How Rights of Women is challenging the status quo and empowering women to access justice.
Women survivors and victims, and their allies and supporters, have long been at the forefront of fixing our broken justice system. Rights of Women have been an important part of this, ensuring the law is fit for purpose and enables women to seek justice. For example, Rights of Women successfully argued for the Government to expand the evidence list for survivors of domestic abuse to access legal aid for private family law cases via a judicial review (on appeal). In 2018 the law was changed to accommodate this, resulting in many more women accessing family law legal aid.
Whilst we celebrate our successes, we still have a long way to go to challenge and change the justice system in England and Wales which still poses disproportionate barriers to access to justice for women.
It is estimated that over 70% of cases which end up in the Family Court raise concerns of domestic abuse. However, policy makers have historically failed to address the safety and wellbeing of victims and survivors of domestic abuse in private law children proceedings. The focus has been on keeping parents out of court, putting up barriers, compelling them into mediation, and making them co-parent.
By ignoring the lived realities of violence against women and girls, when making decisions that will affect them, the Government is complicit in endangering the lives of those they are appointed to protect.
As a proudly feminist organisation, Rights of Women is built to serve women who have experienced gender-based violence and empower them to access justice. That is why we have been campaigning for the government to recognise the importance of centring women, including victims and survivors of gender-based violence, in a system that is supposed to keep them safe and empower them to seek justice. Earlier this month we wrote to MP Alex Chalk, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State of Justice, to challenge the lack of representation on the advisory panel set to guide the review of the presumption of parental involvement.
You can read the letter, which was co-signed by numerous organisations on the frontline of the campaign for women’s empowerment, here.
We are committed to addressing the underrepresentation of women, their perspectives and experiences, in all places decisions are being made. As part of our work, we’ve set up RoW’s Voices of Women Panel. The Panel is made up of women with lived experience of family and criminal law issues, including those who have used the family and/or criminal justice system(s). Its aim is to help guide Rights of Women’s work and, ultimately, ensure more women can access the equality, justice and safety they deserve. We are committed to creating a safe space where women feel valued and their experiences are listened to and acted on to improve information and services for survivors.
Rights of Women will continue to advocate for equal and empowered representation of women from diverse backgrounds and experiences, whether that be within our organisation or the justice system we seek to improve. #nothgingaboutuswithoutus.