relations feminists sought and offered concrete examples of how to connect individual women’s positions to the social forces within which their lives are elaborated. This chapter also offers guidelines for creating feminist consciousness-raising, self-help and advocacy groups.

Feminist approaches to women’s emotional well-being Women’s emotional well-being is a significant component of women’s lives. Feminist work with individual women in counselling and therapy sessions responds to such needs. Their interventions engage women in finding emotional fulfilment and making connections between their personal predicament and the social context within which they live and thus repair the emotional damage in their existence. Working with women on the personal level exposed the social origins of women’s unfulfilled emotional lives as embodied in feminine stereotypes (Baker Miller, 1976; Howell and Bayes, 1981; Chaplin, 1988; Atkinson and Hackett, 1995). Their individual work revealed that women pay the price for meeting community demands associated with the tenets of traditional femininity: pervasive feelings of powerlessness, psychological damage; and emotional sacrifices (Howell and Bayes, 1981). Depression, frustrated hopes and ambitions, feelings of uselessness, lack of worth and substance misuse feature in women’s responses to the circumscribed lives they are expected to lead (Rowe, 2003). Poverty, bad housing, unremitting childcare and arduous elder care take their toll on women’s emotional welfare and are central in women’s lack of emotional fulfilment and feelings of powerlessness, often experienced as depression (Brown and Harris, 1978; Howell and Bayes, 1981; Rowe, 1983, 2003). The flashes of joy women experience in their relationships with children and others occur within a context of constant anxieties about their own physical and emotional well-being and that of those they care for, especially their children. Feminists have rejected analyses that pathologise women’s responses to their responsibilities, especially when ‘caring’ professionals deem them unable to cope if displaying mental illness, drug misuse, alcohol addiction, or excessive smoking. Instead, feminists point to the material and emotional deprivation that women manage daily. Offering women support in building a positive sense of self; highlighting connections between low self-esteem and the socially

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prescribed roles that women are expected to play; gaining resources for their use; and examining the nature of women’s relationships with other women, children and men are important dimensions of feminist work at the individual level. Feminist approaches to emotional work have lessened the stigma attached to mental ill health, seeking therapeutic advice and psychiatric assistance. In therapeutic relationships fostered through feminist therapy, women are encouraged to examine the social causes of their personal suffering and consider how these might have contributed to their feelings of worthlessness and self-deprecation. Women’s explorations of their psychological development draw on experiences they share with other women, including their feminist therapist (Howell and Bayes, 1981; Eichenbaum and Orbach, 1982; Lorde, 1984). Feminist therapists indicate empathy by understanding a women’s personal situation and connecting their diverse experiences to women’s oppression. This lays the groundwork for relating to a woman in less remote, impersonal and hierarchical ways than occurs in traditional therapeutic relationships that rely on professionals maintaining distance in service user–worker relationships and privileging expert knowledge despite claiming client-centredness (see Rogers, 1961). Redefining social problems A key understanding of the feminist movement is that relationships between individuals are imbued with power relations rooted in the ideology of female subordination and male supremacy. This has produced the often quoted phrase ‘the personal is political’ as a shorthand for the sexual politics that pervade every aspect of women’s lives, from the most intimate to the most removed (Millet, 1969). Sexual politics are about power, the socially legitimised power of men to control women and the unacknowledged power of women to resist such control and assert their right to live according to egalitarian principles that do not presuppose the subjugation of others. Feminists have reached this awareness collectively by examining women’s individual experiences and comparing these with those of others in similar situations. Such insights initially arose in loose, unstructured meetings between groups of women who came together to make sense of their condition. These gatherings became more widespread and systematically sought to address women’s issues. These get-togethers provided the basis of consciousness-raising groups which feature strongly in the feminist organisational repertoire (Dreifus, 1973).

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Redefining social problems is a preliminary step in the formation of feminist groups, campaigns and networks and is crucial in challenging prevailing definitions of issues and developing feminist consciousness. Redefining social problems from a feminist perspective demystifies social relations and reveals how these subordinate women in the public arena and work to their detriment. Radical feminists developed feminist groups, campaigns and networks to tackle male violence against women in the home. This entailed redefining the issue not as a personal problem between individual men and women, but a social matter involving all men and women because such assaults were sanctioned by configuring women in subordinate positions (Brownmiller, 1976). Since then, other forms of male violence including pornography, environmental degradation and global nuclear threats have been addressed. Feminist analyses have demonstrated that gendered patterns of male violence begin with men showing contempt for women, calling them derogatory names such as ‘bitch’, ‘broad’ and ‘whore’ and denying their human rights and dignity. These display deep-seated hatred of women and can legitimise rape or murder. These dynamics were exemplified on 6  December 1989 when a man walked into the University of Montreal and committed femicide. He gunned down 14 women engineering students who represented the feminists he hated, because they had dared enter men’s world by seeking to become engineers. He was making the point that women’s place in the community is not in the public world of waged work but in the privacy of the home, ministering to men’s needs. It is precisely these definitions of women’s position and role in society that feminists challenge. Unfortunately, misogynist acts continue. On 23 April 2018, Alek Minassian of the Incel Movement which unites men who blame women for their unsuccessful relationships with them, used a Ryder van to massacre pedestrians on Yonge Street, Toronto, Canada, killing ten and wounding 15 others. Most of these were women (Beauchamp, 2018). In redefining society’s understanding of male violence against women, feminists have focused on gendered social constructions of masculinity and femininity rather than biological attributes and highlighted the significance of the following elements (Brownmiller, 1976; Lederer, 1982; Gordon, 1988). • Gendered rights: Men violate women’s rights to a safe environment by assaulting them. Strega (2004) encapsulated these dynamics in the statement, ‘men have rights, women responsibilities’.

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• Gender-neutral language: The use of gender-neutral language masks gender power relations by obscuring the fact that it is mainly men attacking women. • Power: Men’s sexual attacks on women are about power, not sex, or men’s biological urges. • Control: In sanctioning men’s right to control women, society legitimates men’s abuse and use of violence against women. • Normality: Men who attack women are ‘normal’, not psychopaths. • Misogyny: Personal sexism is rooted in individual men’s hatred of and contempt for women. • Institutional and cultural sexism: Society’s treatment of women victims of men’s physical and sexual aggression reinforces the abuse of women. The police, judiciary, courts and public tend to hold women responsible for these attacks. • Subordination of women: Women’s subordinate social position endorses men’s belief in their right to enforce women’s compliance to their wishes. • Women’s strength: Women’s strengths facilitate survival during harrowing ordeals and movement from passive victim to survivor. Thriving is next on their agenda. • Women’s voice: Feminist theory and practice is based on women’s own accounts of their experiences, thereby enhancing women’s voice and influence rather than giving voice and expertise only to professionals. Unearthing the dynamics of male violence brings these into public consciousness, strengthens women’s capacities to survive, and underpins the work undertaken by feminist groups, campaigns and networks on these issues. This was instanced by American feminists in the antirape movement organising a Rape Speak-Out in New York in 1971. These events provided women with a forum that broke the individual isolation and fear that had prevented them from placing their ordeals in the public arena, and began the process of educating Americans to the realities of rape (Davis, 1989). That year, feminists in Berkeley set up a community-based 24-hour crisis line known as the Bay Area Women Against Rape. This became the crisis centre that has provided the model for the rape crisis centres created subsequently by feminists in America and other countries (Davis, 1989). These centres support women in transcending the pain and disability engendered by assaults on their person and for those women feeling able to do so, to report these crimes and proceed with court cases. Moving from victim to survivor to thriver requires such support. Similar issues have been raised by the #MeToo campaign discussed in Chapter Five.

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Since those days, feminists have uncovered the extent of sexual assaults against girl children, within the alleged sanctity of the family and institutions and professionals responsible for their care (Hooper, 1992). They have developed networks of Incest Survivor Groups to support their healing processes and strengthen individual women’s survival (Dominelli, 1986c, 1989; Armstrong, 1988; Kelly, 1988). Feminist social action on sexual violence has revealed that: young boys are also physically and sexually abused mainly by adult men; highlighted the problematic nature of the dominant ideology of masculinity (McLeod, 1982; Dominelli, 1989, 2002b); and social pressures on men to conform to the unfeeling, aggressive, macho stereotypical man (see Festau, 1975; Tolson, 1977; Bowl, 1985). Anti-sexist men have tackled issues raised by feminists (see Hearn, 1987; Connell, 1995; Pringle, 1995; Pease, 2002). Feminists have focused on eliminating sexist oppression by beginning with women, but their work has exposed the stunted emotional development of children and men and promoted action that also ensures their wellbeing. Eliminating sexism will enhance the quality of life for children, women and men (Dominelli and McLeod, 1989). There are dangers in redefining social problems without incorporating other social divisions and power relations and ensuring that these are contextualised socially, culturally, linguistically, politically and economically. If feminists do not successfully address these hazards, they reinforce other forms of oppression and undermine their struggle to eradicate gender inequality. For example, ignoring the interconnectedness of racism and sexism in matters of sexual violence has meant that white radical feminists in Britain and America inadvertently confirmed racist views of black men as the main assailants by marching through black communities (hooks, 1984; Bryan et al, 1985; Davis, 1989). Black feminists have pointed out that without including racism in their analyses, white feminists’ actions on rape have fed racist myths of black men’s criminality and sexual appetites, and disregarded facts. Most rapes are committed by white men; white men are more likely to rape black women than black men rape white women (Davis, 1989). White feminists are responding to their critiques and becoming more sensitive to the interaction between racism and sexism (Barrett and McIntosh, 1985). Black feminists’ demands have furthered the development of white feminist principles such as listening to other women’s accounts of their experiences and using these to develop less oppressive forms of social action. Reflexivity in their approaches has enabled feminists to adopt new insights and understandings, thereby giving feminism an open and unfinished character.

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Box 3.1: Organising tips: problem (re)definition • Who defines the problem? • For whom is it a problem? • What is the problem? • How can women address the problem? • Who can become women’s allies?

Feminists challenge prevailing definitions of professionalism and redefine it in more egalitarian directions by valuing women’s own views, knowledge and understandings and deprivileging professional expertise to reduce professional distance and enable women to acquire expert professional knowledge. A feminist therapist listens to a woman’s account of her position and works with her to explore its contradictory elements, and dissatisfaction with her own performance (Marchant and Wearing, 1986), to enable her to grow in confidence and make her own decisions. The development of a helping relationship between the woman and therapist cannot be assumed, but needs to be worked for. There may be forms of oppression other than gender affecting the therapeutic relationship for feminist therapists to confront, for example, racism. White therapists need to examine very carefully the extent to which they can empathise with black women whose experience of sexism differs substantially from their own. Black feminist therapists working with black women also work hard to overcome the abyss which racism and other social divisions that intersect and interact with ‘race’ places between them, such as class and sexual orientation (Lorde, 1984). Feminist therapy is not underpinned by notions embedded in the subordination of women as occurs in Freudian therapies (Dominelli and McLeod, 1989). This facilitates women’s development of a healthy respect and liking for other women and encourages their relating to other women without the competition, envy and jealousy characterising woman-to-woman relationships in society more generally. It also allows women to look to other women for emotional fulfilment in both loving and working relationships. Thus, women begin to move away from depending on men to validate their existence and place in society, replacing it with a sense of independence and self-reliance, and accessing support from others without experiencing the world as ‘caving in’ if support or approval is denied. According to Eichenbaum and Orbach (1982, 1984), feminist therapy enables women to feel worthy and deserving of attention

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and confirms their entitlement to receive love, care and affection for themselves in the process. This contrasts sharply with traditional expectations that women are only givers of love, care and affection. Promoting women’s strengths and belief in themselves is integral to feminist therapy. Women who have worked on their problems through feminist therapy have claimed reductions in their sense of powerlessness (Ernst and Maguire, 1987; McLeod, 1987, 1994) and rejected the victim role. Women have also found their performance in feminist therapy sessions is directly relevant to their everyday lives because it is easy to incorporate lessons learnt and skills acquired into routine activities (McLeod, 1987; Heenan, 1988). In turn, this has made women feel more in control of both their domestic and waged working lives. Therapies founded on Freudian premises highlight the father– daughter or male–female relationship as the fundamental one in personality formation (Freud, 1977). Feminist therapy focuses on developing women’s understanding of their relationships with significant women in their lives (McLeod, 1987, 1994). Crucial in this respect is the mother–daughter relationship, which forms the centrepiece of feminist object relations theory (Chodorow, 1978; Eichenbaum and Orbach, 1982, 1984; Ernst and Maguire, 1987; Hollway, 1989). Theoretically, this has shifted professionals’ understanding of women’s condition and psychological development away from male supremacy and onto women’s subjectivity – their capacity to act as subjects. Feminist therapists may have focused too exclusively on the mother– daughter relationship in reacting against its neglect in Freudian psychology and ignored crucial others in women’s lives. Black women with experiences of important bonding taking place with a range of extended family members, including grandmothers and aunts, rather than developing exclusive relationships with their mothers (Wilson, 1977a; Bryan et al, 1985) exemplify the neglect of other significant relationships. Hence, prevailing object relations theories may be valid only for certain groups of white women who were raised in nuclear families in which mothers care for children. Sensitivity to the impact of racism on black women’s lives has made feminists question the universal applicability of their analysis. Additionally, the Eichenbaum and Orbach (1982, 1984) approach to the mother–daughter relationship carries the danger of unwittingly blaming mothers for not socialising their daughters into leading independent lives. Eichenbaum and Orbach’s (1982, 1984) position downplays crucial questions which feminist analyses have to address to eliminate gender

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oppression. These include those linked to the nature of relationships between men and women. What kind of socialisation process is appropriate for the development of egalitarian relations between men and women, whether they are intimate partners, colleagues at work or strangers in the street? What role should men play in childrearing? How do feminists challenge current definitions of fathering based on the biological act of impregnating women and economically providing for the material welfare of unwaged mothers and their children to redefine fatherhood? Redefining fathering relationships around nurturing the emotional well-being of children, women and men according to egalitarian precepts can form an alternative way forward (Dominelli, 2002a; Heslop, 2015). Finally, feminists have to interrogate women’s role in socialising male children in anti-sexist ways in mother–son relationships and waged work with children, be it in schools, social and community services, health services, media or other public arenas. To what extent do women pass on sexist stereotypes to their sons, boy pupils or men service users because they have internalised the values and norms of societies that celebrate male supremacy? How do men and women raise boy children so that they work for rather than undermine women’s liberation alongside their own? Why do women collude with the patriarchal oppression of women and how can this be challenged? Asking these questions is not to blame women for being unable to operate outside the patriarchal contexts that encompass their lives. Posing such queries is essential to understand fully the complexity of the tasks that feminists are undertaking, and enable feminist struggles to realise non-oppressive social relations that will transcend patriarchy at individual and collective levels. Interrogating patriarchy is also necessary in preventing lack of progress in one arena from blocking gains in others intricately connected to it. These questions must also be asked if feminist therapy is not to slip into supporting women and strengthening their self-esteem by disparaging the needs of diverse groups of women, children and men for emotional fulfilment. The significance of addressing these concerns is known because children, men and diverse groups of women challenging heterosexual normativity have spoken out against their own abuse and humiliation, whether or not perpetrated by men. Kindlon and colleagues (1999) have recommended helping boys to become ‘emotionally literate’ to assure movement away from destructive macho-type masculinity. Feminists have proposed nurturing masculinities, men’s equal involvement in caring work and housework and sharing power in the public arena as ways

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forward (Dominelli, 1992, 2002b; Phillips, 1993). Feminists have also challenged women’s oppression of other women by upholding patriarchal heteronormativity, for example the struggle against female genital mutilation (FGM) (Toubia and Izett, 1998) and oppression of unmarried mothers in institutions run by nuns (O’Toole, 2017). Similar points have been made regarding the emotional trauma of children sexually abused by adult carers, men or women (Bass and Davis, 1988), for example healing required by First Nations children and adults in Canada to repair the damage inflicted upon their persons, social structures and cultures by abusive individual and collective experiences perpetrated by both men and women ‘caring’ for them in residential schools (Fournier and Crey, 1998; Gray, 2016). The growing literature on the sexual abuse of children signifies the horrific subordination of their emotional well-being to that of adults, primarily men (Nelson, 1982; Ward, 1984; Dominelli, 1986c; Armstrong, 1988, Stoltenborgh et al, 2011). Girls are the major victims, about 125 million globally; but boys are also sexually abused, mainly by adult men. Feminists can only ignore men’s exploitation of children at the expense of their commitment to egalitarian relationships among all members of society. Men’s lack of social fulfilment is also being exposed through feminists’ and anti-sexist men’s work that encourages men to challenge dominant notions of masculinity (Festau, 1975; Tolson, 1977; Achilles Heel Collective, 1983; Bowl, 1985; Hearn, 1987; Dominelli and McLeod, 1989; Connell, 1995). Feminists have also focused on women who abuse children to find ways of ending this type of exploitation (Pizzey, 1997). Adultism – the power adults have over children – involves men and women perpetrating abusive actions against children (Dominelli, 1989). I devised the term ‘adultism’ to focus on the power dynamics that both genders hold over children and young people to strengthen the understanding of these issues and move discourses beyond sexism which focuses on relationships between adult men and women (Dominelli, 1998, 2002a, 2004b). Understanding power as multidimensional is central in supporting accessible, non-exploiting and non-exploitative sources of power for women. The rights of black men and women to emotional fulfilment are threatened by racist immigration laws that deny them access to and split their families (Plummer, 1978; Gordon and Newnham, 1985); poor job prospects; bad housing; forms of racism that block access to the material conditions necessary for ensuring emotional growth (Davis, 1989); and immigration laws that divide families (Lind, 2018). Racist practices permeate every aspect of their lives to the detriment

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of their psychological development. Internalised racism takes its toll by undermining black people’s sense of identity, pride in their historical achievements and resistance to racism (Coard, 1971; Comer and Poussaint, 1975; Gilroy, 1987). Black women have found that racism has destroyed extended family networks, increased their social isolation, denied their voice in socio-political affairs (Wilson, 1993), and distorted the close relationships they expect to establish with other black women (Lorde, 1984). The emotional sphere is also one in which feminists have uncovered a multi-layered tissue of violence that absorbs the psychic energies of children, women and men, and seriously impoverishes their emotional lives. Feminist scholars have uncovered the routine violence that is exercised over children by both men and women in the name of disciplining and socialising them into their role in life (Miller, 1983). Walby and Towers (2018) have termed the drip-drip pattern of power exercised in daily relationships as ‘coercive control’. The children’s rights movement (Franklin, 1995; Moosa-Mitha, 2004) has also been crucial in promoting children’s interests as different from those held by men and women. Children’s dependency on adults is no excuse for their exploitation, a situation now resulting in trafficked children and their deplorable treatment by Western powers, such as the UK’s deportation when he turned 18 of a trafficked Vietnamese child rescued by the British police (Gentleman, 2018). This act has raised adultism to institutional and cultural levels, a view commonly articulated in the popular press (exemplified in: www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/2018/jun/29/mass-shootings-white-malefragility-capital-gazette-maryland-misogyny). Male-perpetrated violence is often an inescapable fact of women’s lives in the home, factory, office, humanitarian camps (Parkinson and Zara, 2013) and on the streets (Kelly, 1988). Most attacks on women, black and white, are committed by powerful white men (Davis, 1989). White men’s responsibility in reproducing these oppressive and damaging relations and their eradication is deflected by playing on racist stereotypes and focusing attention on black men (Bryan et  al, 1985; Davis, 1989), as currently exemplified in Trump-era America (Lopez, 2018; Pace et al, 2018). Furthermore, the world sits on an arsenal of nuclear weapons which can be set off at any time, while the militarisation of the earth proceeds apace (Cook and Kirk, 1983; Escobar, 1998; Carpenter, 2016). A sense of powerlessness in increasingly violent societies is exacerbated through the interminable ‘war on terror’ following the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Worryingly, this refrain has echoed globally. Growing fears

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about the safety of children and families have intensified the emotional pressures women face in uncertain times. This reality has led feminists to redefine violence as not only physical damage but also as a climate of terror created by men without using physical weapons. The invisible psychological damage individual women endure is as pernicious as visible wounds and bruises, making coercive control a potent weapon. Constant fear of male attack is absorbed into the consciousness of all women, whether or not they have been raped, physically beaten or humiliated by men, because all women have to take precautions to minimise the likelihood of actual assault (Brownmiller, 1976). Having to presume that an attack will happen unless women take active steps to prevent it has placed responsibility for men’s behaviour on women and operated as an effective form of patriarchal social control. It also allows society to use the courts and legal process to blame women when violence occurs (see Brownmiller, 1976; Scottish Women’s Aid Federation, 1980; Kelly, 1988). Men’s absolution from responsibility for their violence and the burden of guilt imposed on women for failed self-protection when they have been unable to stop their attackers was exemplified in a Canadian court case when a judge gave a male child molester a suspended sentence because he was ‘provoked by a sexually aggressive three year old [girl] child’ (The Vancouver Sun, 1989). Strega (2004) attributes this trend to discourses that legitimate men as having rights, women only responsibilities (Patterson and Sutton, 2017; Wistow et al, 2017). Women have felt compelled to reassess their views about violence: its inevitability as something natural; powerlessness in stemming its pervasiveness; and distortion of personal and public lives. The feminist peace movement in the USA has challenged social priorities that appropriate 60 cents out of every income-tax dollar for the Pentagon (Davis, 1989). This figure has risen substantially since President Bush’s declaration of a ‘war on terror’ (Washington Post, 2005) and Trump’s increasingly bellicose stances against difficult regimes like that in Iran. Meanwhile, military expenditures rise while children suffer from malnutrition, women are homeless on the streets and men and women endanger the world’s climate and people’s health producing and using armaments. American feminists have linked increased defence expenditures under Reagan to the devastation of state welfare services like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Medicaid, Medicare and education (Davis, 1989). Further reductions under Clinton via the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) which replaced AFDC made this situation

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worse (Zucchino, 1997). George W. Bush continued this pattern by savagely cutting welfare expenditure to appropriate funds for his ‘war on terror’, reaching $350.6 billion including wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11 (Washington Post, 2005). President Barack Obama attempted to spend money on healthcare through Obamacare, but this compromise attracted the ire of Donald Trump, who tried but failed to rescind its provisions during his first year in office. Trump succeeded in cutting welfare expenditures while reducing taxes for rich people in 2018, and intends to do likewise in 2019 (Witts, 2018). The feminist peace movement has highlighted the extent to which community life could be enhanced if defence resources were channelled into welfare expenditure. America could develop a national comprehensive healthcare service; fund a guaranteed income for all poor Americans; or finance basic health supplies for millions of children in the Global South. In England, the feminist peace movement has made similar connections by exposing: (a) the deleterious effects that fear of nuclear war has had on the emotional well-being of individual women and children; (b) the waste of public resources endorsed by a strategy of escalating nuclear weaponry (Cook and Kirk, 1983); and (c) the desire of countries without them to acquire these, for example North Korea.

Advocacy: a basis for individual and collective action Feminists have advocated improving the plight of women individually and collectively as part of a strategy for social change. Doress and Siegal (1987) identify four forms of advocacy: • Personal advocacy: In this form of advocacy, an individual woman takes action to defend her particular rights, for example a woman lodging an unfair dismissal claim under the Sex Discrimination Act/Equalities Act against an employer who sacks her for becoming pregnant (Strauss, 2018). Such action aims to secure justice for an individual, but her defence may deter the infringement of other women’s rights. Therefore, personal advocacy can support social change. • Interpersonal advocacy: This form of advocacy occurs when one woman supports another who has been unfairly treated to obtain justice, for example the Women Helping Other Women Network. • Cooperative group advocacy: Cooperative group advocacy involves a group of women supporting each other to address problems they encounter as a group. For example, a group of older women

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wanting to discuss the effects of ageism with a group of younger women formed a workshop for this purpose, with each older woman bringing a younger woman to it. During the workshop, each woman talked about the kind of older woman she wanted to be. Sharing anxieties about getting old, becoming a burden if others had to care for them in ill health, and material hardship in old age enabled women to contribute to each other’s understanding of their own fears and put these into context alongside similar ones being expressed by others in the workshop. The insights gained allowed women to create solidarity with each other and use their newfound strength to promote the interests of marginalised older women (Doress and Seigal, 1987). • Organisational and legislative advocacy: This form of advocacy develops links between groups of women with particular interests and the broader women’s movement. This style of advocacy has featured in older women’s contribution to feminist social action as they struggled to obtain government recognition of the differentiated impact that policies regarding social care, pensions and social security benefits, had on older people – men and women. They have convinced younger feminists to take older women’s issues seriously (Doress and Siegal, 1987) and join older women’s and feminist organisations pressing for legislative and other changes to enhance the quality of older women’s lives. Such alliances have been more widespread in the USA than the UK (see Doress and Siegal, 1987) because the Retirement Equity Act had already abolished mandatory retirement. Subsequent struggles have meant that mandatory retirement has been rescinded for many of Britain’s public sector employees, although the age for receiving the state old age pension has risen. This change has impacted badly on some groups of women, particularly those born in the 1950s, resulting in 48,000 women losing £12,000 from their state pensions (Rogers, 2017). The interests of older black women have been particularly neglected (Norman, 1985), and remain a pressing issue for feminist community action. By organising to support organisational and legislative changes for current generations of older women, younger women safeguard their future concerns when they become ‘older’ women. Patel (1990) has argued that black elders have developed their own communitybased resources to cover the gaps left by mainstream providers of social care and thereby added to the burdens carried by black civil society organisations denied state resources.

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Box 3.2: Organising tips: advocating for change Feminist advocacy of whatever type combines elements of self-help with attempts to eradicate gender oppression and achieve social change. The guidelines below help progress this process: • Choose the issue(s) to be tackled. • Consider the problem with other women if it affects many of them to gain their support. • Define and agree the plan(s) of action: −−if legislative changes are required, ensure you understand the relevant policies, pieces of legislation and parliamentary agenda; how to lobby members of Parliament (MPs) and organise parliamentary support for your proposal(s); −−know what resources are available and identify what others that are needed; −−seek allies. • Take action. • Evaluate progress.

Feminist community-based social action on health issues: women challenge health professionals Drawing a line between individual action, group action and campaigns is problematic because activities in one domain often flow into the others. This is particularly evident in feminist social action on health matters which involve action in all three domains, although I focus on the wider health campaigns in Chapter Four. Women constitute the majority workforce in the health service. Located mainly at the lowest rungs of the labour hierarchy (Doyal, 1983, 1985), women have taken leading roles in health matters to improve health interventions individually and collectively. Feminist analyses have revealed that health provisions for individual women are inadequate and under-resourced. Despite the women’s health movement, women’s facilities and women workers have borne the brunt of public expenditure cuts in the health service (Gayle, 2015): approximately 86% of the austerity burden, amounting to £79 billion for women compared to £13 billion for men since 2010 (Stewart, 2017). Consequently, women are active participants in defending community health provisions, establishing new provisions for individuals, groups and communities, and challenging low expectations about older women.

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The feminist health movement is largely a network of diverse health groups ministering to women’s specific emotional and physical health needs. It has combined concern with women’s emotional well-being with an equal interest in their physical welfare (Ruzek, 1978; Doyal, 1985; Bondi and Burman, 2001) and initiated campaigns on various health issues. Their activities reveal feminists’ perception that all aspects of women’s lives are interconnected. These interlinkages account for the complexity encapsulating women’s oppression and expose the centrality of combining the personal and structural dimensions of social life and assessing their impact on individual women’s mental and physical health. Gender relations, a key dimension in women’s analyses and actions on health, have been tackled through feminist action in health groups. These have been formed by small numbers of women concerned about a particular problem, such as doctors overprescribing tranquillisers to deal with depression among individual women struggling to cope with many demands on their time and energies. These groups tend to be small and have a strong consciousness-raising element that enables women to explore the political facets of healthcare at individual and societal levels. Besides consciousness-raising features, health groups provide women with opportunities to learn about their bodies and transmit specialist knowledge to each other. If part of a network, one health group can refer women to other groups that provide specialist services in particular spheres of healthcare. Typically, such work enables women to: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

share experiences, knowledge and feelings; learn from each other; work on practical matters relating to health, such as self-examination; ask questions of themselves, other women and health professionals; support one another; create alternative resources and services for women; acquire confidence in tackling health issues, including how to resist authoritarian doctor-patient relationships; demand healthcare services appropriate to women’s needs; change the nature of service delivery in formal health systems; foster egalitarian relationships between women, regardless of whether they provide and/or use healthcare services; work collectively with other women; focus on preventative care; integrate individual women’s emotional and physical well-being.

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Women’s attempts to challenge the power of the medical profession and broaden their definition of healthcare through self-help initiatives have produced the women’s health movement. It has adopted issues related to women’s own and their children’s ill-health, and developed alternative forms of healthcare to facilitate women’s control over their bodies and treatment (Ruzek, 1978, 1986; Doyal, 1979, 1985). The feminist health movement has utilised women’s traditional healing skills. Healthcare has been defined as ‘women’s work’ except that the rise of state and market provisions has converted health into a commodity that men control (Cochrane et al, 1982; Eisenstein, 1984; Steinberg, 1997). Power relationships in the British National Health Service (NHS) exemplify male-female roles wherein the experts know everything while workers’ and patients’ practical experiences are discounted (Cochrane et al, 1982; Barnes and Maple, 1992; Queasley, 2011). Feminists have argued that healthcare ought to be recognised universally as a human right, not a commodity sold to those who can pay the highest price (Davis, 1989). A broader definition of health – the pursuit of health in body, mind and spirit – has featured strongly in women’s struggle for economic, social and political justice (Lorde, 1984; Davis, 1989). Feminists have defined health as well-being which has to be achieved through a dynamic relationship within a positive and balanced environment for each person (Cochrane et al, 1982). This includes physical surroundings, political, economic, cultural and social structures. Aboriginal women have added spirituality to this concern (Thomas and Green, 2007). In short, health issues are embedded in the totality of how life is organised socially and how individual roles within it are elaborated. Women’s health groups have been formed by applying community work techniques: word-of-mouth, door-knocking, notices placed strategically in places frequented by women to bring together small numbers of women to examine various health issues. These have included childbirth, skin complaints, thrush, breast cancer, menopause, ageing, tranquilliser abuse, mental health, safety in the home and children’s health. Proceeding from their own experience of the subject, such groups have raised individual women’s consciousness about the social organisation, medicalisation and commodification of health. These groups often meet in women’s homes, schools or community halls with few resources other than those that women provide. Occasionally, they receive public funding to attract speakers or provide specialist resources. The Well-Women Clinics (WWCs) in Britain exemplify services that have relied on public funding, although

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some are now run privately. Reliance on state financing has often imposed restrictions on how groups function and the bases from which they can act. This can disadvantage groups seeking feminist approaches to health issues, distorting their commitment to egalitarian processes and practices (Finch, 1982; Foster, 1989). And it increases dependency on state funding, even when funds subsidise private providers. Once feminists established Well-Women Clinics, some London doctors opened private ones to provide gynaecological services. Various GP practices define Well-Women Clinics as sites where women will be seen by a woman doctor to address women’s health issues, without following feminist practice, for example cervical screening. Women’s health groups are fluid in composition and on the subjects they handle. While a ‘core’ of women may remain in a group for some time, others enter and leave the group frequently, without unduly disrupting group processes. These groups’ capacity to accept turnover in membership is facilitated by sharing personal experiences, a relaxed atmosphere, a lack of group hierarchy, and an understanding of the pressures that women negotiate to attend such meetings. As a result, groups: sometimes shrink in numbers, but this is not accompanied by the frustrated bafflement it occasions in many community groups. Members know more about why people have left. They also understand more about how to bring in new people and help them settle in. Thus, the group remains open. (Cochrane et al, 1982: 125) The openness of groups and commitment to egalitarian relationships has attracted individual women who do not normally participate in such gatherings, including those from ethnic minorities. Having women-only groups also facilitates women’s participation in group activities (South Wales Association of Tenants [SWAT], 1982). Although men who work at home caring for children and retired men have joined some women’s health groups without seeking to dominate group dynamics, women have preferred women-only health groups (Cochrane et al, 1982). Yet men partners can find it difficult to accept that women’s involvement in health groups enhances individual well-being to the extent that a woman returns home feeling ‘happy and relaxed’ (Cochrane et al, 1982). Women’s health groups have stimulated relationships between women and facilitated contributions to each other’s emotional growth by fostering their confidence in their ability and capacity to

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ask questions of professionals about the healthcare services available and demand that health resources, whether provided by the state or market, promote women’s well-being rather than merely respond to symptoms that doctors address through intrusive technology-based interventions (Ruzek, 1978; Cochrane et  al, 1982; Doyal, 1985; Steinberg, 1997). Preventative services that keep people healthy have been a major outcome of the feminist health movement (Ruzek, 1978; Doyal, 1985; Foster, 1989; Patel et al, 1998). Additionally, women’s involvement in health groups has had implications for other aspects of their lives. Personal relationships and their attendant sexism have come under scrutiny, enabling women to draw connections between these and a lack of psychological wellbeing. Depression within heterosexual relationships and the toll of unremitting childcare on individual women’s emotional health have been related to unequal socially structured and unsatisfactory family relationships which serve badly the emotional needs of children, women and men. Group members have gained confidence in tackling these problems more imaginatively in their personal lives. Feminist action begun in the area of emotional health has identified the connections between caring within domestic relational space to expose the seamless web woven by gender oppression. Some oppressive relationships ended when feminists demanded more sensitive collective caring facilities for women, children and older people. The relationships between community workers and members of feminist health groups follow non-hierarchical principles of organisation. Tasks are shared between women on a rotating basis to give all women the opportunity to learn new skills. These rotated endeavours include answering the telephone, chairing meetings, writing leaflets, speaking to the media, learning medical terms and details about their bodies, and treating themselves somewhat. If the process of imparting skills to one another is successful, feminist community workers find that they become redundant as the group becomes capable of functioning without them (Cochrane et al, 1982; Dominelli, 1982). Unconscious bids for leadership and hanging on to roles when other women have gained these skills can mar the establishment of egalitarian relationships (Cochrane et al, 1982). Tensions within the group have to be addressed explicitly through open discussion and a commitment to continual critical, reflective analysis, self-appraisal and listening to women’s individual accounts of group experiences. These are essential in avoiding false-equality traps, countering inegalitarianism and retaining women’s membership in and personal commitment to a group.

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Some women’s health groups resist identifying with the women’s movement for fear of being labelled militant, lesbian and aggressive, despite being founded on feminist principles, operating along feminist lines and using the services of feminist community workers (Cochrane et al, 1982; BBC Radio 4, 2018). The unsympathetic portrayal of feminist action in traditional media, and white middle-class feminists’ inadvertent exclusion of certain groups of women, especially workingclass and black women, have contributed to this reaction. Understood as power relations and privileging, such negative reactions are intrinsic to current patriarchal relations benefiting men. Therefore, feminists have a major educational task in furthering society’s understanding of their activities, and working to develop responses that address the differences that structure gender oppression among diverse groups of women. Handling differences along egalitarian lines and using women’s various starting points to develop common strategies for eliminating sexism is a relatively new experience for women. The process of working for unity among women to avoid hierarchies whereby one type of oppression subsumes another has begun (Dominelli and McLeod, 1989) and is often rooted in everyday routines, for example forming childminding circles that benefit specific women. The social interactions, discussions and experiences women share with others can transform personal outlooks on life.

Box 3.3: Organising tips: forming groups The formation of an active, viable women’s group is a vital element in any campaign seeking to advance both individual and group interests. It requires community activists to give considerable thought to the formation of their group and the processes and dynamics on which it operates. Empowering women individually and collectively should be a key concern. Those forming a group should consider the following points: • Objectives Clarity of purpose: −−Why are you setting up a group? −−What do you expect the group to do? −−Do you understand the issue(s) that you plan to tackle and how to do so? • Group membership −−Who will join the group? −−How will you get women to join?

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Women and social action at the individual level −−Are people in the group they believe they joined? −−Is there agreement on the group’s aims? −−Is the group’s size compatible with its aims and objectives? • Group name What will you call the group? −−Depends on the group’s aims and identity. −−Can be difficult to work out. −−Should be ‘catchy’ and memorable. • Problem definition −−What problem is the group addressing? −−Who has defined it as a problem? −−How has the group redefined the problem? −−How does the group’s definition diverge from those of others? −−Who shares the group’s (re)definition of the problem? • Powers of the group −−What powers does the group have? −−What is the group for: show, advisory, action-oriented, independent, for example? • Decision making −−Is everyone involved in the decision-making processes? −−Will the group hold elections to elect an executive committee? −−Are the members of the executive committee accountable to the group? How? −−Are the roles of the executive committee clearly defined? −−Are the terms of the executive committee fixed? −−Are positions on the executive committee rotated? • Commitments expected of group members −−Time. −−Money (fees/dues to be included). −−Practical involvement (include fundraising, publicity, organising objectives) according to an agreed action plan. −−Involving people practically in the group’s activities is crucial in maintaining morale and sustaining the group. Activities should be meaningful to the individual concerned and limited to those to which they personally commit. Groups should not coerce people into contributing beyond their willingness to do so (Cook and Kirk, 1983).

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Women and community action • Group processes −−Progress may be slow. The group will ‘gel’ as individuals become comfortable with and trust one other. −−Be clear about the purpose of each meeting. −−Try to secure an early ‘success’ in the group’s activities to maintain morale (choose a subsidiary issue that can be dealt with quickly). −−Decide action priorities and note that these may change over time. −−Create a suitable group atmosphere: be serious, but have fun too. −−Promote egalitarian relationships. −−Involve all members in the group’s activities. −−Obtain accurate information for the group. −−Develop the group’s ‘fact bank’ and maintain up-to-date records. −−Know who the group is trying to influence, for example decision makers, and why. −−Decide the point and bases on which the group will form alliances with others and extend its demands. −−Create opportunities for gaining and sharing skills and knowledge. • Resources −−What resources does the group have? −−Which resources are internal to the group? −−Include individual skills such as research skills, campaigning skills, organising skills, writing, making posters, publicity skills, fundraising skills, analytical skills, public communication skills, computing and internet-usage skills (for action and understanding society). −−Which resources are external to the group? −−Include premises, personnel resources and material resources such as facilities, equipment and funds, but distinguish between what resources the group has already and which it needs to procure. −−What additional resources does the group need to obtain and from whom? −−Publicly provided resources such as premises, funds and publicity can be obtained from agencies including local authorities, social services departments and central government. −−Privately provided resources such as premises, funds and publicity can be obtained from charities, trusts, companies or voluntary organisations. These cover: -- Material resources: These include buildings, stationery, printing and duplicating facilities, films, videos, telephones, computers, office furniture and furnishings. -- Personnel: People are needed to write publicity and distribute it, hold meetings, organise people in groups, networks and campaigns.

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Women and social action at the individual level −−How will the group get these resources? −−How will the group obtain support from the public and other potential allies? • Action −−Whose attention is the group trying to attract? −−Which decisions or policies is the group trying to change? −−What needs to be done? −−When should it be done? −−How should it be done? −−By whom should it be done? −−How can the group learn from its experience? • Evaluation −−Monitor the group’s progress and evaluate it as an ongoing process.

Health issues provide a significant arena wherein women can explore profound links between the personal and political spheres at both individual and collective levels. Such connections can be hidden when health and illness are individualised and trivialised through the traditional processes for handling health issues in capitalist societies. These neglect the relevance of social factors that produce ill health among diverse social groups. In Britain, the Black Report (Townsend et  al, 1988) exposed class as a key variable in health outcomes, while Ahmad (1996) revealed the significance of ‘race’. Individuals can be tracked for various purposes; some factors affect individual stress levels. Today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses ankle monitors to keep track of (im)migrants in the USA (Long et al, 2018) and, theoretically, quickly remove those not entitled to remain. Territorial expressions of decline in longevity and health have been revealed in comparisons between rich and disadvantaged areas of a country. For instance, in the UK, life expectancy for men and women in London is ten years longer than in Glasgow (Arnett, 2014; Kentish, 2016). Overseas, the relationship between structural and personal factors became the focus of mass health campaigns – for example, immediately after its Revolution, China created the ‘barefoot doctor’ system (Horn, 1969; Sidel and Sidel, 1982), which covered poor people and addressed women’s health needs (Andors, 1983). Health inequalities have crept into China’s current more market-driven healthcare system (Grogan, 1995). In the Global South, Western philanthro-capitalists including Bill Gates have tackled children’s health needs and women’s maternity needs. These concerns are integral to

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meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2015–2030 which replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2000–2015. Black women’s activities have linked individual poor health with poverty. In America, the absence of a national healthcare scheme left them personally vulnerable because they lacked funds to purchase hospital health insurance or healthcare. Those who have purchased insurance have white administrators handling their reception into hospitals disbelieving their claims about cover and refusing admission. This reaction has caused untold suffering and sometimes death (Davis, 1989) among America’s 50 million uninsured people. President Barack Obama introduced what became termed ‘Obamacare’ to reduce the numbers of poor Americans lacking medical insurance. However, coverage remained incomplete, and his successor Donald Trump has pledged to eliminate it. Its removal would plunge poor people into a deeper nightmare of non-coverage from 2019 following the removal of Obamacare’s Individual Mandate through the Affordable Care Act 2018 when tax penalties are imposed on individuals lacking coverage (Mangan, 2018). Around 3.2  million could lose coverage under Trump’s proposals. In Britain, working-class women suffer from an ‘illness-promoting environment’, while middle-class women feature prominently in developing feminist self-help alternatives (Cochrane et al, 1982). In the Global South, women are exposed to appalling working conditions involving low pay, back-breaking detailed work, dangerous chemicals and poorly ventilated buildings. One thousand garment workers in the Rana Plaza garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh died in 2013 under appalling circumstances (BBC News, 2013). Feminist struggles over health matters continue, including demanding funding as a public resource available free to all at the point of need. Working-class women have played key roles in defending the NHS from public expenditure cuts, mounting campaigns in both communities and workplaces to protect public provision. Women workers, particularly nurses in the NHS, have demanded improved services and recognition of the value of their work through decent pay and conditions (Joyce et  al, 1987). UNISON now advocates strongly on these points, having won equal pay cases for women NHS workers in 2005 and 2013. Social care requires sustained longterm funding, not the short-term political fixes and ping-ponging characterising debates between politicians from diverse political parties. Both Conservative and Labour governments have failed to fund health and social care adequately, and ignored The Dilnot Report on the latter (Dilnot, 2011), affecting countless individual women reliant on pubic

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provisions. Raising public awareness of such concerns is crucial in feminist social action.

Consciousness-raising groups Consciousness-raising groups are another tool feminists use when working with women. These have enabled women to come together as women, share experiences by talking about their lives and organise to change them. Women have drawn upon personal experiences to understand the impact of gender oppression upon them and other women and uncover social causation (Morgan, 1970). Early in the women’s liberation movement, white middle-class women in consciousness-raising groups analysed their own experiences and concluded that gender oppression featured universally in women’s lives (hooks, 1984). Neglecting other social divisions through which oppression occurs, they subsumed the experience of all women under their own (see Freidan, 1963). Lesbian women, working-class women and black women have rejected these analyses (see Davis, 1981; Carby, 1982; Lorde, 1984; hooks, 1984; Amos and Parmar, 1984; Wilson and Weir, 1986) and highlighted differences arising from women’s sexual orientation, class, ‘race’, age and physical and mental impairment (Dominelli, 2002b). These show women’s experiences of oppression as complex, varied and intersectional (Crenshaw, 2012). Postmodern feminists have emphasised uniqueness in women’s experiences and questioned the relevance of the category ‘woman’ (Nicholson, 1990). Their insights suggest that sisterhood has to be worked for rather than be taken for granted. Nonetheless, women’s experiences of oppression as women has been crucial in redefining social problems to expose the gendered impact of social relations (Morgan, 1970); the social construction of gender (Dominelli, 2002a, 2002b); and the necessity for collective action to secure social change. Feminists brought women together in groups to discuss issues and raise consciousness about these. By sharing personal experiences, women have identified common problems (Dreifus, 1973). Seeing that they were experiencing similar difficulties in different circumstances enabled women in these groups to challenge views that blamed them and realise that their predicament had a social basis that they could interrogate and challenge. Continued discussion to understand their situations and develop strategies for changing these gave such groups a crucial role in fostering women’s confidence and self-esteem (Curno et al, 1982). These have empowered women to speak out publicly, share their stories and experiences, challenge accepted definitions of

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their problems and stereotypes about the passivity of women (South Wales Association of Tenants [SWAT], 1982) and take action to remedy their position. Women should not exaggerate the commonalities that they have identified during these sessions.

Box 3.4: Organising tips: forming consciousness-raising (CR) groups • Key features of consciousness-raising groups −−Woman-centredness: -- meeting with other women; -- listening to other women; -- sharing experiences, knowledge and skills with other women; -- empowering women to take action that endorses their capacities to take action. −−Small-sized groups. −−Redefining social problems from a feminist women-centred perspective that builds on individual women’s experiences. −−Providing women with support in confronting problems that face them individually and collectively. −−Promoting women’s confidence and strengths as women. −−Endorsing egalitarian relations and group dynamics. −−Developing feminist politics and collective approaches to problem-solving. • Organising consciousness-raising groups −−Finding women to join the group. −−Approaching women in their homes, places where they congregate, through personal contacts and networking, leafletting, posting signs, placing adverts in local papers, engaging in social media including blogs, and forming women’s caucuses in unions or other professional associations. −−Meeting in places easily accessible to women including disabled women. −−Encouraging men to provide supportive assistance including childminding to facilitate women’s participation. • Running a consciousness-raising meeting −−Timing meetings for when women can attend most easily. −−Providing any support services necessary for facilitating attendance, such as crèches, accessible rooms, refreshments suitable for vegetarians and those following religious requirements. −−Ascertaining the degree of structure and leadership needed for the meeting. Completely unstructured meetings may create their own structures and informal hierarchies creep in to distort group dynamics (Dreifus, 1973).

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Women and social action at the individual level Leadership roles should be considered in advance. Rotation among group members helps reduce the problem of hierarchy. −−Focusing on women-determined agendas. Having women decide the issues they wish to discuss beforehand will ensure that they consider matters they deem important and increase their participation in the meeting. −−Establishing egalitarian group processes. Sensitivity to privileges, differential access to resources and other forms of inequality between women, and finding ways of overcoming these (Barker, 1986). −−Sensitivity to differences between women, especially those based on social divisions such as class, ‘race’, age and sexual orientation (Lorde, 1984; hooks, 1984). −−Sensitivity to other women’s difficulties in expressing themselves and supporting them to overcome these (Dreifus, 1973). −−Sharing skills and knowledge. −−Having open discussions. −−Not blaming women for their oppression. −−Formulating a plan of action. −−Linking personal experience to how society structures social relations. −−Focusing on concrete experiences. −−Using women’s anger constructively. −−Redefining personal problems as social issues. −−Focusing on action which can be undertaken to solve social problems on a collective basis.

Conclusion Feminist action on the individual front can supplement collective action by enabling women to respond to their emotional and personal health needs. Feminist community activists tackle health issues to challenge medical expertise and insist that its knowledge becomes freely available to redress power imbalances between professionals and the people they serve individually or as service user groups. The objectives of empowering women to look after their physical and mental health and shift interventions to the preventative domain have been critical dimensions in such interventions. The ‘personal is political’ is meaningless unless interventions are experienced as personally liberating alongside improving group well-being. Feminist therapy and counselling, and the alternative health facilities feminists have developed, have made valued contributions to women’s wellbeing. However, some campaigns have revealed the fragility of feminist gains in the health arena.

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Introduction Women have a lengthy history of struggling for gender parity, but achievements fall short of women’s aspirations. Thus, feminist social action continues to promote women’s well-being holistically throughout society. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reflect the international community’s commitment to realising gender equality by 2030. Time will tell whether these objectives will materialise globally. Feminist social action has been a primary vehicle for changing gendered relations. Redefining social problems has been central to this, reconfiguring private concerns as public issues for society to address, thus eschewing views that personal woes are best solved by individuals or forgotten. Feminists have targeted public policies, legislation, policymakers and public indifference to highlight women’s stories of private misery; demonstrate that some experiences can resonate with women everywhere; and demand social change. Feminist social activists did not wait for others to produce new provisions. Women with personal experiences of issues embarked on actions to develop alternative services that were created by and run for women. In this chapter, I focus on examples of feminist social action that brought women and supporters together in groups and collaborative networks to change social attitudes about men’s and women’s roles in society, secure women-friendly legislation and develop alternative facilities for women. Acknowledging that the ‘personal is political’ and the ‘political is personal’ assists in examining feminist groups, networks and processes through which feminist community workers identify problems to be addressed, how women organise collectively and resolve difficulties successfully by engaging women in community action. I consider feminist campaigns that highlight techniques and forms of organisation for overcoming isolation and securing changes in matters important to women in Chapter Five, although there are 77

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overlaps between these and the forms of social organisation that this chapter covers. Feminist groups and networks utilise social action to address women’s equality in all areas of life. Feminists have a vision of a better world that would materialise when the oppression of a majority of the population, although often deemed a minority, ends. Experience in the field has revealed that this goal is more difficult to achieve than envisaged as it is insufficient simply to change women’s social position. Increasingly it has become clear that the roles and status of both men and women need to be altered to realise egalitarian social relations for all. The interdependence of men, women and children requires changes in all their lives to ensure that all individuals enjoy social justice and active citizenship. Interdependency and connections between people and the physical environment mean that human wellbeing requires a healthy planet. Thus, change today must encompass the entire social and physical world, even if it begins with women’s concerns and labour.

Changing the world for women, men and children by beginning with women Feminist groups and networks take women’s gender-based oppression as the starting point for challenging patriarchal social relations through feminist community action. Feminist groups and networks have become vehicles of social action that create spaces wherein women promote their human, political, economic and social rights. Furthering these objectives has created innovative community-based actions. By participating in feminist groups and networks, women previously uninvolved in public affairs acquire confidence and the skills needed to challenge hegemonic definitions of realities and confront powerful people. For instance, women in the Programme for the Reform of the Law on Soliciting (PROS) ran publicity campaigns that debunked hardened police chiefs’ definition of prostitution as a social evil by redefining it as a job with valuable social usefulness (McLeod, 1982). This claim was not accepted by everyone, but PROS successfully provided an alternative view of prostitution and redefined an allegedly personal problem as a social issue. State concern over extreme overcrowding in British prisons helped make PROS decriminalisation initiative acceptable and reduce public anxieties. Women’s interests have come to the fore, because feminists and their supporters have organised to ensure this happens. Feminist social action in promoting women’s well-being has demonstrated

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that children’s and men’s welfare is poorly served by current social arrangements. Intimate partner violence has been exposed as damaging the emotional existence of children, women and men. Redefining domestic violence has highlighted the significance of safeguarding children’s rights and welfare. Feminists’ work on domestic violence has underlined the urgency of challenging male stereotypes and providing men with support networks for them to transgress their oppressing and oppressive roles (Dominelli, 1982). Feminist activities have redefined private troubles as social ones and secured other forms of support, such as refuges and policy changes (Wistow et al, 2017). The wide-ranging nature of feminist support networks enhances the likelihood that social changes engendered by their endeavours will encompass more than women’s concerns. Expanding support networks lessen the impact of feminist challenges and, instead of transforming social relations, piecemeal reforms leave the status quo intact. For example, American feminists discovered that changing legislation regarding abortion undermined women’s interests when doctors amassed enormous profits by performing abortions privately (Frankfort, 1972). Their clinics turned abortion into a commodity and initiated medical treatments that left women feeling powerless and exploited (Worcester and Whatley, 1988). Moreover, those opposed to women’s reproductive rights have launched vociferous and violent attacks on these gains to introduce counter-legislation. Women using these clinics or working in them have been harassed, threatened and some killed by those declaring themselves the ‘pro-life’ opposition that pits itself against the ‘pro-choice’ group (Shugerman, 2018). Men endorse both. Yet Eire, a country known for its Catholicism, voted to repeal Article 8 of its constitution in a 2018 referendum to give Irish women the right to terminate a pregnancy. Feminists and their supporters ran a campaign that focused on women’s human rights, dignity and right to safe abortions in their homeland, a narrative that contrasted with that of Irish women going oversea to access safe abortions, for example in England. Privatising public provisions gives private firms opportunities for making substantial profits. In Britain, trade in public services is estimated to net private sector providers £30 billion yearly. Health and education services representing 13% of GDP in the UK provide ripe pickings for private entrepreneurs. In privatising public assets through its connections to private business, the state underplays women’s role in creating their own resources to meet unsatisfied needs. Some feminist changes have permeated hierarchical institutions including social services departments, residential homes and probation

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services to challenge patriarchal organisational structures and practices (McLeod, 1982; Dominelli, 1991a). Thus, the National Women’s Aid Federation’s (NWAF, now Women’s Aid) work on domestic violence compelled voluntary agencies to provide resources including refuges for abused women and exposed social services’ relative neglect and lack of understanding of the needs of women recovering from domestic violence. These practices contrasted with the authoritarianism infusing state provision. NWAF’s stance on self-determination and democratic decision making for women living in refuges promoted feminist practices in local authority refuges which were later closed under public expenditure cuts. NWAF refuges have shown that women stigmatised as service users can organise themselves if given the opportunity and resources (Binney et al, 1981). Feminists joined NWAF campaigns, while others developed resources to change violent men’s behaviours (Dominelli, 1990). Community workers, social workers and probation officers became involved in feminist social action and developed internal support groups and networks among colleagues and sympathetic managerial staff within their employing authorities. Such support furthered feminist objectives and eased the sense of isolation and despair workers have felt when facing organisational intransigence and resistance to demands for change (McLeod, 1982).

Challenging medical expertise Feminists’ challenges to the medical profession through groups linked to the health movement have been considerable. They have questioned: patriarchal doctor–patient relationships; the skewing of medical services towards curative care that treats symptoms and promotes high-technology hospital care that leaves patients feeling powerless; the distortion of health service delivery by the interests of multinational drug companies seeking profits; the abuse of women’s bodies, particularly those of black women, for experimental purposes and eugenicist population control; and restriction of medical knowledge to ‘professionals’ (Bryan et al, 1985; Sidel, 1986; Spallone and Steinberg, 1987; Steinberg, 1997; Nittle, 2018). Challenging such realities now encompasses the internet and involves diverse populations (Broom, 2005). Childbirth and gynaecological examinations have been key battle sites for feminists and medical professionals concerned about providing women with the best healthcare. The medical establishment’s responses to these challenges have been discouraging. American doctors took

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feminists to court for illegally practising medicine by encouraging women to carry out their own gynaecological examinations (Ruzek, 1978). Feminist groups massively defended this practice across the USA and ensured that the courts accepted their case. Feminist therapists promoting self-help in healing women suffering the effects of sexual abuse have also faced lawsuits (Bass and Davis, 1990). In Britain, senior hospital obstetrician Wendy Savage was dismissed in 1985 for incompetence after her male colleagues objected to women being given a greater say in the birth process (Savage and Leighton, 1986). By organising direct action, including mass protests, conferences and a defence fund, feminists played key roles in her reinstatement and defended her right to practise sensitively to empower women wanting control over their bodies. These examples show the vulnerability of feminist challenges to traditional medical practice, and the importance of a mass movement to underpin individual woman’s initiatives and launch their defence. These also illustrate the intensely political nature of interactions involving feminists and health providers. Since the late 1970s, struggles over health have been both protracted and widely supported. This has promoted the formation of campaigns around health at work alongside the individual level. In England, campaigns have included resisting the closure of Hounslow Hospital; averting the closure of Elisabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital (EGA) – then one of three women-only hospitals in the country; terminating the use of private pay-beds in NHS hospitals; exposing the inordinate use of drugs to treat women’s depression; and asserting women’s right to control their own fertility and the healthcare associated with that (Rosenthal, 1983). These issues are not one-off struggles because they are constantly contested. Since 2005, closures of women’s facilities continue while private provisions have flourished. Community activists can take comfort from the organisational achievements of these campaigns. Individuals who have never before participated in direct action have done so to defend essential parts of the welfare state. For example, the Hounslow and Elisabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital campaigns laid the groundwork for a broad-based commitment to save these facilities in London. The EGA eventually closed in 1988, although an EGA wing survives as part of the UCLHNHS (University College London Hospital – National Health Service) Hospital Trust. Professional workers and manual workers combined forces to oppose government policy by occupying buildings, demonstrating, petitioning the health authorities, writing petitions and lobbying MPs. They secured financial and material resources for patients left within their care, despite intense coercion by employers

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and management. Trade unionists rallied in support of their activities, although the 1980s Thatcherite legislation curbed trade unionists’ industrial action by abolishing ‘sympathy’ strikes and ‘political’ campaigning. This has curtailed widespread shows of solidarity, a legal position retained by New Labour and subsequent governments. Today, pressure also comes through the internet, for example 38 Degrees and Avaaz, organising mass campaigns to protect public services. Health campaigns became springboards for national action defending services. The Fightback Campaign was organised nationally and locally against Thatcherite public expenditure cuts. By promoting direct action, the Fightback Campaign promulgated consciousness-raising endeavours through newspapers and films utilised by community groups fighting local battles. These stimulated discussions about the health services people really wanted; how health rather than sickness could become a top priority; and how service users could influence decision-making processes. This made people aware that alternatives to existing provisions can and do exist. A major weakness of the Fightback Campaign was that while it drew heavily on feminist ideals and practice in the women’s health movement and literature, women were excluded from its higher decision-making echelons because men dominated the trade union movement and left-wing political parties. Another important feature of the Fightback Campaign and women’s health movement operating throughout the country was the raising of political questions concerning the health agenda. These challenged the existing medical hierarchy dominated by male professionals at the apex of a medical care pyramid that was predicated on the subordination of women staff and patients (Doyal, 1979). Feminists questioned the relevance of high-technology medicine for the majority of people’s illnesses, and the usefulness of a service concentrating on illness rather than health (Ruzek, 1978; Doyal, 1983; Belluz, 2018). For breast cancer, this has resulted in regular screenings through the NHS and a questioning of the use of invasive chemotherapy in all cases (Khan et al, 2002; Masoud and Pagès, 2017). Finally, feminists demanded that consumers participate in determining how services are organised, provided and financed. Such participation anticipated a democratic health service responsible to the needs of people and emphasising prevention rather than cure. This dream remains to be fulfilled. Achievements to date have been mixed. The health service was cut savagely under the Tories (Iliffe, 1985), including using private pay-beds and closing NHS services. Many facilities were retained as a result of local struggles that women waged. The struggle continues, despite the terrain shifting somewhat when New Labour released

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funds under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to encourage private– public partnerships (PPPs) and quasi-markets as it poured more money into the NHS overall. The market’s role expanded under the guise of enhancing consumer choice. Privatisation of the NHS continues apace as subsequent Tory-headed governments have starved the NHS of funds despite rising demands, and cut training places – many doctors and nurses trained in the European Union (EU) have departed due to the Brexit vote (Matthews-King, 2017; Campbell, 2018). User fees imposed for once free services, such as prescription drugs and eye tests, have risen under both Labour and Tory-led governments. Prescription fees have risen from being nil for all drugs in the early 1970s to £8.80 per item in 2018. This penalises poor people most, and hits individual women on low pay badly because they choose which item they can afford if they belong to a nonexempted group (Collinson, 2018). User fees play an important psychological role in normalising private provisions and preparing people to accept the withdrawal of publicly funded services. Budget cuts reinforce ‘economics as ideology’ and subvert discussions about what kind of NHS people really want and how should it be financed – a crucial question in determining political priorities. Prime Minister Theresa May promised such debates, but by late 2018 these had not materialised. Struggles over health offer useful lessons on organisational problems overcome by successful campaigns. Much remains to be achieved to provide woman-run public health facilities free at the point of need. Insights from Terri Schiavo’s campaign The voices of people with disabilities, including disabled women, have limited space in medical discourses. The new technologies that successfully prolong life have become central to debates about disabled people’s social status. Medical leaps in tackling age-old diseases capture public attention in support of technical advances that promise cures. These are simultaneously framed in disablist terms, for example legally aborting a deformed foetus. Testing to avoid disabled children being born is routine and continues under the new reproductive technologies including in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). Disabled adults have their rights to decision making removed if medics decide that they cannot take these themselves. Rights assigned to the nearest kin to protect the interests of the person concerned pose the question: is this guarantee sufficient? Terri Schiavo’s case in the USA raises this dilemma. Its resolution shows the complexities in decisions about what services

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are accessed by disabled people and who decides for them when they cannot. Terri had been in a coma for 15 years and answering this question for her involved costly litigation between her parents and erstwhile husband. Opposed by her parents, Terri’s spouse supported switching off her life support machines on the grounds that this is what Terri would have wanted. The ethical and legal questions were determined by courts that supported the husband, despite campaigns to maintain Terri’s life mechanically. The Disability Convention used the internet to lobby on Terri’s behalf and argued that the medical responses reflected a disablist society’s values and norms. Campaigns in her favour led the American Congress to agree with Terri’s parents. These campaigns ultimately failed. Terri’s husband was given the right to represent her interests and her life support machine was switched off. Was this what Terri wanted? We cannot know, although Terri’s smiling face from her hospital bed suggested she enjoyed whatever elements of life she knew and understood. In the conflict between Terri’s parents and her spouse, no one raised the question of whether he should occupy that role. Although still married to Terri, he had a long-standing relationship with another woman and had had children with her. Would Terri have refused him the right to decide what happened to her if she knew of this relationship? Terri, had she known, might have wanted a divorce from him for these actions. Had this occurred, he would not have been a husband holding power to decide whether to end her life. This point was not raised in public debates about her condition. Possibly, Terri’s parents as Catholics would not have wanted the marriage terminated. Another neglected issue was the situation’s gendered dynamics. To what extent was an able-bodied maledominated health profession colluding with an able-bodied man to decide what happened to a disabled woman? Was this another example of health technologies granting men control over women’s bodies (Stanworth, 1988; Steinberg, 1997)? The medical profession has an ignominious history of sterilising black women and aborting their foetuses without consent on eugenicist and other racist grounds (Shakespeare, 2010; Nittle, 2018).

Characteristics of feminist groups, networks and campaigns Feminist campaigns are covered in greater detail in Chapter Five. In this section, I cover general techniques that apply to feminist groups, networks and campaigns. Redefining personal problems as public 84

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concerns and mobilising around these is common to all feminist organising, and features significantly in the feminist political landscape and feminist community work. As major forms of feminist collective organisation, feminist groups, networks and campaigns are fluid entities structured around groups of women attempting to change particular aspects of their reality when eradicating gender oppression. Feminist campaigns are normally issue-based and involve large numbers of women in direct action, including demonstrations and mass movements. Groups and networks may be localised affairs whereby a group of women offer each other support and seek specific resources for their cause, for example Southwark Asian Women’s Aid for black women (Malek, 1985). These may raise their game and scale up to the national or international levels, as has occurred around endeavours focusing on domestic violence, the Women’s Peace Movement (Cook and Kirk, 1983) and the #MeToo campaign. Feminist networks can be ad hoc support groups that enable women to connect with each other. Sometimes the distinction between a campaign and a network may become blurred. For example, the National Women’s Aid Federation has become a campaigning organisation which has a national network of refuges for women. Feminist groups, campaigns and networks are part of a process to transform social relations that begins by redefining social problems.

Collective organisation The women’s movement consists of diverse initiatives ranging from a woman writing about her own experience or a couple of women getting together to talk about their lives to larger groups and mass campaigns organised around community issues. This provides feminism with a richness of organisational forms, while increasing its fragmented appearance. Fragmentation may be a weakness when organising women nationally and internationally (Wilson and Weir, 1986). At local levels, it provides strengths that help women create spaces for safely pursuing their interests (Segal, 1987). Feminist community workers have utilised women’s individual experiences of oppression to identify issues to address through collective action. By bringing women together in groups, feminist community workers have worked with women to highlight the structural dimensions of oppression, redefine private troubles as social problems and undermine individualising and pathologising approaches to women’s concerns replicated in traditional community work practice. Crucial to feminists’ challenge was to undo the division of

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social problems into private matters requiring individual or family solutions and public ones in which formal state and private agencies intervene. Tackling the structural nature of women’s oppression exposes the socially transformative potential of feminist collective social action, when accompanied by widespread support for feminist goals. This gives feminist community workers the enormous task of raising consciousness among the broader public including non-feminist women and men. Organising collectively has given women courage to speak out, validate personal knowledge, and articulate their views and suffering. Violence against women in the home exemplifies a key phenomenon deemed a private matter until feminist campaigns of the 1970s revealed that the definition of domestic violence as a private issue legitimised its occurrence, blamed women who were caught within its web, and left women who wished to escape it without access to the resources necessary for this to happen (Scottish Women’s Aid Federation, 1980). Refuge workers facilitate access to education, training, housing and jobs. Feminist groups, networks and campaigns have made domestic violence a social issue and established a network of refuges to support women leaving violent partners. Feminist analyses of domestic violence have revealed how social definitions of masculinity and femininity presuppose women’s subordinate position and underwrite the acceptability of men using force to control women. This makes every member of society responsible both for the perpetuation of domestic violence and its elimination. Feminist approaches have borne fruit in that social policies view domestic violence as a crime of assault (Mullender, 1997). Feminist insights have underpinned the development of resources for men engaging in nurturing relationships with others (Dominelli, 1990; Pringle, 1995). Feminists have undermined the view of childcare as a private task undertaken by women in their home. I am not saying that feminists are demanding that society acknowledges children as a social responsibility and grants children rights of their own rather than seeing them as puppets parents dangle on a man’s string. Feminists also reject the state acting as an instrument that scrutinises family life. Social resources should endorse unstigmatised and stimulating childcare for all children and ensure that childcare ceases being the sole responsibility of women (David and New, 1985). The National Childcare Campaign (NCC), unsuccessful in securing publicly funded child-centred childcare for all children in Britain, enabled women to connect low status in the home with low pay in the workforce (NCC, 1984, 1985). Governments have provided limited childcare for priority groups of

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women without changing women’s overall responsibility for childcare. Employers assume women will work for short periods before leaving paid employment to have children and deny them opportunities to update skills, train or do more prestigious work (Aldred, 1981; Armstrong, 1984). Women continue to face dismissal for becoming pregnant (Hinsliff, 2004), as Nicola McNamee did in 2014 and those on ‘zero hours contracts’ in 2017 (Chapman, 2017).

Identifying which problems feminists address Women utilise their lived experiences of gender oppression to transform private woes into social concerns. No areas of life, private or public, lie outside feminists’ remit. Feminists have tackled issues ranging from physical and sexual assaults against women in the home to the militarisation of the world (Davis, 1989) and its environmental degradation (Mies and Shiva, 1993; Dominelli, 2012b). The specificities of gender oppression suggest that the matters tackled vary according to the context and the women involved. Some problems have a global dimension and foreshadow an internationalisation of gender oppression that can block women’s progress in eliminating it, for example trafficking in women. Feminists have used international networks to obtain equality including support from UN agencies and criminal justice systems. Common goals like eradicating gendered exploitation and upholding women’s rights link women with different origins, resources and expectations to ‘law and order’ professionals (Gunnarsson and Svensson, 2016). Feminists actively engage women to create history. Women are neither robots dancing to men’s tunes nor passive victims in historic processes. Feminists have described the impact of material circumstances on women’s oppression and obstruction to their liberation. Women remain with violent men because they realise that without adequate housing and an income of their own they are vulnerable outside such relationships. In redefining social problems, feminists have revealed women’s resistance to oppression in countless ways. Some are public, some private, some effective, some ineffective. Even within violent relationships, women actively take steps to minimise the violence perpetrated against them. Trying not to annoy their partner or overtly challenge his views form part of a strategy to secure their safety. Jennings (2018), studying violence among poor women including sex workers in Bangladesh, found that men and women living in their own specific communities condoned the normalcy of such violence, even when attempting to thwart it. The lack of collective

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action to challenge these oppressive relations in a locality-specific, culturally relevant manner prevents such endeavours from producing transformative change. Similar difficulties are encountered by women experiencing same-gender violence. Important differences that hinder attempts to seek help include the fear of being ‘outed’ if not ‘out’ already; being disbelieved by others; the shame and stigma attached to being assaulted by another woman (McClennen, 2005). Eschewing dogma is a central tenet of feminist theory and action. Women developing forms of organisation best suited to their purposes facilitate adherence to this principle. Issues raised by the Working Women’s Charter (Wilson and Weir, 1986; Segal, 1987) readily attracted support from a cross-section of women. Others have required more sustained action before becoming popularly recognised, for example women’s right to express being sexually attracted to other women publicly (Hunt, 1990). Some concerns first addressed by a small group of women relying on other women to join their efforts have subsequently achieved widespread support. This occurred for feminist social workers who had to overcome societal denial of child sexual abuse while tackling it (see Bell, 1988; Bass and Davis, 1990). The feminist movement has been castigated for a universalism deemed the property of white middle-class feminists but applied to other women (hooks, 1984; Bryan et al, 1985). This has impacted negatively upon feminist social action and forms of organisation involving diverse women. Women’s community struggles reveal that feminist activities have been undertaken by various groups of women, often working with others like them, such as working-class, middleclass, black, white, older, disabled, lesbian, queer or transsexual. Each group has highlighted and devoted its energies to different issues. One group’s definitions of and approaches to problems could alienate others (Wilson and Weir, 1986), for example white feminists’ call for ‘abortion on demand’. This alienated black women whose problems were forced abortions and sterilisation (hooks, 1984; Bryan et  al, 1985). Over time, contentious dialogues among women produced a more acceptable redefinition of the problem as a woman’s right to control her own fertility in the manner most appropriate for her, and campaigns against sterilisation abuse (Sidel, 1986). The propensity for feminist action tackling one problem to uncover others exposes the reflexivity of the feminist movement (Dominelli and McLeod, 1989) and the significance of critical reflection. Feminists are cautioned not to minimise or ignore the struggles of women lacking access to the media and publishers (Hunt, 1990). Appreciating this pitfall is vital to not devaluing or making invisible

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white and black working-class women’s struggles for a better life. In the era of mass communications, women keyed into communication networks can define the terrain of the women’s movement simply because their concerns make better media copy. The efforts of women lacking access to such resources are unsung. Nonetheless, their change endeavours are known in their local communities. This power imbalance can be reshaped somewhat through social media, which is accessible to more women (individuals and groups), and lacks traditional media’s gatekeepers. Examples of the invisibility of black and white working-class women’s struggles include black feminist struggles to survive; secure decent housing, childcare provisions and equality at work; and remove racist immigration policies and practices. Women cross diverse social boundaries to support one another in surviving disasters, for example women cooking meals for entire communities during the 1984 Miners’ Strike in the UK, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China, and the 2010 Chilean earthquake. Black and white working-class feminists have engaged trade unions and other workplace-based organisations to gain rights in waged employment, while simultaneously challenging their racist and sexist nature. During these struggles, they connected their differentiated positions in both the workforce and community. Significant struggles for black women seeking employment equality have included Mansfield Hosiery and Grunwick. Here, they drew heavily on the community support networks that they had nurtured over the years to sustain them in protracted battles with recalcitrant employers. And black women used community pressure to shift the trade union movement from its sexist and racist positions. In the Mansfield Hosiery Strike, the trade union concerned was a major obstacle to black women achieving equality in waged work (CIR, 1973; Anitha et al, 2018).

Women organising across diverse boundaries Feminist networks facilitate processes whereby women contact other women for support. Networking, as a type of formal or informal linkages, allows women to remain connected through either loose structures or formal associations. Feminist networking may simply involve women asking other women they know to join them in examining an issue to make sense of it (Curno et al, 1982). These women then ask other women to come along and a loose network is formed. This technique of women reaching out to other women through women they know can be called ‘snowballing’. This approach

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adds a personal dimension to networking, making women feel more comfortable when discussing issues in such groups than if facing strangers. Establishing a trusting and relaxed atmosphere in which women feel free to be frank is essential in sharing their experiences and in forming and extending the social capital contained within the group or network. More formal network approaches include having a constitution and elected officers. Women usually advertise meetings in places frequented by women, such as laundrettes, doctors’ surgeries and washrooms. Women may print leaflets asking other women to join their group in particular activities. They may use community newspapers for feature articles on their work or social media including twitter and blogs to invite women to join them. Their oppression as women can link group members together by facilitating empathy with other women’s plight whether or not they share similar experiences (Dreifus, 1973). Empathy may fall short of truly understanding specific oppressions and feminists desist from speaking on behalf of other women. Women’s participation in meetings is squeezed between domestic commitments and waged work. Some women run considerable risks to participate in feminist social action, often surmounting considerable hostility from men partners who begrudge their involvement in feminist activities. Women may require support in handling conflict within intimate relationships (South Wales Association of Tenants, 1982). The following account portrays the fears of a woman who occupied the Afan Council Offices: Ceri started to cry. She said she didn’t want to go home but she’d got to. She hadn’t told her husband she was going to the sit-in. She’d just told him she was going to a meeting. She said that she hadn’t dared tell him she was going to stay out all night (let alone three nights!) because he would have stopped her going. Now, she thought, he’s bound to beat her up. (South Wales Association of Tenants, 1982: 25) Ceri’s husband surprises her by admiring her stance because she had appeared on TV. The episode forced this women’s group to reappraise its work, tactics and achievements and reconsider the link between personal relations and political activism. It also highlighted the integration of theory and practice and learning from personal experience. Fear of the consequences of taking action also arises when employers undermine women who tackle workplace inequalities and sexist practices.

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Feminist groups take account of women’s domestic responsibilities by providing childminding facilities and timetabling meetings appropriately. Making connections between the different spheres within which women operate is crucial to engaging women in feminist groups, campaigns and networks. Services that ease women’s participation in feminist activities indicate adherence to the feminist principle that ‘the personal is political’. Reducing power differentials between women and encouraging more women to attend and contribute to a group’s agenda are important dimensions in redefining power differentials between women to transcend such concerns. Egalitarianism and valuing women’s personal knowledge permeate all group relationships and interactions. Feminists ensure that women’s experiential knowledge is appreciated and celebrated alongside professional expertise. Feminists have reduced the power that emanates from formal positions within groups by eliminating powerful roles through flatter decision-making structures and sharing tasks so that all women gain the relevant skills and no woman holds a post long enough to form a clique that bolsters individual power (Tyneside Rape Crisis Centre Collective, 1982). Women become empowered by sharing knowledge with each other. Reducing inegalitarian relationships within groups can be difficult in pursuing equality. Feminist awareness of the ‘false equality trap’ (Barker, 1986) avoids the illusion of equality while reproducing practices of inequality by assuming that all women have similar experiences of oppression, are at the same starting point, have access to the same resources and can participate in all actions. The false equality trap normalises all women within the hegemonic feminine experience of white middle-class women (Dominelli, 2002a). Hierarchical relationships can: creep into feminist organisations. Working-class women have complained that processes organised by middleclass women favour more articulate women familiar with expressing themselves verbally (Finch, 1983; Davis, 1988). Middle-class women have access to resources … denied working-class women. Money engenders hierarchy by excluding women unable to purchase items. Money creates a hierarchy that gives middle-class women a voice whilst denying white and black working-class women theirs. This is illustrated by feminist academic conferences that charge high fees and prevent women with low incomes from joining them. (Dominelli, 2006: 118)

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Having sliding scale fees does not solve this problem because poor women cannot afford the travel, accommodation and subsistence costs. Their voices are marginalised, if not totally excluded, as occurred at the Fourth International Congress on Women at Hunter College in New York. It charged between $US200 and $US275 in conference fees alone. The 1995 Beijing Conference on Women illustrated that high costs excluded poor women and privileged attendance by betteroff women from each country, leading to their overrepresentation among delegates. On local levels, high transportation costs inhibit poor women from participating in feminist activities. Middle-class women establish inclusivity by subsidising working-class women’s participation in groups by providing transportation, and paying for telephone calls and stationery (Torkington, 1981). In sharing resources, women utilise their ingenuity, persistence and organisational skills to reinforce solidarity and ‘sociability’ in supporting others (Daniels, 1985). Feminist groups, campaigns and networks feature strongly in the women’s health movement. Women’s groups share medical knowledge to reduce power hierarchies derived from doctors’ control of medical knowledge, which if accessible to patients would facilitate their adopting a more active role in their treatment (Ruzek, 1978; Doyal, 1983; Foster, 1989). Many feminist innovations have been incorporated into the NHS, such as Well-Women Clinics and midwives in hospitals. Feminist demands for preventative medical care have been partially adopted, including breast screening, cervical screening and access to the morning-after pill. Feminist groups have organised around social policies that affect women’s everyday lives and demonstrated that ‘the political is personal’. For example, social security regulations including the British ‘cohabitation rule’ and American ‘man about the house rule’ have assumed women’s financial dependency on men (Land, 1976; Sidel, 1986). In England, Special Claims Squads (SCS) attempted to force single-parent women in contact with men to become financially dependent on them by intimidating women into dropping social security claims. This prompted feminists to organise in defence of women’s right to their own income. The Women’s Right to Income Group challenged SCS activities by redefining the problem as that of ensuring women’s right to an independent income (Torkington, 1981). Rather than eliminating women’s financial dependency on men, changes in the British social security legislation of 1986 shifted the problem to enforcing dependency within the family by aggregating men’s and women’s incomes and holding them responsible for each other and their children. In 1993, the Child Support Agency endorsed

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women’s dependency on men through the back door (Chunn et al, 2007), a position retained by its successor, the Child Maintenance Service, formed in 2012. These state agencies required women on benefits to declare the paternity of children to compel fathers to pay maintenance even when a relationship had ended in violence and the woman wished to terminate all contact. Women experienced such requirements as intimidatory. These policies reveal that while the personal is political, the political is personal, and depict how public (state) patriarchy reinforces private patriarchy. These outcomes arose from the anti-feminist backlash and failure of the ‘Disaggregation Now’ campaign whereby feminists demanded women’s right to an independent income rather than having theirs integrated within the family’s because women have less access to familial and neoliberal resources than men. The state’s response resisted women’s demands for change while ignoring their lesser access to socalled ‘family’ resources. The 1986 Social Security Act allowed women access to welfare benefits in their own right. But it removed 16- to 18-year-olds’ right to access social security independently by insisting that families support them, a provision that created difficulties for young people having troubled relationships with their parents or not living with them. And it discounts their poverty and lesser access to resources within families. Parents are not obliged to provide resources through an extended dependent childhood, which for those remaining in higher education can be age 25. Poor children are adversely affected by means-tested initiatives.

Organising aids, techniques and tips Feminists organising women in communities uphold principles of social justice, equality, women’s control over their lives, interdependence and democratic decision making. These concentrate feminists’ energies on flat hierarchies; sharing skills and knowledge with other women; acquiring and retaining control of their organisations; building women’s confidence; reducing conflict between workers and users of facilities; and developing problem-solving strategies that yield consensual ‘win–win’ solutions (Brandwein, 1987). Alongside redefining social problems, feminist groups, networks and campaigns centre the processes whereby issues are tackled and relationships that community workers establish with community group members. Intragroup dynamics and consciousness-raising techniques were covered in Chapter Three. Overleaf, I consider the principles, techniques and skills used in organising women. These

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provide organising tips for social workers and community workers of both genders to devise practices consistent with feminist organisational principles when reaching out to women. Organising women, whether in groups, networks or campaigns requires specific organisational skills to mobilise people; generate support; gather information to identify issues; present cases to others; procure material and human resources for a group, network or campaign; and ensure that action remains under women’s control. Implementing these tasks effectively involves organisational, political, communicative and interpersonal know-how.

Box 4.1: Organising tips: support groups and alliances Forming support groups and alliances to implement strategic actions requires a women’s group to: • define and agree the strategy and accompanying action plans; • identify required resources; • access appropriate support; • seek groups/individuals willing to provide resources and support; • decide whether external support is necessary; • achieve the compromises required to obtain this support; • determine the timeframe for acquiring and holding this support. Resources required in implementing an action plan • What resources are required? −−personnel; −−material including finances; −−organisational. • Where can you obtain these resources? −−group; −−supporters; −−public agencies; −−commercial bodies; −−others. • How much money is required to obtain these resources? • For what period of time are these resources required? Running facilities for women • What kind of facility is needed? • What are the aims of the facility? −−What do community workers hope to achieve?

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Women and social action: group activities and networks −−What do service users want to achieve? -- Confidence and self-esteem. -- Autonomy for women and the capacity to stand up for their rights. -- Services that meet the needs of different groups of women, for example, black women, lesbian women, older women, disabled women, women suffering from mental ill health. −−What does the group hope to achieve in its interaction with the public? -- Use consciousness-raising, political education, videos and animation techniques to change attitudes about and behaviour towards women. • Who will make decisions in the group and how? −−Distinguish between collective decisions and individual ones. −−Develop ways of combating hierarchy and promoting equality. −−Endorse democratic decision making and consensus building. −−Adopt policies that do not discriminate against other women, for example black women, lesbian women, older women, disabled women, women suffering from mental ill health. • Keep records of the facility’s activities, resources, funds, expenditures. • What facilities will be available to women? • Where are these facilities located? • Who will have access to the facility? −−Access by users, workers and those they invite. −−Protection for users and workers (very important for refuges). −−Consider access (or not) by men. −−Ensure that the facility is accessible to women with disabilities, and meets fire, building, health, safety, equalities and other regulations. −−Ensure that people using these facilities relate to other users in antioppressive ways. • Who will be the service users of the facility? −−How will they find out about the facility? −−Will they self-refer or be referred by others? −−How will they be involved in running the facility? • What skills sharing, formal advice services, professional services and educative functions will the facility offer service users? −−What support services will the facility offer women? -- Consider childminding provisions, recreational services, meeting rooms, privacy within the facility. −−What training opportunities, housing, employment and other services for women will be provided within/outside the facility? -- Who will provide these? -- Who will access these? -- How will they be accessed? -- Who will pay for them?

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Women and community action • How will the facility be funded, repaired and maintained? • What attitudes and policies will the facility adopt towards male visitors? −−For example, excluding violent partners from refuges may be necessary to protect women from further assaults, but it may conflict with women’s wish to develop future relationships with them, or enable their children to do so. • What relationships will the facility develop with other agencies in the voluntary, state and commercial sectors? • What support does the group expect from the public to: −−target the groups it intends to reach? −−identify women and men sympathetic to their cause? −−consider what contributions can be made by political organisations and parties especially women’s sections, women’s groups, feminist and nonfeminist community groups, labour organisations, environmental groups, women sharing the experiences of the group setting up the facility and other groups. • Ensure that relationships with supporters do not endanger egalitarian group processes and dynamics in a facility by ceding control to them. • Methods of reaching the public include leafleting, brochures, newspapers, public meetings, established media coverage (television, radio, newspapers), the internet and social media including dedicated webpages, twitter, blogs, articles, lectures, and direct action – demonstrations, lobbying, squatting and occupations. • Maintaining group morale is a continuous consideration.

Public meetings Community activists include public meetings in their repertoire to explain actions more widely to those unaware of the group’s existence. Such gatherings can convey information to others, mobilise support for a proposed plan of action, facilitate the acquisition of information not known to organisers or members of the audience and form an umbrella organisation or network that organises action around particular issues. Public meetings can be important vehicles for communicating to mass audiences but can easily go awry. Careful thought on handling the meeting, advance preparation and allocating tasks to different group members will ensure that: • people are notified about the meeting; • the meeting is well-organised and run; • the meeting achieves the aims and objectives set by the group.

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Identifying someone to take minutes assists in maintaining accurate records of the proceedings for use in future deliberations. If the subject being discussed is serious or controversial, create a relaxed but sober start to the meeting. After welcoming all those present, the chairperson should explain the purpose of the meeting and how she intends to run it. If the meeting is primarily a social occasion make sure that everyone enjoys themselves. Encourage people to mix. Games can facilitate such processes. The chairperson for the meeting is a powerful, significant figure. The group carefully considers who should assume this position to ensure that the meeting runs smoothly, follows agreed rules of order, facilitates discussion, gives people on presentation panels the opportunity to convey their messages to those attending, and enables members of the audience to gain the floor and ask questions. This includes allowing both those supporting and those opposing particular proposals to speak in an orderly fashion and present alternative motions to those offered by the organisers. The chair should be prepared to deal with hecklers and others seeking to disrupt the meeting. Humour may deflect difficult situations but requires a confident person to carry it off. The group may role-play situations including cases of controlling disruptive individuals in advance to empower the chairperson in handling actual instances. Regular rotation of the chair is advised to enable all group members to acquire skills in chairing meetings and ensure no one usurps the position to enhance personal power. Speakers require sufficient advance notice to prepare their talk. They should be given specific guidance or protocols about what they should discuss and how long they may speak to the audience. Speakers may supplement their contributions by using films, videos, slides or technological aids to present messages more interestingly and effectively, so organisers should have the necessary equipment available. Some women, daunted by the prospect of speaking at a public meeting, may require assistance to deal with their nervousness. Ways of reducing nervousness on the night can be role-played by the group. When planning the meeting, ensure someone is allocated the task of placing suggestions and motions to participants before it ends. Designate a person to summarise the main points of the meeting. Calls for action, appeals for cash and details of future meetings should be made before the meeting finishes. Women may leave early if they are bored or have other commitments. Start on time and finish on time. If the group has previously decided it is appropriate to do so, the chairperson may invite those wishing to remain afterwards to

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chat informally over refreshments. This can be a productive way of continuing discussions among those who are committed to a cause. Recruiting new members can be an inordinately long process and requires specific consideration, but can be facilitated by socialising at meetings. Leaflets Leaflets are a useful means for communicating between an action group and different communities because these are relatively cheap and easy to produce. Leaflets provide residents with the group’s views on specific issues and provide up-to-date information on controversial matters. Leaflets are intended to communicate with people, so should look well-produced and give a clear and concise message. The presentation and organisation of a leaflet should attract the reader’s attention and hold it while the leaflet is being read. Leaflets should not sensationalise issues, disparage women or other people. They should contain sufficient information to enable readers to decide whether to support the action. Guidance for producing leaflets is given in Box 4.2.

Box 4.2: Organising tips: leaflets Leaflets should: • Be informative: Decide on the issue to be addressed, what the group wants to say and to whom it should be said. Information on leaflets should cover: −−What is happening? −−Who is doing it? −−Where and when is it happening? −−Why is it happening? −−Who can attend? −−What is the anticipated outcome? −−Will it be effective (that is, achieve its ends)? • Get the ‘facts’ right: Accurate information is essential in obtaining/retaining credibility. • Make the leaflet interesting: The leaflet should attract readers through its presentation and content. It should use various layout techniques to attract interest and be easily recognisable as yours. An attractive symbol, memorable abbreviation or catchy group name can imprint its particular message in readers’ minds. Headings can highlight important points or signal a transition

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Women and social action: group activities and networks between one part of a message and another. Cartoons, pictures, videos and animations can depict messages more graphically. • Producing the leaflet: Create a mock-up of the leaflet to give the group the opportunity to see how it looks and reads. This will help you to spot errors before printing. Commercial printing can be expensive, so choose a method consistent with the group’s budget. Offset litho looks professional, but can costs be covered? Stencil duplicating, though dated, is much cheaper, but production is messy. Desktop publishing and computerised technologies are making previously complex and expensive functions available to small groups with computers and printers, although high-quality colour brochures remain expensive. Training group members in using such technologies may be a worthwhile investment. Investigate different printing options before committing to one method. • Distributing the leaflet: Distributing leaflets can be costly unless undertaken by volunteers. The group should decide who will receive the leaflet, and whether it will charge for it. Women’s limited access to financial resources could be decisive. Considerations will be affected by the audience, its relationship to the group, and group resources. People distributing the leaflet should be familiar with its contents and ready to answer questions about it. • Have a contact person: The leaflet should have the name, address and phone number of someone who can answer questions about the group and its position on given matters. In Britain, the name and address of the person(s) or organisation(s) printing and publishing the leaflet must be included as a legal requirement. • Take heed of libel and copyright laws: The laws against slandering individuals apply to leaflets and any other medium of communication, so do not infringe these. Having the correct facts about any issue is invaluable in keeping the group out of the courts and maintaining credibility. Observe copyright laws, including for materials from the internet. A licence to distribute someone else’s work may be required. Ascertaining who owns the copyright may be a complex, lengthy and messy process. Allow sufficient time for it. If in doubt, take your own photo, draw your own picture, create your own artwork.

Community newspapers Producing a community newspaper provides community activists with creative, alternative methods of collecting and organising information to that which is evident in the traditional commercial press nationally or locally. Feminists organise the production of community newspapers collectively. Editorial policy decisions about

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the community newspaper’s production, distribution and costs are made by the editorial collective working together on an egalitarian basis. Tasks are shared and individual women learn a range of skills. Such operations contrast with the hierarchical structures prevailing in traditional media, where the editor has the final say. An equally important feature is that those producing and reporting the news make it available in easily accessible forms. These should be tailored for specific audiences and be locality-specific and linguistically and culturally relevant. Some women may have difficulty with the written word, so use photos, pictures, videos, social media and other forms of communication. For people with hearing or visual impairments, obtain experts or interpreters who can help in making these relevant, such as sign language interpreters or Braille versions of literature. Feminist practice embodies a different conceptualisation of news and what is newsworthy. In feminist production, emphasis is placed upon those affected by events communicating them to others. The idea of dispassionate, neutral reporters presenting a case gives way to involved activist notions embedded in authenticity and experience. Dissemination of information and what is deemed newsworthy is neither constrained nor determined by issues of profitability. The question is what information women want to convey and use to take action. Some editorial collectives produce community newspapers noted for their consciousness-raising potential by focusing on controversial information and points of view not normally accessed through traditional newspapers. The high ideals of collectively produced, non-profit-oriented feminist community newspapers are difficult to realise. There are problems in sustaining continuity in an editorial collective over lengthy periods, obtaining funds for launching and maintaining community newspapers over time – especially when community newspapers are produced by unpaid, voluntary labour, distributed free – and maintaining morale. Despite these difficulties, successful ventures exist in the alternative feminist press, including commercial ones. Some have consolidated their position and extended their operations for a period, for example Virago, the Women’s Press and Spare Rib. Some of these initiatives have been absorbed by commercial publishers and others like Spare Rib have folded after many years. Sadly, the proposed relaunch of Spare Rib in 2013 never materialised, although the Feminist Times replaced it for a short time (Lusher, 2014).

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Box 4.3: Organising tips: launching a community newspaper • Who will produce the newspaper and what role will each editorial participant play? • How will the newspaper be produced? −−Collectively or hierarchically under an editor? • On what basis and by whom will the contents of the paper be decided? • How often will the paper be printed? • How will the paper be financed? • Will there be a charge for the paper? If yes, how much (think of the implications of charging on accessibility for women on low incomes)? • How will the newspaper be distributed? By whom (paid or unpaid workers)? • How will women’s involvement in producing the newspaper be maintained? • Technical decisions: −−What format will it have? −−How will headings be used? −−How will the front page be laid out? −−What layout will be used? −−What size of paper will be used? −−How many pages will the newspaper have? −−Will the paper contain photographs? −−Will the paper use cartoons, photos or drawings? −−How will the paper be produced (offset litho, stencil duplicating, desktop publishing, online)? • How will tasks be allocated? • What premises will be required to produce the paper? • Where are these located? • Provide the publishers’/printers’ address in the newspaper. • Beware: −−libellous statements −−inaccurate facts −−copyright regulations

Preparing videos/films/street theatre Many community groups are becoming more adventurous with their communications. The drop in price of once expensive equipment like videos, digital cameras and computers with PowerPoint software is bringing new communication opportunities into the profession. While

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the production and distribution of materials have technical dimensions requiring specific training, questions about what goes into them and who produces them will be similar to those identified overleaf for producing leaflets and community newspapers. Street theatre can be mounted with limited props, while exploiting dramatic effects to convey messages with power and force and provide therapy. Handling the media Handling the media effectively is critical for feminist community workers. Dealing with conventional media – television, newspapers and radio – demands that women community activists acquire skills in negotiating a path through the forest of distortion, sensationalism and ridicule facing those using conventional media to communicate radical viewpoints; presenting their case accurately; and dealing with conflict and controversy. Feminists’ commitment to transforming social relations gives feminism an anti-establishment philosophy that rarely receives sympathetic treatment in traditional media. The likelihood is that feminist perspectives, opinions and causes will be trivialised and/ or sensationalised to foster hostility to them, unless their messages capture the public’s imagination. Many community groups have addressed the dilemmas and contradictions of interacting with conventional media by developing alternative forms of dramatic communication, such as street theatre, community video and alternative publications like the now defunct Spare Rib. Vulnerable through lack of funding, these forms are important in their own right. However, the size of the audience they reach compared to mainstream media is small. The support systems and resources underwriting messages that feminist ventures can deliver efficiently are limited. Thus, community groups have to exploit both traditional and alternative media successfully.

Box 4.4: Organising tips: dealing with the media Handling traditional media requires skill, thought and preparation beforehand. Useful tips for doing this follow: • What is considered ‘newsworthy’? −−conflict −−hardship and danger to the community −−public scandal

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Women and social action: group activities and networks −−unusualness −−individualism −−controversial actions • How does ‘newsworthiness’ affect media responses to your cause? −−Does it assist in conveying the group’s message or hinder it? • Identify a press officer to handle publicity: −−Rotate tasks to enable all women to acquire the skills of the post. −−Has the press officer been given clear guidelines on what to say about the campaign/cause? −−How does the group decide on its spokesperson for each occasion? • Preparation (before interview/appearing on radio or TV): −−Details of interview. −−Basis of interview. −−Collecting and verifying all the information needed. −−Role-playing the interview with group members. −−Is the timing of the interview suitable? −−How will the group’s or spokesperson’s arrival at the interview be handled? −−Make a note of the main points the group wishes to discuss and who will make each point if the entire group is involved. −−Assess whether or not the reporter or interviewer will be sympathetic and consider how to handle their hostility. −−Ways of handling reporter’s hostility/traps: -- Refusing the interview, thus losing an opportunity to represent the group’s case. -- Putting conditions on the interview and on how the information will be used/released, thus keeping the initiative with the group. -- Looking for other publicity – finding a source sympathetic to the group’s cause. -- Role-playing hostile scenarios. • During the interview: −−How do you maintain the initiative or control the interview’s direction? −−Define which questions you are unwilling to answer and justify your stance, for example protecting a vulnerable person’s identity; secrecy regarding actions the group intends to undertake; accountability to the group (you are responsible to it for your views and behaviour); and avoiding bad taste, offensive or degrading comments. −−Consider how information the group gives will be used. Explain why you won’t comment if this is your position. Be positive in your approach and

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Women and community action statements. Be professionally friendly if refusing to comment (might be difficult). −−Beware of long questions which ‘summarise’ your position and require only a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer as these may distort your group’s case. −−Don’t be pushed into answering impromptu questions, especially on the phone, unless you are certain of the answer. −−Ask the reporter to call back later if necessary. Otherwise, you may reveal more information than the group intended to give. • Comments given ‘off the record’: −−Such comments make reporters suspicious about what you might be hiding, and may be taken out of context and/or misquoted, and so should be avoided. • If after giving an interview, you remember something else you want to say, go back to the reporter and tell them about it. • Make a note of the main points of your conversation with the reporter afterwards. You may need it to check the article for accuracy before/when it appears. • Follow-up after the interview: −−Check what the reporter says about your case. −−Ask for the right to reply if you feel your case is wrongly presented. −−Check out the reactions of readers/your supporters to the article(s) whenever possible. • Don’t go for publicity just for the sake of it, use it to promote your case, not detract from it. • Ways of attracting publicity: −−press release −−letters to the editor −−feature articles −−taking action

The press release The press release is a springboard to publicity because it provides the group with an opportunity to present its arguments and views

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on particular campaigns or actions rather than those identified by the media and gives the group control over its contents. The press release is an important document and must be prepared carefully to attract interest in the group’s cause. Once this is secured, the group has further work with those responding positively if it wants further publicity. The group should write its contact details within the press release for this to occur. Having an email address, blog, website or twitter account can facilitate exchanges of views between the group and wider audiences.

Box 4.5: Organising tips: preparing a press release • Purpose: What is the purpose of your press release? −−Background information −−Notice of event −−Report of meeting/event. • Newsworthiness: Is what is being said ‘newsworthy’? • Style: Is your style suitable? −−Grab the readers’ attention. −−Use short, simple, clear sentences. −−Concentrate on facts. −−Use quotes from individuals involved in the campaign or work. −−Check if the person quoted wishes to be identified. • Essential information: Your information should explain: −−What is happening? −−Who is doing it? −−Where is it happening? −−When is it happening? −−Why is it happening? −−Key points regarding current and future activities. • Length: Presentation and impact are affected by length. −−Try to stick to one sheet of paper. −−If possible, use headed paper. Otherwise, have the organisation’s name at the top of the page. −−Give prominence to important aspects of your case. • Release: Give the date of release clearly. • Embargo: Give the date that the story can be published if you wish information to be withheld until a particular date and time. This is called an ‘embargo’. −−Avoid having an embargo wherever possible, release the information later instead. • Headlines: Use short, simple headlines to highlight key messages.

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Women and community action • First paragraph: The first paragraph of your press release should: −−attract the reader’s attention; −−keep the reader’s attention and interest in what the group is saying; −−set the tone of the release and be differentiated from following paragraphs. • Typing: Press releases should be typed for easier reading. • End of the press release: The termination of the press release should be clearly marked ‘ENDS’. • Contact person: The name, phone number and address of the contact person should be given at the end of the press release. • Photographs: Give details of whether photographs are available and who can use them. Ensure that photographs are credited appropriately and follow regulations regarding copyright protocols including for materials obtained from the internet.

Conclusion Feminist social action through groups, networks and campaigns has been crucial in advancing women’s varied concerns and initiating social change. These have covered every aspect of women’s lives, from reproductive rights to equality at work and pay attention to the processes whereby women organise and interact with others. These activities should not essentialise women, but treat all women as equals. Women’s experiences of oppression vary, so feminist social action has to address diversity among women to avoid oppressing others when eliminating their own or when involving others in collective action to do so. Women simultaneously should find common goals and links to create unity with other women who are different and celebrate diversity.

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Social change through collective action: campaigns and mass mobilisations

Introduction Collective action is a crucial aspect of feminist activities aimed at securing transformational social change including campaigns and mass mobilisations to achieve specific goals that can cover housing issues, social problems including poverty, transportation and the formulation and implementation of community development, sustainability and resilience strategies. This chapter draws on case studies to consider how communities enhance their capacities to form alliances and develop strategies for mass actions and community resilience, such as the development of hurricane action plans for Charleston, South Carolina in the USA; or anti-poverty projects promoting entrepreneurialism and enterprises run by women in South Africa. Women have achieved considerable success in local community-based projects founded upon their local knowledge, skills, networks and community mobilisation capacities. Some initiatives have floundered against men’s opposition. Lessons can be learnt from the fragmentation of the women’s movement and its failure to sustain the creativity, vision and ambition of the 1960s and 1970s. Mainstream feminists’ neglect of marginalised women’s voices, particularly those of black and minority ethnic women, queer women and diverse sexual orientations, fractured and fragmented a movement that remains in that mode. In contemporary society, the securitisation of the state and legitimacy of Islamophobia have increased schisms within feminist groups and communities. This leaves the concern of how to enable women to form alliances that promote unity of purpose while recognising their differences. In this chapter, I scrutinise feminist campaigns around childcare, domestic violence against women and children, child sexual abuse, and peace. I show that feminist community activists use ‘the personal is political’ as a central organising principle to redefine matters that society relegates to the private realm outside the scope of social concerns that are public and affect everyone. I reveal that women 107

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refocus the techniques and skills of redefining problems in feminist directions by drawing upon feminist principles. These include probing feminist attempts to utilise non-hierarchical ways of working, develop their own support networks and use their experiences as women to relate to other women. I also consider issues that women share regardless of their status socially or in the labour market. Feminist campaigns have introduced new features to community action. Foremost among these have been: developing solidarity among women; extending the subjects covered by community action; creating new forms of community organisation (Adamson et al, 1988); and valuing women’s knowledge (Belenky et al, 1997). Feminist campaigns have provided evidence that women can organise effectively to improve conditions around specific matters like prostitution or defend hardearned gains including reproductive rights. Through their actions, the myth of female passivity has received a hard knock. Important feminist campaigns that challenge existing configurations of social relations have included abortion issues (Greenwood and Young, 1976) through the National Abortion Campaign (NAC); reproductive rights through the Reproductive Rights Campaign (RRC) (Frankfort, 1972; Davis and the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilisation Abuse, 1988); decriminalising prostitution via the Programme for the Reform of the Law on Soliciting (PROS) (McLeod, 1982; Dominelli, 1986a); eliminating domestic violence and assaults on women in the home (Scottish Women’s Aid Federation, 1980; Binney et al, 1981; Wilson, 1983) through campaigns organised largely by the National Women’s Aid Federation (NWAF, now Women’s Aid); campaigns to acknowledge women’s specific health needs and secure better health facilities (Ruzek, 1978, 1986; Doyal, 1983; Wistow et al, 2017); campaigns for peace (Cook and Kirk, 1983; Dominelli, 1986c); environmental campaigns (Mies and Shiva, 1993); and the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment. This chapter also contains tips on organising campaigns.

Feminist campaigns and social action Feminist campaigns involve large-scale social action that affirms social justice and human rights for women through anti-oppressive practices that address the ethics of recognition and redistribution (Dominelli, 2012a). Dominelli cites Webb (2010: 13) to suggest that social justice requires the acknowledgement of identity issues and redistribution of resources:

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a critical social work oriented towards a social justice framework must have as its object the correspondence of two homologous structures: the ethics of recognition concerned with cultural injustice and suffering, and an ethics of redistribution focused on redressing economic injustice. Women have conducted feminist campaigns in the Global North and Global South. Some issues have been similar, for example violence in intimate relationships. Others affect more women in the Global South than the Global North, for example female genital mutilation (FGM). According to Global Citizen, a women’s FGM campaign over many years meant that the first woman elected as president of an African country, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, banned the observance of FGM in 2018 (Selby, 2018). This action means that Mali is the only West African country legally to condone FGM. However, a limitation of Liberia’s law is that it only protects women under the age of 18; however, it did pass a law against domestic violence in 2017. Violence in intimate relationships In mounting feminist campaigns and networks, women have redefined individual social problems as social issues, thus giving themselves permission to speak and highlight women’s voices. Through such actions, feminists have placed men’s roles that create difficulties for women and children at the top of the change agenda. For instance, the NWAF campaign against men’s violence in intimate relationships revealed that social attitudes condoning men’s prerogative in disciplining women have legitimated their physical violence and emotional abuse in intimate situations. Furthermore, NWAF has shown that women have been unable to leave violent partners not because they are mentally defective, as some theorists claim, but because they lack the material conditions for leaving men, for example jobs, housing and money (Scottish Women’s Aid Federation, 1980). Erin Pizzey established Britain’s first women’s refuge in Chiswick, London in 1973; others built on this beginning. The NWAF, renamed Women’s Aid, is the main service provider championing struggles against domestic violence (DV), or violence against women in intimate relationships. Women’s Aid is a national charity that coordinates and supports 500 local facilities providing services for women and children escaping DV. It also seeks better legal protection for women and offers the government advice regarding

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policies on the topic. Additionally, it provides information online for the public and staffs a free National Domestic Violence Helpline 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Women’s Aid links up with social workers to improve services for women. Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) critiqued male violence. Arguing that such behaviour ranged from pornography to rape, WAVAW’s position encouraged people to think about male aggression in a new light (Lederer, 1982; McNeil and Rhodes, 1985; MacKinnon, 1993). Some WAVAW initiatives were innovative, for example calling for a male curfew when the Yorkshire Ripper stalked women on the streets of Leeds, England. Their Women Reclaim the Night demonstrations reinforced the message that women have the right to go about their business as they deem fit. However, their approach assumed that women’s experiences of gender oppression are unitary (Bishop, 1994) and by marching through black neighbourhoods WAVAW ignored the impact of racism on black communities. These insensitive actions fed into popular characterisations of black men as sexual predators and prompted black women to demand that white women undertake specific action to counter such perceptions (hooks, 1984; Bryan et al, 1985). Another important feature of feminist campaigns has been women’s commitment to raising public consciousness. This has engaged women in alliances to achieve broad support for their activities, calling on trade unions and professional organisations to endorse their demands (Bishop, 1994). Activating such support has required women to organise within these organisations over time. Their local efforts ultimately coalesced in securing trade union support for their struggles, such as through the Trade Union Congress (TUC) for the homeworkers’ campaign (Hopkins, 1982), reproductive rights campaigns and campaigns for equal pay. Feminists have convinced male trade unionists in public sector unions with higher membership among women to acknowledge the impact of women’s lack of control over their fertility on their employment prospects and its role in undermining equal opportunities and career prospects for women in the workplace. Men in trade unions have been increasingly engaged in realising women’s rights at work and acknowledging their connections to daily routines. But, as Chapter Six indicates, women’s action has not succeeded in achieving equality in the workplace. Feminist campaigns seeking social justice for women carry implications for all those abhorring injustice, wherever it occurs. The moral case for these campaigns has provided opportunities for feminists to obtain further resources for their campaigns and been a

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decisive factor in securing support and sympathy from individuals and organisations not predominantly feminist in their orientation. These supporters are part of a campaign’s wider networks that cover feminist and non-feminist social action. Community action and resilience in Charleston, South Carolina, USA The Palmetto Community Action Partnership (PCAP) in Charleston, South Carolina is a non-profit organisation that endeavours to encourage self-sufficiency and resilience in low-income communities. Its Chief Executive Officer is a man; eight out of ten Board members are women. It achieves its mission through diverse activities and connections to other agencies and resources. Campaigning activities around eliminating poverty, especially for women, form a major strand of PCAP’s work. The PCAP has mounted campaigns to eliminate situational and generational poverty, improve women’s position by supporting women’s demands for equality, and provide training opportunities for all community members irrespective of gender. It works with individuals and groups to raise the quality of community life. PCAP undertakes basic needs assessments for families especially around housing, childcare, education and employment matters and has connections with other agencies and service providers to access additional resources and support. It has outreach services, schemes to promote employment – including self-employment – as a way out of poverty, and equality for women, and provides emergency services to meet basic needs. Significantly, it supports women’s campaigning endeavours, for example the Women’s March on Washington, DC; the Sister March (Korizno, 2017). Their campaigning activities to ‘uplift’ people living on low incomes have inclusionary objectives. Campaigns for mobilising women in the Global South Women have been seriously affected by globalising practices and mounted a range of campaigns to resist the negative impacts of patriarchal relations perpetrated through colonialisation, globalisation and internationalisation. Among the poorest people in the world, women in the Global South continue to struggle against poor employment prospects, high illiteracy rates, poor health, domestic violence and environmental degradation. Campaigns to address these issues provide women with opportunities to achieve their ambitions. Some feminist initiatives have become transnational as women have sought commonalities to forge strong alliances while retaining their

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rootedness in local considerations and traditions. They have achieved this objective by linking women’s regional and national organisations to international ones. In Africa, these have been exemplified by FEMNET (African Women’s Development and Communication Network), WiLDAF (Women in Law and Development in Africa), FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalists), AAWORD (Association of African Women for Research and Development) and ABANTU. In Latin America, women used Encuentros to cover issues of domestic violence in regional meetings. Entrepreneurial Chilean women formed Start-Up in 2010 to support their entrepreneurial activities. It was endorsed by the Chilean Ministry of the Economy and Production. Entrepreneurial women in the Global South Women’s entrepreneurial approaches have problematised the localglobal nexus and attempted to create egalitarian and empowering relationships across national borders. Some of their initiatives have exposed the links between personal difficulties and structural constraints. A number of their initiatives exposed the impact of colonialism and neoliberalism. Some of these schemes are described in the following paragraphs. Many women in Africa are involved in microfinance schemes that provide small sums of money to meet family needs by setting up projects in villages. In 2016, 163  million women formed new businesses in 74 countries (GEM, 2017). Successful ones scale up and can become global. There are some schemes to facilitate such developments on a wider scale. For example, Goldman-Sachs’ Ten Thousand Women Network funds women to acquire entrepreneurial and managerial skills to develop businesses that they run. These funds are used to cover educational costs. Mentoring within the scheme facilitates women’s networking capacities and access to capital markets – a serious issue for women in the Global South because many are denied credit in their own right. Half the Sky Movement Other campaigns include the Half the Sky Movement which aims to provide opportunities for women worldwide to fulfil their talents and achieve their objectives. It opposes honour killings and trafficking of women and children, and uses celebrities to reach out to mass audiences to support their causes and raise funds. Their TED

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(Technology, Entertainment and Design) talks include speakers like Cheryl Wu Dunn, who wants equality for women workers to help them escape the vicious cycle of inequalities and join a virtuous cycle of equality. She deems women’s inequality a key twenty-first century challenge. She is supporting poor women to move out of poverty, become fully educated to help them enter the paid labour market, acquire employment including through self-employment, have fewer children and spend money wisely. #NotBuyingIt Another campaign is #NotBuyingIt. This is a recent initiative that addresses sexism in the media. It focuses on eradicating images of women rooted in sexist stereotypes by promoting positive images of all women, and uses social media tools to achieve its aims. A key tool in this campaign is to ask women not to purchase goods that sexualise women’s bodies to sell them.

Childcare campaigns In the 1970s, childcare issues consumed the energies of second-wave feminists who realised that reliable, stimulating, childcare was critical to getting women into waged work. Their struggle to achieve universal, publicly funded childcare that caters for children’s diverse needs and is available around the clock for all parents contains a goal to be achieved especially in the USA and UK. American feminist National Organization for Women (NOW) argued for childcare. British feminists endorsed free 24-hour childcare provisions for everyone. Their stance was supported by trade unionists, advocates for poor people and employers, who expected this to impact favourably on the workplace by reducing absenteeism. Childcare campaigns in the USA The American National Organization for Women was created in Washington, DC in 1966 by liberal feminists attending the Third National Conference of the Commission on the Status of Women. It had an extensive programme of equal rights for women including ending discrimination in jobs and pay. NOW’s first president, Betty Friedan, authored the Feminine Mystique (1963). Their childcare demands contrasted with that of free childcare for all in the UK. American feminists lobbied for the Child Development Act subsidised

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by federal funds to facilitate charging parents a childcare fee on a sliding scale dependent on income. American feminists’ expectations about the 1971 Child Development Act were thwarted when President Richard Nixon vetoed it to assuage the views of far-right groups strongly opposed to this legislation. Consequently, the initiative fizzled out. Obstructing childcare provisions has been one of the conservative right’s most enduring interventions into family policies. By 2015, American mothers spent $15,000 yearly per child on childcare which was generally of a poor standard. Untrained workers receiving low pay staffed many of these provisions (Berlatsky, 2015). Tensions between heterosexual and lesbian feminists and between white and black feminists hindered NOW’s potential for radical change, although internal struggles eventually endorsed women’s right to choose their own sexuality and lesbian mothers’ right to motherhood in the early 1970s. The campaign around the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) consumed NOW’s energies. Phyllis Schlafly, an ardent anti-feminist, and other religious and commercial groups opposing the ERA, formed the STOP-ERA campaign, which ultimately prevented pro-ERA feminists from obtaining the support of the 38 out of 50 states required to ratify the proposed amendment. Fragmentation within the American feminist movement ensured that social action around childcare never achieved its full potential. This contrasts strongly with the Roe v Wade debates around bodily integrity and reproduction which provided pro-lifers an issue to protest about and pro-choice women something to defend. This legislation is precarious as the conservative right opposes pro-choice stances and conducts campaigns, some involving serious acts of violence, to frustrate women using these clinics to terminate pregnancies. Eleven people were killed during attacks on abortion clinics between 1993 and 2015. President Trump’s reconfiguration of the American Supreme Court may tilt future legal challenges on these issues in more restrictive directions.

Childcare campaigns in the UK Feminists’ failure to obtain free, high-quality childcare resulted in a plethora of expensive, mainly private provisions across the UK, a trend supported by successive neoliberal-oriented governments reducing public expenditures. Unlike French parents, British parents lack accessible, affordable and quality daycare. The absence of childcare tempted British campaigners to enliven their protests through art, such as the Leeds Animation Workshop, a collective of animators and

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filmmakers in Northern England. This was a non-profit cooperative run by women that began as the Nursery Film Group in 1976 when it produced Who Needs Nurseries? We Do! Another of its products was the film the Riddle of the Sphinx created by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen in 1977. The Nursery Film Group became the Leeds Animation Workshop in 1978 to acknowledge its wider remit of critiquing aid and trade relations in a capitalist system, and societies’ heteronormative culture. It continues to make social justice-oriented films such as They Call us Maids: The Domestic Workers’ Story in 2015. This highlighted domestic workers’ exploitative situation and the failure of an immigration system that restricts their options for changing (abusive) employers. Domestic workers are usually women from low-income countries like the Philippines. The irony is that they care for other women’s children while others care for their own. The remittances that Filipinas send home constitute significant proportions of the Philippine’s national economy. In east end London, the Hackney Flashers organised exhibitions to describe the lack of childcare among working-class women. In Montreal, Canada, the Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra made a film of their life on tour in 2012 to link art and family life to highlight need for childcare provisions (Dhillon and Francke, 2016). These examples expose the importance of combining childcare and lifestyles while arguing that childcare is a right. The campaign for childcare at the Chelsea College of Arts and Design began in London when the University of the Arts London (UAL), composed of five art colleges, announced the closure of its nursery to cope with budget cuts. This provision, initially created in 1968 by two women students, was supported by their Rector, Sir Robin Darwin, and turned into a nursery for students during the 1970s. The on-site nursery catering for 60 children was closed in 2009. The threatened closure led two women to start a childcare campaign to retain these provisions. Women activists were astounded by the absence of support among fellow students without children. They argued that becoming a parent was a personal decision that carried the personal responsibility of caring for the child. However, the issue of making visible the parenthood that existed among students challenged creative artistic parents without children to support mothers and fathers who required access to reliable, well-resourced childcare. The rationale for their demands was rehearsed through talks, exhibitions and tours. The lack of maternity policies for students and banning of children from all Royal College of Art premises – a policy that lasted until 2013 – sparked further protests. A conference organised to discuss

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UAL students’ need for a nursery attracted 70 participants. Another initiative in the form of a workshop occurred in 2014 (Dhillon and Francke, 2018). In contrast, Imperial College of the University of London, with 16,000 students, had its own on-site full-time nursery for staff and students.

#MeToo campaign against sexual harassment in the workplace The #MeToo campaign and the Time’s Up campaign have become vehicles for a debate on sexuality, sexual relationships between men and women, sexual harassment and abuses of power by men, especially those in powerful positions. Among high-profile individuals challenged by this campaign was Harvey Weinstein for abusing young women in the Hollywood film industry. Another was Bill Cosby, who was tried in 2018 and found guilty. The campaigns subsequently encompassed sexual harassment and abuse in the music industry, sports, traditional media, military establishments, academia, religious organisations, the Presidents’ Club in the UK and political institutions including the British Parliament and America’s House of Representatives and Senate. The campaigns’ global spread to 85 countries is controversial, and key women advocating for change have been attacked by social media ‘trolls’. Both campaigns are seeking a step change in social relations so that women in diverse service and retail trade industries are not exploited, sexually harassed and/or assaulted by men, who take the normality of such behaviour for granted. The #MeToo social media campaign began in October 2017 when Alyssa Milano tweeted this hashtag to encourage sexually harassed women across the world to respond to highlight the scale of such experiences. The phrase ‘Me Too’ is credited to Tarana Burke, a black social activist and community organiser who first used it in 2006. In the UK, STAGE conducted a survey on sexual harassment in the arts. It found that one in three women had been sexually harassed and one in ten had been sexually assaulted (Aitkenhead, 2018: 7). Jude Kelly created the Women of the World (WOW) festival in 2010 to challenge women’s inequality in the creative arts by staging 49 festivals in 23 countries to reflect upon unequal opportunities facing women. The first woman director of a major British theatre was appointed in 2012. By 2017, there were five. WOW is different from Women in the World, which attracts successful, wealthy women (Aitkenhead, 2018). Kelly welcomes debate of the issues facing contemporary women and men, and deplores the disparaging of people with opposing views.

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Although she has resigned as Director of the Southbank Centre in London, Kelly is concerned that men directors remain the norm. As she comments, ‘Another man has left the arts is not news’; a woman like her is (Aitkenhead, 2018: 7).

Greenham Common: women’s contributions to feminist campaigns involving political action on peace Women’s wish for a peaceful world which could be inhabited by their children and grandchildren led to their engagement in peace movements, and to ultimately formulate their own versions. I examine one of these: the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Movement of 1980 to 2000, to consider its implications for feminist community action. The Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common near Newbury, England, unlike its mixed counterparts, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), European Nuclear Disarmament campaign (END), and local derivatives like the Leamington European Nuclear Disarmament campaign (LEND) was a women-only endeavour based on feminist principles. Its feminist stance separated Greenham Common from other initiatives that women have mounted for peace, such as Olga Maitland’s Families for Peace. Maitland’s group supported the multilateral disarmament position advocated by the then British government. Greenham embodies a different kind of politics that links people’s welfare, concern for the environment, world peace, human survival and local forms of organisation in empowering those who normally experience powerlessness. Its commitment to change became total. It demanded the radical alteration of intimate personal relations and remote social ones articulated through representative democracies. Greenham women’s organising potential depended on the creative use of the limited resources that people bring when confronting a powerful state backed by multinational finance. Their form of organisation drew strength from women’s readiness to facilitate individual contributions to the collective effort according to their own personal assessments rather than having an individual’s endeavours subjected to negative coercion and evaluation by others (Dominelli, 1986c). The principle of allowing women to make their own decisions about their personal contributions to collective activities enabled Greenham women to extend its reach beyond the perimeter fence at Greenham and maintain loyalty to the group. This approach facilitated women’s interactions with each other on a more egalitarian basis

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and absolved them from feeling guilty for not conforming to group expectations. These organisational advantages have been engendered by Greenham women’s commitment to feminist principles of practice. Unlike traditional groups, which rely on group coercion that compels individuals to commit themselves beyond their personal capacity and engender guilt if they do not respond in prescribed ways, Greenham women’s responsibility to the group was discharged by each individual woman admitting where her personal limits in any particular initiative lay (Cook and Kirk, 1983). This approach ensured that women committed themselves to action that they would carry out and that others could value and count on. The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Movement was created spontaneously by a group of women who had not previously participated in political activities. Women formed the camp after marching from Cardiff to Greenham in August 1981 to protest at the siting of cruise missiles in Britain and remained until 2000. The women’s major motivation was the nightmarish one of seeing powerful military men, over whom they had no control, threaten to plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust, thereby holding to ransom their own, their children’s and other peoples’ lives and threatening to destroy the planet (Cook and Kirk, 1983). Fear for the future fired their determination to resist the escalation of nuclear weaponry by taking direct community-based political action and campaigns demanding British unilateral nuclear disarmament. These women organised without the aid of community workers. Belying their assumed powerlessness as women, Greenham women and their supporters, particularly the inner core of activists living in benders (tents constructed of plastic sheets) at the camp, undertook mass actions that included friends and relatives, thereby bringing bridging capital into play. By expanding bridging capital through mass mobilisation and interactions among women, they demonstrated that women have organisational power which they can exercise innovatively while creating linking social capital. Greenham women created a women-only peace camp which ultimately became capable of surviving continuous harassment, threats of eviction, imprisonment and state violence. Greenham women formed a women-only camp after considerable discussion among themselves. Not all the women were adherents of feminist theory and practice, but their experience of a mixed camp involving men and women for a brief period at the beginning of their venture prompted them to exclude men. During their short sojourn at Greenham, men supporters established patriarchal forms of organisation. These endorsed

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hierarchical relationships among participants; the control of knowledge and organisational skills by a small clique; men occupying the key decision-making roles; and taking aggressive stances that perpetrated violence towards and sexual harassment of women (Cook and Kirk, 1983). Believing that these behaviours replicated the system that was causing the problems they wanted to solve, the women asked the men to leave. Men, unsure of their status and position of power, draw upon traditional tenets of masculinity to provide a raft in which they navigate their insecure sense of masculinity. In such situations, separate spaces are a sensible response for women, who feel safer in the women-only spaces provided by their plastic ‘benders’ (tents constructed of plastic sheets). While eschewing patriarchal forms of organising, the Greenham women resisted their exclusion from the public arena. They held machismo responsible for pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war and rejected all it stood for. Maintaining that only women could deconstruct male forms of organisation, they created a women-only camp and developed new ways of structuring social relations among themselves. Their attitudes have been criticised as essentialist and alienating men. Nonetheless, the presence of feminists at Greenham meant that there was an ideology that countered patriarchy and offered women an alternative worldview (Feminism and Non-Violence Study Group, 1983). And it provided a constituency outside the base in the women’s liberation movement from which Greenham women could draw support. Greenham women’s decision to have a women-only camp enabled them to increase their contact with other women and discover how women could work collaboratively with one another. Working together enabled women to focus on eroding the social divisions that existed among them, especially those concerning class, ‘race’, age, disability and sexual orientation. It also allowed them to confront familial ideology and the constraints it placed on women’s ability to participate in public activities and events. Greenham provided another arena for highlighting the link between women’s place in the home and their absence from public life. Greenham women experienced the pain of leaving their families, particularly their children. But they discovered that they, their children and partners could cope. Their menfolk were compelled to accept ‘women’s work’ as their own and, in undertaking childcare and housework, challenge their own stereotypes and attitudes about gender roles and its attendant division of labour (Cook and Kirk, 1983). Some men feared the power of women symbolised by Greenham women. They felt threatened by their exclusion from the camp and

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related activities because they had not previously experienced being unilaterally deprived of power by women. Heterosexual women in the process of working out their positions vis-à-vis male partners, felt undermined by charges of lesbianism utilised in the media’s smear campaign that lamented the demise of their family ties. The media’s stance played upon and compounded women’s feelings of guilt at ‘abandoning’ children and partners. The schism among Greenham’s supporters inside and outside the Base made it easier for the media to condemn Greenham women for doing their own thing, even if this ultimately included nurturing the world by preventing its destruction through nuclear war. Collective, egalitarian relations became the Greenham women’s hallmark as they struggled against state harassment and physical deprivation. Working cooperatively enabled women to assert their power both individually and collectively. Individual women were encouraged to reach their own decisions about their involvement in Greenham activities and not be coerced by group cohesion and dynamics into adopting decisions others made on their behalf. Participative democracy created the ethos in which they worked, lived and played. They were assertive and confident without being aggressive. Non-violence was their counter to violence (Feminism and Non-Violence Study Group, 1983). Women outside the Base came to their defence, spreading their stories, providing material and emotional support, and participating in the mass activities that sprang from Greenham. These external activities were crucial in sustaining women at the camp and extending support outside the Base, for example, Window on Peace 1986–87, the live-in performance art created by women. Greenham women, unclear about their long-term strategy, knew they had to redefine politics and grasp the initiative from the state which had set the parameters around the nuclear debate. They focused sharply and simply on the cruise missiles’ lethal potential. This, they hoped, would reach the hearts and minds of people typically uninvolved in politics and rouse them in a process of self-discovery to consciousness of the threat hanging over them and convince them of their power to challenge state narratives concerning its decision to purchase and locate American cruise missiles in the UK. The Greenham women furthered their objective of supplanting the state’s position by contrasting the destructive anti-life potential of nuclear weapons with their celebration of everyday life. They persistently refused to vacate their camp and made it home against all odds. They called for mass action, bringing together public displays

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of fragments of ordinary existence pregnant with meaning to validate everyday reality for the individuals involved. They celebrated items that embodied the principles of daily life in practice. Photos of loved ones and other memorabilia formed symbols of protest adorning the perimeter fence at Greenham. The symbolic juxtaposition of daily joy and life with the slaughter of war achieved prominence during such mass mobilisations. The encircling of the Base by 30,000 women and their individual statements in December 1982 proved an extremely powerful demonstration of the fusion between society’s political decision-making processes and their impact on people’s personal lives and everyday routines. Having women individually develop their own spaces and statements increased their sense of participation and confidence in this mass project. Acting in accordance with the principles of women personally determining their contribution to the struggle ensured that the definition of the situation was one that each woman had created rather than one determined by others and imposed upon her. Each woman’s statement was a personalised comment embedded in her own beliefs. Conducting their action on these premises enabled women to share their personal consciousness and fears with other women and maximised the impact of the group’s limited resources. The actions at Greenham revealed that non-violent, collective shows of strength and quiet determination were possible and could be influential. These popularised Greenham women’s vision of a peaceful world and contrasted sharply with the aggressive man-made one being peddled by the state through Michael Heseltine, the then Secretary of State for Defence in the Thatcher government (Cook and Kirk, 1983; Marsden, 2013). The processes that Greenham women utilised in conducting their activities followed feminist principles. Small group discussions and workshops were the main fora that Greenham women used to consider their action, take decisions about its exact nature and identify their individual contributions to the collective endeavour. Following principles of feminist non-violence, women discussed and examined the law, the possibility of their arrest and precautions they could take to ensure their physical and emotional safety individually and as a group (Cook and Kirk, 1983). Greenham women transcended local boundaries to reach out globally to other women who shared their desire for lasting peace. Networking became a significant mechanism whereby Greenham women acquired influence beyond those living at the camp and surpassed national boundaries. This enabled them to receive financial

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and moral support from women in other localities and encouraged the creation of women-only peace camps elsewhere, for example Iceland and Italy. Networking is a critical means through which community work can transcend its own parochial boundaries and augment its resources in non-competitive ways. Another example, the World March of Women, extended feminist organisational forms globally, bridging the Global North and Global South through far-reaching networks that included the World Social Forum to promote peace and demilitarisation. The powerful nature of their working methodology was evident in all Greenham women’s activities. The ‘die-in’ at the Stock Exchange on 7 June 1982, when women lay down on a major road in the City of London to disrupt traffic, illustrates its expression in practice (Cook and Kirk, 1983). In the ‘die-in’, Greenham women demonstrated how easily women can release their creativity and make political statements through the artefacts of everyday life. Small self-selected decentralised groups planned the ‘die-in’ and facilitated the processes through which individuals proceeded to develop their personal contribution to a collective undertaking. The working principles fostered by and enshrined in relationships within these groups promoted a form of organisation which empowered rather than deskilled women. Individual women were supported when they voiced their fears about being run over, verbally abused or in conflict with the law. No woman was coerced by others to take on more than she personally felt able to handle. Nor was she made to feel guilty for drawing boundaries around her personal involvement and sticking to feeling comfortable with her contribution. As previously indicated, these principles also underpinned Greenham women’s mass actions. Greenham women’s challenge to the state’s definitions of the cruise missile problem quickly generated enormous support for and mobilised large numbers of people – men and women – in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Its position was adopted formally by the Labour Party and put before the electorate during the 1985 general election. Although Labour failed to achieve electoral victory, its programme was endorsed by one-third of those voting, indicating that a significant proportion of the British populace agreed with this stance. Greenham women’s influence spread to the broader peace movement in Britain, especially CND and END, inspired organisations concerned with other issues, such as the ‘March for Jobs Campaign’, and captured the imagination of sundry individuals. Those moved by the Greenham women’s actions implemented many of their ideas and practices in their own organisations. The

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mixed peace movement became more aware of gender oppression and adopted many of the methods used by the Greenham women in its own activities (Dominelli, 1986c). The impact of Greenham was particularly evident in demonstrations during Easter 1983. Linking personal experiences and non-violent direct action to political decisions that were made by a small caucus of politicians in government featured prominently in these. Moreover, organisations like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (a mixed group with Bruce Kent as General Secretary at the time) promoted the work of Greenham women by asking them to speak to members and share lessons gained from their ways of organising. Besides helping women to engage in consciousness-raising, sharing their views with others enabled Greenham women to obtain both moral and material support for their cause. Many women from these other organisations joined the major protests which took place at Greenham. Growing public support for Greenham women and the penetration of their ideas and methods to other organisations made the state fear the powers they could unleash. The state launched a concerted counteroffensive that encouraged women to form hierarchically structured ‘peace groups’ endorsing NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) decisions, for example Olga Maitland’s Families for Peace. These groupings were unable to attract either mass public sympathy or large numbers of women. The state also initiated a massive media campaign in 1983 to disparage Greenham women and belittle their concerns. It placed a powerful and articulate government minister, Michael Heseltine, in charge of its media onslaught and propaganda campaign against them. The state also intensified harassment of Greenham women, who had already undergone frequent evictions from the camp and destruction of their ‘benders’. State harassment deepened as legal processes swung into action against them. In some instances, local by-laws were changed to deal with their presence at Greenham. Legal intimidation of Greenham women included their being denied voting rights in local elections and access to social security benefits. The physical security of the Base was strengthened in recognition of the damage that could be caused by a few committed women acting without offensive weapons. Barbed wire was placed around the perimeter fence and policing assumed a higher profile. Vast sums of public money were invested in these measures as the state redefined the issue of Greenham as a matter of ‘law and order’. Evidence emerged suggesting that ‘ray guns’ had been used to repel the women camping

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at the gates (Beasley, 1986). ‘Star Wars’ had become a reality for Greenham women. The state’s responses ultimately signalled the weaknesses of the Greenham women’s approach, despite its replication in peace camps in Australia, Iceland, Italy and the USA. Relying almost exclusively on resources generated among themselves and their supporters, Greenham women failed to shift the existing balance of power between themselves and the state with an arsenal of resources. They needed to do this if they were successfully to reverse state policy. Like other feminist initiatives tackling powerful interests vested in the political arena, including the attempts by Kwenna Frambothid (KF) in Iceland (discussed in Chapter Seven), Greenham demonstrates the importance of having a feminist presence in both local and central state structures, the trade union movement and society more generally for its achievements to be sustained over lengthy periods of time, especially if feminist social action is subjected to sustained attack by a state and media whose actions women seek to subvert. Another weakness of the Greenham women’s approach stemmed from their analysis of patriarchy. Identifying men’s construction of the social order as the problem held the danger of seeing ‘men’ rather than patriarchal social relations as the enemy. Ignoring some men’s contributions to the struggle for peace allows other men to continue reinforcing oppressive relations. Some feminists, for example black feminists like Angela Davis (1989) and bell hooks (1984) argued that men, especially working-class men, have a crucial role to play in the peace movement because the war movement is advanced by capitalist social relations that oppress working-class men and women by turning them into cannon fodder for political and economic elites. This is highly relevant to black and white working-class men who are overrepresented in the lower ranks of the army, often choosing it as a career because they lack other options. Nonetheless, the Greenham women’s example indicates that the question of the nature of the relationship between men and feminist social action remains problematic and remains an issue that has to be addressed adequately. Additionally, the polarisation of values into negative ones held by men and positive ones embraced by women simply inverts the existing hegemonic dyad of gender oppression and runs the risk of endorsing biological determinism. It ignores the merging of people’s value systems in reality and the roles women play in reinforcing patriarchal relations when conforming to dominant ideological norms, as Families for Peace demonstrated. Both men and women support capitalist patriarchal relations and it is these which men and women

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have to eradicate in creating egalitarian relationships between them. The feminist message that the ‘personal is political’ and the ‘political is personal’ has to be unpacked to enable both women and men to create a new egalitarian world order that values and celebrates individual and collective diversity and links personal action to institutional change. Men are needed as change agents subverting patriarchal relations.

The impact of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Movement on traditional community action Networking with individuals and progressive fragments was crucial to spreading knowledge of developments at Greenham Common, providing solidarity and using transient forms of bridging capital to touch people’s lives. Widespread public exposure in the media, the involvement of thousands of women community activists in Greenham Common activities, and the talks that Greenham women had with community groups spread the ideas and forms of organisation initiated by a nucleus of women at Greenham Common to large numbers of people active in traditional community work. Greenham women’s contributions have highlighted the development of a new strand of community action that has questioned traditional forms of community organisation. Those challenged in this context are the hierarchical nature of accepted relationships between the organisers and the organised; community workers’ expectations about group dynamics; and traditional concepts of locality-based organising. By compelling community workers to re-examine their usual approaches, Greenham women provided a catalyst for changing the nature of community work and promoting more egalitarian organisational and less stigmatising forms of participation. These acknowledged individual contributions to collective ends from their own standpoint and recognised their expertise and knowledge of life events. Revitalising methods of organising has been especially noticeable in community work among women who have supported Greenham events, such as the Coventry Women’s Health Network (CWHN, 1985). Community workers can learn from experiences of empowerment which flow from feminist work in small groups like those fostered at Greenham. Most people feel uninvolved in key decisions affecting community life. These include school closures, factory relocations, road building programmes, housing construction, environmental degradation and the absence of leisure facilities. People can redefine their aspirations for their communities by wresting the initiative from

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the state and powerful elites that problematise their existence and deny their right to act for themselves in creating the social and physical environments best suited to living a fulfilling existence. Redefining their lives requires men and women to raise individual consciousness and make explicit connections between macro-level political processes and the microcosms within which they lead personal lives. Community work allegedly embarks on such processes within the parameters of traditional thinking that does not challenge established knowledge and modes of action. Foremost among these are separating issues from their holistic social contexts; subordinating social criteria to economic exigencies and political decision-making processes; and devaluing non-expert knowledge. Bureaucratic procedures are used to manipulate discussions and hinder free-flowing creativity (see Alinksy, 1971). The conduct of public meetings deliberating the demolition of housing for road construction illustrates the restrictive methodology prevailing in traditional community work. People attending it usually feel disempowered and angry because they have been treated as passive participants and their concerns have not achieved prominence in the proceedings. There has been no fusion between the political and the personal and no connection between remote political decision making and people’s daily lives. Aggressive posturing rather than a true confrontation of the issues is usually reinforced, leaving men and women feeling frustrated (Dominelli, 1986c). Other crucial facets of the Greenham women’s approach to community action encompass the following: • creating women-only spaces to empower women; • challenging gender stereotypes by: ensuring that men do not grab all the powerful decision-making positions such as chairperson; highlighting women’s capacity to play key roles and make decisions; having men undertake nurturing tasks like making tea and minding children; and freeing women’s energies to assume other responsibilities; • altering worker-group interaction by endorsing collective group dynamics which eliminate hierarchical relationships between community workers and groups they are working with to provide individuals with the space to reach their own decisions. Working along Greenham women’s lines makes community workers more accountable to community groups. Community workers maintain organisational expertise and can initiate ideas, but participate as group members who implement agreed plans of action

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alongside everyone else. Such community workers endorse collective working, share skills, develop participatory mechanisms, refuel group commitment to the task and boost group morale. In forming groups consistent with feminist practice, community workers encourage people to use their own skills and assume personal responsibility for the decisions each takes as a group member, and strengthen resilience in maintaining campaigns over the long term. Ensuring a group’s survival as a collective democratic entity marks the task of a community worker as different from that of other activists. Community workers can liberate thinking by enabling people in groups and campaigns to become involved in consciousness-raising exercises which help them redefine their personal realities in social terms. In these, people can give expression to affective responses and emotions, thereby connecting external decision making with personal experiences as these shape their lives. Community workers can eliminate a sexist domestic division of labour. Confronting the constraints that familial ideology places on women enables community workers to play active roles in overcoming barriers to women’s participation in protest actions. They can encourage men to assume nurturing roles and childcare duties. Facilitating such activities enables community workers to tackle social divisions which inhibit collective community responses and assist people in forming non-oppressive relationships and resisting the subordination of welfare needs to economic exigencies. Community workers can confront the state through non-violent action, but must develop extensive support bases and alliances beforehand and as the action unfolds. Community workers will encounter state hostility if they organise challenges to state power or hegemony of the dominant ideology – currently neoliberal, marketdriven approaches to the human condition. These may become problematic. Preparing for negative state responses to their endeavours requires community workers to build extensive networks carrying overwhelming public support locally, nationally and internationally. Community workers mobilise both public and personal resources in favour of their cause and endorse collective ways of working. Finally, consciousness-raising is a powerful medium, but its impact on community work will be limited if groups do not acquire the resources and widespread support they need to translate awareness into action promoting transformational social change. Only by securing these can community work avoid losing even the circumscribed gains exemplified by the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Movement and those featured in feminist community action (Dominelli, 1986b).

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Making allies Making allies or forming alliances to support one’s cause is necessary for any group initiating social change in existing power relations. Traditionally, community workers have relied on community members and trade unions to provide allies for their causes. However, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Movement illustrates how an open, transparent and flat hierarchical structure can engender support near and far, much of it occurring spontaneously when their actions speak to people’s wider concerns about the world and their place in it. Their experiences demonstrate that having a cause that captures the imagination can attract supporters without requiring specific action in that regard. Another creative approach was displayed by Italian feminists who asked individual women across the world to affirm peace by buying a maximum of one metre of land at the entrance to an American airbase in Sicily to block vehicle movements in and out.

Box 5.1: Organising tips: forming alliances Questions to consider when thinking strategically about forming alliances are given below. Talk to people other than those forming your group. Be transparent about your motivations and learn about theirs to ensure you will be able to work together on a common goal. Keep your call to action simple and clear. This will require clarity about the issue you wish to address and make available the evidence of its importance to you and your potential allies. Show interest in your message, be well-informed and demonstrate hope in your project’s capacity to meet your objectives. Listen carefully to what your potential allies have to say. Go away to think about issues they raise if necessary. Cover action plans, group composition (be alert to issues of diversity), finances, networking with others outside the alliance, and local relevance of what you plan to do. Before engaging potential allies, identify your goal(s), policies and potential risks. Helpful questions include: • Why do you need to find allies/form an alliance? • Who should become allies/become part of the alliance and why? • Who should initiate the search for allies and why (do they have the necessary resources and skills)? • What advantages and disadvantages will arise from having allies/forming an alliance (for all those involved)? • How will group members respond to proposed allies/alliances? • Will consciousness-raising initiatives about goals be required?

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Social change through collective action: campaigns and mass mobilisations • How will decisions be taken and by whom (identify rules and protocols)? • Will training be required to facilitate good relationships between allies/an alliance? • What action(s) can be taken to address potential problems that might arise (identify problems and possible solutions; be flexible in responding to suggestions made by others)? • How will morale be maintained over time and who will be responsible for maintaining it? • Under which conditions or when will new members be added? • Under what conditions or when should the alliance end?

Conclusion Shaw (1994: 647) argues that civil society is a significant player in social change, defining civil society as ‘the network of [complex] institutions through which groups in society in general represent themselves – both to each other and the state’. This includes social movements like the feminist movement that Shaw considers as flexible, ‘relatively informal, spontaneous’ arrangements often involving mass mobilisations resulting in ‘episodic’ or variable influence in all aspects of women’s lives. Traditional community workers can learn much from feminist campaigns and mass mobilisations. The most innovative and significant one considered in this chapter is the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Movement, which devised collective ways of working that freed individual women to decide for themselves how to contribute their support to the wider collective effort. Its flat, egalitarian structures inspired a belief in the capacity of women to achieve social change, and subvert hegemonic discourses, even though they were eventually unable to sustain their action against the onslaught of a powerful and intransigent state. This weakness of the Greenham women’s initiative remains one that community workers have to transcend.

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Introduction Tackling inequality in the workplace remains an important arena for feminist interventions that encourage social and economic developments for women in both waged labour and unpaid caring work. In undertaking this, they tackled both public relational spaces and domestic relational spaces respectively. Feminist social action has exposed the monotony and drudgery characterising housework (Oakley, 1974); highlighted damage to women’s emotional development and careers caused by the gendered division of labour in both domestic (Gavron, 1966) and waged employment (Armstrong, 1984; Coyle and Skinner, 1988); and exposed the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in workplaces and violence in the home (Benn and Sedley, 1982). Feminists also identified the compulsion for men to persist in emotionally and physically numbing work to act as economic providers for their families (Dominelli, 1986a). Feminist action in the workplace has revealed the connections and contradictions between a woman’s experience of herself as a nurturer in the community and employee in paid employment. Feminists have organised within equal opportunities initiatives to promote egalitarian relations at work, in political parties, autonomous feminist groups, trade union movements and boardrooms to secure social justice for women through both male-dominated and women-only groups. In this chapter, I examine feminist action in creating working environments more conducive to women’s workplace rights and consider the patchy nature of feminist achievements on this front. I highlight the importance of dealing with equal pay, sexual harassment and promotion prospects. I also look at the relationship between waged work, unpaid domestic labour and their impact upon men’s and women’s lives in the home, including the division of domestic caring for children and older dependants. Using case materials, I examine how feminists have organised around these issues to improve women’s position as carers within the home and employees in the workplace. And I consider the backlash that has undermined feminist gains on employment rights despite legitimating discourses on the erroneously termed ‘work–family balance’ because this terminology perpetuates 131

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the view that domestic labour, including emotional work in family relations, is not work. I show that women practitioners performing nurturing roles have some needs that are coterminous with those of service users. This convergence provides the basis for an empathy resting on women’s shared experiences. However, such a focus cannot mask differences between them. I explore service user-worker relationships and draw parallels between the positions of women workers and the individuals they serve to reflect upon feminist perspectives used to explore the tensions between the care and control sides of their work. I suggest forms of organisational change to improve women’s position in social work and community work.

Waged work and domestic labour are interlinked The close connection between waged work and unwaged work reveals how one feeds the other. Work that women do in the waged labour market draws on the skills women learn by working in the home. Assuming these are acquired ‘naturally’, employers make few provisions for training women, thus reducing substantially their training costs for waged women. Like housework, women’s waged work is devalued and poorly paid. Women tend to occupy subordinate positions while men hold those commanding authority, power and resources (Munro, 2001). Housework has a large element of drudgery (Oakley, 1974); women’s waged work can be tedious, repetitive and monotonous. Inequality in waged work has encouraged some women to prefer working at home. Black and white working-class women facing atrocious conditions as paid labourers may relinquish their jobs to stay at home if this is a viable option (hooks, 1984; Davis, 1989). Waged work may be physically hazardous because women handle dangerous substances, do close work which strains their eyesight and may be rooted to one spot in uncomfortable positions for lengthy periods, thereby damaging their backs.

Women’s lot: unpaid domestic work and low-paid waged labour Society’s definition of masculinity and femininity are intricately connected to paid employment. Paid work, especially better paid, prestigious positions, belong largely to men. Unpaid work in the home is women’s lot. This idea pervades the social division of labour, the educational system in preparing people for their social roles and family

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relationships (Belotti, 1975). Feminist scholars have expended energy in exploring women’s position in the labour market and found that familialist ideology structures employers’ expectations about women employees. Women’s family responsibilities promote presumptions about women as temporary incumbents of the waged workplace who are expected to leave if they marry or have children. Responsible men are assumed to be tied to the workplace to provide financial support for their families. Waged work for men furnishes a career; for women, it contributes ‘pin money’ (Coyle and Skinner, 1988), a view that remains salient today as men’s careers tend to be valued more than women’s. The US Census Bureau found that women still earn only 75.5 cents for every 100 cents earned by men. In 2003, before the financial crisis of 2007–8, which disproportionately affected women more than men, real wages for women fell while poverty rose. Women at the highest levels in the boardroom were paid 16% less than men. In 2005, the British trade union Amicus deemed the position ‘disgraceful’ and launched a major campaign against the gender pay gap. In 2018, under government requirements that firms with more than 250 employees publish an equal pay audit, even the illustrious BBC was exposed as having a gender pay gap of 18.9%, using mean pay compared to the UK median of 18.1%. Much of this disparity is driven by the structural reality of more men being ensconced in senior positions while women occupy junior roles. Society’s definition of waged employment ignores dimensions of reality essential to women’s well-being. Women’s lives are constructed around having one foot at home in the community and the other in waged work. The one earner, two-parent family is no longer the major family form (Eichler, 1983; Sidel, 1986; Segal, 1987). Twoearner couples are necessary for a family to enjoy a decent standard of living since neither working alone earns a sufficiently high salary to provide for dependants (Sidel, 1986; Segal, 1987). For single-parent families headed by women, poverty prohibits their acquiring a decent standard of living (Davis, 1989) because waged-working women earn less than men. Women in Britain, the USA and Canada, for example, earn on average around two-thirds of the male wage (Armstrong, 1984; Sidel, 1986; Segal, 1987). Though less in some occupations, the ‘gender pay gap’ persists (Status of Women, 2001; ONS, 2004; Census Bureau, 2005; EHRC, 2018). Women work part-time to meet family responsibilities. These jobs are located primarily in the low-waged service and retail sectors, thereby reducing women’s earning capacities and ability to acquire credits for a sufficient pension in old age. This results in the ‘feminisation of poverty’ throughout the lifecycle.

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Feminists in Britain and America have campaigned around women’s unequal position in the workplace and demanded equal pay for equal work. In Britain, the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA), passed in 1970 following feminist social action, became effective in 1975 and created an even stricter segregation of labour than existed previously as employers sought to evade its provisions by defining more jobs as ‘women-only’ ones. Consequently, women’s wages, which had peaked at 73% of male wages following the implementation of the SDA, declined to 67% by the late 1980s (Segal, 1987). America’s 1964 Equal Economic Opportunities Act was followed by a period of affirmative action. Nonetheless, waged women receive lower pay than men and are excluded from the higher echelons of the labour hierarchy by a ‘glass ceiling’ while black men and women continue to earn less than their white compatriots (CEA, 1998). The waged labour market covers only a fraction of the work women undertake. Their unpaid domestic housework makes a substantial contribution to the economy, as Canadian analyses indicate (Status of Women, 2001). In 1970, it formed 41% of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The UN, responding to 20 years of demands from grassroots women’s organisations, valued women’s unpaid work at $11 trillion annually worldwide. The Beijing Platform for Action following the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women asked all governments to collect these figures in satellite accounts to GDP. Few governments have complied. Despite feminist endeavours in raising awareness, domestic work remains publicly invisible. An early feminist attempt to bring domestic labour into the open was to demand ‘wages for housework’ (Dalla Costa and James, 1972). The Wages for Housework Campaign did not achieve its objective, but redefined public understandings of unpaid work. One problem was that the call for ‘wages for housework’ was not supported by the feminist movement as a whole. Socialist feminists rejected its specific demand while accepting the social importance of domestic labour on the grounds that payment for housework would lock women more firmly into houseworker roles. They preferred housework to be socialised and shared equally between men and women. State initiatives in socialising housework in capitalist states have been limited, affecting primarily nursery provisions for stigmatised families, and hardly merits being so classified. China undertook a massive socialisation of housework, particularly in the areas of childcare, cooking and laundry during the Great Leap Forward (Andors, 1983; Dominelli, 1991b). This was not a huge success and a sexist division of labour has prevailed in socialised enterprises. Domestic labour was not recognised

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as socially useful work and did not earn workpoints (Andors, 1983). Women performed the bulk of socialised housework and community work while earning fewer workpoints than men. ‘Women’s work’ remained undervalued whether socialised or not, and men’s work received higher workpoints (Dominelli, 1991b). These developments suggest that ‘men’s work’ and the servicing of life in general have to be incorporated into a redefinition of ‘women’s work’ to transform a gendered division of labour into one that does not reinforce sexism.

Women’s unequal engagement in the workplace Discrimination against waged working women is unacceptable; their representation in the higher echelons is poor, whatever high-paying professional sector is examined. Unequal gender relations feature in the criminal justice system. Women form two-thirds of students reading law at British universities. However, only 25% of the judiciary are women. Within the Supreme Court, there are 11 men and 1 woman judge, Lady  Hale, appointed in September 2017. On this basis, achieving equal representation would take years. A sexist organisational culture within the judiciary includes older men’s patronage, influential old boys’ networks and the devaluing of women’s contributions to the profession. Women barristers have higher dropout rates due to taking time out to have children and lifestyle choices (Bowcott, 2015). By 2015, only 9% of top executive positions in the business sector were occupied by women. The majority of these were non-executive, part-time positions; only six had reached the rank of chief executive officer (CEO). Vince Cable when Secretary of State for Business sought to raise the number of women in corporate boardrooms. Women’s unequal representation persists despite being a drain on productivity. Economic performance increases when women inhabit the boardroom. Thornton (2017) argues that workforce inequality decreases the UK economy by 3% of GDP or £49  billion yearly (Treanor, 2015). Women have acquired several important posts internationally. Until sacked by Trump, Janet Yellen headed the American Federal Reserve; Christine Lagarde of France leads the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Women are challenging sexism in corporations, for example Dalal Belghiti’s case of sexual discrimination against the investment bank Jefferies (Spillett, 2015). Women are less evident in the higher ranks of multinational technology giants. When in top positions, women continue to be harassed, for example Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo, and Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook. Mayer was

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criticised for wanting two weeks (out of 18) as maternity leave; and Sandberg was accused of being a ‘false feminist’. Gamers, the majority of whom are men, complain that women’s quest for equality is constraining their creativity by denying them the use of sexist, racist and ageist stereotypes (McDaniel, 2016), reflecting the sense of entitlement among men who take their privileges for granted. Women are poorly represented among the higher echelons of the Church of England, despite their ordination being agreed in 1994. By 2012, one in four of those ordained or 1,870 were women. Moreover, 319 men occupied senior positions compared to 39 women. Women bishops were approved in 2014. However, of seven diocesan bishops appointed, only two were women. Women are largely located at the lower suffragan bishop level. Pope Francis has reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s policy of no women priests and celibacy among the priesthood (Sherwood, 2016). Women form over 50% of students at major film schools, but of the top 250 grossing films in 2014, women directed 7%, a drop of 2% in 17 years. Only 12% of their lead roles were female, and no woman was aged over 45. Since 2008, women in speaking roles have declined by 5%. Among that year’s top 100 films, women constituted 11.2% of writers and 18.9% of producers. Meryl Streep, a top Hollywood actor, receives less pay than her male counterparts and is subjected to sexism (Topping, 2015). Gender relations in the music industry are equally skewed. Only four of the top 20 earners are women – Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Rihanna and Taylor Swift. In 2011 in the UK, 61% of performers were men; nearly all (93%) were white. Within the promotion and management ranks of 2008, only 30% were women. Women are underrepresented in music festivals: 10% at the Reading and Leeds Festivals of 2015. Classical music presents a similar picture. Among the top 22 orchestras in the USA, only one woman was a conductor; no woman has been musical director in the UK. In 2012, women formed 40% and 29% of players in these countries respectively. Women’s music was often misallocated to men, for example Björk’s (Topping, 2015). The popular media does not represent the population. In a 26-year study of 2,000 newspapers and magazines, men were mentioned five times more often than women and dominated the by-lines by four to one. In 2012, men wrote 82% of front-page articles in the UK. Men were more likely to be quoted than women. Women dominated the scene as crime victims (Martinson, 2015). The feminine fashion industry provides an exception: three of four top positions are held by women, namely Alison Loehnis (Net-

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a-Porter); Stacey Cartwright (Harvey Nichols) and Helen David (Harrods). Women comprise 72% of the British Fashion Council’s Advisory Board. In 2015, women ran half the labels in the London Catwalk in September; formed 84% of the top-tier international buyers; and ran eight of nine labels receiving funding for new talent (Cartner-Morley, 2015). Women compose 70% of workers and run 14% of the top fashion brands – a better record than the 4.6% running companies in the Fortune 500. Yet the mainly women workers producing their garments in China, Cambodia, Vietnam and Bangladesh endure appalling working conditions, costing many their lives, and receive incredibly low rates of pay (Cartner-Morley, 2015).

Feminist workplace initiatives Feminists also campaign, around health issues in the workplace, transcending traditional approaches to health and safety at work by focusing on wearing protective apparel and restricting access to certain types of work. Feminists have prioritised preventative healthcare which enables people to keep their health longer, such as breast and cervical screening. Progress remains patchy, and gains contradictory. They intensify pressures to keep women working longer and ignore women’s emotional and mental health needs by expecting them to perform a double shift every day – in waged labour and unpaid domestic work. Women face additional hazards in waged work which rarely affect male colleagues, such as sexual harassment from male workers. Women face physical, psychological and emotional attacks which can destabilise their sense of well-being. Feminists have focused on verbal and physical abuse, demonstrating that sexual harassment creates atmospheres that intimidate women and prevent them developing their full potential in waged work (Whittington, 1986; Benn and Sedley, 1982). Feminist action in the workplace has tackled this issue and made eliminating sexual harassment and racial harassment an integral part of equal opportunities policies that encourage women to join the waged workforce, including in male-dominated occupations. Feminist action on these fronts has been fraught with difficulties (Munro, 2001). Men have resisted acknowledging inequality in the workplace, refused to accept responsibility for perpetuating and condoning it, and taken few active steps to eradicate it. Additionally, men have begun to complain of sexual harassment from women in powerful positions. Such instances highlight abuses of power in

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hierarchical organisations and bolster feminist claims for egalitarian, violence-free social relations. Feminist initiatives against sexual harassment suggest that the problem has to be confronted at various points: the socialisation of boys and girls; changing expectations at school, training and waged work. For feminist efforts to be effective, sexual harassment has to be taken seriously by men. Men must accept responsibility for their obnoxious behaviour and take determined steps to end it. Men also require training from childhood to make them aware of sexist power dynamics and unpack how their own behaviour may (un) wittingly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Such messages have been resisted, although the #MeToo campaign has successfully raised public consciousness in turning this private trouble into a public issue. Prior to this campaign, feminists had organised women’s support groups and caucuses to make sexual harassment a trade union issue and convince employers to adopt policies which made sexual harassment a disciplinary offence. Unions like NALGO (National Association of Government Officers) and NUPE (National Union of Public Employees) before merging as UNISON and the Association of University Teachers (AUT, now the University Colleges Union (UCU) responded to feminist concerns by highlighting this problem among members. These have exposed the extensiveness of sexual harassment in women’s working lives; the reluctance of men to admit its prevalence; the fears that inhibit women from bringing forward complaints; and the difficulties encountered in making sexual harassment a serious workplace issue. Focusing on men’s abuse of women at work has also exposed bullying at work across sectors for both genders (Dominelli, 2006). Shifting trade union membership and employers’ attitudes is problematic because this requires men to rethink and change previous behaviours and condemn earlier patterns of relating to women. Men have to learn that comments, actions and structures previously accepted as ‘normal’ have trivialised and degraded women and are socially reprehensible. While agreeing there was a problem, some women workers have been sceptical about the extent to which feminists could successfully challenge ‘natural’ male behaviour and introduce new codes of conduct in workplace settings. They wanted evidence that men took the issue seriously. Women’s responses indicate the significance of feminist ways of working in encouraging women to consider social matters from their own personal position and experiences and work through them.

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Childcare campaigns connect domestic work and waged labour Feminists have highlighted the connections between women’s housework, childcare and access to waged work. They have argued that housework, especially childcare, should be socialised to free women for other activities. Campaigns to improve childcare provisions feature strongly in feminist social action. This has included campaigns to defend public nursery provisions threatened with closure through public expenditure cuts, such as Save the Wheatley Street Nursery; end racist practices in daycare centres, such as Hackney; and improve nursery and childcare provisions nationally, for example the National Childcare Campaign (NCC). The majority of struggles around daycare for the under-fives are local. Women organise in response to loss of places, absence of provisions and desire to provide children with anti-sexist and antiracist environments. Some struggles are protracted, especially if the local authority being challenged is the one threatening to close existing facilities. Its response may compel women to occupy buildings, as occurred in the Save the Wheatley Street Nursery campaign. Here, women undertook diverse activities, including lobbying local councillors, obtaining media support, working through trade unions and procuring community support, prior to taking direct action. Working together in non-hierarchical ways during such campaigns, women have shared their skills, expertise and fears to change workplace relations. Women in unionised workplaces have sought union support. Supportive trade union action has included facilitating women’s access to buildings they intend to occupy (NCC, 1984). Unions can furnish useful information and advice on practicalities to be followed, provide legal counsel, and negotiate wages and policy changes with employers. Such collaborative relationships or alliances can create links between women and workers in communities, and men and women in workplaces. Women occupying buildings can disrupt family life. Meals will not appear on the table; housework will not be done. This makes connections between women holding both public and private roles readily apparent (Cook and Kirk, 1983). Women engage the community more closely in their action (Gallagher, 1977) by relying on informal networks among women to secure political and practical support to draw upon and extend social capital. Women in the community sign petitions, attend demonstrations and supply those occupying buildings with food, drink and bedding. Some women help family members left at home.

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Participants handle problems encountered by specific nursery campaigns imaginatively, for example overcoming differences in women’s preparedness to undertake ‘militant’ action by enabling individual women to participate only in actions that they feel able to; coping with the legal aspects of confrontation between community groups and the authorities; and broadening their base of support. Women have indicated that they would work if they had access to low-cost high-quality childcare. Campaigns around childcare issues are important aspects of workplace action. More such campaigns are organised when nurseries become casualties of public expenditure cuts and women assume prominent roles. Scattered throughout the country, childcare campaigns have been fragmented, each replicating organising efforts elsewhere and limiting women to learning strategies and tactics on their own instead of drawing inspiration from other women’s struggles (NCC, 1985). With few exceptions, fragmentation prevented women from supporting one another in moments of acute struggle or demoralisation. Women from one childcare campaign spontaneously began to contact women in other campaigns and meet them at various conferences and discussion seminars. Women substantiated these links through mutual support at demonstrations. Contacts of this nature were formalised when women launched the NCC in July 1980 (NCC, 1985). Communication is now facilitated by social media. The culmination of women’s concern for and support of one another in forming the NCC made their campaigning experiences more easily available to other women protecting local childcare provisions. NCC members were not prepared to let the NCC only defend inadequate provisions. They raised questions about women’s roles in society (including the labour market), their responsibilities vis-à-vis children (including inadequate childcare provisions) and oppression caused by having dual roles in waged work and domestic labour. Their endeavours gained New Labour support for making highquality childcare the norm and initiated the debate about the work– life balance, an issue that remains high in social discourses. Feminist social action in the workplace raised new questions concerning the well-being of all workers, including men working absurdly long hours. Wheatley Street Nursery campaign This campaign illustrates feminist social action around childcare provisions. Women affected by the proposed closure of the Wheatley Street Nursery formed a Parents’ Action Group (PAG) to oppose it. At first, the PAG organised petitions and lobbied councillors to alter

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the Council’s decisions and produced a document that spelt out their reasons for opposing the nursery’s closure. Meanwhile, PAG continued meeting the relevant parties to the dispute. PAG members collectively drew up a series of contingency action plans, including occupying the building. The right of individual women to determine their own contribution to the struggle was maintained and no woman in the group was compelled to undertake action to which she personally could not commit. PAG sought support among professionals, trade unionists, local government employees and parents, emphasising the links between private caring and the public realm of waged work. These preparations paid off when they occupied the building to prevent the nursery’s closure. Trade unionists in NUPE endorsed the occupation immediately. However, under orders from the Council, senior NALGO officials uninvolved with PAG members locked the building, switched off the electricity and turned off the gas while women were inside the premises. These actions demonstrate the importance of acquiring support for a campaign at all levels of the trade union movement before reaching crisis point and highlights the gap between shopfloor trade unionists and their managerial echelons. While occupying the building, PAG prepared publicity for the campaign and organised public meetings to present its case and secure support for the occupation. PAG arranged meetings with local authority officials responsible for closing the nursery and demanded they reverse their decision, and organised marches to the Council buildings. As they marched through the streets, people sang protest songs PAG members had written. Keeping members participating in PAG’s activities was a vehicle for maintaining morale and commitment among them. Their tactics paid off. The occupation was successful and Wheatley Street Nursery was saved. Recognising the necessity of addressing the lack of childcare to encourage women into the workforce, private employers became more receptive to feminist demands for good childcare provisions for waged working women. In late 1989, larger private companies like the Midland Bank (now HSBC) provided workplace crèches and nurseries so that employees could be assured of high-quality childcare. Employers have made these provisions available not because they endorse feminist positions, but to attract women employees (Allenspach, 1975) and gain higher productivity (Trautner, 2016). Public sector trade unions have supported feminist demands for nurseries, crèches, flexible working hours and job sharing. Unless discrimination against waged women workers is tackled directly, these measures can become sites to exploit women’s labour further. Women’s

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exploitation will be exacerbated if the resultant increase in productivity is not recognised through pay increases, better career prospects including for women working part-time, involving men equally in childcare work, and creating egalitarian working relations. Workplace actions have to restructure both home and workplace relations according to feminist objectives and abolish the distinction between ‘women’s work’ and ‘men’s work’ in both locations (Dominelli, 2006).

Eldercare: work undertaken in the home The declining birth rate and lower number of young school-leavers currently reaching the waged labour market, have caused employers to fear future labour shortages and rethink their attitudes, policies and provisions regarding women employees (Benyon, 1989). The dwindling supply of young workers coupled with Britain’s restrictive position on immigration means that women looking after children and older people in the home form the largest sources of untapped labour that employers can access. Employers will have to direct their attention to growing workforce requirements by attracting more women workers (Bird, 2018). Consequently, challenging definitions of caring as ‘women’s work’ cannot be limited to childcare. Eldercare has to be moved out of women’s caring ghetto. Care of older people already taxes the energies of more women than childcare (Higgins, 1989) and more men and young people are becoming carers (Twigg and Atkin, 1994). Given the demographic makeup of Britain, eldercare is likely to rise. The 2001 Census figure of 11 million people of pensionable age in the UK will reach 15.2 million by 2031. One in five will live in poverty. Most will be women. Eldercare cannot be left as an isolated task that women perform in the home or low-paid ghettos in private sector residential or nursing homes. Men must become more engaged in these activities, see the merit of working in egalitarian directions, and not infantilise older people. Intergenerational divisions that split people into young and old who do not interact must cease. Integrated community-based provisions for elders created by black people to address ageism and racism demonstrate this (ASRA, 1981; Patel, 1990). Unpaid caring work undertaken at home is the neglected face of work, but essential for the well-being of substantial numbers of women, men and children. Older people, an important proportion of Britain’s population, face three major problems: social devaluation for not working in productive sectors of the economy; material poverty including inadequate pensions; and social isolation which leads to

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poor physical and mental health (Walker and Hennessy, 2004). Many older persons cannot afford central heating and die unnecessarily of hypothermia; cannot maintain homes in good repair; and cannot adapt their homes to meet age-related physical needs like easily accessible bathrooms and bedrooms. The debilitating effects of poverty during old age are disproportionately experienced by women, who constitute the largest proportion of older people and have the lowest incomes. Townsend (1979) discovered that older women were likely to have half the income of older men. In 2003, 17% of single older men and 21% of older women lived in poverty (ONS, 2004). By 2017, these figures had risen to 18% and 23% respectively (ONS, 2018). Women are overrepresented among poor people because they have not gained pension credits when undertaking domestic work or accumulated enough of these in low-waged employment and/or interrupted waged careers. The social isolation of older people cannot automatically be attributed to increased frailty generated by declining physical health due to old age (Doress and Siegal, 1987). Ageism or discrimination against older people on the basis of age and devaluation of their contributions to society as unpaid carers and retired waged workers contribute to this. People without a productive role in both waged and unwaged work arenas lose their social status (Phillipson, 1982). Losing their status and roles causes individuals to experience declining confidence, lowered self-esteem and feelings of uselessness and irrelevance. These realities create major threads running through the lives of older people living on low incomes (Walker and Hennessy, 2004). Older people can feel overwhelmed and disempowered by the mere fact of their existence. Such feelings are particularly oppressive for older women whose experience of ageing is more problematic than men’s because they have lost social significance as beings with a purpose and are denied sexuality. Women’s experience of ageism differs because they face ageism at a younger age, live out old age in poverty, are stigmatised to a greater degree and endure more isolation than men (Doress and Siegal, 1987). Yet they undertake substantial amounts of care for grandchildren and voluntary work. The American Census of 2012 declared that 10% of grandchildren lived with their grandparents. Ultimately, to eliminate ageism, the basis on which society is organised must change to reflect feminist principles. These accord people dignity and purpose by virtue of being alive and not by role(s) occupied in waged work (Dominelli, 1991b). In the interim, older

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women are reacting against such treatment, organising themselves as carers and pensioners to resist ageism, for example Maggie Kuhn’s Grey Panthers in the USA. The burden of caring for dependent adults falls largely on women. The working relations of women caring for adult dependants at home are indicative of women’s subordinate position in society. These unpaid carers are unsupported and isolated. Those known as the ‘sandwich generation’ will be caring for children and/or older parents and holding waged employment simultaneously (Bonny, 1984). Women whose caring duties compel them to leave paid employment and an independent life to care for others can find their predicament extremely distressing. Within families, single women are expected to volunteer care to spare their married sisters. This places them in the unenviable position of having their welfare subordinated to that of their siblings who are servicing men. The pitting of a single woman’s welfare against her married sister’s is not only an unequal arrangement in which the social balance is tipped heavily against the unwed woman, it also damages her emotional well-being and distorts her relationships with her sisters if she harbours resentment at being landed with the task. Her brothers are not called upon to make similar sacrifices (Dominelli, 2013), thus intensifying the injustice of her situation. The position of unpaid carers in the home is appalling, but the state is increasing demands for women’s labour by cutting social care budgets and closing institutional provisions. In the UK, austerity measures disproportionately affect women because most public sector care workers are women. Women constitute 71% of the workforce providing personal care in both state and market provisions. Additionally, self-help has been appropriated through governmentendorsed austerity policies to cover the gap in provisions between what service users need and what the public purse disburses. ‘Contingency planning’ encapsulates the assumption that women’s unpaid labour provides community-based care for older people not assessed as having serious needs (Dominelli, 2013). The appalling lack of publicly funded support to carers of older people has prompted feminists to develop support networks and demand payment for carers (Bonny, 1984). Ageism combined with low incomes have left older people unprotected and had a major impact in limiting welfare provisions for older women. Poverty in old age, the product of low incomes in women’s waged work and none for their unwaged labour during their years of employment make it virtually impossible for women, especially black and white workingclass women, to buy private pensions to ease the hardships of old age.

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They are reliant on miserly state provisions. In 1970s Britain, 40 years’ contributions entitled them to a maximum £79.60 per week; now £164.35. In America, they obtained support from family and friends (Stack, 1975). In Australia, the Older Women’s Network (OWN), a national grassroots movement supporting and run by older women, extended state provisions through self-help initiatives. The government’s individualised and fragmented approach to caring for older people does little to enhance social solidarity between generations. Payment for Britain’s eldercare has been devolved onto families through the requirement that capital assets over £23,250 (the capital disregarded in 2016) captured through older people’s home ownership are released to cover care costs. In 2015, the price of a single room in a care home in England averaged £34,000 yearly, and varied according to region. The East and Southeast were the most expensive; the cheapest was the Northeast, where annual costs reached £24,232. In 2016, the average price of a terraced house in County Durham reached £91,169, a semi-detached dwelling £125,156 and a detached property £223,498. Selling a terraced house in County Durham would cover 3.76 years of care before the state would have to step in if this was a person’s only asset, which is usually the case. Intergenerational relationships and expectations could have been irrevocably broken. Moreover, those with the least assets would have been subjected to such cruelty most because wealthy families could pay for eldercare and retain their property. Women are a source of support to individuals receiving care and have challenged society’s neglect of older people and ageist practices in both home-based and institutional care. Current age demographics mean that older women may be cared for by other older women ‘in the community’ through poorly supported kin care, neighbourhood care and state or commercial nursing homes. Most older people are cared for at home; 5% receive institutional care (Johnson and Falkingham, 1992). In Britain, the National Association of Carers, now Carers UK, links up local carers’ support groups and presses for legislative changes to improve services for carers, those they care for and their families. In the USA, organisations like the Grey Panthers and Older Women’s League connect local groups and offer intergenerational support. Feminists have established carers’ support groups to question society’s neglect of the needs of women caring for older people (Bonny, 1984) and challenge ageist oppression of older people. Their concerns straddle the needs of both carers and those being cared for. Recently, feminists have embedded the right to ‘care about’ and ‘care for’ people in the rights of citizenship (Knijn and Ungerson, 1997). Environmentalists,

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including those endorsing green social work, are extending this ‘duty of care’ to planet earth and all animate and inanimate things within it to promote sustainability holistically (Dominelli, 2018).

Recognition of caring work: organising around old age is a workplace issue Caring has implications for workplace relations. Employers should recognise it as socially necessary work regarding hours of work, pensions and career progression. Carers’ support groups provide a supportive environment for carers to discuss problems openly, share with others their experiences and frustrations of caring for dependent adults, including disabled adult children, and raise eldercare as a workplace issue. Carers’ support group members exchange knowledge about resources, learn about health problems in old age, arrange specialist speakers, organise social or fundraising activities, and initiate policy changes by lobbying employers and government. By sharing and exploring concerns, carers make friends and discover that they are not alone in facing problems engendered by the invisibility of caring work. Carers’ support groups are tasked with raising awareness of caring work and caring relationships among themselves, employers and wider society; and arguing for caring work to be included in accruing contributory pensions to offset poverty in old age. This could redress the gap in women’s pension contributions caused by career interruptions to care for others. Carers’ group activities develop women’s understanding of the relationship between their personal situation as unsupported carers who sacrifice their own needs to provide care and challenge society’s neglect in providing care services for older people. They also enable women to comprehend more fully the quality of available resources and initiate development of more appropriate services for those they care for and themselves. Debates about the most appropriate forms of care for older people cover accessible institutional, affordable care retained as long as necessary; and family-based care consistent with feminist principles (Dominelli, 1981; Finch, 1984; Nice, 2008) to enable service providers to treat older people with dignity and practise human rights-based care. Adhering to feminist principles consistent with a feminist ‘ethics of care’ becomes tricky when ensuring that the interests of neither persons being cared for nor carers are subordinated or exploited (Ungerson and Knijen, 1997; Svenhuijsen, 2001; Noddings, 2002, 2003). People’s right to be ‘cared for’ and ‘care about’ others introduces reciprocity into caring relationships. This requires institutions that

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are run along egalitarian lines, engage care workers and people being cared for in all decision-making processes; ensure residents lead an independent life compatible with their mental and physical capacities, retain the right to control their destiny, receive all their human and civil rights including the right to invite long-term visitors to ‘their home’, have privacy, undertake sexual activity, and live a full life. The state, as the embodiment of collective will, is responsible for facilitating the realisation of these aspirations. Choice is central for both carer and cared for. Institutional care is appropriate for some people if both caring and working relations in such institutions follow feminist theory and practice. Older people have identified problematic areas to be addressed. These include: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

ageist definitions of their position; feelings of isolation and powerlessness; remaining independent and living in their own homes; overreliance on relatives, adult children and neighbours and providing space for them to visit, provide social contact and support; low incomes including low pensions; poor public transportation (taxis are expensive; buses are difficult to manage and expensive); bad housing; lack of quality housing that meets current needs regarding size and facilities for those with physical disabilities; inadequate domiciliary services, especially home helps, Meals on Wheels, gardeners; a complicated social services system interacting with healthcare; lack of leisure centres and open spaces easily accessed by older people; providing unobtrusive monitoring services to ensure safety; high fuel prices precipitating fuel poverty and expensive other household necessities; services to prepare older people for active post-retirement life; inadequate and expensive communications systems; the expense and poor availability of aids and adaptations.

Older women’s organisations impact both the workplace and wider society Carers and older people have organised feminist campaigns and networks around old age, for example the Grey Panthers started by

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Maggie Kuhn in the USA and Older Women’s League (Doress and Siegal, 1987) to challenge workplace and wider social relations. In Britain, Carers UK and other organisations are unravelling ageist stereotypes by: • challenging ageism and society’s definition of old age, especially its enforced dependency, symbolised in compulsory retirement ages; • replacing the term ‘elderly’ with ‘older people’ or ‘elders’ in recognition of their life experiences and wisdom, thereby challenging ageist assumptions of their status and capacities; • highlighting connections between women’s low incomes in old age and poorer financial status, low wages in waged work, married women’s position of enforced economic dependency on men and/or interrupted working careers to care for others, including children, aged relatives and husbands; • breaking down barriers between different age groups, challenging their division into young and old, and promoting intergenerational solidarity; • demonstrating older women’s strengths and enhancing their confidence and pride; • identifying older women’s specific health needs in non-ageist terms, such as providing breast screening for women regardless of age; • hearing older women’s voices. Until recently, community workers in Britain paid scant attention to older people and rarely engaged in direct work with them. Nonetheless, older people have been organising themselves, for example the British Pensioners and Trade Unions Action Association (BPTUAA) has actively organised older people as an organisation catering for older men and women locally and nationally (Vincent et al, 2017). Older people in BPTUAA have held conferences, drawn up a manifesto of demands and demonstrated against government policy on low pensions and high fuel charges that burden elders. They are currently focusing on retaining health and social care services free at the point of need and broadband upgrades for older people. BPTUAA’s demands are wide-ranging and cover most concerns that pensioners have. Besides demanding dignity, independence and security as full members of society, they cover incomes, housing, personal social services, fuel allowances, healthcare, education, recreational facilities, inflation-linked pensions, tax-free Christmas bonuses, retention of pensions if they work after retirement and death grants. Pensioners have also opposed home closures and council tax rises, and risked

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going to jail for their stances (Mulholland, 2005). Community activists can support older people through such organisations by facilitating processes in which older people make demands and control the show. Feminists can positively support their decisions. BPTUAA has encouraged trade unions to recognise older people as part of the working class whose interests should become an integral part of their concerns and responsibilities and should be included in negotiations with employers. It has insisted that pensioners’ concerns thread through all aspects of workplace relations, especially for decent pensions to become a right enjoyed by all. BPTUAA’s activities can be criticised for not making radical demands that challenge institutionalised ageism like their American feminist counterparts. However, BPTUAA’s impact in organising older people and raising British pensioners’ consciousness of their rights and entitlements should not be minimised or its influence on the trade union movement ignored. BPTUAA’s paper, the British Pensioner, has improved communications between pensioners and the public by identifying problematic areas in their lives. Older women have highlighted interdependency between generations (Doress and Siegel, 1987) and brought together groups of women to share problems, develop understandings and provide support across age and other barriers. Carers’ demands for the recognition of carework and promulgation of policies that meet their needs have drawn extensively on feminist organising to pursue carers’ interests. The National Association of Carers, now Carers UK, has argued that informal carers be paid the Carer’s Allowance (formerly the Invalid Care Allowance) which recognises caring for others as work if they do over 35 hours weekly. Alongside their demands for publicly supported childcare (NCC, 1985) and eldercare (Doress and Segal, 1987) to widen women’s participation in the labour force, feminists have struggled to secure equal opportunities in the workplace. They have worked through trade unions; joined ad hoc equal opportunities committees; formed workplace-based support groups; and networked with other feminists to introduce equal opportunities policies and practices in waged work. Sustained feminist and black people’s actions on workplace inequalities have compelled public sector unions like NALGO (now UNISON) to establish an Equal Rights Working Party to examine the rights of women, lesbian women, gay men and black people in local government employment. These groups had organised autonomously within NALGO previously, for example the Black Members Group. UNISON has continued with these and added the right to self-defined sexual orientation to its remit and supports women’s claims for equal

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pay for equal work today. The 2018 UCU’s (University and Colleges Union’s) strike for better pensions for existing and future lecturers depicts an intergenerational attempt to sustain decent pensions for workers, but employers have frustrated this outcome. Older people’s initiatives have had mixed results. They have raised the public profile of women’s inequality at work; opened more sectors of the economy to women workers; helped employers and workers become aware of blatant forms of discrimination against waged working women; and encouraged employers to monitor recruitment practices, interviewing procedures and promotion opportunities for gender bias (Coyle and Skinner, 1988). These moves have not produced the results anticipated. Women recruited to workplaces traditionally dominated by men often left quickly when encountering extensive hostility from men colleagues. They were subjected to sexist jokes, sexist innuendo and sabotage as men fought to keep them ‘in their place’ (Benyon, 1989). This picture contrasts sharply with men entering women’s traditional occupations, such as office work, teaching, nursing and social work. Men are supported by women colleagues, welcomed and accepted. Their superiors consider them promotion material and they advance to the managerial and higher echelons very quickly (Senate Sex Equality Committee, 1986; Howe, 1986; Benyon, 1989). Women continue to fight the ‘glass ceiling’ that blocks advancement up the managerial ladder (DTI, 2005; Block and Crawford, 2013; Omran et al, 2015). It seems that equal opportunities policies that focus on limited aspects of the dynamics leading to gender discrimination at work advance men’s interests more readily than they promote equality for women.

Women workers and women service users: shared interests Feminist community workers seek egalitarian relationships with the women with whom they work. In redefining relationships between them, feminist community workers have recognised that women in the community face triple workloads – waged work, unwaged housework and unpaid caring work including voluntary work – and refuse to lock them into these categories. Feminist community workers support women by making known their plight and raising public consciousness through campaigns, street theatre, audiovisual productions including films, videos, social media, community newspapers, leaflets, posters and lobbying. Feminist community workers have strategically involved local men in tasks normally considered ‘women’s work’ to break down the

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division of labour in community groups, for example men minding children in crèches they provide. Feminists have tried to convince men that they should do housework, mind children and care for older relatives to free women for community activities; and encourage men to undertake supportive roles rather than dominate community groups (Curno et al, 1982). Encouraging men to support women’s involvement in community action can release women participants and women community workers from domestic commitments that eat into their time for doing other things including doing waged work and using leisure facilities. While acknowledging that they wield power by virtue of their skills as practitioners, feminist community workers have begun to reduce it by imparting knowledge to those they work with and focus attention on facilitating women’s ability to make their own decisions about their groups’ orientation and activities. They have placed women in community groups on a more egalitarian footing by highlighting areas of shared experiences as women where interests might converge. This has been significant in redefining work to include both waged and unwaged labour and valuing both while recognising the interdependence between these two spheres. Feminist community workers and women in community groups can endorse the importance of childcare facilities that suit all women’s needs and work together as equals to develop these in practice. Demanding resources that meet the requirements of both groups of women enables them to support each other in arguing for childcare that is available around the clock. Such provisions would open up waged employment opportunities for women and make it easier for them to choose the lifestyles they deem most rewarding. The concern of both sets of women to provide the best possible care for children enables them to consider together what kinds of services will meet children’s needs for intellectual stimulation, emotional fulfilment, physical care and bodily growth. In short, they have pooled resources to develop facilities that accord equal importance to meeting the needs of women as service users, waged workers, working at home and caring for others. They can incorporate diversities and tackle inequalities among them, for example fighting for good-quality childcare for all groups would ensure that the specific needs of black women and black children or disabled women and disabled children are properly addressed. Developing relationships of equality between women community workers and women in the community is critical to feminist community workers, avoiding the trap of enforcing domesticity upon women and prioritising the needs of waged women over those of

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unwaged women. If they become caught in relations of domination and subordination, feminist community workers will promote oppressive forms of community work consistent with social controls that reinforce women’s domestic roles while ignoring their choices.

‘We’re all in it together’ – women against pit closures Feminist community activists have consistently argued that workplace relations and domestic arrangements are intricately linked. The protracted British Miners’ Strike of 1984–85 exemplified community action which connected community issues with workplace ones and involved alliances covering a wide cross-section of the population locally and nationally. Women Against Pit Closures refused to remain on the sidelines in subordinate roles to men and initially defended mining communities threatened with decimation if the pits closed. Protecting local communities meant women had to leave them to convince others to support their cause. Women travelled the length and breadth of the country giving talks, appearing on television and performing their own sketches of the situation. During their struggle, women developed both gender and class consciousness. The domestic division of labour by which miners’ wives were responsible for housework acted as a drag on their involvement. To free women’s time for undertaking public activities, domestic arrangements were altered. Domestic relations were challenged as men used to going home to meals cooked by their wives began cooking for them. In some communities, domestic tasks like cooking and childcare were ‘socialised’ or undertaken by groups of women working together to enable individual mining communities to survive the lengthy conflict and stretch limited resources. Women remained primarily responsible for these ‘collective’ welfare services. While working in these services, women talked to each other, developing solidarity and awareness of their position as working-class women, making visible the classist and gendered nature of society. The repressive might of the state, including spending millions on policing communities while refusing to finance better healthcare and other welfare services became obvious. Currently, there is a demand for a public enquiry into the police handling of this strike. Acquiring these social insights prompted women to question society’s organisation and who benefited from it. Their greater awareness drew women from mining communities closer together and enabled different groups of women – academics, artists, retail workers, secretaries, straight, lesbian, black and white – to form alliances with

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them and support mining community women in their struggles in practical ways, both financially and by organising and signing petitions. The Women Against Pit Closures and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) failed to prevent the closure of many mines, but their experiences of organising profoundly changed relationships between men and women in mining communities and raised questions about the kind of life people wanted to lead (McCrindle and Rowbotham, 1986; Lewycka, 1986). They realised that both men and women had to fight for their communities, indicating that events at work had serious repercussions for home life and affected women, children and men. It led Women Against Pit Closures to request associate membership in the NUM to influence its policies. The NUM rejected this proposal as men felt threatened by the power that feminists could potentially acquire if women joined the union in this capacity.

Feminist prefigurative forms Besides feminist action to change existing provisions, feminists have created other autonomous ventures that endorse feminist principles and practices in the workplace. These prefigure the non-oppressive social relations feminists aim to establish across society. These efforts cover various autonomous community initiatives that include restructured traditional workplaces, like Lee Jeans Cooperative; unwaged cooperatives such as food cooperatives on low-income housing estates; commercial waged ventures; cooperatives such as the Spare Rib Collective; feminist services located within the public sector including Well-Women Clinics (WWCs) in the NHS; voluntary organisations – carers’ support groups, rape crisis centres, incest survivor lines, women’s refuges, women’s resource centres and women’s therapy centres. Such initiatives enable women to challenge definitions of work and working relations, facilitate collective action and reduce hierarchical relations. These cover various social divisions, such as class, ‘race’, gender, disability and social orientation; reducing differentials in pay, status and skills; eliminating divisions between managers and those being managed; blurring distinctions in work processes between workers and service users; involving both waged workers and consumers in decision-making processes; acknowledging interconnections between the demands of home life and waged working life; and profiling women’s interests in their activities. British Well-Women Clinics illustrate feminist prefigurative working relations (Doyal, 1983; Deacon, 1983; Foster, 1989). These represent

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feminist workplaces carved out within the interstices of paid work and unpaid self-help in which service providers work with service users collectively and democratically to address directly those points at which their interests varied. Feminists have formed WWCs outside and inside the NHS, depending on the extent of local support or hostility generated when putting forward proposals for women-centred and controlled workspaces and healthcare. Women dominate frontline medical positions and eschew the passive patient roles and emphases on curative medicine. WWCs were created to ensure women’s right to participate in their healthcare, foster preventative approaches to medical care and respond to women’s needs. By 1987, 100 area health authorities had WWCs (Foster, 1989: 345). WWC teams composed of doctors, nurses and volunteers worked together in less hierarchical ways, enabling WWC workers to learn medical, organisational and interpersonal skills from each other. Their efforts were not always successful, as service users responded to volunteers’ advice with less alacrity than a doctor’s, thereby devaluing volunteers’ experience and status (Foster, 1989). Besides promoting more equitable professional relationships, this approach utilised available resources effectively. WWCs offered alternative working relations to problematic traditional ones encountered by individual feminists working within NHS hospitals. Working alone, they could become extremely isolated and vulnerable, as Wendy Savage discovered when attempting to empower midwives in controlling hospital childbirth regimes (Savage and Leighton, 1986). By adopting a holistic approach to medical care, WWCs gave women sufficient time to discuss their concerns and encompass both physical and emotional states in their treatment. Professionals worked with each woman as a whole person whose interdependent parts made up the total individual. Listening to women validated their definitions of health needs. Listening and preventative strategies freed WWCs from relying on drugs and surgery to deal with women’s health problems. Moving away from drugs facilitated processes whereby women could play more active roles in treatment programmes. WWCs challenged traditional notions of neutral, uninvolved professionalism and redefined professional roles. Workers in WWCs were sensitive and caring, and exposed their own vulnerabilities and emotions to connect with women throughout their treatments. Such work carried dangers for practitioners who could become totally exhausted by not caring for themselves. Foster (1989) reported the story of one WWC that closed down after two years due to worker ‘burn out’.

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WWCs sought to dissolve social divisions and reach women requiring medical services. Inadequate resources impeded progress, limiting the numbers of black and white working-class women using these facilities. WWCs tackled this problem by seeking precarious urban aid funding from both local and central states (Foster, 1989) despite outstanding grants suddenly being unilaterally withdrawn. Obtaining state approval was difficult for projects seen as having ‘political’ aims which included feminist ones. Workers appointed through urban aid programmes were marginalised through a lack of career structures within mainstream health services. The employment of black women under such terms confirmed institutionalised racism. Marginalisation limited WWCs’ potential to control employment policy and practice in the wider NHS, but they contributed to the struggle to eradicate racism and ensure that black women accessed NHS promotions. WWCs were marginal provisions, whether inside or outside the NHS, operating on a shoestring. The first WWC in Manchester provided one clinic session weekly. Others had restricted hours that limited their accessibility. WWCs located within GPs’ surgeries received state funding only for cervical smears for women over 35 taken once every three to five years (Foster, 1989). Some local authorities misused the name by including family planning clinics in this classification simply because they were staffed by women. However, practice within them did not follow feminist principles (Foster, 1989). WWCs spread to other countries, such as the USA and Australia. WWCs had strengths and weaknesses shaped by being self-help initiatives carved out of a dominant medical model antagonistic to their existence. Their provisions were easily accessible because these were located in the communities served and practitioners exercised a degree of autonomy in running their affairs. The WWCs’ size consumed workers’ time and energy to keep their activities going (Foster, 1989), leaving scant time for further developmental and outreach work. Limited resources meant only small numbers of women accessed WWC services. Waiting lists for feminist health provisions like mainstream ones could be lengthy (McLeod, 1987). WWCs’ growth was hindered by being unable to refer women to other NHS services. WWCs could be abused by unsupportive NHS doctors who referred only ‘difficult’ patients (Foster, 1989). Their limited impact on dominant modes of service delivery and labour organisations in the NHS failed to threaten established medical interests. More positively, WWCs offered women services otherwise unavailable, increased choice in community facilities, and provided women with treatments they could enthuse over (Foster, 1989). Their

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significance was local, giving women more choice about where to seek medical attention. Women have been disempowered through the medicalisation of their bodies via technological inventions that impact on women’s reproductive rights, such as in-vitro fertilisation (Steinberg, 1997). Feminist approaches resisted the ageism and youthism inherent in applying cosmetic surgery to reverse the physical ravages of old age (Dominelli, 2004b). WWCs illustrate good medical practice that does not glorify high-technology medicine which disempowers and alienates women patients (Doyal, 1985). Feminist self-help provisions should make markets more responsive to women’s needs. American feminists discovered the opposite in practice. Large-scale corporate medical providers have cynically used information gathered through feminist ventures to offer women hightech medicine and drug-oriented therapies, such as progesterone therapy in treating premenstrual syndrome. Healthy, high-income women were attracted to these facilities by promises of enhanced lives (Dreifus, 1973; Ruzek, 1986; Worcester and Whatley, 1988). The British scenario was affected by New Labour continuing Tory policies of dismantling the NHS, despite calls for more consumeroriented democratic reforms. Developments including Foundation Hospitals promoted by New Labour did not provide alternatives to Tory patterns of health provision. Opposition to Tory proposals to dismember the NHS and New Labour’s market-oriented initiatives could be blocked by health professionals and doctors becoming salaried state employees instead of independent contractors, and giving consumers a greater voice in the power structures and administration of the NHS (Iliffe, 1985). Such changes have not occurred and consumer powers have not been enhanced. Simply turning consultants into state workers would not empower consumers. The current welfare state model that divides commissioning services from their provision witnesses how removed service users are from the centre of services commissioned and/or provided by state employees (Croft and Beresford, 1989). Welfare state employment can make workers less sensitive, more bureaucratic, remote and alienating (Maynard and Bosanquet, 1986) as occurred under New Labour’s health reforms (Dominelli, 2004a). NHS developments under New Labour governments intensified the unravelling of the NHS as a socialist institution begun by Thatcher and continued by governments postNew Labour under Cameron and May. Quasi-markets, budgetholding GPs and hospital trusts have turned doctors and dentists into contractors running small-scale enterprises. Endorsed as modernising public services, increasing user advice and professional accountability

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to consumers, people’s experiences of these provisions are off-putting. User fees, long waiting lists, a carousel service instead of consistent relationships with one doctor, inaccessible or absent services and centralisation of provisions undermine patient experiences of the NHS. These features belie its status as a caring, publicly funded institution that responds to service users’ and carers’ needs. Change conducive to people’s welfare is likely to occur when ruling managerial elites facilitate user-determined change. Changes according women equality will not endure if not infused by feminist principles in theory and practice institutionally and culturally in government and society more generally.

Contemporary struggles for equal pay Women have demanded equal pay from both the state and corporations. The state, initially seen as an ally, passed legislation that upheld women’s rights in the workplace. In Britain, passage of the Sex Equality Act 1973 slowly endorsed equal pay. For instance, women constituting 82% of the social services workforce form 51% of managers (Samuel, 2013), up from previous levels. Women have successfully challenged unequal pay for similar work in local authorities like Birmingham and Glasgow, although this legacy continues across the UK. Theresa May’s government sought to address the pay gap issue by requiring large employers to undertake a pay audit that showed pay rate relativities between men and women. The success of this scheme is uncertain, but the exercise has highlighted current differences in pay between genders. In early 2018, the Women in the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Group highlighted huge disparities in pay within it. The BBC claims its average gap is 7%, considerably below the national average (18.1%), ignoring its median gap (18.1%) and mean (18.9%). It investigated this problem to redress it. Interestingly, those compiling the report did not consult with the 170 women who compose the Women in the BBC Group, nor did they involve feminist researchers in examining the current state of affairs. The BBC asked PriceWaterhouse Coopers, a global management consultancy company, to conduct the research. Large corporations generally have poor records on gender parity. What does a management consultancy firm with a mean gender pay gap of 43.8% compared to a median of 18.7% among its rivals know about equality between men and women? The report, released on 30 January 2018, was rejected by the women whose pay it examined because it shed no new light on the matter. Equalising

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women’s pay and having courses to promote women in management form part of a strategy to increase those breaking through the glass ceiling. Only 4% of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in the top 500 companies are women. The upper echelons in corporations exemplify a workplace with a functional ‘glass ceiling’ while falling off the ‘glass cliff’ awaits women appointed to restore failing companies.

Conclusion Regrettably, women’s struggles for equal pay are ongoing in the Global North and Global South. The workplace remains an important site of feminist struggle in ensuring women’s equality in waged work globally. Their initiatives have included eradicating sexual harassment and domestic violence, promoting equal opportunities, demanding career structures for women, and creating alternative services for them. Innovative feminist initiatives have been partially incorporated into mainstream services. Women’s gendered positions, redefinition of professionalism and user control of their care have been placed on the change agenda without underwriting the major gains desired. Women have not transformed domestic labour into an activity performed equally by both men and women. Redressing the ‘work-family’ balance can contribute towards achieving this reality.

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Increasing women’s positions in parliament, governance and decision-making structures

Introduction Women’s inequality is evident throughout society and needs fundamental changes to occur in governance and decision-making structures for an egalitarian world to emerge. Around 52% of women in intimate relationships such as marriage still do not make their own decisions about consensual sex, contraceptives and health services. Moreover, 19% of women aged between 19 and 49 claim to have endured physical and/or sexual violence within the past year. Intimate partners were the perpetrators of almost half of the murders of women. In the UK, on average two women are being murdered per week (ONS, 2016). Violence in intimate relationships is also an issue of representation and governance, reflecting women’s disempowerment in both domestic and public relational spaces. Globally, child marriages affect 700  million or one in four young girls, and female genital mutilation (FGM) occurs to 200  million or one in three of them (Kelleher, 2014). The global figure varies according to region and country, being higher in some and lower in others, depending on cultural factors. Other types of inequalities also abound. For example, in the USA, women undertake 2.8 hours of unpaid domestic work daily compared to1.7 hours for men. Women earn 80 cents for every dollar (100  cents) men make. This figure declines to 60  cents for black women in America. Such data makes the case for addressing gender equality on a holistic basis involving leadership, economic empowerment, freedom from violence and quality education for women ever more urgent. In this context, tackling the political representation deficit becomes a key step in the struggle for equality. Additionally, an infusion of feminist values and processes into parliamentary ways of working would help secure parity between men and women parliamentarians. Women are underrepresented among political decision makers, with the picture a nuanced one of variations in different lands. In countries 159

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like Rwanda, women form 64% of parliamentary members compared to 29% in the UK. In the West today, Nordic countries lead in women composing a substantial proportion of parliamentarians, including in the upper reaches. In Sweden, for example, women form about 44% of parliamentary members. The United Nations considers political representation by women as a factor in assessing the equality of women in parliamentary structures and has set the threshold at 30%, well below the level for population equivalence (Norgaard and York, 2005). This chapter considers how far communities formed around the issue of tackling inequality in governance structures and political representation can nurture women’s talents and enable them to rise through the bureaucratic and political ranks. Organisational cultural hierarchies have been identified as crucial in supporting or hindering the advance of women. In this chapter, I also examine how to make organisational governance cultures more supportive of women’s claims for equality, a matter for societal development. Alongside these issues, I identify lessons to be learnt from unsuccessful examples of feminist political action and argue for feminist political action that permeates both local and central state structures. I use case studies to examine feminist political initiatives and consider reasons for their limited impact to date.

Feminist political action nationally in the UK In Britain, the political domain and machinery of government have provided specific workplace terrains for feminist social action. Despite gaining the right to vote early in the twentieth century (1918), albeit mainly for upper- and middle-class women, UK government structures have proved remarkably resistant to demands for equality and full representation. The first woman elected to the House of Commons was Constance de Markievicz of Sinn Fein in 1918. However, she refused to assume her seat for political reasons linked to the issue of Irish independence. The first woman who was elected and did sit in the House of Commons was Lady Astor of the Coalition Conservative Party. She was elected in 1919. The first and only woman Speaker of the House to date has been Betty Boothroyd of the Labour Party, who was elected to this role in 1992. Nearly a century after women first acquired the vote, this poor representation prompted Frances Scott to initiate the 50:50 Campaign. It began in London in November 2013 and aimed to equalise the numbers of men and women representatives in the British Parliament. On 10 June 2018, women celebrated the 100th  anniversary of achieving suffrage by

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marching in London, Edinburgh and elsewhere. These events also depicted women’s demand for true equality because during this 100year timespan, 4801 men have been elected to the House of Commons compared to 489 women. Contemporary structures reveal few women in the top echelons of British representational structures. Rectifying this deplorable situation has subjected the political arena to feminist social action. More women are now being elected to the British House of Commons (Westminster). Its first woman prime minister, Conservative (Tory) Party leader Margaret Thatcher, acquired this status in 1979 without women being fully represented in Parliament. Theresa May became the second woman to hold this office in 2016 when she became leader of the Conservative Party by acclamation. Neither of these two prime ministers has promoted feminist principles and ideals, although May has endorsed demands by women members of Parliament (MPs) for the elimination of sexual harassment in the workplace called the House of Commons. The 1997 Blair government in the UK had the largest proportion of women MPs to that point, but failed to include substantial numbers of them in the Cabinet. Nor were contributions by independentminded women highly valued, as Mo Mowlam, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Harriet Harman, Secretary of State for Health, discovered during the first Blair administration (Langdon, 2000). Moreover, in the reshuffle after the 2005 election, Blair retained Gordon Brown, Charles Clarke and Jack Straw in the top three posts of Chancellor, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary respectively. The first woman Home Secretary was Jacqui Smith, appointed by New Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2007. Ironically, Theresa May, Home Secretary under the Cameron Conservative government in 2010, lasted in this post until she became Prime Minister in 2016. Amber Rudd succeeded her as Home Secretary, and implemented May’s policies of enforcing a ‘hostile environment’ on immigration. In 2018, Rudd’s failure to deal adequately with the ways that Home Office guidance was used to deprive legitimate British citizens known as the ‘Windrush Generation’ of their rights led to her downfall. The Windrush Generation were immigrants who, at the government’s invitation, came from Commonwealth countries to the UK between 1948 and 1971 to rebuild Britain after the Second World War. They were reported as losing their homes, jobs, rights to services including healthcare, and facing deportation (Gentlemen, 2018) through misapplied immigration controls. This depicts a scandalous example of institutionalised racism that built on its personal and cultural

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variants. Rudd claimed to be unaware of years of harassment and abuse including denial of services and jobs endured by Commonwealth citizens entitled to remain in the UK. In 2018, Rudd was replaced by Sajid Javid, the first Muslim Home Secretary with family origins in Pakistan. His interventions to date have been traditional, conservative ones aimed at not rocking the boat. This stance is optimal for an aspiring politician seeking to become a Tory Prime Minister. He did insist that he would deal with the ‘hostile environment’ introduced by Theresa May and upheld by Amber Rudd, who said she was unaware of the existence of this policy. Progress on this score has been slow. Women still do not form half of the elected representatives or of the Cabinet. Although the Blair landslide of 1997 brought more women into the corridors of Westminster, women then constituted only 18% of MPs and 28% of councillors in local authorities (Norris, 2000). By 2015, only 29% of British MPs were women, a figure 7% higher than at the previous election, and 26% were engaged as politicians holding government posts. Following the 2017 election, it reached 32%, and women’s representation in Cabinet reached 26% (Lowther and Thornton, 2015). These figures include women holding 32% of senior Cabinet and 24% of junior government positions, a figure that has declined since May’s reshuffle in 2018 when only four women remained in her Cabinet. Representation within British political parties remains differentiated. The Labour Party has 43% women MPs compared to 36% for the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), 21% in the Conservative (Tory) Party and none in the Liberal Democratic Party, now reduced to eight MPs. Women comprise 52% of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. Fifty per cent of the SNP’s spokespeople are women. Unelected bodies such as the House of Lords and High Court also reflect gendered social relations. These remain dominated by men and their decisions often endorse anti-feminist stances. For instance, the Court of Appeal struck down all-women lists that sought to increase women’s representation in Parliament, despite the initiative leading to gains in women’s representation. The Court’s decision legitimated the power of men, defining all-women’s lists as discriminating against men. All-women shortlists were a form of feminist social action on representational governance structures. The idea was based on Emily’s List, which was formed in the United States in 1985. Emily’s List stands for ‘Early Money is Like Yeast’ because it aimed to raise money for Democratic women to stand in American federal elections and thus increase their representation. This initiative was launched in the UK in 1993 by Labour women.

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Feminists target the political realm Women have struggled to have their voices heard globally, often targeting the state to change the laws that determined their roles and places in society, obtain resources for achieving equality, and participate in its governance structures. Feminist political action in political relational space has taken place through diverse forms ranging from women’s sections in major political parties to the formation of a Women’s Party concerned with getting women the vote, as instanced in the USA at the turn of the twentieth century (Irwin, 1971), and a feminist party attempting to challenge patriarchal representative democracy as illustrated by Kwenna Frambothid in Iceland in the 1980s (Dominelli and Jonsdottir, 1988). British feminists have sought to secure change primarily through existing political parties and the labour movement. Labour women, for example, formed Women’s Sections to bring women together and develop their agenda for change. Feminist intervention in the political sphere1 has been guided by the realisation that in public relational space, the issues of representation are unavoidable. Additionally, as power is associated with holding representative positions, the slogans – ‘the personal is political’ (Dreifus, 1973), ‘the political is personal’ (Ungerson, 1987) and ‘sisterhood is universal’ (Adamson et al, 1988) – become relevant expressions of the significance of bringing women together. Feminist social action in the political arena has redefined ‘politics’ to expand its horizons and focus on power relations in interpersonal relations and governance structures. Feminist activities target barriers to women’s participation ranging from the timing of meetings and way they are run to selection processes and attitudes towards women politicians. Feminists discard definitions of politics based upon electoral processes that exclude women. Feminist politics rejects the separation of politics into the public realm of electoral politics which people influence by occasionally casting their vote so that all decisions which profoundly affect people’s lives are made on their behalf by elected representatives and others in control of governance structures in various institutions, enterprises and bureaucracies (Dominelli and Jonsdottir, 1988). Feminists refuse to accept that participation in political processes is limited to casting a vote every four or five years because it abrogates one’s responsibilities as a citizen to a remote and rarely accountable elected group of men whose actions mystify the gendered nature of power in social interactions. Feminists have argued for power-sharing endeavours that

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empower women and combine personal responsibility with collective accountability. Additionally, feminist understandings of political processes transcend views of politics that are based primarily within party-political arenas and machinery. All feminist social action is political because it aims to dissolve power relations that establish hierarchies between people, and to transform society at all levels – political, economic, social, cultural and (inter) personal. Meeting this objective entails changing the social relations that exist between men and women, between adults and children, and between women, men and children and both local and central states. Feminists have engaged in the political processes of government and sought to place feminist social action about governance on their agendas.

Feminist social action in British public relational space The 50:50 campaign A cross-party grouping, the 50:50 Parliament Campaign, has been created to raise women’s representation in the House of Commons to 50%. The 50:50 Campaign in the UK aims to achieve equal representation in governance structures between men and women in Parliament, council chambers and public boards and thereby reflect the demographic gender profile of the country. This Campaign has followed other initiatives following the 1973 Sex Equality Act, which was incorporated into the Equalities Act 2010. Since its inception in 2013, Frances Scott’s petition to increase women’s parliamentary representation has been signed by 52,000 individuals. As all the main political parties accept gender parity in Parliament, they have formed the Women and Equalities Select Committee and the Commons Reference Group on Representation and Inclusion to achieve a more representative and inclusive Parliament. The diversity of women along ethnic, age, religious and other lines would be included within the figure for equal representation. In November 2016, the 50:50 Campaign launched the hashtag, #AskHerToStand to encourage greater numbers of women to stand for election to Parliament. Then, in 2018, the 50:50 Voice ezine was set up to share information among 50:50 supporters. Men are encouraged to support such initiatives and those women who do choose to stand. By assuming more of the domestic chores and caring work that women do, men could assist greatly in this endeavour. The 50:50 Campaign has links with similar campaigns in diverse countries and other initiatives included the creation of women’s caucus groups in different political parties, all-women lists for parliamentary 164

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candidates and training for women as leaders. For example, the European Union has a similar initiative – the European Women’s Lobby 50:50 Campaign for Democracy which began in 2008 and now has cross-party representation to achieve gender parity in all EU institutions. In 2016, the United Nations launched the Planet 50:50 Campaign, known as the Step It Up for Gender Equality Campaign. The UN hopes that countries will ensure gender parity by 2030 in areas such as political participation, education, health, safety and the media. So far, 95 countries and 65 media organisations have pledged support. Malawi, among other countries, also has a 50:50 Campaign to encourage more women into politics. It began in 2004 when women’s representation was 7%, reaching 22% in 2017. These are promising beginnings, but the journey ahead remains an arduous one. Other initiatives to enhance women’s representation Another recent British scheme revolves around the Women’s Equality Party (WEP), which was set up by Sandi Toksvig, Catherine Mayer, and Sophie Walker in March 2015. It seeks to promote parity among men and women representatives in the House of Commons by 2025. Within a year, WEP had 45,000 members and supporters across 65 branches. In comparison at the time, UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) had over 40,000 members and the Green Party 65,000 (Perraudin, 2015), so WEP was a potentially important source of change. UKIP, as a single-issue campaigning organisation had shown that decades of persistent political action could achieve success because it succeeded in promoting Brexit as the majority choice for the British populace in the June 2016 referendum on whether to leave the European Union. However, Brexit is not a gender-based campaign, and indeed, one could argue that certain aspects of it such as the exclusion of EU nationals from easily entering the UK has a deleterious impact on women, especially those healthcare and social care professionals who staff the NHS and social care services. In contrast, the Green Party has one MP, a woman, Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion. She supports women’s equality and issues concerned with environmental justice, matters that greatly concern women. The lesser impact of WEP indicates the limited priority that gender equality has in the British public’s imagination, and its relative newness as a consciousness-raising tool and as a party seeking to alter existing democratic structures.

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Feminism and British municipal socialism During the 1980s, feminist political action in Britain centred on the activities of women’s committees sponsored by the local state, especially in London (Campbell et al, 1986; Whitlock, 1987; Tobin, 1990). Subsequent funding emanating from the central state revealed that feminist activities were not endorsed by government even though they had substantial support among the wider population. In other countries, for example Iceland, feminist political parties were established to intervene directly in electoral processes (Dominelli and Jonsdottir, 1988). Neither of these paths to power has ensured that feminist principles and practice become significant aspects of political life at either local or central state levels. Nonetheless, women have become important players in Icelandic governance structures. Developments there suggest that without the endorsement of feminist action at all societal levels, state support for their activities will be at best limited. Without strong links between the state and feminist community initiatives and alliances, there is scant opportunity to transform social relations in the political arena in accordance with feminist principles. Many provisions demanded by feminists require substantial inputs from public funds and changes in the social distribution and use of power and resources. Their lack can lead to the demise of innovative feminist initiatives, as occurred with the closure of Women’s Units in English cities like London once Thatcher abolished the Greater London Council (GLC) and other local authorities supporting radical ventures in the 1980s. British innovations in the 1980s occurred in Labour-controlled local authorities practising ‘municipal socialism’. This sought to eliminate ‘race’ and gender oppression within socialist praxis in local authorities located mainly in larger cities like Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham and Bradford (Livingstone, 1987). Some now defunct metropolitan counties and the Greater London Council (GLC) established either Women’s Committees or Women’s Equal Opportunities Officers to promote women’s welfare and appointed leading feminists as staff, for example Hilary Wainwright in the GLC’s Women’s Unit, Valerie Amos in Camden Borough Council’s Women’s Committee and Lee Comer in the Bradford Women’s Committee. The Women’s Committee Support Unit of the GLC, the Camden Council’s Women’s Unit, the Birmingham Council Women’s Unit, Sheffield’s Equal Opportunities Officer for Women and Leeds’ Equal Opportunities Officer for Women provided major examples of

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feminist ventures within the local state. In these, women workers furthered the interests of women as both workers and users of services to acknowledge that women faced problems that men did not and prioritised addressing them by establishing links with women in the community. Women normally excluded from local authority provisions were given specific attention. These included lesbian women, disabled women, older women and black women. Reaching women in novel ways and involving them in local authority decision-making processes constituted key elements of their agenda. As feminist councillors had played key roles in promoting the development of Women’s Units, they often included them in their portfolios. Women’s Units would draw on existing feminist networks to reach women normally ignored by local authorities. Working groups were one strategy that feminists utilised to connect councillors with women in the community and hold open meetings through which local women residents participated in moving local state power downwards and outwards. Community fora were also created as venues that facilitated this purpose. In Camden, the Women’s Unit established women’s fora through which women residents met directly with women councillors. These arrangements were flawed because the working groups and fora lacked power. They could only make recommendations to full Council through existing elected representational structures, for example when women councillors accepted often controversial and radical demands, local councils could reject them. Local women were disadvantaged by relying on personalities to convey their wishes, thereby subverting feminist commitments to participative democracy. They were also unable to challenge either political priorities or the hierarchical nature of political decision-making processes which marginalised women in government locally and nationally. This the woman councillor heading the Birmingham Women’s Unit discovered when she was sacked for allegedly jeopardising Labour’s electoral prospects by promoting women’s equality (Whitlock, 1987). Women’s Units were poorly funded and vulnerable. For example, in 1984, the GLC allocated £500,000 for all the city-wide initiatives launched by its Women’s Unit. Authorised under Section 137 of the 1972 Local Government Act, continued funding depended on the willingness of central government to countenance the local state giving financial support to feminist causes. The anti-feminist and anti-socialist sentiments of the Thatcher government ultimately in charge of this funding were echoed locally by its backers, who condemned the use of Section 137 monies for either feminist or socialist purposes.

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The success of the Women’s Units in reaching groups formerly disenfranchised in local authority provisions contributed to their undoing. The radical nature of some demands that women in the community made of the Women’s Units, such as the provision of hostels and refuges for prostitutes working in the Kings Cross area of London and transport for lesbian women, were disparaged by the popular press and Conservative opposition in the capital to accuse Labour of being controlled by the ‘Looney Left’ and mishandling public money to serve the interests of ‘unworthy and unrepresentative’ groups such as lesbians, prostitutes and gay men. Their views resonated in the media and even progressive politicians feared losing their elected positions (News on Sunday, 1987: 13). Margaret Thatcher had little sympathy for feminist causes and felt that individual merit (or its lack) rather than structural inequalities accounted for women’s place in society. Consequently, women lost a number of significant welfare gains during her period in power, including the elimination of universal maternity benefits. The Thatcher administration abolished metropolitan and GLC levels of government, thereby demolishing key sites for feminist projects. Her government’s actions brought home the importance of having a feminist political presence in the national state to lessen the vulnerability of feminist initiatives located in the margins of local state activity. The marginalisation of feminist political action subordinates their work to electoral vicissitudes. Labour authorities that retained electoral popularity, such as Leeds and Manchester, continued to support women’s initiatives. Others that had their electoral buoyancy punctured by negative publicity were quickly panicked into scapegoating feminists and left-wing activists. This occurred in Birmingham, where its Women’s Committee was axed when Labour’s share of the vote declined during the 1987 local elections (Whitlock, 1987). Attacks on feminist initiatives during moments of electoral adversity seriously damaged feminist gains on equal opportunities policies, childcare programmes, women’s safety, women’s health and research projects on women’s needs (Armstrong et  al, 1987). The controversies around public funding for minority marginalised groups and interests undermined feminist social actions and ultimately led to their demise. Homophobic, racist and sexist opposition to these ventures ensured that many activities sponsored by the Women’s Units ceased. So when Thatcher abolished the GLC, then headed by Ken Livingstone (nicknamed ‘Red Ken’ in the media), and terminated its funding, most initiatives closed through lack of funds. That such sentiments should

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prevail in public bodies charged with promoting the welfare of all residents in their locality highlights how much more work feminists need to undertake if their theory and practice is to infuse local and central government structures. It also demonstrates how feminist gains have to be underwritten at all levels of society if they are to be protected from attack. This includes the trade union movement, community groups, political parties, the general public and the local and central state.

Autonomous feminist political organisations: lessons from Iceland Icelandic feminists have influenced the electoral process in dramatic ways, initially by establishing a feminist political party, Kwenna Frambothid (KF), in November 1981. Entering the arena as a new force guided by feminist principles, theories and practice, KF women organised themselves according to egalitarian precepts. Each woman in the Party had a role in promoting its potential among the electorate. KF’s programme was developed collectively. Women supported each other in learning how to handle the media by role-playing their parts with each other and sharing their skills and experiences so that they could learn from each other. Their endeavours paid off, and they gained a sizeable share of the vote under a system of proportional representation in the 1982 local elections and successfully elected feminist councillors in Reykjavik and Akureyri, Iceland’s two largest cities. KF councillors maintained links with the feminist movement beyond the local state by networking and holding open meetings to enable women in the community to have direct access to them. These actions extended their store of social capital, kept women connected with each other and enabled them to develop an understanding of the issues that women in the community were concerned about; expedite feminist research; support the creation of specific facilities for women such as a women’s resources centre, a women’s newspaper and a refuge; and attract working-class women members (Dominelli and Jonsdottir, 1988). The formation of the Organisation of Women in the Labour Market (SKV) was one of KF’s major initiatives for recruiting working-class women and creating an organisation that tackled workplace inequality. KF supported women’s direct action as its members sought to raise public consciousness about women’s plight. The format adopted in raising consciousness was often highly imaginative. For example,

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KF women protested women’s low wages by staging a public demonstration in Reykjavik’s supermarkets. Selecting the ingredients for rice pudding which a male government minister had promoted as being nutritious and within the financial reach of all Icelanders, the women demonstrators offered to pay 60% of the price of the goods since women earned that proportion of men’s wages. Some perplexed women cashiers accepted the amounts tendered, others called their managers (men) to the tills. When KF women refused to leave and started singing protest songs and dancing in the supermarkets, the managers called the police(men). The police watched the women’s performance helplessly and trod a fine line between maintaining law and order and allowing a peaceful protest. The women protesters left the premises of their own accord once they had made their point. Their protest made interesting copy in the newspapers, much to the minister’s chagrin. The KF women’s organisational daring also came to the fore when they responded to a sexist challenge inadvertently pronounced by Reykjavik’s mayor at a ‘beauty contest’. He commented that if KF women had such beauties, they could more readily ensure women’s equality in the council chambers. KF women arranged to bring their ‘beauty contest’ into Reykjavik Council’s deliberations. Assuming the titles of virtues men wish women to hold – for example ‘Miss Patience’, ‘Miss Docility’ – KF women entered the meeting room wearing the sashes of ‘beauty queens’. The one KF councillor who participated in these proceedings (the other refused) read out a statement from the group and tabled their previously agreed comments on each agenda item. The group then sat down and said nothing further for the rest of the meeting. The media, which had been alerted to the action, had a field day and hugely embarrassed the mayor (Dominelli and Jonsdottir, 1988). For a brief period, KF women’s commitment, the originality of the venture and the enthusiasm of women participants worked, giving Icelandic women a sense of electoral power and reducing hierarchies between the elected representatives and women residents. However, the hierarchical council structures within which the feminist councillors had to operate quickly sapped KF’s organisational initiatives and distorted the group processes and dynamics that the KF councillors had established to promote interaction with the women electorate. Collective deliberations on KF councillors’ responses to the many items on their lengthy council agendas consumed most of their time and energies. While consistent with feminist ideals of ensuring

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representation, this method of working destroyed both processes in and the spontaneity of meetings that councillors held with constituents. Responding to council issues consumed all their available time and prevented women from raising other issues which concerned them. Demoralisation and disillusionment set in, creating divisions among the women (Dominelli and Jonsdottir, 1988). KF’s failure to tackle key impediments to women’s full involvement in political activities contributed to their disenchantment. Also, KF lacked a position on the role of men in the organisation and could not address inequalities arising from women’s responsibilities in the home and waged work. By responding to issues on an ad hoc basis, KF failed to offer women an adequate vision of the future. KF women’s inability to achieve a consensus on their approach to electoral politics caused a split between feminist women and womancentred women in 1983. The latter formed Kwenna Listin (KL) while KF folded. Their disagreement shaped feminist strategies in the electoral arena for a period. KF women who refused to join KL thought that their limited success in electoral politics required them to organise autonomously outside state processes to serve women’s interests more effectively. KL women felt that the modest gains made in improving women’s welfare, raising women’s issues for debate and extending women’s involvement in traditional parties demanded their continued participation in electoral structures. They believed that other major political parties had shifted leftwards as these adopted women candidates and gave women’s issues a higher profile to stem erosion in support from progressive factions among the electorate. KL women stood for the 1983 and 1987 national elections and won three and six seats respectively (Dominelli and Jonsdottir, 1988). Moreover, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was elected the first woman President of Iceland in 1980. Through KF and KL activities, the proportion of women in government rose from 5% in 1981 to 30% by 1995. This legacy persists. However, having risen to 48% in the intervening years, the 2017 elections reduced this to 38%. This compares to 20% in the American Congress, 21% in its Senate and 19% in the House of Representatives following the election of Donald Trump. The tensions of what constitutes feminist action in the political arena, who defines it and how to conduct it continue. KL later regrouped as the Women’s Alliance (Samtök um kvennalista), but split in 1997. The Women’s Alliance had some success in promoting feminist concerns for the environment, equality and social justice, a fair and prosperous economy and an independent political movement. The Women’s Alliance joined a Left-Green Movement in 1999 which brought it

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together with social democrats and conservationists to promote leftwing politics in a neoliberal global context. The Icelandic experience suggests that the formation of a feminist political party can influence party-political processes to some extent. However, this alone cannot transform electoral politics and orient its processes in feminist directions. The existence of a feminist political party in isolation from a feminist presence at all levels of society is likely to dissipate feminist energies and lead to the fractures that occurred in Iceland without transforming party-political decisionmaking processes (Dominelli and McLeod, 1989). The price feminists may have to pay for becoming involved in the electoral governance processes in the short term can negate feminist egalitarian principles, as happened when collective processes in meetings between KF councillors and women were usurped by the obligation to address all the items contained in bureaucratically derived local government agendas.

Feminist political action outside electoral politics Existing political institutions have proven poor vehicles for promoting feminist electoral aims and objectives. British feminists have tried to transcend their limitations by developing fora that unite different groupings in progressive ‘fragments of the Left’ as these became known (Rowbotham et al, 1980). The first initiative was the ‘Beyond the Fragments Conference’ in 1980. Socialists disillusioned with the Labour Party followed this with other organisational forms, such as the ongoing newspaper Red Pepper formed to support miners during the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike, left-leaning political parties and conferences. These have failed to ‘unite the fragments’ in effective opposition to the neoliberalism favoured by governments from Thatcher to May. Other feminist initiatives have focused on changing their personal politics and gave rise to ‘identity politics’ which enable women to tackle particular forms of oppression affecting them personally (Adams, 1989). The danger of this strategy is that it further fragments feminist initiatives and ignores collective action to address broader sources of oppression linked to but emanating from social divisions other than gender, such as ‘race’, class and disability (hooks, 1984). Feminists affirm diversity within unity by finding commonalities among women whose experiences of oppression are dissimilar. As hooks (1984: 58) explains: ‘our different experiences often meant that we had different needs, that there was no one strategy or formula

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for the development of political consciousness. By mapping out various strategies, we affirmed our diversity while working towards solidarity’. Crenshaw (2012) devised intersectionality to enable women to conceptualise the multiple facets of oppression that were intertwined in women’s experiences and argued that these had to be tackled simultaneously. Feminists have undertaken a range of women-only initiatives to provide safe places for women and enabled them to create their own governance structures and navigate ways through them. Such spaces have also been utilised to challenge the lack of provisions capable of meeting women’s specific needs and in seeking to eliminate the destructive consumerist orientation of late capitalist society, as illustrated by the women’s peace movement. One of its key achievements was the development of non-oppressive governance structures utilised to engage women in direct action and mass mobilisations. Feminist peace initiatives have also uncovered the connections between the squandering of social resources on armaments while children around the world die of hunger; the massive profits made by multinational companies dealing in weapons; the failure of these corporations to pay taxes; the destruction of non-military jobs to provide resources for the defence industry; the usurping of welfare monies to feed the war machine (Davis, 1989); the environmental degradation caused in pursuit of peace through war, for example Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Afghanistan and Syria, among others. The destruction wrought through these conflicts is but a larger, more public version of the atrocities that occurred in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and Sudan. How much has the destruction of key cities, monuments, housing, hospitals and built infrastructures contributed to soil, air and water pollution, and climate change? The additional layers of burden and oppression that wars impose on women include fear for their own and family members’ safety; spending more time completing daily tasks like fetching water, food, medicine, in the face of absent built infrastructures; and exploitation of their bodies as weapons of war. Additionally, how much will the reconstruction of devastated areas contribute to further greenhouse gas emissions and landfill sites to take toxic debris? This is in addition to the misery and hardship caused to other living beings alongside human suffering and deaths. These situations display the failure of mainstream governance structures at local, national and international levels, including the United Nations, to provide security and a safe world for all. Feminists have redefined the concept of defence by arguing for non-violent solutions to social conflict and affirming peace.

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Ecofeminism and redefining economic and environmental issues Environmental crises and degradation are also symptomatic of the failure of mainstream governance structures to defend the environment by controlling developers and multinational firms that have exploited natural resources as means to their end of making profits for the few at the expense of the many and planet earth. These abuses have been exposed by ecofeminists among others. Ecofeminist themes have been integrated into feminist environmental campaigns. Ecofeminism, a political ideology located within ‘new’ social movements concerned about ecological diversity, shows that industrialisation destroys interdependence and promotes economic growth as occurring in a vacuum devoid of social and physical contexts. Ecofeminist Vandana Shiva’s work on environmental campaigns against transnational corporations that have usurped farmers’ right to harvest and plant their own seeds in India illustrates the connections between external decision makers and people’s daily lives, knowledge, identity, autonomy, livelihoods, the environment and loss of basic human rights (Shiva, 1993). The Diverse Women for Diversity is a global movement defending ‘food rights and biological cultural diversity’ (Shiva, 2003). It challenges neoliberal economistic development while promoting women’s strengths, and extends limited resources by holistic, locally rooted activism that cares for the earth when producing food. It deems decentralised production, nurturing the environment and localism capable of protecting biodiversity and defying globalisation to undermine the appropriation of local knowledge and genetic resources. In short, these movements are questioning traditional definitions of production and reproduction (Leff, 1995; Shiva, 2003). This includes their eschewing mainstream stances that are individualistic, decontextualised and allegedly ‘neutral’. Arundhati Roy, another ecofeminist, has raised similar concerns in the campaign against the construction of the Sardar Sarovan Dam. Begun as a struggle against the damming of the Narmada river valley in India, it grew into an anti-dam movement that challenged the Indian political system, American corporatism and transnational companies seeking profit-making opportunities in industrialising countries (Roy, 1999). Pseudo-scientific claims that newly created jobs outweighed the ensuing environmental destruction and homelessness were challenged by grassroots mobilisation that included big names like Roy (1999). She was subsequently taken to court and ended up in the Supreme Court of India in 2002 over her actions in defence of this environment and

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its peoples, especially the Dalits (formerly the Untouchables). These actions show that ecofeminism has been important in turning the community as a marginal site into an emerging centre of innovation and alternative visioning of the world to redefine production in favour of biocultural diversity and involvement in local governance structures making decisions affecting specific communities (Escobar, 1998). The use of the worldwide web to seek support and publicise their causes has created transnational practices that link virtual and place-based modes of activism with a cyber-cultural politics that defends place. These movements pit economic rationality against an alternative, ecological rationality rooted in local-level identities (Escobar, 1998).

Box 7.1: Organising tips: supporting environmental issues Supporting community environmental struggles is no longer optional for women. Working in non-oppressive ways on environmental issues poses the following questions for feminists: • What government and corporate structures become targets for change? • What are the implications of particular actions for women, black and other oppressed peoples and the environment? • How do these implications differ from those of the group that you are working with? • Why? • How do feminists support marginalised groups in daily community activities and their environmental efforts?

Conclusion Feminist social action in the political arena has challenged electoral politics, decision making by remote entities that disregard the opinions of those affected by specific decisions and traditional ways of working within community groups. These activities have included engaging women more fully in these spheres and have created more collaborative ways of involving individuals in collective action, as did the Women’s Units and KF in Iceland. Moreover, ecofeminists have sought to deprivilege economic rationality in determining the development of the social and physical environments necessary in sustaining life by demanding that those affected by decisions are the ones to make them. 175

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These threads have been endorsed by the women’s environmental movement that has challenged global corporatist governance and decision making for its destruction of the balance between the earth and peoples who rely on its resources in their everyday lives, including the issue of food security for poor people. Note While the slogan ‘sisterhood is universal’ captured women’s commitment to coming together to eradicate gender oppression in the early days of the women’s liberation movement, its assumption of the sameness of women’s experiences of oppression has been challenged and it is now taken to mean acknowledging and celebrating women’s differences and working towards a unity focused on celebrating diversity and improving the specific position of particular groups of women in practical ways.

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Sustainable community development Introduction Traditional forms of community engagement ignored sustainability unless they were directly concerned with environmental matters. Fortunately, community sustainability in the twenty-first century is becoming a central part of community development discourses given current concerns with environmental issues, (hu)man-made and natural disasters including climate change, environmental justice and the promotion of green social work (Dominelli, 2012b). Sustainability was defined in the Brundtland Report (1987) as having the capacity to meet today’s needs without jeopardising the capacity of future generations to meet theirs. This definition implies using resources wisely for current and future generations of people and is now supported by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There are 17 SDGs, all having to meet worthy aims such as ending poverty, hunger, gender discrimination and developing sustainable cities and environments. I have expanded the definition of sustainability to include all living things – animals and plants – and the physical environment in a holistic approach to social justice, structural inequalities, interdependency and connectedness in caring for and protecting planet earth indefinitely (Dominelli, 2012b). This chapter explores women’s actions in developing sustainable communities, the challenges they encounter in doing so, and women’s incorporation into traditional gender relations through social development initiatives. I examine instances of sustainable development that have attracted both intellectual and activist interest, such as the Sierra Nevada Alliance which seeks to protect communities, water, land, wildlife through conservation projects.

Sustainability, modernity and globalisation Defining sustainability The 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and 1980 World Conservation Strategy of the International Union for the 177

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Conservation of Nature separated development from the environment in taking these issues forward and gave rise to the Brundtland Commission on Sustainable Development (a term it coined) to unify the conservation of nature and the environment with intergenerational equity, gender equity and poverty alleviation. The Brundtland Commission (Brundtland, 1987) was first to define sustainability as those activities that did not have a deleterious impact on future consumption and production. Dominelli (2012b) added people’s ‘duty of care’ towards planet earth so that its bounty can nurture people, living things and the physical environment equitably in perpetuity. This includes people not treating the earth as a means to the end of making profits for the elite few, but as an end in and of itself, even when meeting human needs. Following the Stockholm Conference, the industrialised West had become increasingly concerned about the costs of industrialisation to the environment and sought to promote sustainability after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and 2002 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012 also called for sustainability. Sustainability is gendered. Norgaard and York (2005) found that women have a higher propensity to be concerned about and seek to maintain environmental sustainability. Development theorists consider women as more trustworthy members of the community in ensuring that funds reach children, families and community members, and in advancing community goals. This means that women become the target of social development projects, especially income-generation ones founded on women’s traditional skills – agriculture, drying and selling vegetables, embroidery and jewellery making. Microfinance schemes also emphasise women at the level of community, giving them small loans to buy equipment, such as sewing machines that will facilitate traditional crafts including sewing clothes to sell and earn funds to support their families. While such loans may ‘keep the wolf from the door’, they seldom take women out of poverty (Burkett, 2007). Microfinancing skills can be exploitative of women’s labour by charging them high interest rates and enforcing collective responsibility for the payment of debts owed by any village woman who cannot repay her interest and/or loan (Dominelli, 2012b). However, a few women have successfully transcended the poverty trap as self-employed entrepreneurs, for example Sarah Breedlove, the maker of hair products for Afro-hair, became the first African-American woman millionaire. Sustainability has to occur at the macro-level of international action, meso-level of the nation state and micro-level of households in the

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community. To occur at the household, community, national and international levels, sustainability requires action to establish legal frameworks to hold governments, businesses and individuals to account for their use and protection of environmental resources and underpin sustainable development in all of these levels. Sustainability at the macro-level refers to global usage of the earth’s resources today without undermining the capacity of the earth to meet the needs of future generations of people, other living things and the physical environment globally. Sustainability at the household level tends to focus on what individuals and families can do to reduce their consumption of the earth’s resources. However, in social development discourses, sustainability is about ensuring income generation for families by supporting projects that create funds for family use. Environmental sustainability may be a casualty of income generation processes if not nurtured. Community as the space in which development occurs provides one possibility to escape neoliberalism, which its critics deem essential to devising new models of industrialisation and social development (Homfeldt and Reutlinger, 2008). Many of these schemes aim to engage women. Social development focuses on communities and its workers advocate for and empower women within them. A number of its methods – for example interviewing, listening to people, empowerment, and values like social justice, equality and inclusion – are shared with social work. Integrating social development with globalisation Globally, development has been tied to modernity and industrialisation, and hence globalising forces. Early social theorists believed there were universal models and stages of development followed by each country, roughly in the same order as others preceding it. Andre Gunder Frank questioned this view during the 1960s and formed the theory of the development of underdevelopment whereby countries in the Global South (then the Third World – the West was the First; the communist countries of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Eastern Europe and China formed the Second) became underdeveloped to fuel growth in Western metropolises (Gunder Frank, 1966). The geopolitics of a system imposed by colonial powers are shifting as power moves to the East, with China and India growing economically and politically to demand their full places in the world. Other theorists posited the limits to growth (Meadows et al, 1972), while some believed that societies would always progress. Unlimited progress and reckless exploitation of the earth was replaced by the

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notion of sustainability, something indigenous peoples argued they had always followed by being custodians of the earth and using its resources judiciously. Environmental movements have also promoted sustainable development, often positing it as an alternative to capitalist models of development. However, multinational corporations have appropriated these words to wrap themselves in cloaks of sustainability even though their practices remain primarily neoliberal and oriented to exploiting the earth’s resources for profit. The right to development is also part of the sustainability agenda. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Right to Development (DRD) in 1986. Article 1 of the DRD highlights the link between rights and development. It states: The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized. The DRD requires nation states to ‘take steps to eliminate obstacles to development resulting from failure to observe civil and political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights’. The industrialising Global South, frustrated by not reaching the high levels of Western development, maintains its right to it. Environmental rights were not considered by the DRD. However, if it were to be written today, it would likely include these. Environmental rights, as one embodiment of equality, have now become integrated into demands for social justice (Dominelli, 2012b). In the Global South, social development is considered a more appropriate form of social work than one-to-one casework which has been associated with privileging poor white people over black people, especially in Africa and Latin America. Post-apartheid South Africa developed social work as social development to pull away from the psychologically oriented casework model of social work practice that favoured white residents before democratic majority rule in 1994. ‘Ubuntu’, an African way of indicating solidarity – I exist because you do (or through you) is a central tenet of African social development. Social development is a collective, community-based activity, and developing communities is a key form of expressing it in practice. Social development has become popular because it provides a way of industrialising and acquiring the technological

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benefits of modernity, while taking advantage of the knowledge that has been accumulated prior to and since colonialism, whose practices it challenges. Community participation, engagement and coproduction of local solutions to social problems are crucial ingredients in contemporary social development processes. Coproduced solutions to problems are essential ingredients of sustainability because community engagement provides viable, long-term answers to contemporary problems and can keep an eye on and maintain sustainability over time. Environmental discourses have rarely been incorporated into traditional social development activities, especially those linked to income generation, although they ought to be wider than this. Incomegeneration projects target women as the most reliable members of the community for ensuring that funds are deployed to care for children and dependent adults. Projects typically utilise women’s traditional skills, such as embroidery, sewing, and buying, growing, and selling agricultural products. These can reinforce traditional patriarchal relations, while giving women some income that they control. This point raises questions about the role of feminist community action. Feminists do not impose their views on women. Change in any aspect of their lives has to occur because women themselves wish it. All feminists can do is support women who have already embarked on change ventures or talk through the implications of doing so with them. Change carries risks as well as opportunities and women have the right to know what these are and make decisions that are fully informed. Men can become allies, targets of change and change agents, making involving them in gender-sensitive sustainable development projects crucial, albeit with caveats to prevent them usurping control over women and/or of projects. Various issues impede the fulfilment of the goal of sustainability. Integral to this are those of poverty, living in degraded physical environments and climate change. Addressing these problems, particularly climate change, at the social, political and industrial levels is essential in embedding sustainability in communities in the long term. Without doing this, life on earth is likely to become unsustainable, despite its dynamism and resilience (Turner and Alexander, 2014). Climate change Climate change is the outcome of burning fossil fuels and emitting substantial amounts of greenhouses gases into the atmosphere. These gases include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (Dessler and

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Parsons, 2010). In 2017, emissions stood at 406 ppm (parts per million) – an increase of 126 ppm over pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that these emissions must be reduced to keep rises in the earth’s temperature to less than 2°C, and preferably below 1.5°C. The Climate News Network estimates that world temperatures have already risen 1°C above pre-industrial levels, increasing substantially the risk for already vulnerable populations, especially poor ones. Most of these people live in Africa and Asia, where current emissions are low, but are projected to rise considerably given existing demographic trends and modernisation strategies. Current levels of fossil fuel consumption are predicted to raise global temperatures above 2°C unless urgent mitigation actions are taken internationally by all nations within 12 years (IPCC, 2018). The Paris Agreement 2015 sought to commit all United Nations member states to keeping emissions down to 1.5°C. Despite advice from across the world not to pursue this path, President Donald Trump withdrew the USA from the Paris Agreement in 2018. Trump’s decision is a major blow and will contribute to climate change stressing the earth further. The USA is the second largest polluter after China, which overtook it in 2005. The Paris Agreement was agreed during the deliberations of the 21st meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP21) in 2015, which took place in Paris. Under this Agreement each country undertook to devise its own National Action Plan (NAP) to keep its greenhouse gas emissions low to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol objective of keeping temperature rises to no more than 2°C was met. Countries also committed to aim for no more than a 1.5°C rise in temperature. Thus, despite Trump’s assertions to the contrary, the USA, like other countries, became responsible for setting its own NAP targets and for reporting progress on reaching these (or not) at subsequent UNFCCC meetings. Sadly, the Paris Agreement, like the Kyoto Protocol, lacks teeth for non-compliance. This does not augur well for reaching its objectives, even though each country controls the process, is responsible for determining its goals, making its plan of actions and reporting on progress. Unfortunately, there is no consensus around climate change. The concept is mired in controversy between those called the ‘greens’, who accept the science of climate change, and the ‘sceptics’ who do not (Giddens, 2009). The populations in the world’s major emitters – China and the USA – are least concerned about global warming. Such indifference is worrying. Other populous countries whose emissions are likely to increase under plans to modernise are India,

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Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and those on the African continent. Their right to modernise and develop must be accompanied by the use of renewable energy forms. It is the duty of rich Western nations which benefited from past development to share freely knowledge of renewable technologies and climate change. Profits can still be made from the sale of individual products. Matters are becoming serious because concerted action globally is lacking, and the large number of climate change refugees created by global warming could substantially aggravate international relations and tensions. Some scientists have calculated that if temperatures rose on average by 3°C, half the world’s population would be living in uninhabitable areas. Feminist action on climate change Feminist action on climate change aims to achieve climate justice because women are more likely to be injured and killed during natural disasters. Women are more likely to respond to crises (Shah, 2018). However, women are rarely involved in climate change decisionmaking bodies. Delegates at UNFCCC COP meetings do not reflect the world’s demographics. At COP10, for example, women constituted only 12–15% of heads of delegation and 30% of delegates overall. This global number had risen to 38% by COP23 in 2017. Feminist activism became strengthened after Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, where women constituted 31% of those who died. Other such initiatives include the KARAAT (or KARAT, the name of the hotel in Warsaw, Poland where women from Eastern Europe met to realise their aim of creating a network of regional support in 1997) Coalition in the European Union and One World Action who are engaged in feminist social action on climate change. The idea of KARAAT was conceived by these women at the 1995 UN Summit on Women in Beijing in 1995 and has inspired women since. Examples of sustainable community development activities exist throughout the world. Many deal with infrastructure issues, particularly water, sanitation and transport, and have significant impacts on women. The Lalibela water development project, financed by Plan International, provided clean drinking water for women in Lalibela village, saved them time in fetching water from distant water holes and was safer. Water also became available to grow crops, especially nutritious vegetables. Lalibela school could access water, enabling improvements in health to occur among children. Investment decisions disregard the needs of 2.9 billion women for solar-powered heating and cooking equipment (Norgard and York, 2005) that can reduce

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indoor air pollution which undermines women’s and children’s health. Feminist groups in India and elsewhere have advocated for solar power to help with cooking and heating, thus eliminating the search for firewood which often endangered species survival – for example, Yareta trees in Argentina had become virtually extinct. In numerous disasters including Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar/Burma in 2008, unmarried women had none of their needs met during the distribution of humanitarian aid, an inequity feminist scholars had highlighted earlier (Pittaway et al, 2007). Additionally, women demanded protection in diverse areas of life ranging from income generation to ensure family survival, maternal health and a gender perspective in emergency preparedness and responses.

Poverty eradication is crucial to sustainable development processes Poverty is usually considered as having insufficient resources for a decent standard of living for the society and historical period in which one is located (Townsend, 1979, 1997). It has been defined on two planes: absolute poverty, and relative poverty. Both concepts were extensively quantified and monetarised during the 1980s when the World Bank defined absolute poverty as the condition of living on less than $1.00 per day. In 2008, absolute poverty encompassed 2.7 billion people living on less than $2.00 daily. The rate for absolute poverty was increased to $1.25 a day in 2013, when still 1.3 billion people remained under absolute poverty. Updated to $1.90 daily in 2015, this amount symbolises those living in total penury: 70% are women. In Western Europe, poverty is defined in relative terms, namely, living on 60% of the median wage for that country. Although this might seem generous, it is not if a decent historically relevant quality of life is being sought (Gaisbauer and Schweige, 2017). Poverty is coupled with social exclusion from decision making in both domestic relational space in the home and political relational space involving governance structures and decision making in public arenas and the waged workforce and affects women disproportionately (Dominelli, 2018). Development, as the processes whereby society moves from one phase of social growth to another, involves human, social, political, economic and cultural domains. Development contains a notion of progress which can be incremental, evolutionary or revolutionary. Development is critical to eradicating poverty, including the mechanisation of agriculture so that it can sustain industrial development and feed the world’s peoples, especially those living in cities in highly populated

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nations like India and China. For example, the Green Revolution in India changed the structure of Indian agriculture from subsistence farming to modern agribusiness, thereby enabling the country to feed its people and produce a surplus for industrialisation. Even in less populous nations, the industrialisation of agriculture provided the funding needed for urbanised industrialisation. This was instanced by England, where the Industrial Revolution industrialised agriculture to produce additional surplus value for export-led development. In contrast, the French Revolution was one of the political ideas that changed how people thought about being governed and led to promoting equality, democracy and government led by and for the people. Community, as the location within which people conduct their lives, lies at the heart of development initiatives, regardless of the scale or plane in which it is located. That this is recognised as women’s space makes a mockery of their invisibility within it.

The focus on micro-level sustainability in community work Community work traditionally has been about individuals, groups and communities nurtured by women and deemed part of the social work profession. In 1986, in England and Wales (not Scotland), community work was separated from social work, and its posts cut. Few community workers now work in the local state. In these two countries, social work tends to focus on individual and safeguarding work. Communities are the spaces where people live and enact their daily routines. Both social workers and community/social development workers operate within them, often doing different work and having different roles. In the following section, I consider an example of community work as community action when they were considered part of one profession. Globally, the International Consortium on Social Development (ICSD) deemed itself distinct from social work; it broke away from the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) several decades ago, under a different name: the International University Consortium for Social Development (IUCISD). The International Association of Community Development (IACD) is linked to, but separate from social work. Community work stemmed from the Settlement Movement tradition, not the Charity Organisation Societies (COS), which focused on casework and laid the foundations of modern social work with individuals and families. Social development and environmental critiques developed in contrast. Jane Addams,

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for example, developed recycling as an income-generation project to improve poor people’s lives in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in nineteenth century Chicago. This tradition is recognised in contemporary environmental social work (Besthorn, 2012) and green social work (Dominelli, 2012b, 2018). However, not all community development initiatives engage in sustainable or environmental social work. Two such examples were the Community Development Projects (CDPs) in the UK and the American War on Poverty. Both sought to alleviate poverty among significant segments of their respective populations. I describe the British initiative below.

The Community Development Projects There are many examples of community work that focuses on microlevel or household sustainability to preserve family and community integrity by facilitating daily consumption and reproduction patterns. I examine one, the Community Development Projects (CDPs) promoted by the British Labour government from the late 1960s to mid-1970s (Loney, 1983). Their definition of sustainability concerned primarily socioeconomic developments that addressed poverty by halting economic decline and deindustrialisation in Britain. CDPs initially followed community organisation and development models of action by assuming that the overall socioeconomic and political systems were basically sound and simply required piecemeal modifications to correct minor deficiencies. These emphasised local self-help community roles in fulfilling development needs without considering the physical environment. A paradigmatic shift occurred when grassroots action challenged community development’s assumed community passivity and pathology and transformed their endeavours into community action. The Home Office initiated the CDPs in 1969 by authorising 12 community-based action-research projects with a five-year lifespan to tackle social problems, especially poverty, by engaging voluntary agencies and community groups. Each CDP focused on a specific geographical location and had an action team that undertook community work and a university-based research team that evaluated and monitored its poverty alleviation activities. The Home Office retained authority by sitting on management committees and approving funding for specific projects. The local authority responsible for each CDP held day-to-day control of its work programme by releasing social action funds for activities approved by the management committee which included its representatives.

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CDPs initially followed community organisation and development models utilising self-help. They assumed that an overall basically sound social system required only piecemeal modifications to correct minor deficiencies. Government expected CDPs to: improve the efficiency of local government by co‑ordinating service delivery and avoiding the unnecessary replication of services; affect local and central government policies through its research; and encourage local resident participation in policy formulation and service delivery through the establishment of self-help groups. (CDP, 1977a) The 1968 Seebohm Report and 1969 Skeffington Report promoted citizens’ participation in community activities. Ultimately, citizen participation became a state tool that utilised corporate management techniques to engage people in delivering services to residents in an efficient, cost-effective manner; incorporate community energies in designing and delivering services; spread limited resources across a wider range of community groups; and retain state control of local developments. The inadequacy and contradictory nature of the state’s assumptions were quickly exposed as CDPs’ activities challenged the social pathology theory of poverty for being unable to explain structurally induced poverty resulting from a declining industrial base as capital moved to more favourable profit-making opportunities elsewhere. CDPs’ work demonstrated that structural change, not middle-level mismanagement, accounted for the welfare state’s failure to meet local needs (CDP, 1977a, 1977b, 1977c). The state rejected this message, which exposed poor people as necessary components in the cycle of capital accumulation. The outlook of CDPs contrasted with state-endorsed, pathologybased explanations of poverty through ‘cycle of deprivation’ theories which asserted that generations of the same family had not exited the clutches of poverty through hard work by passing undesirable traits like refusing to work from one generation to another. This approach ignored research showing that poor adults caught in poverty traps in declining communities without the prospect of well-paid work could not access opportunities to rise from the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy and enhance their children’s well-being through betterpaid jobs. Conservative governments blamed single-parent womenheaded families and ‘absent fathers’ for these social ills. CDPs became community action-oriented when their interventions proved unable

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to reduce disadvantage (Community Development Project Working Group, 1974). The 1970s state monitored CDPs achievements closely and found these wanting for failing to reduce poverty and having radical messages that identified state failure in controlling economic decline by not curbing capital’s ability to move wherever it wished. CDPs created antagonistic relations with the state by critiquing its actions while relying on state funding for their jobs and interventions. Facing intolerable questioning, the state quickly closed problematic CDPs like Cleator Moor and Batley despite earlier agreements to extend their remit. It ultimately terminated funding for all CDPs and replaced these with alternatives (Loney, 1983). Central government promoted state control of workers’ activities through bureaucratic means and funding arrangements that favoured traditional community work and non-contentious organisational approaches (Loney, 1983). This began a precipitous decline in publicly funded community work posts and had the knock-on effect of eliminating community work training in English social work education (Dominelli, 2004b). CDP work on ‘race’ and gender issues Beset by internal contradictions, CDPS failed to deal with ‘race’ and gender divisions by operating gender-blind and colour-blind approaches that ‘treated everyone the same’ and as having identical needs. Their research generally ignored the overall impact of both racialised and gendered relations. CDP workers paid scant attention to non-economic structural forms of oppression rooted in social and cultural divisions and assumed that people had identical material needs. Few black people occupied positions as either paid community workers or team leaders, even when projects encompassed black communities. Women community workers and secretaries were expected to make the tea and provide clerical services to area teams. Women workers were located primarily in the lower ranks of the paid workforce regardless of qualifications. And the few women who held positions as team leaders did not receive the same pay as their male colleagues. No account was taken of the dual career burden that women carried when organising workloads and meetings. Gendered relations in CDPs CDPs’ work with women initially followed traditional lines (Remfry, 1979), organising women into groups to deal with their concerns

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as mothers, for example childcare provisions. There was no attempt to make these activities relevant to or involve men. Women were supported in improving their position in waged employment by obtaining union recognition in workplaces predominantly hiring women, while their specific needs as women workers responsible for both family and workplace commitments were disregarded. Demands to schedule meetings to facilitate women’s attendance were often ignored. Women without other arrangements had to pay additional childcare costs to participate in out-of-hours meetings and activities. Feminist community work prospered in certain CDPs towards the end of their existence. North Tyneside, for instance, vigorously addressed issues that impacted on women’s lives as women, such as domestic violence. Some of its initiatives have survived the demise of CDPs. The Working Women’s Charter, promoted by the 1970s labour and women’s movements, encouraged a group of CDP women to examine CDPs’ failure to address gender inequalities in their own ranks. A few women, for example Jeanette Mitchell, Penny Remfry and I, attended the meetings that took place before CDPs, including Central Office, were disbanded. The irony of ignoring gender oppression within CDPs’ own structures while trying to address it in the wider community did strike us. Women community workers in CDPs were located primarily in the lower level ranks of the paid workforce regardless of qualifications and performed clerical and service duties not included in their job descriptions, such as making tea for area teams. The few women holding team leader positions did not receive the same pay as their male colleagues. Organising CDP women nationally was problematic as there were many difficulties in forming a national organisation of CDP women. Meetings to discuss gender inequalities were added to existing heavy workloads. Uncovering the specifics of women’s position in CDPs by examining pay scales, the position of secretaries and roles that women community workers occupied had to be completed on top of a full day’s work and without obtaining resources for doing so. CDPs were nationally dispersed, with few women in any one project. It was time-consuming and expensive for us to travel regularly to one location to meet, even if venues were rotated. Our endeavours to secure transformative change often failed. Frustrated by the lack of progress regarding equalising pay among team leaders, a case was raised with Kirklees Council through the trade union, NALGO. Sitting outside the room where the Council and trade union representatives – all men – deliberated on the case, the woman team leader felt humiliated by the comments she overheard them make, asserting that she was going to get married soon, was earning

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‘pin money and did not need a pay rise’. Although an independent woman, with marriage furthest from her mind, the team leader lost the case, despite having the title of Team Leader, doing the work of Team Leader and holding more academic qualifications than her male colleagues. However, the Sex Discrimination Act was not yet in force, and no further legal pathways for resolving her predicament were available. Racialised relations in CDPs CDPs’ record on combating racism was only marginally better. Few black people occupied positions as either paid community workers or team leaders, even when projects encompassed black communities. Several CDPs working with black communities, for example Saltley and Batley, attempted to tackle this problem by exposing institutionalised racist practices that hindered developments in these communities, such as the ‘redlining’ of black communities for mortgage purposes (CDP, 1977c). ‘Redlining’ referred to the practice of defining certain communities as ‘high risk’ and unsuitable for lending purposes. Building societies and banks refused to lend money to applicants living in these areas, inhabited mainly by black (would-be) borrowers. Racist social relations permeated interactions between CDPs’ black community workers and their white colleagues. Black employees often had responsibility for eliminating racism in various communities dumped on their shoulders. They were usually hired at lower levels, although the work they undertook was more complex than that of white workers. Black workers living in black communities were accessible to residents requiring help around the clock without additional pay. In working with black women, white women community workers’ attempts to counter the dynamics of racism and sexism were often mishandled, despite a commitment to being sensitive to black women’s needs and position in their communities. Benevolent paternalism could pervade these relationships, for example assuming that Mirpuri or Gujarati women needed white women’s intervention and mediation with the black men controlling these communities in order to form women’s groups. CDPs may have held a radical reputation, but it was not merited in terms of their contributions to eliminating either gender or racial oppression.

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Mainstream community work continues to monetarise sustainability The retreat of state-funded community action critical of state responses in deprived areas was exemplified by the CDPs. Their departure left a vacuum that the state filled by maintaining community workers in voluntary settings using ‘self-help’ principles, and employing them in statutory settings where managers could direct their labour through tight job descriptions. They were charged with raising people out of poverty through sustainable livelihoods, but their definition of sustainability ignored the impact of development initiatives on the physical environment, and monetarised sustainability by concentrating on raising people out of poverty through incomegeneration projects. The central British state had begun to reaffirm more traditional forms of community work through the Community Programmes Department, established in 1971. The community organisation model this favoured has been endorsed by subsequent governments. These have targeted resources in small areas, such as Neighbourhood Schemes, to improve service delivery and coordination at the expense of engaged community participation. Women contribute their resources by providing informal care and voluntary work, and various groups are compelled to compete for scarce funds (Diamond, 2004). Griffiths (1988) crucially redefined community work away from mobilising people and towards servicing activities defined and controlled by local authorities by emphasising job functions that accentuated community workers’ roles in community care, elaborating government policy and managing limited financial resources and buildings. Government endorsed types of participation that constrained innovative changes (Barnes, 1999), and strong central control became endemic to modernising public services. Community workers’ labour processes were controlled through job descriptions, financing and specified interventions that constrained radical approaches to community mobilisation. This placed workers in contradictory positions involving potential and actual constraints on their activities. This disadvantaged creative innovations from arising spontaneously within poor communities and encouraged disaffection with participatory processes that were tokenistic at best. Space for community workers to manoeuvre within their restricted position (London–Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, 1979) hinged on residents’ compliance with their interventions and hopes of moving their lives in progressive directions. Community workers’ capacity to

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utilise these spaces creatively depended on their ability to organise a strong power base among constituents. The government attempted to regenerate inner-city areas through schemes that encouraged private entrepreneurs to develop areas by reducing regulatory controls (‘red tape’), providing funds and other inducements. Deregulation enabled firms to penetrate declining communities without being held accountable for casualties created en route. This strategy continues under neoliberalism and has resulted in private management and economic planning consultants assuming community development roles in deprived urban areas. Moreover, deregulation proceeds at the expense of environmental sustainability because cutting costs is prioritised over protecting the environment for the future. Deregulation and privatisation accorded bureaucratic professional expertise primacy over grassroots-oriented community workers (CDP, 1977b). These experts treated communities as ‘passive’ entities and offered little other than self-help to solve their problems. Additionally, funding became targeted and restricted to areas most in need, a feature rejected by several local authorities which felt their entire area required extra funds. Women and black people, rarely found in managerial positions, had little input in the formulation of these directives. Also, these arrangements failed to address the needs of women and black people, their exclusion from political processes and political relational space, or their wish to live in safe, sustainable environments. These policies had the net effect of curtailing public participation in local areas and ‘depoliticising’ community issues by turning them into neutral technical problems requiring technicians to expend their expertise in resolving them. Government sought to attract private industry into designated areas via special concessions, subsidies and publicly funded infrastructures like communication networks and roads. Such approaches effectively excluded women and black people from decision-making processes and these groups rarely had the resources to launch entrepreneurial initiatives. Young black people across the country rebelled at various times, for example in 1998, 2001 and 2011. Since then, precarious employment prospects, increasing losses in manufacturing jobs, continued deprivation in Britain’s inner cities and a rise in racist attacks have demonstrated the bankruptcy of the various free enterprise initiatives through which the state attempts to revitalise inner cities. Even its strategy of developing a sizeable black middle class along the lines of the American experience has not reduced inner-city poverty. Hidden for many years, poverty in rural communities has resurfaced and is particularly acute for older

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women (Chapman et al, 1998) and black people (Chakraborti and Garland, 2004). Moreover, welfare interventions to mitigate damage to people thrown on the ‘scrapheap’ through economic decline occurred within the contexts of severely curtailed welfare funding and growing numbers of economic casualties stretching limited resources (Iliffe, 1985; Loney, 1983). Various community-based ‘training’ and ‘retraining’ schemes partnered between employers and trade unions sought to absorb casualties of deindustrialisation and refit them for new employment prospects with limited success (Finn, 1985). These groups have now been termed ‘the left-behind’ people, black and white. Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State for Health from 1972 to 1974, reaffirmed pathology-based explanations of poverty through ‘cycle of deprivation’ theories which highlighted the inability of generations in particular families to exit poverty. Ignoring structural constraints, Joseph argued that undesirable traits such as refusing to work were passed from one generation to another and locked families into intergenerational poverty. He ignored research which indicated that once caught in the poverty trap in declining communities without the prospect of well-paid work, poor adults could not access opportunities to rise from the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy to better jobs and thereby enhance their children’s well-being. Joseph blamed lone mothers for these social ills, including the lack of decently paid employment opportunities a theme subsequently popularised by Peter Lilley. Later, Cameron’s ‘Troubled Families Programme’ targeted such families without providing permanent well-paid jobs either (Crossley, 2016). The ‘absent father’ thesis promulgated in the 1990s gave pathologising explanations a new twist by blaming women for alienating men from family circles while ignoring how men literally left women holding the baby when relationships broke down. British and American New Right ideologues pathologised poor people and blamed welfare states for promoting a ‘culture of dependency’ that encouraged people to live off benefits rather than work for their keep (Murray, 1990). While not getting sustainable employment was deemed socially unsustainable, leaving people on the scrapheap was not. Later, New Labour responded with the ‘New Deal’ to reduce unemployment figures substantially by encouraging people to undertake training and work their way out of poverty – a position that proved fiscally unsustainable because the jobs available were low paid. These measures eventually encompassed unemployed persons, young people, single mothers and older people (Millar, 1996). The jobs claimants could access were low-paid casualised work that failed to meet their aspirations for a

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better life. Today, these economically vulnerable groups provide fodder for ‘zero hour contracts’ which trap them in poverty, often under ‘Alice in Wonderland’ conditions in which they cannot seek alternative employers even if they are not offered work for months at a time. They cannot obtain Job Seekers’ Allowance during such periods because the state considers them employed. People’s engagement in ‘active citizenship’ projects reflected a commitment to create ‘sustainable communities’ and end social exclusion (SEU, 2000). These tended to ignore environmental justice as part of social justice. Promoting ‘active citizenship’ is relatively new, as is the rhetoric accompanying the term. Under New Labour, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) focused on ‘a prosperous and sustainable community for the 21st century’; the Home Office concentrated on ‘building a safe, just and tolerant society’; the CRU on ‘people and government solving problems together’. Despite fine rhetoric, research by Purdue (2000) and Anastacio (2000) indicates that local participants in these schemes felt sidelined by experts who retained control of projects. The top-down emphasis on unitary communities dispersed diversity, equality in general, and the specific needs of and roles played by women and marginalised others into the background.

Sustainable income-generation projects Widespread disasters cause extensive damage and require creative, alternative solutions, as is instanced by China’s 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake which destroyed infrastructure, housing, communities and livelihoods. Social workers and community development workers supported the rebuilding of these. Women were a key target group. Their initiatives occurred step by step to respond to communities’ and women residents’ self-defined needs (Sim, 2009; Ku, 2011; Ku and Dominelli, 2018; Sim and Dominelli, 2017). Once in a safe environment, the first concern of women victim-survivors was to feed devastated people through community kitchens. This they achieved by commandeering whatever food resources and utensils were available, often long before formal responders arrived. Later, they sought to acquire livelihoods to secure sufficient income to purchase items required by their families and communities. Over time, income-generation projects became financially sustainable, and subsequently environmentally sustainable, especially in agricultural areas where organic fruit and vegetables were grown using traditional methods passed down through community elders. Such activities encouraged positive intergenerational relationships by bringing

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older and younger people together to learn elders’ traditional culture and skills; reintegrate community members; and promote cohesive relationships. Green social workers in these schemes facilitated the formation of links between urban and rural areas through transactions for selling agricultural products produced through collective endeavours (Dominelli and Ku, 2017).

Microfinance schemes: micro-level sustainable incomegeneration projects Women have relied on microfinance schemes to access small loans to initiate small income-generating projects, such as buying embroidery thread and sewing machines. Mohammed Yunis first devised such schemes for poor women in Jobra, Bangladesh to acquire funds to generate income for their families. These schemes created the Grameen Bank, which brought poor women together in groups to access loans (credit). Normally, these charged high rates of interest and held the group responsible if an individual woman defaulted (Burkett, 2007). Collective responsibility for paying off individual loans and demanding very high rates of interest have ensured that such schemes can continue. Yunis became a millionaire and was awarded many prizes, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, for the microcredit idea, which has been emulated globally. By drawing on traditional skills and making women responsible for undertaking the daily work involved in maintaining families, these projects affirm patriarchal social relations within households and communities. The Sierra Nevada Alliance The Sierra Nevada Alliance (SNA), formed in 1993 to create sustainable habitats for living forms to thrive and promote grassroots activism, is a non-profit organisation that currently opposes rurbanising (rural areas mimicking urban ones) initiatives that undermine the health and well-being of rural ecosystems and communities. The Alliance was formed following a conference called ‘Sierra Now’ which was organised following a series of articles that identified the destruction of the Sierran ecosystem. These papers were written by Tom Knudson during 1991 and won him a Pulitzer Prize. The Sierra Now conference attended by ecofeminists proposed the following priorities: • acting as the unified environmental voice for Sierra activists regionally and nationally;

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• providing technical, legal, and organizational support for environmental partners; • pursuing recommendations suggested by Sierra Now Task Forces; • educating the public about the Sierra’s environmental problems; • providing models and proposals for effective environmental management of the Sierran ecosystem; • publicizing the environmental degradation Sierra Nevada in the popular media; • building a consensus that engaged Sierra environmental advocates; • helping environmental partners advocate for changes that would effectively protect and rehabilitate the Sierra Nevada; • creating coalitions between the public and private sectors to facilitate the formulation of sustainable environmental policies. (SNA, nd) Today, SNA seeks to restore the 23 (of 24) watersheds that were polluted, and protect 17 endangered native species in the Sierra mountains. According to its website, these dangers are intensified by the threat of climate change, which is predicted to reduce the Sierra snowpack by 36% over 50 years. The Sierra Nevada Alliance Regional Climate Change Program was developed to advocate for regional, sustainable climate change initiatives and conduct educational activities and projects to resist threats to the ecosystem and monitor progress in doing so. The SNA engages in sustainable projects through conservation initiatives for restoring and protecting water, land, wildlife and other community resources. Women are key players within its ranks.

Empowering social capital Empowerment is a tool for engaging people in developing sustainable communities. Community empowerment requires the development of social capital (bonding, bridging, linking) through social interactions between different groups of social actors. Bonding social capital works within groups that are similar on crucial social attributes, such as family, kinship groups and ethnic groups. Bridging social capital extends the connections and networks to others within a community or geographic locale where a number of bonds and objectives are

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held in common alongside recognised differences, for example a community group formed to block a road scheme that would bifurcate their neighbourhood. Linking social capital goes beyond the confines of locality to encompass national and international fields (Putnam, 2000; Woolcock, 1998; Dominelli, 2006), for example the local, national and global reach of Greenpeace on environmental issues. Empowerment is a form of power sharing that can sustain community action over time. Ideally it should be egalitarian and inclusive. Unfortunately, the term has become a trendy buzzword, and so it exists in the following forms: • Legalistic: Empowerment can be purely legalistic, as represented by the Citizens’ Charters promoted by John Major when British Prime Minister. • Tokenistic: Empowerment is superficial and usually portrayed as warm words that retain power in the hands of officials and elites. • Bureaucratic: Empowerment is procedurally driven and can leave service users feeling disempowered by the procedures used to address their concerns. • Consumerist: Empowerment encourages participation by exercising choice in the marketplace and is not available to those lacking funds to make purchases. • Commodified: Empowerment is about pricing all relationships and interactions so that they are turned into reified market-driven relationships. • Agent-driven: Empowerment is about self-empowerment or having the capacity to make decisions or take action individually and collectively. • Collaborative: Empowerment is group empowerment or the right to enact group decision making. All these forms of empowerment are used in practice, and several can coexist together (Dominelli, 2000).

Box 8.1: Organising tips: self-empowerment Self-empowerment covers self-care and the development of resilient communities and personalities. Self-care in disaster-prone communities requires preparation before disasters occur and prior to going into the field to help communities under dire disaster conditions. Self-care during humanitarian aid situations includes:

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Facilitative factors in supporting social development Working with other people to promote resilience and sustainable social development requires other facilitative factors. These are: • Trust: This is the capacity to believe in and work with others in positive relationships. • Reciprocity and mutuality: These factors concern individuals and communities both giving and receiving help and support from each other. Even in self-help situations, mutuality is essential in maintaining relationships over time, for example achieving sustainable self-help through mutuality. • Accountability: This dimension involves people being responsible or held accountable for their decisions and behaviours. • Solidarity: This attribute encompasses a willingness to empathise with or support someone who is in need or trouble. • Collective action: Such activities engage people as a group or community working together to achieve agreed or commonly held goals. • Power sharing: Power sharing draws upon the belief that power is created through interactions and negotiations between individuals and groups. Instead of being enmeshed in a zero-sum game of one having power while another does not, power is negotiated and shared among participants in an interaction. • Resource finding and sharing: Resources are often in short supply. Additional resources must be found; existing ones shared. Acquiring resources can be challenging.

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• Linking the personal to the structural (and the reverse) to promote social change: Social change involves complex interactions between individuals, the social relations in which they engage with each other and structural or institutional arrangements they have to navigate. Transformative change at any level has to encompass both personal and structural domains. • Coproduction: This is a process of engagement. It engages ordinary residents and experts in sharing their diverse knowledges and working together to find solutions to specified problems. Coproduced new knowledges and solutions have a greater likelihood of being owned by communities and sustained over time because agreed actions will be carried out.

Conclusion Sustainability is a contested term, often focusing largely on incomegeneration projects and building community resilience to survive disasters. Otherwise, it concerns sustainable physical environments that guarantee the existence of the earth’s resources into the distant future and care for planet earth which nurtures all living things, not just people.

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Introduction Women have focused on changing policy in different countries through local, national and international initiatives, the latter endorsed by the United Nations since the 1970s. The first world summit on women occurred in Mexico in 1975 and gave rise to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1979. Further summits and many actions later, full equality for women remains a goal to be achieved globally. Key milestones have included the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, which shifted discourses to define women’s rights as human rights and tempt men into supporting equality for women, especially in ending domestic violence. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) depicted a major undertaking intended to have a significant impact on women’s lives. Of the eight MDGs which were to be implemented between 2000 and 2015, MDG3 was particularly aimed at promoting gender equality and empowering women. Others, including those which sought to reduce poverty among women, improve maternal health and increase girl children’s chances to receive education, also sought to improve the position of women (OASGI, 2008; Wilkinson and Hulme, 2012). The UN had limited success in achieving the MDG goals, and in 2015 the MDGs were replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This action expanded the eight MDG goals to 17 SDGs. These are to be implemented by 2030 and have human rights and sustainability at their centre (SDGs, 2015). SDG5 specifically seeks to enhance women’s lives by promoting gender equality and empowering women. Those SDGs that attempt to eliminate poverty and improve health and education emphasise that they are ‘for all’ without prioritising women. At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 the UN also committed itself to women’s rights as human rights and mainstreaming gender equality. The government delegates attending 201

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the conference endorsed gender mainstreaming as a mechanism for achieving the goal of equality for women in all aspects of life. The realisation of this objective remains for the future. This chapter examines the opportunities, challenges and obstacles that women have encountered while struggling to attain gender equality and mainstream gender in specific areas of public life through international policies and endeavours. It draws upon specific examples in both the Global North and the Global South to convey their successes and failures. These encompass the UK’s refusal to support the Human Rights Council Resolution 15/14 of 30 September 2010 regarding people’s right to water and sanitation because there was no internationally agreed definition of these; and the failure of countries in the Global South to ensure access to safe water, basic sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Failure to progress both elements affects women more deleteriously than men.

International attempts to challenge gender inequalities Women have a lengthy history of asserting their rights to gender parity locally, nationally and internationally. Women’s struggles for gender equality in England have been discussed publicly for centuries. A classical illustration of these is Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Vindication of the Rights of Women written in 1792. While gains have been made since then, there is considerable scope for further social action, as this book, among others, indicates. Women’s unhappiness with their role in society was exposed in dramatic ways during the 1960s. In the USA, middle-class women wrote about ‘the problem that has no name’ when describing their anomie and malaise (Friedan, 1963), while working-class women in Mexico struggled to obtain decent housing and pay for poor populations. The Wages for Housework Campaign went global by arguing that women’s domestic work in the home, which was undervalued, usually provided for free through a family or marriage contract, should be recognised by being paid (Dalla Costa and James, 1972). Critics of this position claimed that women’s work was unappreciated because it covered reproduction issues based on caring work for survival purposes rather than producing merchandise for sale as men did. In capitalist societies, only social relations linked to production, or working for a wage making goods deemed economically productive, were valued. These jobs were mainly men’s prerogative. However, this analysis does not explain the lower value assigned to women’s work in non-capitalist parts of the world such as China and the then Soviet Union. These were then termed the ‘Second’ World,

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which proclaimed equality between men and women, but in practice paid women less than men for the same jobs (Dominelli, 1991b). Calculating the monetary worth of women’s unpaid work was a concern of the UN’s World Plan of Action and was included in the UN Decade for Women in 1975. In Australia, for example, the Women’s Alliance calculated that women’s domestic labour was equivalent to 58% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In Canada, women’s work was considered equal in value to the manufacturing industry, thus making a significant contribution to the economy. Authors during this period tended to treat feminism as unitary and essentialised, but Banks (1981) divided feminists into radical feminists, socialist feminists and black feminists. These configurations were formed and underpinned by the women’s liberation movement, which was not the property of any one feminist group (Mohanty, 1991; Ferree and Tripp, 2006). These groupings had different philosophies and demands, although they shared the concern about women being oppressed as a category, often ignoring differences between them. Black feminists, for instance, demanded the eradication of racism within white feminist ranks (Lorde, 1984; Mama, 1995) and some preferred to call themselves ‘womanists’. Women’s journeys varied according to their social positioning, cultures and geographical locations. In industrialising countries, women were preoccupied with issues regarding the acquisition of the means to feed, clothe and educate their families, for example water, sanitation, food, healthcare, education, jobs and decent housing in urban areas. Black feminists in the Global South condemned the exploitative and often inappropriate nature of development aid and ideologically oriented Western interventions that accompanied offers of help (Mohanty, 1991, 2003). Women in the Global South organised their own powerful collectives focused on their particular concerns and demanded that their views be heard locally, nationally and internationally, especially in deliberations at the UN (Jayawardna, 1986; Sen and Grown, 1987; Sen, 1999). Notwithstanding these important differences, many popular discourses viewed women’s identities as monolithic or unitary, fixed and essentialised, while others emphasised women’s diverse, multiple, fluid and changing identities. At the same time, women in the Global South were being subjected to coercive Western policies aimed at curtailing the extent to which they could control their lives, especially their fertility. In 2001, for example, then President George W. Bush introduced the ‘global gag rule’ that prohibited the use of American funds for legal abortions

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in organisations that received American funds for family planning purposes. Subsequently, in 2008, USAid endangered Ghanaian women’s reproductive health by not supplying contraceptives (Holden, 2008: 7). President Trump reaffirmed this policy in 2017 by preventing NGOs receiving US funding from engaging in activities that enabled women to control their fertility (Boseley, 2017). Conceptually, feminists have the task of understanding how to encompass both the similarities women share and the significant differences between them in a framework that values all women equally. Feminist scholars have sought to re-theorise patriarchal relations, women’s diversity and innovation in establishing egalitarian alliances with other women (Bishop, 1994). Fraser (1997, 2003) argued that the multiple oppressions women faced necessitated social justice approaches embedded in human rights and social justice. Additionally, the lacklustre approach to disabilities (Parker, 2006) provided the springboard for critiquing the weaknesses of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with a Disability. Both neglected the complex and diverse needs of disabled women, who are more marginalised than men (Frohmader, 2002). Postmodernist feminists have acknowledged women’s multiple and fluid identities (Nicholson, 1990; Irigaray, 1977), but undermined collective action (Dominelli, 2002b). All feminist groups have highlighted the importance of formal policies in safeguarding women’s interests where these have been promulgated, and lobbied for those that were missing. Significant in this regard were policies promoting social development, especially those supported by international bodies like the UN, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and international nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). Crucially, cultures are static and unitary, but fluid, dynamic and changing entities that also retain continuities as part of their traditions (Dominelli, 2004a). After many years of struggle, continuities within discontinuities were exemplified in Saudi Arabia during 2017 when King Salman granted women the right to drive cars from June 2018. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had promised to modernise Saudi Arabia and return it to a form of ‘moderate Islam’ by reducing the power of clerics committed to a conservative form of Wahhabism. Women have now been allowed to watch football in King Abdullah Stadium, entering it through turnstiles especially designated for women and families (Shaheen, 2018: 23). In 2013, human rights law included a violence-free environment in the home, following the launch of the

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ad campaign ‘No More Abuse’. Psychological, sexual and physical abuse was covered by this legislation. Yet, women remain subordinate to men. Globally, disparities continue to exist between men and women across all markers. However, women are specifically selected for social development projects because they are considered most likely to influence their communities by cascading their skills and engaging other women: ‘By educating [women], you prepare a strong army to stop poverty, health problems, prevent infection and prepare food hygienically. If you educate girls, they will support other girls. It’s a big, big change’ (George, 2008: 2). Highlighting women’s issues Women’s struggles for equality internationally were conducted largely under the auspices of the UN and organisations that women created to use as platforms for the realisation of their rights. Women targeted the UN from its inception in 1945. Four women delegates from Brazil, China, the Dominican Republic and USA who attended its first meeting in San Francisco urged the inclusion of ‘equality of rights among men and women’ in its Charter. Women’s agitation for their rights continued and these demands were endorsed when women delegates including 19 social workers successfully called for the recognition of human rights and the formation of a Commission for Women at the first meeting of the UN’s General Assembly in London. Given the aim of promoting women’s equality and rights, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was formed under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1947. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was endorsed in 1948. Having been lobbied by women activists from all over the world, the United Nations held its first World Conference on Women in Mexico City, Mexico in 1975 and declared that year the International Year for Women. This was followed by the Decade on Women which aimed to promote women’s equality, but emphasised the importance of human and social development for men and women in the Global South. International Women’s Day was promulgated as 8 March each year to celebrate women’s achievements and remove the invisibility that engulfed many of these. The Second World Conference on Women was organised in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1980. Both conferences in Mexico City and Copenhagen were occasions that displayed considerable disagreement among women as tensions between those

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from the industrialised countries and the industrialising ones surfaced. Women from the Global South felt marginalised because white women from the West dominated these proceedings. An interest in mitigating the conflict around the invisibility of women from the Global South within social development circles during the 1970s was expressed by recognising the legitimacy of their claims. These included acknowledging their endeavours to secure equality for women locally and globally; capacities to organise their own lives and activities; and ability to express what they wanted. This approach led to dialogues for devising better relationships between women from the Global North and Global South before the next world conference. This willingness to engage with each other and find mutual ways of moving forward produced innovation and the formation of new networks like Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) in 1984 and Grassroots Women Organising Together in Sisterhood (GROOTS) in 1985. These networks accorded women from the Global South the space to contribute confidently as equals in further endeavours, though some tensions remained and continued to surface at various points. Such initiatives heightened sensitivity in addressing these issues among women from the Global North who sought to reduce their privileged status. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women The UN promulgated the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1979, ratified by 177 countries, but not the USA and Somalia. Neither of these two countries has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). American ratification of CEDAW and CRC would raise the profile and impact of both instruments internationally. CEDAW was the first human rights treaty for women and symbolised the UN’s role as advocate for and guardian of women’s human rights and engagement in social development activities (Ferree and Tripp, 2006). CEDAW’s implementation faced barriers and external controversies. This included apartheid in South Africa and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict which proved divisive and hindered actions that required consensus because the USA and Israel demanded that other countries’ positions on Palestine should remain depoliticised and neutral. Women bear the greatest burden in helping families to survive armed conflicts like these. They are also most likely to support peace initiatives and mediation to deal with violence (Norgaard and York, 2005), for example the

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Women’s Peace Movement in Northern Ireland; the Women in Black in Palestine and Israel. Funding is crucial in supporting women’s equality. Paying outstanding monies the USA owes the UN would help. ABC News claimed American arrears totalled $1.3 billion in 2010. Some were paid off in 2011, leaving a debt of $736  million. This rose again, reaching $3  billion (including peacekeeping dues) in 2015 under President Obama. His successor, Trump, now claims that the USA is paying too much, although its regular contributions were capped at 22% of GDP in 2001. Outstanding debt impacts negatively on UN projects committed to gender and social development as projects cannot be funded. Women’s international organisations Between key events, women across the world advocated that women engaged in other processes to highlight their centrality to development as grassroots-led self-sufficiency. One organisation called ‘Women in Development’ (WID), initiated in the late 1960s, promoted grassroots action. WID’s stance was challenged by feminists in the Global South because it gave prominence to Western women’s definitions of development which stereotyped women in other countries. Their critique chimed with UN priorities around poverty; non-Western models of modernisation and development; and the centrality of women to a country’s economic life. Moreover, the (re)emergence of the Western women’s movement meant that feminists like Boserup (1970) had already begun to advocate for the inclusion of women’s initiatives from the Global South. Feminist action during the 1970s focused on meeting basic needs (food, clothing, shelter), involving women in decision making and waged employment, obtaining recognition of women’s economic contributions to sustaining life through the domestic economy. Despite the huge boost these initiatives provided for women’s engagement in development, at local levels, they were unable to challenge the overall unequal distribution of resources between nations and within nations and the distorted local development this occasioned. Esther Boserup (1970) aided this struggle by identifying the unequal power relations and resources available to women in the wealthy West and their lack in the Global South where colonial policies and practices had facilitated the transfer of resources and wealth to the Global North. The bulk of these rested with white men. Nonetheless, white women, especially those in the upper and middle classes, were privileged compared to those in the Global South, the majority of whom were ‘black’.

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I utilise the term ‘black’ and not ‘women of colour’ as a political term implying resistance to inegalitarian social relations. My view, as a woman with a South Mediterranean heritage alongside Canadian and British ones, and classified as a ‘dark European’ by the British Home Office, is that we are all coloured in some way or ‘othered’ by racist social relations. Thus, the phrases ‘white’ and ‘black’ depict a privileging of some women over others. Moreover, this privileging exists on a continuum that is shaped not only by colour, but by other social divisions besides gender, such as age, ethnicity, (dis)ability, culture, religion and physical attributes. In the mid 1980s, WID faced a competitor, ‘Gender and Development’ (GAD), because some Western scholars insisted that the focus on women was too narrow and demanded a wider initiative based on gender relations. This turn of events ran the risk of losing the focus that its rival WID had on women as change agents and GAD also ignored unequal power relations in relationships between men and women. There were times when the interests of men and women could be seen as different and requiring oppositional responses. For example, research showed women and children as the main victims of armed conflict, but it took years of lobbying to ensure passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in 2000. Redressing global inequalities at that time was also endorsed by the Group of 77 industrialising countries when proposing the New International Economic Order. Their suggestions were rejected by an industrialised West in favour of the rule of ‘market forces’. This ultimately gave rise to the neoliberalism which underpins the current socioeconomic global order which has incorporated most countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, or the BRICS countries as they are now called, within its grasp (Hirst and Held, 2002). Women’s advancement on all fronts globally has been slow, but feminist demands have proceeded apace. Lack of substantial progress globally continues to bedevil contemporary feminism (Boserup, 1970; Dominelli, 1986a; Wichterich, 2000; Taylor, 2007). Indigenous movements have included women and sought to retrieve locality-specific culturally relevant knowledges, partially in reaction to the destruction caused by colonisation and current demands for ‘undeveloped’ land for agricultural and mining purposes (Balay-As, 2018). They defined themselves as ‘indigenous’ despite the term’s association with colonisation. Moreover, the indigenisation movement has impacted upon social work, producing ‘indigenous social work’ movements (Dominelli, 2000; Thomas and Green, 2007; Gray et al, 2012).

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The traffic in feminist discourses was not one way – from the West to elsewhere. There have been examples of women in diverse countries contributing to feminist theory, analyses and practices in the West, although these have not always been given the recognition they deserve. For example, Frankfort (1972) describes movingly the influence that Chinese women in ‘speak bitterness meetings’ had on emerging feminist concerns with domestic violence in the USA. Black women have been influential in women’s struggles in the West, for example Sojourner Truth’s ‘Ain’t I a Woman?’ in getting women the vote in the USA; black nurse Mary Seacole in the UK devising modern hospital practices during wartime; Armity Desai in India promoting disaster social work (Desai, 2007); Maori women around case conferences (Hollis-English, 2015); First Nations women on culturally appropriate welfare services; Ecuadorian women on holistic approaches to environmental issues (Dominelli, 2012b); indigenous women like Rigoberta Menchu in Latin America on liberation (Stoll, 1999); countless examples given by scholars like Jayawardna (1986); and the many stories that remain unrecorded, but exist at the level of community throughout the world (Mies, 1986). Until the advent of social media, traditional media outlets in the Global North have neglected the narratives elaborated by women from the Global South, thus intensifying their invisibility. Nonetheless, some of these have been documented by black women’s own networks, such as FEMNET, WiLDAF, FAWE, AAWORD and ABANTU, to promote their interests in Africa; Encuentros, a regional organisation Latin American women use to pursue matters like domestic violence regionally. The empowerment of women entered the social development vocabulary through such networks (Sen and Grown, 1987). Structural Adjustment Programmes The Washington Consensus was a term devised by John Williamson in 1989 to describe economic policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund IMF, World Bank (WB) and US Treasury when demanding economic reforms from debt-ridden industrialising countries seeking loans. These proposals became known as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and embedded social development and sustainable community development within the interstices of neoliberal globalisation. Besides imposing trade liberalisation and a global market-based economy on poor countries, the US Treasury, IMF and World Bank compelled countries in the Global South to subscribe to Structural Adjustment Programmes that reduced welfare

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subsidies particularly during the 1980s and 1990s. This decimated any semblance of the safety nets that could cushion women’s burden in carrying out daily life routines. These financial institutions insisted that governments in the Global South reduce expenditures on health and education to obtain loans. These demands destroyed the stability of the social fabric in poor countries in Africa and set them on a downward economic spiral (Mwansa, 2008). Neoliberalism’s main tenets included individual self-sufficiency, unregulated financial markets, a low-paid global labour force and turned citizens into consumers, but excluded poor people. Consequently, the instruments of the Washington Consensus privileged Western companies that introduced and strengthened market relations in the Global South. Moreover, SAP policies produced the ‘lost generation’ of the 1980s and the ‘credit crunch’ of the twentyfirst century. Hoogvelt (2007) has revealed how underdevelopment in Africa can be attributed to catastrophic SAP policies. Not only did they destroy African welfare states and labour markets, but women became burdened with additional caring responsibilities including educating children and caring for older people. Thus, women and children became major losers as globalisation spread worldwide (Dominelli, 2008). Moreover, as development favoured economic interests, planet earth became a means to the end of producing profits accrued by the few. Planet earth lost sustainability because resources were exploited without consideration of conserving them for the future. Rights-based approaches to women The UN held the Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985. This event was significant for initiating the redefinition of women’s rights as human rights to strengthen women’s claims to holistic well-being. This change also marked a link between a rightsbased approach and sustainable development and human rights and universalising the goal of obtaining equality for all women. It also provided grassroots activities with a universalism that connected with the specificities of women’s experiences. However, cultural relativists, especially those rooted in religious fundamentalism regardless of religious affiliation, rejected such universalism. Traditionalists and religious fundamentalist men and women across all religions insisted on defending cultural practices rooted in the patriarchal subordination of women (Ferree and Tripp, 2006) and maintaining traditionalist patriarchal positions. For example, in the Middle East, the rise of Da’esh, otherwise known as Islamic State, reinforces men’s power

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at the expense of women’s and is reasserting a patriarchal binary based on the subordination of women within the family and nation (Dominelli, 2017). Such approaches are challenged by Women Against Fundamentalism, a network with a global reach to support women’s empowerment. Additionally, the debate between universalists and relativists affects women’s views of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which some perceived as too individualistic and Western. Moreover, this analysis downplays the role of collective action in the West in pursuing and securing women’s rights including the right to vote, be paid a proper wage for their labour and have control over their own bodies and sexuality. And it ignored the dominant roles that powerful men assume over women in the Global South, particularly regarding women’s lack of access to credit, and ownership of the agricultural land that women work. Some of these critiques ignored the significant impact that insufficient access to material resources had in distorting state responses to the UDHR, both internationally in the unequal global distribution of resources between states and internally within nation states. Such inequalities are unjustifiable given that Social Watch claims that poverty could be eradicated if the political will were available. Eradicating poverty would be an enormous boost for women given that they comprise 70% of the world’s poor people. Environmental and anti-globalisation movements gained greater prominence in women’s activism during the 1990s as corporate entrepreneurs made clear their lack of interest in their concerns. Feminist research and experiences exposed corporate managers as contributing to women’s impoverishment, especially by paying low wages and creating exploitative working conditions (Wichterich, 2000). Moreover, corporations appropriated women’s knowledges – intellectual property based on local knowledge about agriculture and land – which increased their vulnerability to market forces alongside the degradation of those environments in which women raised families (Mies and Shiva, 1993). Women environmental activists such as Vandana Shiva (2003) and Arundhati Roy (1999) were celebrated for challenging global capital’s environmental degradation; exploitation of women’s labour and knowledge; and demanding development based on human needs. This included a safe, physical environment; respect and dignity for people; meeting basic needs; and economic growth for all peoples. WID had been articulating these concerns over several decades. Between Nairobi and Beijing, China, where the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in 1995, women seized other opportunities to highlight women’s agendas for achieving equality

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across key issues. For example, women used the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights which was organised in Vienna, Austria to mobilise action against violence against women, especially in intimate relationships including the family, and affirm the importance of human rights to women, including in the private domain of the home. They also discussed women’s equality at the UN’s 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, which was held in Cairo, Egypt. This issue was particularly controversial because granting women reproductive rights faced strong opposition from religious traditionalists, particularly within Islam and Catholicism. Women at the Conference sought to bridge the gap by highlighting the importance of women’s contributions to economic development and reducing population growth somewhat. Not defining the issue as women’s right to control their bodies at that point was critical in moving ahead and obtaining widespread support for addressing some of the effects of gender inequalities on women and the cultural symbolism attached to their bodies. Through their actions, women became acknowledged as key actors in economic development, playing significant economic roles that underpinned human and social development centred on securing social justice for women (Sen, 1999; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Women throughout the world pressed for strong civil society organisations to advance women’s interests (Sylvester, 1994). Many of these were led by women in countries that reaffirmed their independence after a period of colonialism. Furthermore, feminist research and scholarship provided evidence that endorsed demands for a fund for women. This ultimately led to the formation of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, Women’s World Banking (loan guarantees), International Women’s Tribune Centre (communications) and a widening of the remit of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to encompass the world’s children, not just those in countries devastated by the Second World War. Women also began to find new strength in creating networks that crossed borders in ways that did not endorse hierarchies between women (Mohanty, 2003; Moghadam, 2005). The Beijing Platform of Action: women’s issues become a matter of human rights The Fourth World Conference or Beijing World Conference for Women in 1995 had in attendance substantial numbers of NGOs

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interested in women’s issues. However, the discussions among official delegates revealed that women’s concerns were being sidelined by being defined as of interest only to women. Women attending the NGO deliberations were based in a separate location outside Beijing in Huairou. They reformulated women’s rights as human rights to widen their remit, to engage more fully with men and to turn men into allies for transforming women’s place in the world. The dynamic among women attending the NGO part of the Beijing Conference led to their devising a strong consensus around women’s concerns to convey to government delegates for inclusion in the final Platform for Action that accompanied the Beijing meeting. Under the auspices of the International Association of Schools of Social Work, social work practitioners, researchers and academics, including the author, made submissions to this gathering and contributed to its negotiations (see Orme et al, 2000). To this end, women and their allies developed the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA). The BPFA covered five strategic objectives for action to address the gendered effects of poverty. These were to: 1. review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that addressed the needs and endeavours of women (and children) in poverty; 2. revise laws and administrative practices to ensure women’s equal rights and access to economic resources; 3. provide women with access to savings and credit mechanisms and institutions; 4. promote violence-free social relations and peace; 5. develop gender-based methodologies and conduct research to tackle the ‘feminisation of poverty’. Moreover, the Beijing Platform for Action embodied the view that ‘women’s rights are human rights’ and endorsed coalitions of women and their allies – men who supported women’s equality. Feminists also scrutinised policies for their gender-specific impact and argued that these should be monitored for implementation (Hershatter et al, 1996; WEDO, 2005). Women’s global reach through the Beijing Platform for Action suffered a serious blow in 2004 when the USA withdrew its support. In contrast, the European Union was active in the deliberations of Beijing Plus Five in 2000 and Beijing Plus Ten in 2005, and sought to mainstream gender in its own institutions and agencies. The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) disseminates knowledge and tools

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for achieving gender equality between men and women in Europe, and documents achievements (or lack thereof) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Ten years later, the goals of the BPFA had not been reached (UNMP/TFEGE, 2005; UNRISD, 2005; UNSD, 2005). Their realisation remains a distant objective.

UNWomen: a global initiative to improve conditions for all women The UN has not organised another World Conference on Women following the Beijing one in 1995. Since 2011, the UN has had a specific entity, UNWomen (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women), which is concerned with empowering women and promoting equal representation for women within the UN. Its creation involved the amalgamation of the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW, formed in 1976), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI, created in 1997), and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM (launched in 1976). Michelle Bachelet, former President of Chile, became UNWomen’s first Chief Executive. UNWomen works within the framework provided by the BPFA and UN Charter. UNWomen reports on the status of women and their participation within the UN system as well as running events and undertaking research in its own right. It also coordinates International Women’s Day Events (8 March yearly), and promotes the 2015–2030 Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG5 on women’s equality. UNWomen reports to the General Assembly, the Commission on the Status of Women, the UN Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (UNIANGE) and the UN Secretary General’s Change Management Committee.

Meeting women’s welfare concerns: the general and specifics Women’s welfare concerns cover matters specific to them, such as female genital mutilation, discrimination against women, and general matters relevant to both men and women, even though more women may experience them, such as poverty. Meeting both general and specific needs can create tensions regarding priorities and the allocation of scarce resources. Sometimes, these are evident as tensions regarding the balance between universalism and relativism, and individualism and

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collectivism, which persist. Women in the Global South continue to argue that their collectivist values are negated by the individualism that is embedded in Western discourses about human rights. Nonetheless, global feminist activists over the past half-century or more have focused on the following priorities which have been adapted locally as women themselves have considered appropriate: • political, social and economic citizenship rights, albeit associated with a specific nation state; • cultural rights including social traditions; • language rights to preserve local languages and expose power relations embedded in these; • the affirmation of equal power relations in interpersonal relationships and social structures because unequal ones disadvantage women in all spheres of life, and particularly in daily routines; • reproductive rights and bodily integrity to facilitate women’s realisation of bodily health and management of pregnancies; • rights to sexual expression and determination of sexual orientation; • rights to education and training across the lifecycle; • rights to housing; • rights to food and other basic needs like shelter, clothing, heating, lighting; • right to security – both socioeconomic and physical; • right to peace; • environmental rights to include the provision of safe clean water, reliable sanitation facilities, and unpolluted land, air and skies; • workforce participation rights and right to income; • right to food security. Many of these concerns were adopted in the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals that followed them. However, their fulfilment remains problematic, despite formulaic and legalistic promises from ruling elites to change their societies to comply with their requirements. Mainstreaming gender endorsed by the UN to ascertain the implications of discrimination against women and address violations of these remains contentious.

The Millennium Development Goals The persistence of gender inequalities and women’s disadvantaged position highlighted limited progress in enhancing women’s conditions and eliminating gender inequalities that held back women’s 215

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development across the world. Addressing this reality led the UN to establish the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. Eradicating poverty, enhancing the health, education and wellbeing of women and children, and improving maternal health were essential elements for targeting actions within them. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a critical endeavour aimed at poverty alleviation and agreed in the United Nations in 2000. Countries had until 2015 to achieve the MDG goals and targets, including improving the quality of women’s lives. Eight MDGs promulgated to run from 2000 to 2015 aimed to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; promote maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; create a global partnership for development.

Despite aspirations to reduce poverty and improve women’s situation globally, most of these goals have been missed globally. China has done best on poverty alleviation, but has not pulled all its poor population out of poverty, and inequalities between men and women persist. The MDG programme ended in 2015 and was replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals. Failure to meet MDG goals can be partially attributed to the lack of political commitment among signatories to place funds behind these commitments. The MDG targets could not be achieved without sufficient financing, a problem illustrated by UNESCO. It required $11 billion a year to provide basic primary schooling for poor children, but acquired only $7 billion (Elliott, 2008: 32), a significant shortfall. UNESCO’s situation was aggravated by reduced resources caused by substantial drops in commodity prices and the high costs of food and fuel. Correll (2008) maintained that the MDGs were conceptually weak because these reflected the international community’s neglect of commitments made under the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development in 1995. Social development discussions then provided more holistic and integrated programmes of intervention that could have addressed the needs of women and children better than the MDGs (Correll, 2008).

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Fundamentalist religious and social movements endorsed the neglect of women’s needs by upholding gender-blind approaches. Fundamentalist men and women initiated a backlash during the second millennium to reassert male privileging, especially within the family. Their widespread influence contributed to reductions in the UN’s role in support of women. Included in this was the Security Council’s refusal to renew Mary Robinson’s term as Commissioner for Human Rights on the grounds of being outspoken (Crossette, 2002). Moreover, countries failed to transfer 0.7% of GDP to the UN for overseas development aid (ODA), despite the reaffirmation of this target at Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005. During 2007, Norway topped the donor list with 0.92%; the UK contributed 0.7%; and the USA a mere 0.14%. The American record on contributions to the development of women and children was worse. In 2001, each American gave half a cent to these, compared to 25 cents by each Dutch person and 45 cents by each Norwegian (Ferree and Tripp, 2006: 46). The world’s global financial recession of 2007–8 further reduced American contributions.

The Sustainable Development Goals The Sustainable Development Goals SDGs, endorsed in Sendai, Japan in 2015, replaced the MDGs, which had failed to eradicate poverty, hunger or illiteracy between 2000 and 2015. Post-2015, the 8 MDGs became 17 SDGs. Poverty, hunger, illiteracy and poor health are common to both. The SDGs, running from 2015 to 2030 have 17 elements. SDG5 specifically seeks to achieve gender equality. The others carry implications for women, either to facilitate their growth and development as beings with full citizenship rights wherever they live and/or to provide the work necessary to embed all SDGs in daily life routines. The SDGs aim to: 1. end poverty in all its forms everywhere; 2. end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture; 3. ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages; 4. ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all; 5. achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls; 6. ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all;

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7. ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all; 8. promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all; 9. build resilient infrastructures, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation; 10. reduce inequality within and among countries; 11. make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable; 12. ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns; 13. take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts; 14. conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development; 15. protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation and end biodiversity loss; 16. promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels; 17. strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development. The SDGs provide a roadmap for improving the quality of life for all people, but also acknowledge the specific issues impacting on women’s lives and propose action on these.

Country-based initiatives Women in the Global South spend much time and energy collecting firewood, fetching water and attending to sanitation needs. These add to their burden of work, and can be hazardous to health. Various NGOs have sought to provide safe water and sanitation in poor communities, for example Plan International, Oxfam. Undertaking infrastructural initiatives are usually beyond individual community resources and require national financial commitment. Nigeria is endeavouring to secure safe drinking water and sanitation facilities for 57 million of its inhabitants, at significant cost and with considerable coordination (www.wateraid.org/ng?id=UN0000,RA/TPG,Online,RA/TPG/01A &gclid=CPmh872Stc4CFUU8GwodRp0LAA&gclsrc=aw.ds#sthash. DH9FO6tt.dpuf). Saving women’s time and energies facilitate their use for other purposes.

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Women’s position in the UK The UK’s tally on equality between men and women has many shortcomings. However, the country led by its second woman prime minister reported to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (SW) that it continues to support gender development and equality, has more women in Parliament than ever before, has its highest number of women on the boards of the largest companies, requires larger employers to publish their gender pay gaps, tackle domestic violence and support the UN’s High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment which envisages achieving women’s equality, which will contribute $12 trillion to the global economy. Justine Greening, MP, in reporting to CSW61, claimed that since 2011 UKAid has supported 36 million women in other countries to access financial services and 3 million women to improve their land and property rights, funded children’s, especially girls’ education, supported women’s sexual and reproductive rights and assisted in tackling bullying in schools. The Counting Women In Coalition in the UK consists of the Centre for Women and Democracy, the Electoral Reform Society, the Hansard Society, the Fawcett Society and Unlock Democracy. Formed after the 2010 general election, this Coalition seeks to raise awareness of the absence of women at the top levels of UK politics. In 2015, it published the Counting Women In Report: Sex and Power 2015: Who Runs Britain? It makes depressing reading. In the 100 years since women obtained the vote, only 450 have been elected to Parliament, and over half of these have been elected since 1997, a watershed year. Also, women are over-represented among poor people. British social policies have yet to succeed in mainstreaming gender across all sectors of society.

Conclusion The UN has been a key mover in getting women’s equality on the international agenda and using its provisions to initiate change at national level among member states. However, this required much organising on the part of women and, since the Beijing Conference, UN initiatives on women seem to have run out of steam. Meanwhile, despite some openings such as women being permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia, patriarchy has become entrenched through the activism of fundamentalist religious-minded groupings that are seeking to claw back women’s gains in the arenas of paid employment and reproductive

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rights. Women’s equality globally requires renewed vigour and commitment to actualise it. The UN can lead this advance. Notes Useful websites: The MDGs are available at www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/gti.htm and www. un.org/millenniumgoals/ The SDGs are available at www.fivetalents.org.uk/un-sustainable-development-goals/ and https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ The SDGs in an interactive version are available at http//:www.theguardian.com/ global-development/ng-interactive/2015/jan/19/sustainable-development-goalschanging-world-17-steps-interactive (Accessed 12/12/2017)

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Conclusions

Introduction Communities are contested spaces, and women continue to struggle to claim their places within them. Equality for all women in every sphere of life has yet to be achieved in any country. However, this is not a statement for despair because much has been achieved in the decades since CEDAW was endorsed by the UN. Women are playing more important roles in their communities, whether these are located at the local, national, international or virtual level(s). Forming alliances across the many social divisions and physical boundaries that divide diverse groups of women becomes crucial in further progressing the goal of eliminating gendered inequalities (Mohanty, 2003). This chapter concludes by arguing for recognising and strengthening women’s engagement in public relational space alongside that occurring in private relational space in the home and community; encouraging women’s full participation in decision making at the local, national and international levels on all matters that affect their lives; creating the social resources to facilitate such involvement, such as childcare provisions; and engaging men in doing housework and caring work. Thus, I conclude the book by calling for women’s work in communities to become more visible, celebrated and valued and to involve men in delivering what has been traditionally considered ‘women’s work’.

Supporting women: changing and transforming policies and practices Communities, however defined, specify women’s location and the spaces wherein they lead their lives, caring for and supporting others, while also seeking to realise their full potential as women wanting to engage with and contribute to wider society in their own right. Women are grounded in the locations wherein they reside among people with whom they have relationships. Their positionality blurs the analytical boundaries favoured by theorists who categorise communities based upon interests, identities and locations. Quality of life and environmental degradation are matters of central concern to 221

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women. They engage in various activities including direct action in defence of (private) personal and (public) communal spaces. Women tend to be unacknowledged players in their communities, despite their work in them. Their initiatives are often assumed and/or ignored.

Organising women in the community Community work has often replicated the patriarchal relations prevalent in society. Nonetheless, women have participated in community action defending a community’s humanitarian, caring values and standards of living for working-class peoples and other marginalised groups. The community work literature undervalues and underrates women’s contributions, although it occasionally acknowledges this reality and highlights women’s engagement in community issues generally (Mayo, 1977; Curno et al, 1982; Dominelli, 1990, 2006; Ledwith, 2005). Their work remains invisible, and suggests that women only operate behind the scenes, supporting others’ capacities. However, women’s community action has historically advanced key community causes, including housing struggles like the 1915 rent strikes in Glasgow (Mayo, 1977; Ginsburg, 1979). And women have consistently created community-based social capital by networking with others to enhance local well-being (Lowndes, 2000). Women’s increasing consciousness of their lower status in society prompted the women’s liberation movement. This encouraged individual women and groups of them to organise over issues of major concern – military violence, the physical assault of women within intimate relationships, the sexual assault of women generally, women’s poor emotional well-being and the inadequate quality of life in late capitalist society – and highlight the impact of atrocious working conditions, environmental and fiscal crises on women. Supporting women through the traumas associated with socioeconomic exigencies linked to low-paid employment, poverty and abuse has engaged women in equal pay initiatives, the Women’s Peace Movement, National Women’s Aid Federation (now Women’s Aid), Women’s Rape Crisis Centres, Incest Survivor Lines, feminist therapy, and other facilities. Women’s gender-specific action has revealed the material hardship and emotional suffering that shapes women’s lives, and the constraints that family responsibilities place on women’s ability to organise and care for themselves. Women in the waged labour market face precarity within it, while unwaged women without other means depend on men or the welfare state, where available, for financial security. A precarious positionality restricts women’s financial independence, a

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reality legitimated through the marriage contract, state legislation including the aggregation of family income and its impact on social security benefits, taxation and pensions. Moreover, the aggregation of ‘family’ resources fails to acknowledge the unequal distribution of resources within families. Understanding the structural constraints that women encounter is crucial for community activists wishing to organise with women, facilitate their handling of women’s initiatives in their practice and adopt practical approaches in nurturing women’s willingness to form alliances with others around common issues. Community workers should reverse roles by dissolving distinctions between professionals and ordinary group members and servicing lay people, such as community workers preparing the tea, or male community workers minding the children while women meet. Community workers endeavour to become redundant by enabling women to assume responsibility for decision making and acquire the skills needed to conduct their endeavours and to enhance community life. When organising with women in the community, small groups enable women to explore and understand personal experiences, strengthen their demands, develop their confidence, raise consciousness about women’s societal positions and connect with others sharing their concerns to enhance the community’s cache of social capital. These groups facilitate discussion of political considerations and/or power relations, links between the social organisation of women’s reality and personal experiences to challenge gender oppression effectively. For their activities to spread, women have to form networks and alliances with others to transcend small, women-only groups and extend their social capital. Their allies may be trade unionists, politicians, professionals, men and women involved in voluntary organisations, neighbours and others they interact with through the internet. The British feminist experience of working within the local state to foster anti-racist and anti-sexist initiatives, and American feminists’ lengthy struggle over reproductive rights, show the importance of underpinning feminist gains with broad societal support to withstand determined anti-feminist opposition (Adamson et  al, 1988). Additionally, a feminist political presence has to permeate the central state for it to underwrite social change throughout society. To maximise the group’s strengths and increase its membership, a feminist group has to safeguard against the danger of becoming incorporated by allies (Bishop, 1994). Otherwise, it will lose its own political orientation,

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independent impact and its commitment to egalitarian processes of interaction and relationships. Organising with women in the community is difficult because women are isolated from each other whether working in the workplace or the home. Feminist activists have superseded such obstacles through social action. Women’s engagement in local community matters, homeworkers’ campaigns (Hopkins, 1982), housing campaigns (Mayo, 1977), campaigns around single-parent families (Mayo, 1977), domestic violence (Wistow et al, 2017), older women’s campaigns (Doress and Siegal, 1987); health campaigns (Ruzek, 1978; Doyal, 1983); nuclear disarmament (Cook and Kirk, 1983); and workplace issues such as sexual harassment (Benn and Sedley, 1982) and equal pay (WEU, 2003), testify to women’s organising abilities and supportive actions. Women will unite to argue for their interests, if the forms of organising address their common and diverse needs as women organising. Women’s resilience in struggle has been exposed in women workers’ industrial action and community initiatives. Protracted recent battles on the wage labour front have been mounted and sustained by women. These cover Mansfield Hosiery, Imperial Typewriters, Grunwick, Chix, Lee Jeans, Kigass and later others, including local authorities (Anitha et al, 2018). Community workers organising with women have to walk a tightrope to avoid ghettoising their activities and relegating these to second place in the wider community work movement. Preventing this outcome is critical to preventing women’s activities being subsumed by male prerogative and becoming an extension of men community workers’ domain. The welfare needs of women community workers and their demands for equal pay must be met. Safeguarding women’s interests entails considering both their waged work and domestic commitments, ensuring equality of opportunity and recognising their specific contributions to community work. Many of the rights women demand in waged working and domestic life, for example the right to an independent income, a violence-free existence and personal well-being, are as relevant to children and men as they are to women. Hence, alliances to obtain these rights for all are significant. It is not an either/or situation that produces only winners or losers. Everyone can win by working together in egalitarian ways. Men can be women’s allies; there are role models to follow. Dr Denis Mukwege, for example, was awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Nadia Murad for services in empowering women. Mukwege repaired women’s genitalia ripped apart during sexual assaults conducted to dishonour them during armed conflict, and

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spoke out against misogynist male violence. Murad challenged the ISIS/Da’esh perpetrators who sexually tortured her as a Yazidi Muslim woman in Iraq (Burke, 2018). These two people honour and celebrate women’s lives. Their actions contrast starkly with Donald Trump, who elevated a man – Burt Kavanaugh – accused of assaulting women to hero status to counter resistance to his nomination to the American Supreme Court. Trump voiced outrage that a ‘man’s life had been shattered’ without a shred of awareness of the devastation caused to women victim-survivors of male violence (Siddiqui, 2018). May there be more courageous and dignified women like Murad and men like Mukwege celebrating and honouring women across the world. Were this to become the case, women’s struggle for equality would more readily achieve the goal of transforming social relations in egalitarian directions. Feminist community action has advanced the welfare of children, women and men. Alongside its achievements have been reverses, and its goal of eliminating gender oppression remains a distant one. The progress that has been made has maintained women’s morale and commitment to struggle for their rights, a humanity-oriented world and social and environmental justice. It has affirmed women’s conviction that there is nothing ‘natural’ about being a subordinate species or having a fatalistic outlook that jeopardises their interests. Women can and do exercise agency to promote their vision of the world, and work to make it a reality. Furthermore, the intersection between gender oppression and other forms of oppression, such as racism, ageism, disablism, classism and environmentalism, have to be tackled specifically and together. Gender equality will not magically appear on the world’s agenda when a classless society materialises if these issues are not directly addressed.

Feminist community action and the future Feminist community action has become increasingly relevant as people become trapped in a web of declining welfare services, rising joblessness and diminished civil and human rights as cost-conscious governments repress people’s resistance to oppressive social relations through both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ forms of social control and claw back earlier feminist gains, such as women’s reproductive rights in America, women’s employment protection and social benefits in Britain. Women are organising in their communities, following self-help principles to promote their interests and show solidarity. The principles that feminists use in guiding their activities apply to all community workers

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irrespective of the gender of group members because they seek to eliminate hierarchy and relations of dominance in group interactions and throughout society.

Feminist theory and practice: guiding principles Good quality general training for community workers has been provided by groups like the Federation for Community Development Learning, the Community Development Foundation and others using the National Occupational Standards for the profession. Actions linked to social justice, sustainable communities and reflective practice overlap with feminist concerns. There is no magic toolkit labelled: ‘Feminist Practice – Ready for Use’. Feminist practice is about forming relationships that will bring forth the best in women by engaging in collaborative, egalitarian ways of working and initiating social change that eliminates inequalities that impact upon women, children and men. It has principles for judging social interactions and guiding those attempting to work in empowering ways. These are: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

developing individual women’s full potential; eliminating gender oppression; transforming social relations in egalitarian directions; fostering the well-being of all women in society regardless of their social status, including class, ‘race’, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental capacities; acknowledging the political nature of all social relations; acknowledging the political nature of knowledge; promoting egalitarian relations between men and women, adults and children; increasing women’s control over their lives; having a right to welfare; making caring a collective responsibility which is undertaken by both men and women in both domestic relational space and public relational space; acknowledging the interconnectedness between the public and private spheres; ensuring that work, whether carried out in the home or workplace, provides women with choices about what they are doing, how they are doing it, and why they are doing it; democratising institutional decision-making processes; shifting public priorities and resources to favour meeting human needs sustainably over enriching the few;

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• highlighting the interconnectedness between social policy and economic policy and ensuring that social policy is not subordinated to economic exigencies; • ending patriarchal relations and hierarchies to contribute to the well-being of children, women and men. In practical terms these principles have led feminists to demand that: • the social causes of individual hardship and unbalanced emotional development are recognised and addressed; • individuals are not pathologised for their plight; • egalitarianism permeates all social interactions/relationships; • public institutions and organisations foster individual and collective well-being; • sexism in all its forms is eliminated from individual behaviour, social institutions, social policy, cultural values and social norms; • all forms of oppression are eliminated; • all individuals are publicly guaranteed an existence free from violence and coercion; • all individuals are provided with a publicly guaranteed minimum income; • women have a right to an independent income; • masculinity and femininity are redefined in non-oppressive ways; • familial ideology is redefined to encourage egalitarian relations between ‘family’ members; • the diversity of ‘family’ forms is recognised; • parenting is acknowledged as a social activity with men and women responsible for bringing up children in socially supportive environments; • working relations are transformed to provide all workers with equality of status, pay and humane conditions of work; • hierarchy in the division of labour is eliminated; • the state facilitates the development of personal, familial and community relationships; • goods and services that foster women’s creative talents and potential become available to women; • social planning reflects social needs and involves service users and workers in their design and organisation; • social services and healthcare systems prioritise preventing material and emotional distress; • professionalism is redefined to reflect the interests of the users of the service.

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Feminists have incorporated these demands in their own practice at both strategic and tactical levels to: • create prefigurative forms of the social relations they envisage for the future in current practice; • form alliances with others to eliminate social injustice. Feminist community action has not achieved feminists’ ultimate goal of transforming society and redistributing power and resources in egalitarian directions. However, feminist social action has had two beneficial effects. One has been safeguarding women’s present position, and improving women’s and children’s and men’s emotional wellbeing and material circumstances, despite the hostile climate created by the ‘New Right’ and neoliberal globalisation. In a context that has seriously degraded the standards of living for women, black people and working-class people, defending past gains is a worthy endeavour. Advancing this defensive position cannot be allowed to substitute for the goals of transforming social relations in more egalitarian directions and obtaining an egalitarian distribution of social resources. The second effect is the positive influence that the struggle for progress has had on women’s consciousness and, in consequence, the consciousness of children and men. This has included: • exposing the myths of equality which disguise society’s unequal distribution of resources and environmental degradation that the capitalist social system compels marginalised groups like women, black people and large sections of the working class to endure; • the power and confidence felt by powerless groups who act collectively to challenge their prescribed subordinate social positions; • a holistic appreciation of the connections between men and women, their interdependence on each other and on planet earth, an entity which has to be respected and used sustainably by all. Women and other marginalised community groups are organising against their oppression with some success in changing existing provisions and creating services previously missing for them. The state is withdrawing support for community action, particularly its more challenging versions, in favour of community organisation and community care. However, these are inadequately financed for the tasks they are obliged to carry. Such restrictions do not protect the state from the impact of feminist community action. Social workers, including some employed by the state, are forming alliances with

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community groups to provide users with more appropriate services. Welfare workers’ idealistic fervour and commitment to helping people lend energy to forming alliances that facilitate the processes whereby powerless people organise to assume control of their lives. Women are active in these. Feminist community action, riddled with contradictions regardless of level of functioning, heralds the dawning of non-oppressive working relations. Feminist community action as a sphere of activity is relevant to all those promoting people’s welfare. Traditional community workers should analyse its potential and adopt its theory and practice.

Contributions by feminist community work and social action to mainstreaming gender equality Social and community workers have devised an agenda to mainstream gender equality and secure changes in practice in: • shifting the balance of power towards service users and away from professionals, especially those in health, social services and education; • allowing services to be controlled and directed by service users (including the personalisation agenda which encompasses individual budgets controlled by service users); • replacing oppressive practices with empowering forms. Their demands have developed anti-oppressive practice, particularly in tackling gender, ‘race’, age and disabling inequalities, and their intersections with each other (Dominelli, 2002a; Crenshaw, 2012).

Changing social work practice Endeavours supporting women’s well-being target women as the subjects of changes. To work in women’s interests, social workers require skills and knowledge for: • delivering a nuanced gender analysis that does not treat women as a homogeneous group, but as diverse groups, each with different needs, while recognising that these groups share some commonalities; • supporting women in expressing their voices and finding their own solutions to their problems. Participative dialogues and coproduction of solutions are hallmarks of feminist practice (Dominelli, 2017);

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• targeting men as subjects of change; • working with men to create nurturing and life-sustaining forms of masculinity; • forming alliances with ‘new’ social movements at the local, national and international levels. In realising their objectives, social and community workers can use Articles 22–27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in devising poverty eradication strategies and extending the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Social and community workers should engage with local communities, politicians and allies to develop strategies that create alternative social, economic and political structures, and harness people’s energies to work collectively to secure social justice, equality and well-being for all. These have to end neoliberalism’s supremacy and preoccupation with materialistic individualism and consumerism; exclusion of poor men, women and children across the globe; and degradation of the earth and erosion of its capacity to sustain people, plants and animals. By engaging more fully in these tasks, social and community workers can: • help local communities mobilise and organise to enhance wellbeing and care for people, their social and physical environments and the planet; • develop links and alliances with other like-minded peoples across the world, facilitated by the internet; • support demands for corporate and political accountability; • practise holistically to link personal attributes and structural inequalities in their change endeavours; • use national and international legislation to promote human dignity and well-being. Feminist social action grounded in women’s vision of a life-affirming, sustainable world rooted in the duty to care for and about it can deliver services that meet people’s needs and protect planet earth. Its theory and practice provides a model of mobilisation relevant for all – men, women and children.

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Conclusion Feminist community work has focused on transforming unequal gendered social relations in egalitarian directions. While it has made significant gains in all aspects of life, ranging from daily routines and intimate interpersonal relationships in domestic relational space to involvement in public relational space to increase women’s political representation and shatter the glass ceiling in multinational corporations, much remains to be done. Additionally, feminist social action has focused on the processes of engagement to argue for the sharing of roles, knowledge and skills among all women, to acknowledge women’s strengths and agency in practice and celebrate their achievements. In this, they offer a model of feminist community work that encompasses the lives of all – women, children and men – as indicated in Figure 10.1. An inclusive egalitarian world order is ours for the making. Figure 10.1: Community engagement processes and practices Community profile development Risk and needs assessments

Identifying issues

Two-way communication Developing action plans

Action plan implementation

Community engagement and coproduction

New challenges

Action plan (re)evaluation

Source: Adapted from Dominelli (2018)

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270

Index 50:50 Campaign 160, 164, 165 #MeTooCampaign 85, 108

A Abercrombie, N. 8 abortion 79, 88, 108, 114, 203 Achilles Heel Collective (ACH) 58 Adams, A.L. 172 Adamson, N. 20, 22, 108, 163, 223 adultism 58–9 advocacy 49, 50, 61–3 ageism 62, 142–4, 148, 149, 156, 225 agency 31–2, 40–4, 47–8, 92, 214, 241 Ahmad, W. 71 Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) 60 Aldred, C. 87 Alinsky, S. 19 Allenspach, H. 141 alliances 127–9, 139, 152, 166, 171, 177, 195, 196, 203, 204, 221, 223, 224, 228, 229, 230 American War on Poverty 186 Amicus 133 Amos, A. 73 Amos, V. 166 Anastacio, J. 194 Andors, P. 71, 134, 135 Arber, S. 42 Armstrong, C. xvi Armstrong, J. 87, 131, 133 Armstrong, P. 54, 58, 168 Asante, M. 12 Asgill, P. 4, 6, 22 Asian women 85 ASRA (Asian Sheltered Residential Accommodation) 142 asylum seekers and refugees xv, 183 Atkin, K. 142 Atkinson, D.R. 50 Australia 124, 144, 155, 203 autonomous feminist political organisations 131, 169

B Bailey, R. 21 Baker Miller, J. 50 Baldwin, S. 15 Banks, O. 203 Barclay Report 15 barefoot doctors 38, 71 Barker, H. 79, 91 Barnes, C. 45

Barnes, M. 65, 191 Barrett, M. 54 Bass, E. 21, 58, 81, 88 Batley CDP 188, 190 Batten, T. 18 Bayes, M. 49, 50, 51 Beasley, K. 164 Beijing Conference on Women xi, 28, 92, 134, 183, 201, 211–15, 219 Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) 28, 134, 201, 212–14 Belenky, M.F. xv, 4, 108 Bell, C. 7 Bell, S. 88 Belotti, E. 133 Benn, M. 131, 137, 224 Benyon, M. 142, 150 Beresford, P. 156 Berger, P. 48 Bernstein, E. 45 Beyond the Fragments Conference 172 Bhavani, K.K. 22, 23 Binney, V. 80, 108 Birmingham 157, 166–8 Bishop, A. 110, 204, 223 black men xvi, 6, 31, 33, 54, 58, 59, 110, 134, 190 black people 18, 20, 22, 59, 142, 149, 180, 188, 190, 192, 193, 228 black women xvi, 4, 6. 7, 22, 23, 44, 54, 55, 56, 59, 62, 68, 72, 80, 84, 85, 88, 89, 95, 110, 151, 155, 159, 167, 190, 209 Blagg, H. 10 Blair, T., Prime Minister 24, 161–2 Bondi, L. 49, 64, 118, 125, 196 bonding social capital 42–4, 56, 196 Bonny, S. 144, 145 Bosanquet, N. 156 Bourdieu, P. 42 Bowl, R. 54, 58 Bradford 166 Brah, A. 12 Brake, M. 21 Brandwein, R. 20, 21, 93 bridging social capital 42, 44, British National Party (BNP) 24 British Pensioner 149 British Pensioners and Trade Unions Action Association (BPTUAA) 148–50 Brook, E. 21 Brown, G. 50

271

Women and community action Brown, G., Prime Minister 161 Browne, C. Brownmiller, S. 52, 60 Bruntland Commission 178 Brundtland Report 177 Bryan, B. 21, 23, 33, 54, 56, 59, 80, 88, 110 bureaucratic empowerment 46–7, 197 Burman, E. 49, 64 Bush, G.W., President 60, 61, 203 Butler, J. 31, 32

C Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 117 Campbell, B. 42 Campbell, C. 83 Campbell, D. 166 Canada 52, 58, 115, 133, 134, 203 capacity building 40, 44–5 Carby, H. 73 carers 58, 131, 142–9, 153, 157 Carers UK 145, 148, 149 caring work 14, 36, 57, 131, 145–6, 150, 164, 202, 221 and older people xv, 3, 8, 15, 62, 67, 142–50, 193, 210 see also childcare CDPs (Community Development Projects) 19, 58, 186–92 CEA (Council of Economic Advisers) 134 Census Bureau (UK) 142 Census Bureau (US) 133 Chakraborti, N. 193 Chaplin, J. 50 Chapman, P. 193 child abuse 58 Child Support Agency 92 childcare 23, 50, 67, 86, 89, 107, 111, 113, 114, 115, 119, 127, 134, 139, 140, 141, 142, 149, 151, 152, 168, 189, 221 childcare campaigns 113-55, 119, 127, 134, 139–42, 149, 151–2, 189, 221 children, abuse of 58 China 31, 71, 89, 134, 137, 179, 180, 182, 183, 185, 194, 202, 208, 211, 216 Chix 224 Chodorow, N. 56 CIR (Commission on Industrial Relations) 89 Clarke, C., Home Secretary 161

class 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 31, 55, 68, 71–5, 88, 90, 91, 92, 115, 119, 124, 132, 144, 149, 152, 155, 160, 169, 172, 192, 202, 207, 222, 225, 226, 228 class-oriented community action 19–20 community action xvi–xvii, 2, 7, 14, 19–27, 32, 36–40, 49, 50, 62, 63, 77, 78,108, 111, 117, 125–7, 137, 182, 185–6, 188, 191, 197, 222, 225, 228, 229 and elder care 50 and emotional well-being 50, 64, 222, 228 and gendered social relations 2, 32, 33, 162, 231 and state policies xvi and support groups 80, 85, 94, 138, 145, 146, 153 and health issues 4, 63–7, 137 and older women, 61–3 and social capital 169, 196–7, 222–3 and trade unions 19–20, 89–90, 191, 223 and womanism 22, 223 Cleator Moor CDP 188 Climate News Network 182 CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) 117, 122 Coard, B. 59 Cochrane, M. 65, 66, 67, 68, 72 Cockburn, C. 16 Coleman, J. 42 collective organisation 85 Collins, P.H. 6, 22 Collinson, P. 83 colonialism 112, 181, 212 Comer, J.P. 59 Comer, L. 166 Commission for Human Rights 217 Commission for Racial Equality Commission on Sustainable Development 178 Commission on the Status of Women 113, 205, 214, 219 communitarianism 8 communities xi–xvi, 1–5, 8, 10, 12, 7–26, 77, 216 and national communities xv, 3, 8, 10, 12, 77 and international communities 216 community action 19, 26–7, 32, 36, 39, 48, 49, 62, 77, 78, 108, 111, 117, 125–7, 151, 152, 181, 185, 186, 188, 191, 197, 222, 225, 228, 229 and community development xiv, 5, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 28, 37, 39, 42, 107, 177, 183–8, 192, 194, 226

272

Index and emerging forms of community work 23 and impact of Greenham Women’s Peace Movement 37, 117, 118, 119, 120–6, 129 and organising women 85, 93, 94, 189, 222, 224 see also feminist community action community action from a black perspective 14, 19, 22 Community Care Act 15, 16 community care 7, 8, 14, 15, 16, 17, 32, 39, 189, 191, 199, 202, 221, 228, 230 community development xiv, 5, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 28, 39, 42, 107, 177, 183, 185, 186, 188, 192, 194, 226 Community Development Foundation (CDF) 226 Community Development Projects (CDPs) 19, 58, 186–92 Community engagement 177, 181, 231 community newspapers 90, 99–100, 102, 150 community organisation 7, 14, 17, 39, 108, 125, 186–7, 190, 191, 203, 228, 230 community profile 28, 231 compiling organising tips 55, 63, 68, 74, 94, 98, 101, 102, 105, 128, 175, 197 Community Programmes Department 191 community work xiii, xvi, 2, 7, 13–24, 31, 45, 53, 155, 156, 157, 179, 180, 187, 191, 196, 207, 224, 230, 231 community work and the British state 38, 191 corporate management and hierarchical institutions 16, 187 and feminist challenges and gender relations 38, 79, 81 and gendered perspectives 31 community politics 22, 25, 32, 43, 51, 74, 117, 120, 163, 164, 165, 171, 173, 175, 179, 198, 219, 231 and state initiatives 134, 231 see also community action; community care community work xiii, xvi, 2, 7, 13–24, 31, 45, 53, 152, 155, 156, 157, 179, 180, 186, 187, 191, 196, 207, 224, 230, 231 and community work discourses 9 and contributions to community life 39 and emotional well-being 50, 57, 58, 61, 64, 144, 222

community work models xiii, xvi, 2, 7, 13–24, 31, 45, 53, 155, 156, 157, 179, 180, 187, 191, 196, 207, 224, 230, 231 and organising women 85, 93, 94, 189, 222, 224 Conference on the Environment and Development 178 Connell, R.W. 31, 54, 58 consciousness-raising 49, 50, 51, 64, 73–4, 82, 93, 95, 100, 123, 127, 128, 165 and carers groups 58, 131, 142–9, 153, 157 and health issues 4, 63–66, 71, 74, 137 and miners’ strike 20, 152, 172 consultative participation 45 contingent participation 45 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 29, 201, 206, 219 Cook, A. 59, 61, 69, 85, 89, 108, 118–122, 139, 224 corporate management 16, 187 corporate welfarist community work 23 Correll, D. 216 Coulson, M. 23 Counting Women In Coalition 219 Coventry Women’s Health Network (CWHN) 125 Cowley, J. 10, 37 Coyle, A. 17, 131, 133, 150 Crey, E. 12, 58 Croft, S. 156 CRU (Civil Renewal Unit) 194 Curno, A. 20, 71, 73, 89, 151, 182, 222

D Dalla Costa, M. 134, 202 Daniels, A.K. 36, 92 Data Protection Act 1998 89 David, M. 41, 86 Davies, R. 16 Davis, A. 124, 132 Davis, L. 21, 58, 81, 87, 88 Davis, R. 21, 53, 54, 58, 59, 65, 72, 88, 133, 173 Davis, S. 21, 108 DAWN 206 Deacon, B. 153 Dearlove, J. 17 defence expenditure 60 democratic participation 45 Derricourt, N. 10 Desai, A.S. 209 Diamond, J. 191 die-in 122

273

Women and community action disability xvii, 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 25, 27, 33, 35, 43, 53, 84, 119, 153, 172, 204, disability action xvii, 25 Disability Convention 84 Disability Discrimination Act 1995 25 disabled people 1, 2, 6, 10, 27, 33, 35, 43, 53, 119, 153, 174 disabled women 74, 83, 95, 151, 164, 204 Disaggregation Now Campaign 93 disempowerment 159 Diverse Women for Diversity 174 Dixon, G. 20 domestic violence 21, 27, 28, 79, 80, 85, 86, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 158, 189, 201, 209, 219, 224 and collective organisation 85 and domestic work xiv, 115, 132, 137, 139, 143, 154, 159, 202 and feminist practice 66, 80, 100, 127, 226, 229 and miners’ strike and paid work 20, 152, 172 domestic work xiv, 115, 132–7, 139, 43, 202 Dominelli, L. xvi, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 45, 46, 47, 54, 55, 57, 58, 67, 68, 73, 79, 80, 86, 87, 88, 91, 108, 117, 123, 126, 127, 131, 134, 135, 138, 142, 143, 146, 156, 163, 167, 168, 171, 178, 179, 180, 184, 186, 188, 194, 195, 197, 204, 208, 209, 211, 222, 229, 231 Doress, P.B. 21, 61, 62, 143, 148, 149, 224 Doyal, L. 64, 65, 67, 82, 92, 108, 153, 156, 224 Dreifus, C. 21, 22, 51, 72, 74, 75, 90, 156, 163 Dunbar, M. 11 12 Duffy, K. 40

emotional well-being 50, 57, 58, 61, 64, 144, 222 empowerment xiv, 22, 40, 45, 46, 47, 125, 159, 169, 197, 198, 209, 211, 214, 219 and types of empowerment 197– 198 END (European Nuclear Disarmament Campaign) 117 environmental activists 25, 28, 108, 211 environmental community action 23, 25 environmental degradation 25, 52, 87, 111, 125, 145, 173, 216, 228 environmental justice xiv, xvii, 25, 26, 165, 225 environmental issues xiv, xvii, 4, 5, 6, 23, 24, 25, 28, 52, 82, 87, 96, 108, 111, 125, 145, 165, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 186, 192, 194, 195, 196, 209, 211, 215, 216, 222, 225, 228 environmental partners 195, 196, 209, 211 environmental rights 180 environmental sustainability 178 environmentalism 25, 28, 225 EOC (Equal Opportunities Commission) Equal Economic Opportunities Act 1964 (US) Equal Pay Act 1970 Equalities Act 2010 25 equality 201, 203, 205, 206, 207, 211 equality for women 7, 11, 111, 113, 150, 201, 202, 203, 211, 213, 214, Ernst, S. 56 Escobar, A. 26, 45, 59, 175 ethnicity xv, 1, 2, 6, 11, 12, 19, 27, 31, 33, 42, 45, 208 Etzioni, A. 8, 10, 44 EUMC (European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia) xv, 3

E

Falkingham, J. 145 false equality traps 67, 91 Families for Peace 117, 123, 124 Farrah, M. 23 Federation for Community Development Learning (FCDL) 226 Fellin, P. 9 Feminism and Non-Violence Study Group 119, 120 feminist community action 14, 19, 20, 22, 25, 48, 62, 78, 117, 127, 181, 225, 228, 229 and advocacy 49, 50, 61–3

ecofeminism xvi, 6, 174, 175 Edinburgh 161 Eichenbaum, L. 51, 55, 56 Eichler, M. 5, 133 Eisenstein, H. 33, 65 Eisenstein, Z. 33, 65 electoral politics 163, 171–5 Eliminate Third World Debt 26 Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital 81 emancipatory community action 23, 25 Emily’s List 162

F

274

Index and campaign characteristics 84 see also campaigning aids, techniques and tips feminist campaigns and networks 22, 28, 34, 44, 52–4, 63, 64, 70–5, 77, 78, 80–6, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 125, 127, 129, 139, 140, 147, 150, 164, 174, 224 and challenging medical expertise 80 and collective organisation 85 and community profile 28, 231 and domestic work and paid work xiv, 115, 132, 137, 139, 143, 154, 159, 202 and health issues 63, 64, 65, 66, 71, 75, 137 and identifying problems 108 and information technologies 12, 24, 27, 70, 80, 82, 94, 96, 99, 106, 223, 230 and miners’ strike 20, 152, 172 and older people 3, 8, 15, 62, 67, 142–50, 193, 210 and personal level 5, 49, 50 and workplaces xiv, xvi, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24, 28, 72, 89, 90, 110, 113, 116, 131, 133–40, 142, 146–53, 162, 169, 189, 224, 226 and workplace, prefigurative forms 153, 228 feminist community workers, and women clients 151 feminist political action 117, 118, 125–9, 160, 163, 165, 166, 168, 172 and ecofeminism xvi, 6, 174, 175 and Greenham Common 117, 118, 125–9 and in Iceland 122, 124, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172 and feminist action outside electoral politics 172 Feminist Times 100 Festau, M. 54, 58 Fightback Campaign 82 Finch, J. 8, 14, 20, 66, 91, 146 Fine, B. 43 Finn, D. food security 176, 215, 217 Foster, J. 66, 67, 92, 153, 154 Foucault, M. 11, 34, 35, 155 Foundation Hospitals 156 Fournier, S. 12, 58 France 41, 135, 160 Franklin, B. 59 Fraser, H. 204 free enterprise initiatives 192 French, M. xvi, 5, 35, 36

Freud, S. 55, 56 Friedan, B. 4, 113, 202

G Gallagher, A. 139 Garland, J. 143 Gavron, H. 131 Gemeinschaft 8 gender xiii, xvii, 1, 2, 5, 12, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 63, 67, 68, 73, 75, 77, 78, 79, 85, 87, 88, 91, 94, 102, 108, 110, 116, 119, 123, 124, 126, 128, 131, 133, 136, 138, 146, 148, 150, 153, 157, 161–6, 172, 176, 178, 181, 184, 188, 190, 195, 199, 201, 202, 207, 208, 212, 213–7, 219, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 228, 229, 231 gendered identities 11 and subject-subject social relations 25 and subject-object social relations 25 gendered social relations xiii, xvii, 1, 2, 5, 12, 20, 23, 24, 25, 27, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 49, 50, 51, 57, 73, 75, 78, 79, 85, 102, 108, 116, 119, 124, 138, 148, 153, 162, 164, 166, 190, 195, 199, 202, 208, 213, 225, 226, 228, 231 and women-only spaces 27, 38, 119, 126 and geographical communities 44 and geopolitics 179 see also men see also women Gesellschaft 8 Giddens, A. 183 Gilligan, C. xvi, 5, 48 Gilroy, P. 59 Ginn, J. 42 Ginsburg, N. 222 Glasgow 71, 157, 222 global social activism 23, 26 globalisation 24, 25, 26, 111, 174, 177, 178, 201, 211, 228 GMLPU (Greater Manchester Low Pay Unit) 24 Goodman, R.M. 3 Gordon, L. 52 Gordon, P. 58 Goulbourne, H. 42, 43, 44 Green, J. 42, 208 Greenham Common Women’s Peace Movement 37, 85, 117–129, 173 and impact on traditional community action 122–123

275

Women and community action green social work 25, 146, 177, 186, 195 Greenwood, V. 108 Grey Panthers 145–7 Griffiths, J. 14, 38 Griffiths, R. 16, 17, 191 Griffiths Report 16–8 Grimwood, C. 17, 37 Groves, D. 8, 14, 20 Grunwick 89, 224 Guru, S. 22, 23

housework xiv, 119, 131, 132–5, 139, 150, 51, 152, 202, 221 see also domestic work Howe, D. 17, 150 Howell, E. 49, 50, 51 Humphries, B. 67 Hunt, M. 88

I

H Hackett, G. 50 Halpern, M. 13 Hamner, J. 21 Hanifan, L.J. 42 Harding, S. 10 Harris, T. 50 health issues 4, 63, 64, 65, 66, 74, 75, 137 and challenging medical expertise 80–3 and feminist social action 1, 27, 28, 54, 62, 63, 73, 77, 78, 80, 88, 90, 106, 111, 124, 131, 134, 139, 140, 160–4, 168, 175, 183, 228, 230, 231 and Foundation Hospitals 156 and Well-Women Clinics (WWCs) 65, 66, 99, 153 and WWCs in workplace 152–3 Hearn, J. 54, 58 Heenan, C. 56 Held, D. 208 Henderson, P. 4, 44 Heseltine, M., Minister of Defence 121, 129 heteronormativity 31 hierarchy 36, 66, 75, 82, 91, 95, 134, 188, 193, 226, 227 and feminist organisations 51, 62, 91, 94, 122 and Greenham Common 117–24 Higgins, J. 142 Hinsliff, G. 87 Hinton, W. 38 Hirst, P. 208 Hollway, W. 56 Hölscher, D. 13 Home Office 161, 186, 194, 208 Home Office and CDPs 19, 58, 186–92 Hoogvelt, A. 46, 47, 210 hooks, b. 22, 23, 54, 73, 75, 88, 110, 124, 132, 172 Hooper, C. 54 Hopkins, M. 110, 224 Horn, J.S. 71 Hounslow Hospital 81

Iceland 122, 124, 163, 166, 169–75 identity-based communities 11 identity politics 25, 32, 172 Ife, J. 23 Iliffe, S. 82, 156, 193 immigration 22, 58, 71, 89, 142, 161 Imperial Typewriters 224 impressionistic enquiry In Place of Strife incest 54, 153, 222 inclusion xiv, 27, 35, 40, 41,54, 111, 164, 179, 205, 207, 213 India xvi, 6, 7, 164, 174, 180, 183, 184, 185, 208, 209 inequality 2, 33, 34, 35, 75, 91, 113, 116, 131, 132, 137, 150, 159, 160, 169 informal networks 43, 139 information technologies 83, 84, 99, 183 Innerarity, F. 44 interest communities 13 internet 12, 24, 26, 27, 70, 80, 82, 84, 96, 99, 106, 223, 230 Irwin, I. 163

J James, S. 134, 202 Janssen-Jurreit, M. 21 John-Baptiste, A. 12 Johnson, P. 145 Jonsdottir, G. 163, 166, 169, 170, 171 Jordan, B. 13, 18 Joseph, Sir Keith, Secretary of State for Health, 193 Joyce, P. 72 Jubilee 2000 26

K Kaseke, E. 13 Kelly, J. 116–7 Kelly, L. 54, 59, 60 Kigass 224 Kindlon, D. 57 Kirk, G. 59, 61, 69, 85, 89, 108, 118–122, 139, 224 Knijn, T. 145 Knudson, T. 195 Kuhn, M. 144, 148

276

Index Kwenna Frambothid (KF) 124, 163, 169–74 Kwenna Listin (KL) 171 Kwo, E.M. 13

L Labour Party 122, 160, 162, 170 see also New Labour 8, 17, 82, 140, 156, 161, 193, 194 Ladd, E.C. 42 Land, H. 92 leaflets 67, 74, 90, 96, 98–9, 102, 150 Lederer, L. 52, 110 Ledwith, M. 4, 6, 22, 222 Lee Jeans 153, 224 Leeds 110, 114, 115, 136, 166, 168 Leff, E. 174 Leighton, J. 81 LEND (Leamington European Nuclear Disarmament Campaign) 117 Leonard, P. 21 lesbian women 25, 68, 73, 88, 95, 114, 120, 149, 152, 167, 168 LEWRG (London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group) 191 Lewycka, M. 153 Lilley, P. 193 Lister, R. xiv, 3, 45 Livingstone, K. 166, 168 locational communities 9, 10 London 10, 66, 71, 81, 109, 115, 116, 117, 122, 137, 160, 161, 166, 168, 205 Loney, M. 39, 186, 188, 193 Lorde, A. 6, 21, 22, 23, 51, 55, 59, 65, 73, 203 Lovett, T. 14 Lowndes, V. 37, 41–3, 222 Luckmann, T. 48

M McClennen, J. 88 McCrindle, J. 153 McIntosh, M. 54 MacKinnon, C. 110 McLean, C. 43, 44 McLeod, E. 155, 172 McNeil, S. 110 mainstreaming gender 5, 26, 28, 201, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 227, 229 Maitland, O. 117, 123 Major, J., Prime Minister 197 Make Poverty History 26 male norms 34 Malek, F. 23, 85 male supremacy 51, 56

Mama, A. 203 Manning, B. 20, 22 Mansfield Hosiery 89, 224 Maple, N. 191 Maquire, M. 56 Marchant, H. 20, 21, 55 Marsden, D. 13, 14 Martinson, J. 136 Maynard, A. 156 Mayo, M. 4, 8, 13, 14, 20, 21, 39, 222, 224 media 57, 67, 68, 74, 88, 89, 90, 96, 100, 102–5, 113, 116, 120, 123–5, 136, 139, 140, 150, 165, 168, 169, 170, 196, 209 and handling the media 102 and press release 104, 105–6 Member of Parliament (MP) 81, 161, 162 men xv, xvi, xvii, 1, 2, 8, 10, 12, 17, 19, 21, 25, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 44, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 60, 78, 86, 124, 137, 138, 142, 144, 164, 171, 207 and child abuse 58 and class-oriented community action 19–20 and community work xiii, xvi, 2, 7, 13–24, 31, 45, 53, 155, 156, 157, 179, 180, 187, 191, 196, 207, 224, 230, 231 and dominance xii, 2, 32, 36, 226 and emotional well-being 50, 57, 58, 61, 64, 144, 222 and Greenham Common 37, 85, 117, 129, 173 and locational communities 9, 10 and managerialism 46 and paid work 15, 24, 36, 41, 101, 131, 134, 154, 187, 188, 189, 193, 203 see also gender see also violence middle-class women 2, 72, 73, 91, 92, 160, 202 Mies, M. 87, 108, 209, 211 Millar, J. 193 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 72, 201, 216, 217, 220 Millet, K. 51 miners’ strike 20, 152, 172 Mizra, H. 45 modernity 177, 179, 181 Montreal 115 Moosa-Mitha, M. 59 Morgan, R. 21, 73 Morris, W. 10 mother-daughter relationship 56

277

Women and community action Mowlam, M., Secretary of State for Northern Ireland 161 Mulholland, H. 149 Mullard, C. 22 Mullender, A. 21, 86 municipal socialism 166–70 Munro, A. 132, 137 Murray, C. 193

N NALGO 138, 141, 149 National Abortion Campaign (NAC) 79, 88, 108, 114, 203 National Childcare Campaign (NCC) 86, 139, 140, 149 national communities xv, 3, 10 National Domestic Violence Helpline 110 National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 15, 16 National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) 153 National Women’s Aid Federation (NWAF) 80, 108, 109 Nelson, S. 58 neoliberalism 112, 172, 179, 192, 220, 230 networking 43, 74, 89, 90, 112, 121, 122, 125, 128, 169, 222 New, C. 86 Newby, H. 7 New Deal for Communities (NDC) 17, 24, 39, 193 and New Labour 8, 17, 82, 140, 156, 161, 193, 194 see also Labour Party 122, 160, 162, 170 National Women’s Aid Federation 85, 109 New, C. 86 new managerialism 46 Newby, H. 7 Newnham, A. 58 Neysmith, S. 45 Ng, R. 18 Nicholson, L. 22, 73, 204 Norman, A. 62 Norris, P. 162 North Tyneside CDP 189 Northern Ireland 161, 207

O Oakley, A. 121, 132 Oakley, P. 13, 14 Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) 194 Ohri, A. 20, 22

older people xv, 3, 7, 8, 15, 62, 67, 142–50, 193, 210 and care 7, 8, 15, 62, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 151, 174, 178, 188, 190, 191 and residential care 16 see also community care see also community organising older women 61, 62, 63, 95, 143, 144, 147, 149, 167, 224 Older Women’s League (OWL) 145, 148 Older Women’s Network (OWN) Oliver, M. 46 oppression 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 49, 50, 54, 55, 57, 58, 64, 67, 68, 73, 75, 78, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 106, 123, 124, 140, 143, 145, 166, 172, 172, 176, 188, 189, 190, 204, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228 oppression, definition of 34 Orbach, S. 51, 55, 56 Orme, J. 8, 15 Orr, C. 4 othering 11, 34, 35, 37 othering, definition of 34

P paid work 34, 36, 39, 41. 101, 132, 134, 154, 187, 189, 193, 203, 224 and domestic work xiv, 115, 132, 134, 137, 139, 143, 159, 202 and feminist practice 66, 80, 100, 127, 226, 229 and social exclusion 18, 40, 41, 184, 194 Palmetto Community Action Partnership 111 Paris Agreement 2015 26, 182 Parmar, P. 73 Parsons, T. xvi, 5, 35, 182 participation 8, 15, 18, 40, 44, 45, 46, 66, 74, 75, 82, 90, 91, 92, 121, 125, 127, 149, 163, 165, 171, 181, 187, 191, 192, 197, 214, 215, 221 participation, democratic 45 participation, contingent 45 participation, ladder of, 45 participative, consultative 45 Patel, N. 67, 142 patriarchy xii, xvi, 2, 5–6, 28, 33, 57, 93, 119, 124, 219 patriarchy, definition of 33 patriarchy, private xiii, xvi, 2, 6, 28, 93 patriarchy, public xiii, xvi, 2, 6, 28, 93 peace movement see women’s peace movement 26, 37, 60, 61, 173 Percival, R. 13

278

Index personal responsibility 60, 115, 127, 164 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act 1996 60 Phillips, A. 58 Phillips, B. 45 Phillipson, C. 143 Pizzey, E. 58, 109 Plummer, J. 58 politics 22, 32, 43, 51, 74, 117, 120, 163, 171, 172, 175, 179, 193, 219 and community work xiii, xvi, 2, 7, 13–24, 31, 45, 53, 155, 156, 157, 179, 180, 187, 191, 196, 207, 224, 230, 231 and ecofeminism 6, 174–5 and Greenham Common 117, 118, 125. 127, 128, 129 and Iceland 122, 124, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172 and municipal socialism 166–8 and outside electoral politics 172 politics, cyber-cultural 175 politics, electoral 163, 171, 172 politics, feminist 74 politics, identity 25, 32, 172 politics is personal 22, 51, 172 politics, representational 51 politics, sexual 51 Pope Francis 136 Popplestone, R. 17, 37, 136 poverty 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 177, 178, 181, 184, 186 see also older people Poussaint, A.P. 59 power 5, 17, 33, 34, 35, 36, 45, 46, 51, 65, 119, 162, 163, 180, 192, 197, 198, 203, 204, 207, 208, 210, 211, 215, 219, 223, 228, 229 power of 5, 36, 51, 65, 119, 162, 204 power over 5, 17, 33, 34, 35, 46 power to 5, 36 power-sharing 45, 163, 198 press release 104, 105–6 Pringle, K. 54, 86 Private Finance Initiative (PFI) 24, 83 private sphere xiii, xvi, 1, 5, 32, 226 professionalism 55, 154, 158, 227 Programme for the Reform of the Law on Soliciting (PROS) 78, 108 prostitution 78, 108 protectionist community action 23, 24 public meetings 96, 126, 141 public-private partnerships (PPPs) 39 public sphere xv, 1, 44 Purdue, D. 194 Putnam, R. 8, 37, 42, 197

Q Queasley, G. 65

R racism 16, 22, 23, 44, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 110, 142, 155, 161, 190, 203, 225 and CDPs 19, 58, 186–92 and emotional well-being 50, 57, 58, 61, 64, 144, 222 and feminist therapy 49, 51, 55, 56, 57, 75, 222 rape 52, 53, 54, 60, 91, 110, 153, 222 Red Pepper 172 redlining 190 Redmond, M. 40 Rees, S. 46 Reitma-Street, M. 45 Remfry, P. 189 renewable technologies 183 reproductive rights 79, 106, 108, 110, 156, 212, 215, 219, 223, 225 reproductive technologies 83, 84 residential care 16 retirement 62, 147, 148 Rhodes, D. 110 Rio+ Earth Summit 2012 178 Rogaly, J. 23 Rogers, C. 51, 62 Rose, H. 19 Rosenthal, H. 81 Rothman, J. 14 Rowbotham, S. 153, 172 Rowe, D. 50 Roy, A. 174 Ruskin, J. 10 Ruzek, S. 64, 65, 67, 81, 82, 92, 108, 156, 224

S Salmon, H. 44 Saltley CDP 190 Samtö kum kvennalista 171 Savage, W. 81 Save the Wheatley Street Nursery 139, 140, 141 Schiavo, T. 83 Sedley, A. 131, 137, 224 Seebohm Report 187 Segal, L. 33, 85, 88, 133, 134, 149 self-help 14, 18, 39, 50, 63, 65, 72, 81, 144, 145, 154, 155, 156, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 198, 225 Sevenhuijsen, S. 43 Sewpaul, V. 13 Sex Discrimination Act 190 Sex Equality Act 1973 164

279

Women and community action sexism 16, 33, 35, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 67, 68, 113, 135, 136, 190, 227 sexism, definition of 33 sexual harassment 26, 108, 116, 119, 131, 137, 138, 158, 161, 224 Shakespeare, T. 11, 84 Shakib, S. 11, 12 Sheffield 166 Shiva, V. xvi, 6, 87, 108, 174, 211 Sidel, R. 71, 80, 88, 92, 132, 133 Sidel, V. 71 Siegal, D.L. 21, 61, 62, 143, 148, 149, 224 Sierra Nevada Alliance 117, 195–6 sisterhood is universal 176 Skeffington Report 187 Skinner, S. 44, 131, 133, 150 Small, J. 22 Smith, J., Home Secretary 161 social capital 8, 28, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 90, 118, 139, 169, 196, 197, 222, 223 social care 39, 62, 72, 144, 148, 165 social cohesion 41 social change 3, 19, 20, 28, 38, 49, 61, 63, 73, 77, 79, 106, 109, 111–119, 127, 128, 199, 223, 226 and collective level change 77, 109, 111–128 and individual level change 49, 61 social exclusion 18, 40, 41, 91, 184, 194, social exclusion, gendered perspective and 91 social inclusion 18, 35, 40, 41 social security 22, 62, 92, 93, 123, 223 Social Security Act 1986 93 social work 13, 16, 25, 46, 49, 80, 88, 94, 109, 110, 132, 146, 150, 177, 178, 180, 185, 186, 188, 194, 195, 205, 208, 209, 224, 228, 229 solar power 184 Solomos, J. 42, 43, 44 Sondhi, R. 22 Southwark Asian Women’s Aid 85 Spare Rib 100 Special Claims Squads 92 Squires, J. xvi SSEC (Senate Sex Equality Committee) 150, 160 Stack, C. 43, 145

state xiv, xvi, 2, 3, 8, 9, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, 34, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 48, 52, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67, 78, 79, 80, 86, 93, 96, 107, 114, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 134, 135, 144, 145, 147, 152, 154, 157, 160, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 179, 180, 182, 185, 187, 188, 191, 193, 210, 212, 215, 219, 222, 227, 228 Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with a Disability 204 Statham, D. 21 Status of Women 113, 133, 134, 214 Steinberg, D.L. 65, 67, 80, 84, 156 strategic essentialism 10 Straw, J, Foreign Secretary 161 street theatre 101, 102, 150 Strega, S. 52, 60 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, 1972 178 Summit on Social Development 1995 216 sustainable communities 177 sustainable development 107, 146, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 184, 185, 186, 191, 192, 199, 201, 210, 216, 218, 220, 230 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 72, 77, 177, 201, 217, 218, 220, 230 sustainability 107, 146, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 185, 186, 191, 192, 199, 201, 210, 216 sustainability, definition of 177 SWAF (Scottish Women’s Aid Federation) 60, 86, 108, 109 SWAT (South Wales Association of Tenants) 66, 74

T Taylor, R. 208 technologies of the self 37 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) 60 Thatcher, M., Prime Minister 7, 20, 82, 121, 156, 161, 166, 168, 172 Thatcherism 20 therapy 49, 50, 51, 56, 57, 75, 102, 153, 156, 222 Thomas, D. 4 Thomas, R. 42, 208 Tobin, A. 166 Töennies, F. 7, 8 Tolson, A. 54, 58 Torkington, C. 92 Toronto 52 Townsend, P. 7, 143, 184

280

Index trade unions 19–20, 89–90, 110, 113, 124, 128, 131, 133, 140–1, 148–9, 161, 169, 190, 193, 223 and campaigns 22, 28, 34, 44, 52–4, 63, 64, 70, 71, 72, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 125, 127, 129, 139, 140, 147, 150, 164, 174, 224 and health issues 4, 63–7, 71, 75, 137 and older people xv, 3, 8, 15, 62, 67, 142–50, 193, 210 and sexual harassment 26, 108, 116, 119, 131, 137, 138, 158, 161, 224 TRCCC (Tyneside Rape Crisis Centre Collective) 91 Treasury 209 Twigg, J. 142

violence xiii, xiv, 1, 2, 21, 27, 32, 35, 38, 52, 53, 54, 59, 60, 79, 80, 85, 86, 88, 93, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 114, 118, 119, 120, 121, 131, 138, 158, 159, 189, 201, 204, 206, 209, 212, 213, 219, 222, 224, 225, 227 and emotional well-being 50, 57, 58, 61, 64, 144, 222 see also domestic violence 21, 38, 79, 80, 85, 86, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 158, 189, 201, 209, 219, 224 Virago 100 virtual communities 9, 23, 26 voluntary work 15, 143, 150, 191

W

U UNIANGE (Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality) 214, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225, 27, 28, 29, 230 UKAid 216 UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) 24 UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Ungerson, C. 145 UNISON 72, 138, 149 United Nations (UN) xi, 28, 160, 165, 173, 180, 182, 201, 205, 212, 214, 216 UNWomen (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) 214 Urban Aid Programme (UAP) 53, 54, 55 see also Community Development Projects (CDPs) see also community work United States (US; USA) 7, 10, 12, 14, 24, 42, 60, 62, 71, 81, 83, 107, 111, 113, 124, 133, 136, 144, 145, 148, 155, 159, 162, 163, 182, 183, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 213, 217 and defence expenditure 60 USAid 204 see also reproductive rights

V

waged labour 41, 131, 132, 134, 137, 139, 142, 144, 151, 224 see also paid work Wages for Housework Campaign 202 Wagner Report 15 Wainwright, H. 166 Walby, S. xiii, xvi, 2, 6, 28, 32, 59 Walker, A. 6, 143, 165 Wallerstein, N. 45 Wandor, M. 48 Ward, E. 58 Washington, D.C. 111 Washington Post 60, 61 Wearing, B. 20, 21, 55 websites 111, 196, 201, 205 WEDO (Women’s Environment and Development Organization) 6, 111, 216 Weinstock, E. 16 Weir, A. 48, 73, 85, 88 Well-Women Clinics (WWCs) 92 Whatley, M. 79, 156 Wheatley Street Nursery 139, 140, 141 white people 180 Whitehead, A. 31 Whitlock, M.J. 166, 167, 168 Wichterich, C. 208, 211 Williams, C. 10 Williams, F. xiv, 3 Williamson, J. 209 Wilmot, P. 10 Wilson, E. 8, 20, 39, 49, 73, 85, 88 Wilson, M. 23, 108 Windrush Generation 161 Wistow, G. 60, 79, 108, 224 womanism 22, 223

Vancouver Sun, The 60 videos 70, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, 150 Vincent, C. 148

281

Women and community action women xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 95, 96, 100, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 158, 159, 160, 162, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 171, 178, 181, 183, 184, 188, 189, 190, 192, 194, 195, 197, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 217, 219, 220 Women in Black 207 women in cabinet 161, 162 Women in Development (WID) 207, 208, 211, Women’s March 111 women-only support groups 80, 85, 94, 138, 144, 145, 146, 149, 153 see also feminist community action 14, 19, 20, 22, 25, 48, 62, 78, 117, 127, 181, 225, 228, 229 see also gender Women’s Party 163 women’s pay 158 and caring work 14, 36, 57, 131, 145–6, 150, 164, 202, 221 and CDPs 19, 58, 186–92 and impact of managerialism 46 oppression 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 49,m50, 54, 55, 57, 58, 64, 67, 68, 73, 75, 78, 85, 86, 87, 90, 91, 106, 123, 124, 140, 143, 145, 166, 172, 172, 176, 188, 189, 190, 204, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228 organising in the community 219, 222, 223, 224, 225, 228 power 5, 17, 33, 34, 35, 36, 45, 46, 51, 65, 119, 162, 163, 180, 192, 197, 198, 203, 204, 207, 208, 210, 211, 215, 219, 223, 228, 229 Women Against Pit Closures 152, 153 Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) 110 Women and Equality Unit (WEU) 224 Women’s Aid 60, 80, 85, 86, 108, 109, 110, 222 Women’s Alliance (Iceland) 171 women’s committees 166, 171 Women’s Economic Empowerment 219 Women’s Equality Party (WEP) 165

women’s peace movement 173, 207, 222 Greenham Common 37, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 129 Women’s Press 100 Women’s Right to Income Group 92 Women’s Units 166, 167, 168, 175 Woolcock, M. 42, 197 Worcester, N. 79, 156 work xiv, 34, 36, 39, 41, 101, 115, 132, 134, 137, 139, 143, 154, 159, 202 see also domestic work xiv, 115, 132, 134, 137, 139, 143, 159, 187, 189, 193, 202, 203, 224 see also paid work 34, 36, 39, 41, 101, 132, 134, 154, 187, 189, 193, 203, 224 working class 10, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 72, 73, 88, 89, 91, 115, 124, 132, 152, 155, 169, 202, 222, 228 working-class women 15, 72, 73, 89, 91, 92, 115, 132, 152, 155, 169, 179, 202 and health issues 4, 63–7, 71, 75, 137 and miners’ strike 92 Working Women’s Charter 88, 189 World Conservation Strategy of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature 1980 178 World March of Women 122 Wainwright, H. 166

Y Young, J. 10 Young, M. 108 Younghusband, E. 13 Yuval-Davis, N. 10, 11, 212

Z Zucchino, D. 24, 61

282