Good morning GFPs! just a couple of items to mentions before we get going this week.
First up: I am in the running for two panels in this year’s
SXSW, but first I have to get past the dreaded public vote 😱 – btw I read
an interesting paper this week looking in part at how women avoid competitive environments more than men, and it certainly holds true for me, I HATE this. I have some THOUGHTS about the extent to which this correlates with women knowing the game is often rigged against them, meaning they prefer not to take part, which, again, I think is true for me. But anyway, here I am, so, GFPs, please vote – and
before the 20th November as that’s when voting closes. So vote now before you forget!
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On the 27th November 2014, Claire Moore stood outside Downing Street in London and read out a list of 149 names:
the names of the women who had been murdered by men in the past year. She had marched through London with a group of about 100 women, many of them survivors of domestic violence, to ask the government to step up and prevent these preventable deaths by investing in the women’s sector and making domestic violence training mandatory across all sectors.
In Claire’s words:
Time and time again we see that the woman killed have been failed – that the warning signs were missed, they were not believed, in essence that their murders could have been prevented. I hear the same statement I have heard too many times to count – ‘Lessons will be learned’ and my heart sinks. I cry WHEN? We women are more likely to be raped, beaten and/or murdered by men we know than by a stranger – one in three of us will experience domestic violence and so just as the dead man walking phrase means someone who is about to die – we are all dead women walking – because until those lessons are learned and women’s lives valued statistically we will be joining this too long list. We walk in protest that our sisters are dying at the hands of men and in memory of the women killed.
This year, the march has been denied permission to go ahead, but as regular GFPs will know, while Covid can stop a march, it certainly hasn’t stopped domestic violence. In fact this pandemic has made addressing domestic violence more urgent than ever, as
levels of domestic violence have
risen dramatically around the world.
And so while the march cannot go ahead as planned, Claire has decided to march on her own, to raise money for money for
AAFDA, a registered charity founded by Frank Mullane in memory of his sister Julia Pemberton and her son Will who were both killed by her partner. AAFDA helps families who have lost a loved one due to domestic violence and their work is more important now than ever. If you can, please donate
here.