The Equalities and Human Rights Commission is currently in a fight for its survival. Read the full story

Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to you to update you on recent developments with regard to the future of the Women’s Library, which is housed at London Metropolitan University.

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As GEA policy officer, I was interested to have the chance to interview Professor Sir Adrian Smith, a very eminent mathematician and former Principal of Queen Mary University of London, on how the current UK Government is approaching policies on higher education and gender. Sir Adrian is the UK Government Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)’ champion for equalities and diversities. He is keen to advance women’s position in universities amongst other inequalities. Read the full story

The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has a statutory remit ‘to promote and monitor human rights; and to protect, enforce and promote equality across the nine “protected” grounds – age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, sexual orientation and gender reassignment’. According to the Commission, a survey carried out by it in 2007 showed that discrimination and disadvantage are still common across Britain. So EHRC states: ‘We don’t all have equal chances in life and some forms of discrimination are complex and deep-rooted. Sometimes people choose to ignore the rights of others even when this is against the law. This is why the Equality and Human Rights Commission is here’. Read the full story

‘Clinton is proving that feminist foreign policy is possible – and works’ so headlines an article in the Guardian in which Madeleine Bunting argues that Hilary Clinton is building her political foreign policy on a solid 1970s feminist mantra that ‘Transformation in the role of women is that last great impediment to universal progress.’ Clinton has proclaimed that ‘the rights of women and girls are now core to US foreign policy’ and Bunting draws attention to the 450 mentions of this ‘signature issue’ in the first five months of Clinton’s office.  Clinton argues that ‘the empowerment, protect and protection of women and girls is vital to the long-term security of the US’.  In a telling remark Bunting asks, imagine any politician saying something similar in the UK now. It is, indeed, unimaginable! Read the full story

The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology is to lose its funding from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills from April 2011. This is part of the latest round of spending cuts being carried out by the UK’s Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition government. Read the full story

In the UK, the Fawcett Society has been actively engaged in mounting a challenge to the Coalition government’s approach to tackling the deficit. A recent high court challenge to the emergency budget demanded that there is a judicial review of the gender impact. Read the full story

The 10^th of November 2010: I and 50,000 school, college and university students and staff gathered in central London to protest against the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government’s proposed cuts to education and rise in tuition fees up to £9000 per year. This placard – Don’t Cut Women out of Education – was left under the feet of the demonstrators, washed up by a tide of protest: one of a vast range of slogans on show, from the ironically knowing to the straightforwardly angry. But its message stands. Those who stand to lose out from the government’s plans are, overwhelmingly, those who already lose out. Read the full story

Everyday there seems to be yet more depressing news for education in the UK. Yesterday saw more rushed ideological notions of bringing soldiers into the classrooms, destroying teacher education within  Higher Education,  and reconfiguring the national curriculum yet again.

Schoolchildren and students were also active in walking out of lessons, taking to the streets and occupying campuses. These actions are in response to massive hikes in tuition fees in Higher Education, and the abolishment of  the Educational Maintenance Allowance in Further Education. Curiously, an article in the the Daily Mail has focused on the gendering of these protests, highlighting the actions of rioting girls. Perhaps we are seeing a new wave of youth and female led activism? I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts

We thought you’d be interested in a recent letter to the Guardian from one of our members, Val Millman, which was in response to a question about whether there is anything left for feminists to fight against.  Here’s what Val writes: Read the full story