Agenda item

RESOLVED:

      I.          Cabinet approved the implementation of the Council’s refreshed Male Violence Against Women and Girls strategy for the period 2023-2027.

Recommendations for NOTING

      I.          Cabinet noted the priorities highlighted within the strategy, along with the data analysis of national and local crime data, as well as the qualitative feedback received through the Safer Ealing for Women listening exercise in 2022.

REASON FOR DECISION AND OPTIONS CONSIDERED:

Ealing and the Safer Ealing Partnership were committed to making the borough a safer place to live, work, and visit for everybody. A key part of this commitment is in recognising and responding effectively to violence against women and girls.

The Council’s current plan also included a strong commitment in relation to MVAWG issues and sets out an ambitious approach to making women safer:

‘Continue to take tough action to prevent violence against women and girls, end female genital mutilation (FGM), and extend support through the Women’s Wellness Zone network established in the borough. We will also remain committed to enforcing our public space protection order at Mattock Lane, ensuring women have access to family planning free from intimidation, and we will also invest more than £1m in making public spaces safer and well lit.’

The UN defines violence against women and girls as:
Any act of gender-based violence that is directed at a woman because she is a woman or acts of violence that were suffered disproportionately by women. This included physical, sexual, and psychological/emotional violence, economic abuse, and sexual exploitation. Violence against women and girls can take place at home, at work, or in public places.

Male violence against women and girls was a health and human rights issue, which cuts across all areas of work in Ealing and has links with a number of local strategies, including our approach to health and wellbeing, education, Prevent and community safety. Ealing’s strategy is informed by the Government’s Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and by the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy, the work of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and the Domestic Abuse Act (2021).

Ealing’s existing Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy was devised in 2015. This refreshed strategy reflects the developed knowledge by professionals working with victims and survivors as well as with perpetrators; it also reflects the changes in insight and understanding of the issues among the broader public and our residents.

The latest available data from the crime survey of England and Wales, Metropolitan Police, and organisations working with victims and survivors has been used to inform the refreshed strategy. In Ealing, this learning is additionally underpinned by the feedback from over 2,800 women and girls who took part in the Council’s listening exercise, A Safer Ealing for Women (SEfW) in early 2022.

The strategy had expanded to recognise misogyny, behaviours, and offences that were not explicitly identified in our previous strategy. Examples of this were the inclusion of stalking within the strategy, recognising the challenge posed by perpetrators and repeat perpetrators, and a sharper focus on women and girls’ safety in public spaces.

The offences and challenges explored in the strategy were:

·       Rape & sexual assault

·       Stalking

·       Honour-based violence

·       Forced marriage

·       Female genital mutilation

·       Childhood exploitation & sexual exploitation (this will include gang-related crime and modern slavery etc)

·       Trafficking

·       Sex working

·       The challenge posed by perpetrators and repeat perpetrators

·       Women’s safety in the public realm

·       Domestic abuse

·       Misogyny

We know from our listening exercise that some of these issues were universal and affect nearly all women and girls in Ealing, while others were more prevalent in a specific group who were disproportionately affected.

The refreshed strategy sets out four key priorities in response to these challenges:

·       Prevention

·       Support for victims/survivors

·       Developing a Community Co-ordinated response

·       Holding perpetrators to account

Another key consideration for Ealing’s strategy was around the label we apply when discussing the issue of violence against women and girls, and specifically to what extent we acknowledge the offender within this. We know violence against women and girls is an overwhelmingly gender-based crime, where the offender or offenders were male.

A number of professional, voluntary and advocacy groups have flagged the ‘passive’ nature of VAWG as a label, as it implies violence is something that happens but does not explicitly recognise who is committing the violence. For this reason, Ealing’s VAWG strategic partnership and the Safer Ealing Partnership formerly recognise within the label we apply that the strategy is targeting those gender-based offences where the perpetrators were overwhelmingly male. A number of other local authorities, community safety partnerships and constabularies were beginning to adopt this term.

The adoption of the term MVAWG did not mean the partnership does not recognise those instances of violence perpetrated on women by other women. Indeed, the partnership, the Council Plan, and the strategy itself recognise there were complex behaviours within the context of interfamilial and honour-based violence, as well as FGM and abuse within same sex relationships, where women do perpetrate violence on other women. However, we know from the evidence reviewed, from careful data analysis, and from feedback from a wide range of professional and voluntary sector partners that the majority of violence against women and girls is perpetrated by men, and that the complexities of interfamilial violence stem from patriarchal hierarchies that reinforce systems of abuse or control by men towards women and girls.

In London, the messaging from City Hall and from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) refers to ‘male violence’ when discussing issues of violence against women and girls. The recent well-received media communications and awareness campaigns by MOPAC, including the ‘Have a word with yourself, then with your mates’ awareness campaign targeting men, remind us that violence ‘starts with words,’ and that words matter.

We therefore believe it was appropriate to recognise male violence in the label we apply to our strategy and recognise the key role that men play in changing behaviours and attitudes towards women. We understand the fact that including these words in the naming of the strategy may create a wider debate and we welcome this dialogue and feel it is something that should be discussed and understood more. We also recognise that violence against women and girls is complex, and, for the avoidance of doubt, this strategy is clear that all instances of violence against women and girls were unacceptable and that it is our collective responsibility to protect women and girls and support them in feeling safe.