FOR SEVERAL SEASONS, THE CLUB HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE FIGHT FOR EQUAL PRIZE MONEY FOR MEN’S AND WOMEN’S COMPETITIONS ~ from Dialectik Football ~ The Football Association has frozen prize money for the 2025/26 Women’s FA Cup while increasing the total prize money for the men’s competition. This represents a setback for the small steps taken in recent seasons towards equal prize money. Why has the Football Association (FA) chosen to exacerbate the inequalities in its flagship competition? Lewes FC took advantage of the Women’s FA Cup third round to raise this issue again and request a meeting with the FA’s Professional Game Board (PGB) to get an explanation for this reversal. Ahead of their match against Crystal Palace at the Dripping Pan on 14 December, the East Sussex club called on its supporters to use the game as a platform to protest once more against the freeze on prize money for the Women’s Cup. Rooks fans symbolically displayed banners bearing the equals sign in the stands. “Equality is not a cost, it’s a commitment to the future of football,” proclaims the campaign slogan. This demand is not new for Lewes, who launched the “Equal FA Cup” campaign in 2019. Since then, while the FA has indeed doubled the prize money for women’s competitions, the gap with that of men remains enormous. THE FIGURES AND THE STARK REALITY To give an idea, the winning teams in the third round of the Women’s FA Cup received £35,000 in prize money, while the runners-up received only £9,000. Meanwhile, at the same stage of the competition, men’s teams will receive £121,500 for the winners and £26,500 for the eliminated team. The freeze on the overall prize money for the women’s FA Cup (144,000 pounds was added to cover a new preliminary round) is all the more unfair given that the men’s prize money has increased by 1.5 million pounds compared to the 2024/25 season. The freeze also applies to prize money paid during the preliminary rounds of the men’s FA Cup, impacting dozens of amateur clubs already burdened by the overall increase in costs. Adding insult to injury, the winner of the men’s edition will receive 2.12 million pounds next May, 120,000 pounds more than last season. Considering the revenues of the Premier League clubs to whom the trophy is promised, this increase feels like an insult to the teams in the earlier rounds who could have shared it. “Today, the lion’s share of the £23.5 million prize money for men’s football will go to wealthy Premier League clubs who arguably need it the least and for whom this money will make very little difference,” laments Ben Hall, director of Lewes FC, in an opinion piece published on the BBC website. “Same sport, same rules, same competition, same knockout format, same governing body, but a different value placed on the women’s and men’s players.” In the early rounds, the prize money is so paltry that many women’s teams lose money. The costs incurred by travel, medical coverage, and pitch rentals often exceed the prize money earned from a victory at this stage of the competition. INEQUALITY AT EVERY LEVEL Ironically, the FA knows how to be egalitarian when it comes to national teams, its crown jewels. Since 2020, the FA has been paying women the same match fees and bonuses as men. “The question, therefore, isn’t whether the FA believes in equality, but rather why this conviction stops at the FA Cup,” Hall continues. The governing bodies have no shortage of excuses, citing commercial realities and differences in television revenue. For Ben Hall, it’s primarily a matter of political choice: “The FA decides the prize money for both competitions. They could make them equal tomorrow; they simply would have to.” For many, this situation is merely the result of the setback women’s football has suffered due to its 50-year ban by the English Football Association, perpetuating a view of football primarily as a male preserve. Under the guise of profitability, the FA is simply perpetuating this history of male dominance. A CALL TO OTHER CLUBS This is why Lewes FC wrote to all the teams participating in the Women’s FA Cup, inviting them to carry out protest actions such as a team photo before kickoff, with the players forming an “=” sign with their arms, and a 21-second pause after kickoff, referencing 1921, the year the FA banned women’s football. Lewes FC and Corsham Town did this during the first round. With its “Equality FC” campaign launched in 2017, Lewes has already become the first club – in the English professional and semi-professional landscape – to allocate equal resources to its women’s and men’s teams. It has made this fight for equal treatment in football a central element of its DNA as a “community-based” club. While it is still struggling to bring many other clubs on board, the club is not giving up. However, it is not entirely alone. A few seasons ago, Clapton CFC and Stourbridge FC Ladies also took up the cause. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation The post Lewes FC, a club in pursuit of equality appeared first on Freedom News.

A COALITION OF FEMINIST, MIGRANT AND LEFT GROUPS IS PREPARING TO OPPOSE THE ANNUAL CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST MARCH IN LONDON ~ Blade Runner ~ This Saturday, 6 September, the annual anti-abortion March for Life UK will once again take place in central London. The event began in Birmingham in 2013, moved to London in 2018, and now attracts thousands. It is backed by US-linked groups such as ADF UK—the British arm of the US-based rightwing hate group Alliance Defending Freedom—which in 2024 spent over £1 million on legal cases and lobbying. March for Life is part of an international Christian fundamentalist project that grew in confidence after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US, and is increasingly tied to the wider far right in Britain. A coalition of feminist, migrant, and left groups is organising a joyful counter-demo. We asked one of the organisers four quick questions. What is happening? “March for Life is part of a global and organised attempt to change the political environment to become more right-wing and socially conservative, which we have seen the results of around the world. The campaign to end abortion in the US took many years, but now they have achieved their goal of obstructing access to abortion in America, and that funding is now freed up to focus on other countries, including the UK.    “Each year, they organise a big anti-abortion political church service in the Emmanuel Centre followed by a conference and then march to Parliament Square, where they have a stage with Christian rock bands, a huge sound system, and hate speeches. “March for Life is part of a broader far right, including anti-trans, pro-Israel, incel/alt-right, and anti-migrant ideas. In the US, they brought Trump to power; they are now trying to emulate this in the UK with Reform and neo-Nazi groups.   “We plan to hold a fun and joyful counter-demo with drumming, dancing, and generally making noise and having fun”.   Who is taking part? “The counter-demo is organised by feminist, migrant, and left groups, including Feminist Fightback, Feminist Assembly of Latin Americans (FALA), Brazil Matters, Razem, Anti-capitalist Resistance, RS21, Socialist Women’s Union (SKB), Young Struggle, and Hackney Anarchists.  “We have also been working with the wider antifascist movement, who will be supporting with their presence. We need as many numbers as possible on the counter-demo to keep one another safe, and we also think this is an important part of getting together as a broad movement to counter fascism in the coming year”.  What happened in the past?  “March for Life has been going on for several years. In the past, the demonstrators were made up of nuns and older people, but in the last two years, we have noticed more young people and alt-right streamers getting involved, spreading their hateful message online and across generations. This increases the threat to younger women, girls, and queer/trans people.  “Two years ago, it was pretty big, and we managed to block them. They were aggressive, violent, and scary, but we held our place. We performed ‘A Rapist in Your Path’, a Chilean feminist dance. The lyrics address the structural and state-based nature of sexual violence”.  Why is it important? “The movement is part of the dangerous, growing fascist coalition. In the UK, we are seeing an emboldened far-right, with St George’s crosses across towns and cities, and racist assaults against migrants on the rise. Mainstream fascists are expected to attend, in coalition with the fundamentalist Christians. It’s critical we hold our ground and stop them dictating the narrative.  “The narrative from the far right is about protecting children and even foetuses. However, patriarchal violence against women and children is endemic, and by bringing their kids along to March for Life, they are exposing them to the violence they perpetrate against migrants, queer people, and women, encouraging their kids to grow up and do the same”.  The post Countering the far-right ‘March for Life’ appeared first on Freedom News.

THE FAMILY IS MARKETED AS A SAFE SPACE, A PLACE OF LOVE AND MUTUAL CARE, BUT THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE DATA—HOW DO WE BRING OUR EXPERIENCES OF MUTUAL SUPPORT NETWORKS TO THE CENTRE OF SOCIETY? ~ Alana Queer, El Salto ~ Something is wrong. We already struggle to imagine the end of capitalism, but abolishing the family? Feminism seems to have long since abandoned this old feminist demand, and this year the LGBTQIA+ movement in Spain will celebrate twenty years of equal marriage, that is, its inclusion in this patriarchal institution of marriage and family that marks a new “homonormativity,” which is primarily a copy of heteronormativity. We’re in trouble. We lack imagination, we lack visions of other forms of coexistence and parenting. I write this article from my perspective as a family survivor. A survivor of sexual abuse, psychological and emotional abuse and neglect, abuse that has left me with complex trauma that I am still learning to live with. To live, not just survive, as I have done for decades of my life. Writing from a survivor’s perspective, in a way, is writing from the perspective of a child, providing a counterpoint to the debate dominated by adult-centric perspectives. When I think of family, the first words that come to mind are violence, (sexual) abuse, abandonment, mistreatment, emotional blackmail… Not for a millisecond of my life have I considered starting a family.  While I strongly agree with the diagnosis of the family’s role in the economic and political order, as put forward, for example, by Nuria Alabao in this article or Sophie Lewis in her book Abolish the Family, in a way, this diagnosis is unnecessary. I only have to think about my own experience, look at my surroundings, my friends, and what I see is violence, mistreatment, abuse, emotional neglect, and all the resulting traumas. Is it possible that so many of us have simply been unlucky? Perhaps there is a more structural problem, that it’s not something failing in some (many) individual families, but the family system itself that is at fault? THE FAMILY, A SYSTEM OF MISTREATMENT AND ABUSE The family is marketed as a safe space, a place of love and mutual care. Above all, it is said that the family is the best place for children. This could not be further from the truth.  According to a meta-analysis of physical violence experienced or witnessed in the family at the global level, in Europe 12.7% of children have been victims of physical violence in their family, with a higher rate for boys compared to girls (girls are not included in the analysis), and 10.5% have witnessed physical violence in their family. Another global meta-analysis of more types of abuse and neglect reaches even higher results: 14.3% of girls and 6.2% of boys had suffered sexual abuse, 27% of boys and 12% of girls had suffered physical abuse, 6.2% of boys and 12.9% of girls had suffered emotional abuse, and 14.8% of boys and 13.9% of girls had suffered neglect during their childhood. Overall, boys suffer more physical abuse and neglect, and girls more emotional and sexual abuse. Fathers perpetrate more physical and sexual abuse, while mothers perpetrate more emotional abuse and neglect. A study in the United Kingdom concluded that 41.7% of children were exposed to some form of child abuse—physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, or physical or emotional neglect. Some 19.3% witnessed domestic violence between their parents or care-givers within the family. The famous ACE Study (Adverse Childhood Experiences Study) of 1998 in the United States reached prevalence rates of 11.1% for psychological abuse, 10.8% for physical abuse, 22% for sexual abuse, and 12.5% for exposure to domestic violence against the mother. Children often suffer more than one form of abuse at a time. In Spain, an estimated 18.9% of the population has been a victim of sexual abuse in childhood (15.2% of men and 22.5% of women), more than half of whom were perpetrated by a family member. According to a report by Save the Children, more than 25% of children in Spain have been victims of abuse by their parents or care-givers. Despite considerable variation across studies, all of them show the family as a site—the primary site—of abuse, mistreatment, and neglect. Studies that differentiate by sexual orientation, such as one from the United States, generally find much higher prevalence rates of abuse and mistreatment across all categories for LGBTQIA+ people compared to heterosexuals. And children who exhibit behaviours that do not conform to their assigned sex at birth suffer even more abuse of all kinds. Beyond abuse, 40% of children never develop a secure attachment to one of their care-givers. According to research by the Sutton Trust in the United Kingdom, “Many children lack secure attachment relationships. Around 1 in 4 children avoid their parents when they are upset because they ignore their needs. Another 15% resist their parents because they cause distress.” According to the same research, insecure parental attachment is the most important risk factor; that is, insecure attachment is reproduced from generation to generation if parents with insecure attachment do not work on their own attachment styles and traumas. > To these figures of child abuse and neglect, we can add the high prevalence of > intimate partner violence, gender violence, and domestic violence. Witnessing > this violence also has negative consequences for children. Is the family a safe place of love and care? The numbers debunk this myth. We can say that for children, the least safe and most dangerous place is their family home. With these figures—a prevalence of abuse between 15% and 40%—how can we think that something is wrong at the individual level, that the problem isn’t the structure (the family), but a lack of education, resources, etc.? I invite you to a thought experiment. Let’s imagine a society wants to choose between several models of coexistence and parenting: tribal or community parenting, other models I have no idea what they might be, and family parenting. Predictions of child abuse are estimated for each model. Can we imagine that a model with a 25% prediction of abuse would be chosen? I doubt it. CHILD ABUSE: LIFELONG DAMAGE Child abuse leaves lifelong damage, I know this from my own experience. For example, complex trauma refers to early negative experiences involving neglect and/or abuse that occur within an attachment relationship with the primary care-giver. This means that the figure who is supposed to provide affection, love, and protection to the child is, at the same time, a source of anxiety, threat, neglect, and/or abuse, resulting in distressing experiences such as verbal abuse, abandonment, bullying, emotional invalidation, abandonment, and so on. Because of their ongoing nature, such abuse generates a stress response that leaves a mark on the brain. Furthermore, these situations go unnoticed externally and are cumulative. In many ways, complex trauma is related to “non-events,” things that didn’t happen when they should have—a look, a smile, being considered, or a comforting hug. These non-events have a significant impact, although they don’t remain as memories beyond emotional sensations. I know all this very well. It’s estimated that up to 7.7% of adults suffer from complex post-traumatic stress disorder (c-PTSD or complex PTSD) and up to 20% suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. To me, these numbers seem too low. However, it’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t a simple binary—either you have PTSD or complex PTSD according to strict diagnostic criteria, or you’re fine. Problems with emotional regulation, forming close relationships, behaviour, trust, and a negative self-image can all be present and can cause considerable problems without meeting all the diagnostic criteria for PTSD or complex PTSD. Complex trauma, often also called complex developmental trauma or developmental trauma, is in the vast majority of cases the result of prolonged emotional abuse and neglect in childhood and adolescence. Here we see many of the 15% of children who avoid their parents because they cause distress: survivors of sexual abuse and other forms of prolonged maltreatment. There are also other consequences for mental and physical health: eating disorders, depression, other mental disorders, substance use and abuse, and much more. From the ACE study in the United States, we know that adverse childhood experiences have a profound impact on many areas of adult health. TOWARDS OTHER MODELS So, we abolish the family. Okay! But what do we put in its place? Sophie Lewis says: “Nothing.” Perhaps an overly simplistic answer.  It’s true that in the current system, the family fulfils functions for which the best answer is “nothing”. As Nuria Alabao says, “The family is not a neutral institution: it is still sustained by hierarchical relations of subordination based on gender, age, and race/migration origin. […] As an institution, the family has a central economic function; it has always been essential to the reproduction of classes in capitalism, to allocate inheritances, transmit property, or guarantee the payment of debts”. These are the functions we don’t want to replace. Enough with Sophie Lewis’s “nothing.” We don’t need a gender police force, we don’t need an institution that reproduces patriarchy and prepares children to function well under capitalism. However, there are other functions of the family in the current system, such as parenting and caregiving, which the family performs quite poorly, as I’ve shown above, but which are nonetheless necessary. We need other models of living together, of relating, of parenting, and of organising caregiving. Today, mainstream feminism has nothing more to offer than promoting “co-responsibility” in parenting, that is, equal participation of fathers in childrearing. Where are the more radical visions? > I don’t mean that children need their mother, father or biological parent, but > they do need adults who allow them a safe and stable attachment. According to Nuria Alabao, “In 19th-century socialism linked to the labour movement, and later in the 1970s, class-based feminism called for the socialisation of social reproduction: soup kitchens, 24-hour day-care, or innovated experiences of nurturing or support on the margins”. However, even these proposals don’t question the family itself in a deeper way. They are proposals more focused on allowing women to participate in the labour market. Ultimately, they are adult-centric proposals. And, regarding the miserable figures of children with secure attachments, I fear that these proposals could even worsen the situation for children if the nuclear family model is maintained. By this, I don’t mean that children need their biological mother, father, or parent, but they do need adults who allow them a secure and stable attachment. In this sense, it might even be helpful to “de-centre” biological parents, to think about care and parenting in a community, a tribe, parenting models that include a network, a community of adults in the children’s lives. The African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” points in this direction. Children need more secure and stable relationships with adults, beyond their parents, a “village.” There is some research on the perspectives of children raised in consensually non-monogamous relationships. According to Elisabeth Sheff, “The presence of more than two adults in the family provides several advantages to children, such as receiving more attention, nurturing, and time from significant adults, receiving more gifts for special occasions, and being exposed to a greater number of positive role models. It also allows them to form family bonds with other children beyond biogenetic kinship and to have more siblings”. > The parenting network does not have to be limited to the sexual and emotional > bonds of the parents: I am thinking of networks of relational anarchy, > networks that decentralize love and the couple. Other recent research with children says: “Children living in polyamorous households often view their parents’ romantic partners as resource persons, which fosters the development of a positive view of these adults in the child. Many children explained their affection for their parents’ partners by highlighting how these adults cared for them and supported them, emotionally and materially. This echoes studies conducted with parents practicing NMC, who described their extra-dyadic romantic partners as supportive, loving, and understanding, not only for them but also for their children.”  Thinking further, in terms of the concept of “village” or community, the nurturing network need not be limited to the parents’ sexual affective ties. I’m thinking of networks of relational anarchy, networks that de-centre love and the couple (or couples). This isn’t so simple. Myriam Rodríguez del Real and Javier Correa Román say in an article in El Salto: “The central issue is understanding that friendship has been emptied of material content in order to centralize the couple. Societies construct systems of kinship and affinity that determine which bonds are recognized and which are left on the margins. The heterosexual monogamous couple constitutes the center of these systems, and the rest of the relationships (including friendship) are reconfigured in response to it”. And: “Therefore, it is not simply a matter of ‘giving more importance to friends,’ but of rejecting the current configurations of both the couple and friendship to create new relational forms. We need to ‘disorient’ (…) the normative notions of affection in order to imagine other forms of relational inhabitation. Only to the extent that we think of other forms of friendship does the couple cease to make sense as the organising centre of our lives”. In a talk about abolishing the family in Seville two years ago, considering alternatives to the family, Nuria Alabao spoke about building relationships with a reciprocal obligation (in order to assume caregiving), and that these types of relationships take time to build. We already have this obligation in today’s family, and I seriously doubt it contributes to adequate care, neither for children nor for adults or the elderly. For me, caregiving out of obligation isn’t care, but rather a sacrifice. And, today, the vast majority of women have to make this sacrifice to care for their parents or another relative. > How do we bring our experiences of mutual support networks to the centre of > society? How do we change our perceptions so that we see ourselves as capable > of trusting these networks? Personally, I think more about making commitments—that is, I voluntarily make a commitment in a relationship (of any kind) that doesn’t require reciprocity. It’s more about trusting the network (of relational anarchy, of my community), that when I need care or support, there will be a person in the network (or several) who can take it on, and they don’t have to be the same people who previously received support from me. I feel like this is something we’re already trying to practice in my network. Hil Malatino, in his book Trans Care  (Bellaterra, 2021) ,  offers this minimal definition of community: people who are re-weaving. And when I review my experience of the last nine years, facing my family traumas, it has been a constant re-weaving of my networks. Some people left my networks, others joined. Perhaps we should leave behind the idea of a stable, lifelong mutual support network that should assume the care and support—emotional, financial, parenting, when we are sick—that today is assumed (often poorly) by the family, and instead rely on our networks, always fragile, always in reconfiguration, but capable of sustaining us when we need them? I don’t know. I’m still afraid of it myself, but, at the same time, my networks have sustained me over the past few years, and they continue to sustain me. How do we bring our experiences of mutual support networks to the centre of society? How do we change our perceptions so that we see ourselves as capable of trusting these networks? How can we strengthen them? I don’t have the answers. I think it’s about building by walking and experimenting. This is just a start. And, for me, building alternatives to family, new structures of mutual support and care, is a matter of survival. I’ve outlived my family, and I’ve gotten this far thanks to my networks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation. Photo: David F. Sabadell The post Abolishing the family: A survivor’s perspective appeared first on Freedom News.

THE OFFER OF SPACE TOURISM TO RICH WOMEN IS A PASTICHE OF FEMINISM WHICH ACTS ONLY TO SHOWCASE THE SHALLOWNESS OF CORPORATE LIBERALISM ~ Sourdough ~ Earlier this month, for the first time since Valentina Tereshkova’s 1963 spaceflight, an all-female crew briefly took to space aboard Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard for a total of 11 minutes before touching back down on Earth. The vanity project of Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez, the flight also included pop star Katy Perry and TV personality Gayle King, among others, marking the tenth such flight of Blue Origin and one of many more private space flights to come. Although subsequently reviled and mocked widely online for its performative nature, the rebuttal came largely from misogynist spaces and has seen comparatively little critical class coverage in comparison to its widespread coverage in the mainstream press. This flight acts as the apotheosis of liberal feminism. Liberal feminism privileges a select few women to, literally in this case, rocket out of the stratosphere and break the glass ceiling, all the while allowing the shards from such a rupture to lacerate the women below them. While these women take to space, the working women of the world who toil and labour to allow their journey to subsist under the oppression and misery of patriarchy. As a purely symbolic move, the flight continues the capitalist project’s watering down of feminism from a radical movement to a marketing campaign, preventing the destruction of the system of patriarchy that governs all women today. While women’s rights decline around the globe, the ever-precarious position of women is overshadowed by spectacles such as this spaceflight, as seen just two days later as the UK Supreme Court ruled to exclude trans women from the legal definition of womanhood. Upon reaching space, the crew engaged in a chant, “take up space”, that served as the theme of the outing. While the rich have always sought greater and greater thrills to occupy their time and overburdened wallets in the quest for ever more thrilling vacations, the phenomenon of privatised vanity trips to space is still relatively new. Where space travel was once the sole domain of the State, it has been increasingly privatised, as is everything in the capitalist system, in the scarce pursuit of further profit. With little work and fulfilment to be found at the top of the world, the rich must turn to utter nihilistic hedonism to amuse themselves to death. This pursuit is a great example of the mindset of the bourgeoisie in our current moment, which sees the world as a playground for their amusement and entertainment. In a time when the planet burns and people starve, they take up an exorbitant amount of space and resources on the planet for their overblown holidays. Ever rapacious, just owning the world will never be enough to satisfy the capitalist and their monstrous system, it must consume everything and grow regardless of drive or feeling. Spaceflight was once a symbol of possibility for the human race, a grand demonstration of what we could accomplish together as a species. A future that once seemed to be out among the stars has been eroded into just another frontier for corporate profit, stripping the dream of exploration and plenty away from the heads of the people and into the hands of the powerful few who already hold enraptured all the dreams of human freedom to be found on Earth. We must remember that humanity is a shared dream, and while the vast majority of women throughout the world remain oppressed, there can be no liberation. Liberation can not be the elevation of a select few, but the elevation of all women to choice and autonomy as should be afforded to every human being. At the intersection of class and patriarchal domination, we must form the bonds of solidarity and cooperation necessary to liberate ourselves from capitalism’s mirage of progress. The environment can not be allowed to continue to burn to fuel the dreams of the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone. The future belongs to everyone, and while space now belongs to the state and its corporate stooges, it is we who own the future. It waits out in the stars for us to meet it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pic: Lauren Sánchez after returning from the flight, courtesy of Blue Origin The post The Rich ‘Take Up Space’ appeared first on Freedom News.

ON SATURDAY 8 MARCH—INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY—TWO MAJOR DEMONSTRATIONS TOOK PLACE IN DOWNTOWN LONDON  ~ Blade Runner ~ A coalition of grassroots feminist and supporting organisations called for an International Women’s Strike, gathering at Gandalf’s Corner in Regent’s Park.  A colourful and vibrant crowd numbering in the low thousands marched chanting through Marylebone, bringing traffic to a standstill at Oxford Circus before concluding at Piccadilly Circus.  The march received (generally) positive reactions from drivers and bystanders and the Piccadilly Circus rally featured speeches from sex and care worker groups. At the same time, a mainstream demonstration supported by the unions featured thousands gathering off at Oxford Street before marching to Trafalgar Square, shutting down major streets for the Million Women Rise march. The grassroots coalition issued a call to “strike to honour all those who are oppressed and martyred to keep the wheels of capitalism, imperialism, racism, and the patriarchal war machine running”. “We strike because we know that the state does not take care of us—we take care of us!”, said the call. The callout also highlighted troubling statistics, including the fact that a woman is killed every three days in the UK, and the continuous attacks on trans rights as well as the Labour government’s escalating persecution of migrants. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photos: Shiri Shalmy, Blade Runner The post In pictures: International Women’s Day in London appeared first on Freedom News.

DEMONSTRATIONS TAKING PLACE TO OPEN 16 DAYS OF ACTION AGAINST FEMICIDE, RAPE AND OTHER VIOLENCE TOWARDS WOMEN AND GIRLS ~ Cristina Sykes, Mateo Sgambati ~ The international day against patriarchial violence is being marked today (25 November), with numerous actions and demonstrations having already taken place over the weekend. From Asia through Europe to the Americas, demonstrations will continue today and into the next 16 days, culminating on International Human Rights Day. In the UK, a large Reclaim the Night march is being organised in Brighton on Friday 29 November. Violence against women and girls remains one of the most prevalent and pervasive human rights violations in the world. According to the United Nations, almost one in three women globally have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their life. In 2023, at least 51,100 women were murdered by partners and family members. This means a woman was killed every 10 minutes. “When I go out, I want to be free, not brave”; demonstration in France, 23 November. Photo: Kurdistan au feminin In France, demonstrations are set to take place in Paris, Grenoble and Strasbourg, among other locations. “Our struggles do not stop at the borders imposed by nation states”, stated the call-out for the Strasbourg demo, “the anti-patriarchal struggle is international and cannot be dissociated from the struggles against all forms of racism, fascism, imperialism and colonialism”. In Madrid, the workers of the Gender Violence Network of the city council and regional authority will go on a 24-hour strike, highlighting insufficient funding and the outsourcing of practically all the network’s resources to external companies who compete for providing them at the lowest price. This contributes to “precarious services and a general deterioration in the working conditions of the workers and in the quality of the care directed to women, their daughters and sons, and their environment”, said the workers. Poster for Madrid demonstration, endorsed by trade unions including CGT and CNT. In Mexico, feminist collectives and organisations including the madres buscadoras are highlighting the need to reclaim the autonomy and independence of the feminist movement from the state’s agenda. “Women are the most vulnerable to the escalation of femicidal violence, disappearances, trafficking, forced displacement, impoverishment, labor inequality, the devastation of natural resources and militarization”, said the groups in a declaration, ahead of today’s mass rally in Mexico City. The day was designated in 1981, during the First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter. It commemorates the murder on 25 November, 1960 of the three Mirabal sisters—María Teresa, Minerva and Patricia—who opposed Trujillo’s dictatorial regime in the Dominican Republic. It was officially adopted by the United Nations in 2000. The post International day against patriarchal violence marked worldwide appeared first on Freedom News.