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SUDAN PASSES LAW CRIMINALISING FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION

Sudan has criminalised female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) with a penalty of up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine.

The amendment to the country’s criminal code comes four years after efforts to introduce a national law banning the practice by Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan’s ousted ruler, were quashed due to backlash from religious conservatives.

The transitional government that replaced al-Bashir in April last year passed the landmark law on 30 April 2020. The rights of women in Sudan have gained prominence following the pivotal involvement of women and girls in the nine-month-long street protests which culminated in the ousting of the former leader. The transitional government has pledged to prioritise women’s rights, and women have taken on a number of prominent roles within the cabinet, including labour and social development.

FGM/C involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia. The wound is then sewn up, which can lead to the formation of cysts, result in painful sex, and prevent orgasm.

The United Nations estimated in 2016 that 87% of Sudanese women and girls between 15 and 49 were circumcised. The practice is widespread throughout Sudan, despite six of the country’s 18 states having already banned FGM/C.

Activists heralded a new era for women’s rights in Sudan, but pointed to countries with similar laws that have not seen a reduction in numbers of circumcisions performed. There are calls for a changing of minds in communities, where the practice is bound up with cultural and religious beliefs, and is seen as necessary to prepare daughters for marriage.

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LONEY GORDON, GRACE ELDERING AND PEARL KENDRICK

Loney Clinton Gordon, Grace Eldering and Pearl Louella Kendrick together researched, created and developed the first vaccines for whooping cough. Throughout their careers-long collaboration, they went on to contribute to the promotion of vaccine standards worldwide.

A WHOLE COMMUNITY TO WORK TOGETHER

Pearl Louella Kendrick was born on 24 August 1890 in Illinois. Pearl was described by her teachers as “a first class student, thorough, accurate and rapid.” In 1914, Pearl graduated from Syracuse University to become a school teacher.

While teaching, she continued to study bacteriology at Columbia University, and, in the early 1920s, she was recruited by the Michigan Department of Health. At that time, it was common to recruit women scientists for their comparatively cheap labour. The director of the Bureau of Laboratories provided his employees funding and time to pursue their education and, in 1932, Pearl earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins University.  

In 1926, Pearl was recruited to direct the Department of Health’s newly opened Grand Rapids branch. By the late 1920s, the branch had established a national reputation for its bacteriologic research.

Grace Eldering was born on 5 September 1900 in Montana. After graduating from high school, Grace attended the University of Montana for four semesters before money troubles caused her to drop out. She taught for four years, saving up enough money to return to the university and obtain a BSc, after which she returned to teaching. In 1928, Grace moved to Michigan to volunteer at the Department of Health, where she was promptly hired. She moved to join Pearl’s work in Grand Rapids in 1932. Grace earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1942.

Despite French researchers identifying the bacteria that caused whooping cough in 1906, and a number of vaccines having been developed to combat the disease, by 1931 the American Medical Association’s Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry had found “no evidence” of their value or efficacy. At that time whooping cough was killing an estimated 6,000 children each year in the US, with countless more deaths worldwide.

In 1932, a cluster of whooping cough cases broke out in Grand Rapids. Thus, Pearl and Grace began the whooping cough research project. They set to work improving the methods for growing the disease’s bacteria, inactivating it, and creating a safe vaccine.

Pearl and Grace performed carefully controlled animal studies of different vaccines, and conducted numerous sterility and safety tests, even self-injecting the vaccines to test their safety. The safe vaccines were then distributed to local doctors.

In designing and directing the first large-scale controlled clinical trial for the vaccine, Pearl and Grace sought community buy-in from a diverse coalition of local and state public health departments, citizens’ groups, women’s groups, parent–teacher associations, and a network of local nurses and doctors. When doctors told them about infections in the community, Pearl and Grace would go to visit the affected families. In a 1958 retrospective, Grace noted that “among the many who contributed to the success of the program were the parents and their children who accepted the requirements for test and control groups in the field trials… and laid a foundation in the community upon which other studies could be built.”

Through their research, Pearl and Grace were able to determine the correct period of self-isolation for whooping cough, to reduce infection within communities. Before these studies, mandated whooping cough quarantines varied from two to four weeks, but Grand Rapids adopted Pearl and Grace’s quarantine recommendations. Their recommendations required doctors to report the disease, the health department to place warning placards on affected homes, and the enforcement of a 35 day isolation period or, with 2 consecutive negative cough plates, release on day 28 after the onset of symptoms.

Pearl and Grace’s vaccine was being produced by the Michigan Department of Health by 1938, and distributed nationally by 1940. The American Academy of Paediatrics approved the vaccine for routine use in 1943. Prolonged and widespread vaccination saw a plummeting in the number and severity of cases and, by 1960, the number of whooping cough cases had dropped to 5% of those occurring in 1934.

WHAT CAN BE ACHIEVED

Loney Clinton was born in Arkansas in 1915, and earned her Bachelor’s degree in home economics and chemistry in 1939. Following college, she found a job working as a dietitian in an institution in Virginia, but was treated poorly. She later came to Grand Rapids to seek work, but was informed that “white male chefs would not want to take orders from a black female dietitian.”

Pearl and Grace’s research continued, and in 1944 they hired Loney as a chemist. Loney tested thousands of culture plates, leading to her finding the strain to make a better, more effective vaccine, and better ways of incubating the virus in the laboratory.

Despite their groundbreaking achievements, the women involved in the development of the whooping cough vaccine did not seek fame, which Grace described as “embarrassing.” When asked to write an encyclopaedia entry on whooping cough, Pearl elected not to include the names of its vaccine’s creators.

Over the course of their careers, Pearl and Grace published more than 60 articles in a wide variety of journals, including the American Journal of Public Health and the Journal of Infectious Diseases. The research group shared their vaccines, plates, cultures and research with scientists around the world, hosting international teams of scientists in their laboratory. Pearl travelled the world, often as a consultant for the World Health Organisation, helping to establish vaccine programs in eastern Europe and Central and South America.

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NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA

Nadia Murad Basee Taha was born in 1993 in the village of Kawjū, Sinjar District, Iraq, to a family of Yazīdī farmers. Nadia is a human rights activist, campaigning to rebuild communities in crisis and advocating globally for survivors of sexual violence.

a story like mine

As a child, Nadia dreamed of becoming a history teacher, or of opening a beauty salon in her village. She wanted to live near her family in Sinjar.

On 15 August 2014, Islamic State (IS) militants came to Nadia’s village and began to massacre the Yazīdīs living there. They murdered most of the men and older women, including Nadia’s six brothers and her mother, and swept their bodies into mass graves.

The younger women, including Nadia, were trafficked to Mosul and sold into sexual slavery. Nadia was raped, tortured and bartered for among militants for three months before escaping when a door was left unlocked. She fled into Kurdistan by posing as the wife of a Sunni man, who risked his own safety and that of his family’s to escort her out of IS territory to a refugee camp. There she was offered the opportunity to move to the German state of Baden-Württemberg under an emergency asylum programme set up in 2014 by Kurdish-German psychologist, Jan Ilhan Kizilhan.

In her memoirs, Nadia writes, “I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine.”

MY FIGHT

In late 2015, almost two years after her abduction, Nadia and other Yazīdī women were encouraged to address the UN Security Council by Kizilhan. She has since become a tireless advocate for the Yazīdī community and for victims of sexual violence in conflict zones.

In 2016, Nadia became the first UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking in order to draw attention to the suffering of the estimated 3,400 Yazīdī women and children still held captive by IS, and was awarded the Council of Europe Václav Havel Award for Human Rights and the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

In 2018, Nadia was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Dr Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynaecologist who specialises in the treatment of women who have been raped. Nadia was the second-youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate in history. The youngest ever was Malala Yousafzai, in 2014.

Nadia is now a member of France’s Gender Advisory Council, a role in which she calls on G7 states to adopt legislation protecting and promoting women’s rights. She and her charity, Nadia’s Initiative, have also been instrumental in two UN Security Council Resolutions: Resolution 2467, which expands the UN’s commitments to end sexual violence in conflict, and Resolution 2379, which established the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL.

I DO NOT SEEK MORE SYMPATHY

It is estimated that IS’ genocide included the enslavement of nearly 7,000 Yazīdīs and the displacement of more than 400,000 Yazīdīs to camps in northern Iraq. 350,000 Yazīdīs are estimated as still living in refugee camps, lacking adequate access to food, water, electricity, education, health care or opportunities for work.

In July 2019, several survivors of persecution based on religion or belief addressed the US’ second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. Nadia was among their number, and came with a five-point action plan to address the challenges faced by the Yazīdīs.

First, conflict over local governance must be resolved.

Second, Nadia emphasised the need to focus on ensuring the long-term stability of the region by investing in reconstruction and sustainable development initiatives, pointing out that without international funding targeted at development, stability in the region cannot be achieved.

Third, better integration of religious minorities must be made within Iraq’s security forces, to enable minorities to have a hand in their own security.

Fourth, justice must be served for the genocide the Yazīdīs have undergone.

Finally, it must be realised that by failing to assist the communities targeted for annihilation, we are complicit in their eradication.

You can learn more about Nadia’s work and the strength her advocacy requires on the websites for her charities, Nadia’s Initiative and the Global Fund for Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, from her memoir The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State and from Alexandria Bombach’s documentary On Her Shoulders.

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THE EQUALITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION’S APPROACH TO THE CORONAVIRUS

David Isaac CBE, the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has issued a letter sharing the Commission’s approach to ensuring a rights-based response is considered by state actors during the coronavirus pandemic.

While acknowledging a spectrum of equality implications from access to treatment and support for disabled people to the “real anxiety” of those unable to follow their religious funereal traditions, and paying heed to the impact on human rights of the emergency legislation passed in recent weeks, the letter also expresses wholehearted support for the role of government in acting to protect the lives of it citizens.

The letter notes that even in times of challenge, “human rights and equality law provide a framework to help governments make decisions to balance public safety and economic interests with the universal values of freedom, respect and fairness.” As the emergency measures continue, the EHRC will look to monitor developments, work with governments and local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales, and ensure the fulfilment of equality and human rights duties.

The letter ends on an appeal to conciliation, claiming that acting through a human rights and equality law framework will “help the whole country get through the major challenges it faces and allow us to emerge stronger and more united” and to “overcome very recent divisions in our society.”

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OLIVE ELAINE MORRIS

Olive Elaine Morris was a community leader and activist in the 1970s. She campaigned for access to education and housing rights and fought against state and police oppression.

AN INDELIBLE, IF ANONYMOUS, MARK

Olive was born on 26 June 1952 in Harewood, St Catherine’s, Jamaica, to Doris and Vincent Nathaniel Morris. After her parents left Jamaica for London, she lived with her maternal grandmother until she was nine, when she and her brother Basil joined their parents in Lavender Hill.

Olive attended local state schools, before dropping out at 15 to focus her efforts on the civil rights movement.

STRUGGLE IN THIS COUNTRY

In 1968 Olive became a part of the British Black Panther Movement, of which she would become a core member. Along with others from the Movement, in 1974 she set up the Brixton Black Women’s Group, the first network for women of colour in Britain. The Group sought to address the specific issues faced by black women, and to offer solidarity and advice to those in difficulty.

On 15 November 1969, Olive was hanging out with friends at a record store. Outside, Nigerian diplomat Clement Gomwalk, was confronted by police, who falsely believed that he was driving a stolen car. At the time, “sus” laws enabled police to stop and search people solely on the suspicion of wrongdoing. Then, as now with stop and search powers, people of colour were disproportionately the target of such searches. Seeing the police begin to beat Gomwalk, Olive intervened. She was assaulted and racially abused by the police, and arrested. She was strip searched and threatened with rape while in police custody, and was ultimately fined £10 and given a three-month suspended sentence.

Among the numerous demonstrations Morris organised was a protest outside local council offices in 1972, campaigning for safer heating in social housing after two children had died in a fire started when their portable heater was knocked over. Knowing that police threats to arrest the protestors would not apply to children, Olive sent the youngest demonstrators into the council offices. Minutes later, the head of the housing department agreed to look into the matter. Central heating was soon installed.

Olive began squatting in underused buildings in 1972. She and her friend Elizabeth Obi established a squat at 121 Railton Road in 1973, which became an organising centre for community groups and the home of a black community bookshop. 121 Railton Road remained a squatted social centre until it was closed in 1999, making it one of the longest running squats in British history.

Olive was offered a scholarship to study economics and sociology at Manchester University, despite not having any formal qualifications, in 1975. While she was studying, Olive became involved in the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative and the Black Women’s Mutual Aid Group and helped to establish a supplementary school after campaigning with local black parents for better education provision for their children.

After graduating in 1978, Olive and her friend Stella Dadzie founded the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent. The Organisation would go on to become a force throughout London, mobilising women of colour to challenge inequalities and state oppression, particularly in housing and education.

Olive travelled widely, including a visit to China as part of a student delegation. She left impressed with what Chinese socialism had accomplished, which she attributed to the role of the people in building societal structures. She also travelled to Morocco, Algeria, Spain, France, and Hong Kong. 

IN FACT, SHE TOOK THE LEAD

Olive died on 12 July 1979 in St Thomas’ Hospital, after falling ill with non-Hodgkin lymphoma the previous year. She was 27.

In 1986, Lambeth Council renamed 18 Brixton Hill the Olive Morris House following a campaign by the Brixton Black Women’s Group.

The Remembering Olive Collective was established in 2008 to preserve information about Olive’s life, and in 2015 Olive became a face of the Brixton Pound, a currency designed to support businesses local to South London.

There are currently plans to demolish the Olive Morris House as part of Lambeth’s New Town Hall development. Following the reformation of the Remembering Olive Collective as the ROC 2.0 in 2019, there is now a campaign to ensure the planned demolition of the building does not equate to the erasure of Olive’s legacy in the borough. There are plans to lay a cornerstone memorialising Olive, and to set up the Olive Morris Memorial Award for young activists. You can read more about the ROC 2.0, and ways to support them, here.

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BARONESS JANE CAMPBELL

On 24 March 2020, the Department for Work and Pensions published its latest figures on disability and employment, showing a disability employment rate gap, the percentage point difference between the proportion of disabled and non-disabled people in employment, of 28.1%. For comparison, the last published gender employment rate gap was 8.2%.

These figures accompany a growing realisation of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic could have on disabled people. The Women and Equalities Committee has already set up an inquiry on the unequal effects of the pandemic on those with protected characteristics. On 7 April 2020, an open letter calling for equal treatment was published, entitled COVID-19 and the rights of disabled people. The letter now has over 1800 disability groups, disabled individuals and allies as signatories. Top of the list of those signatories is Baroness Jane Susan Campbell of Surbiton, DBE.

I LOVE IDEAS

Jane was born on 19 April 1959. She was initially, as with most disabled children in England at the time, sent to a segregated school, where academics were not prioritised. At 16, and with no qualifications, she joined Hereward College. In just three years there, Jane had caught up and gained sufficient O- and A-levels to secure a place at Hatfield Polytechnic where she went on to secure a BA in political sciences. She then went on to achieve a Master’s from the University of Sussex, writing her dissertation on Sylvia Pankhurst.

I’M AMBITIOUS

Jane’s activism was initially inspired at a disability rights conference, at which she listened to a speech by Vic Finkelstein, the South African political activist and campaigner. He encouraged disabled people to rise up and demand the human right to be a part of society. From that day on, Jane became a radical disability activist, fighting for equality of access and equality of treatment.

This activism saw Jane, along with other activists, blocking Westminster Bridge Road with her wheelchair, and helped to bring about the ground breaking Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act 1996, which gave people more control and choice over their support. In 1996 she co-authored Disability Politics: Understanding our Past, Changing our Future.

Jane has held numerous positions fighting for rights equality. To list a few of the entries on her impressive CV: between 1991 and 1995, she was co-chair of the British Council of Disabled People; from 1996 to 2012, she was a co-director and then trustee of the National Centre for Independent Living, which she co-founded; between 2000 and 2007, she was commissioner of the Disability Rights Commission; and, from 2001 to 2005, she served as executive chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, an appointment by the Minister for Social Care.

In her position as a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, Jane has been vocal about the effects of austerity on disabled people, and is credited with quashing an amendment to the then Coroners and Justice Bill which would have granted those accompanying people going abroad for assisted suicide immunity from prosecution.

I LOVE LIFE

Jane continues to liaise with all those legislating on rights for equality, making sure marginalised voices are heard.

If you’d like to sign the open letter COVID-19 and the rights of disabled people, you can do so here.

If you’d like to learn more about the disability rights movement further afield, I can highly recommend the Netflix documentary Crip Camp, which documents a group of disability rights activists in the US.

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PROFESSOR DOROTHY CROWFOOT HODGKIN

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was a pioneering British chemist, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1964 for the determination of the structures of penicillin and vitamin B12.

THERE WAS MAGIC ABOUT HER PERSON

Dorothy was born in Cairo on 12 May 1910, to parents involved in the colonial administration of countries in North Africa and the Middle East. Although she was sent to a local school in England under the charge of her grandparents, it was her mother who encouraged her love of science. For Dorothy’s sixteenth birthday, her mother gave her a book on crystallography, the specialism she would go on to develop. When later asked to name her heroes, she would cite the medical missionary Mary Slessor, Margery Fry, the Principal of Somerville College, and, above all others, her mother.

Dorothy fought to be allowed to study science with another girl at the school, and in 1928 was awarded a place to read chemistry at Somerville College, one of the first two women’s colleges in Oxford. Having not studied the Latin required for the Oxbridge entrance exam, her headmaster privately tutored her.

In 1932, Dorothy graduated with a first-class degree from Oxford, the third woman to ever do so.

a brilliant mind and an iron will to succeed

After her graduation, Dorothy moved to Cambridge to undertake doctoral research on pepsin. She returned to Somerville College in 1934 and remained there until her retirement in 1977. After establishing an X-ray laboratory in the Natural History Museum, she began work on determining the structure of insulin.

In 1939, she was asked to solve the structure of penicillin by the Australian pathologist Howard Florey. By 1945 she had succeeded in describing in three dimensions the arrangement of its atoms, which led to her election to the Royal Society in 1947. She went on to discover the structure of vitamin B12 in the mid-1950s, leading to her election in 1960 as the first Wolfson Research Professor of the Royal Society.

Dorothy finally won the Nobel Prize in 1964 for her work on penicillin and vitamin B12, after being nominated multiple times. The following year she was made a member of the Order of Merit, Britain’s highest honour for achievement in science, the arts and public life. She was the second woman to do so, preceded only by Florence Nightingale.

In 1969, she finally cracked the structure of insulin, 34 years after she had taken her first X-ray image.

SHE RADIATED LOVE

Dorothy devoted much of her life to encouraging and supporting the work of scientists in developing countries. She had acquired from her mother a concern for social inequalities, and developed a particular concern for the threat of nuclear war. In 1976, she became president of the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, stepping down in 1988, the year after the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty imposed a global ban on short- and long-range nuclear weapons systems.

Dorothy retired from public life in 1988, although she made it to the 1993 International Union of Crystallography Congress in Beijing, aged 83. Dorothy died on 29 July 1994.

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GABBY EDLIN

Everyone deserves a bloody good period

Gabby Edlin is the founder and CEO of Bloody Good Period, an organisation supplying asylum seeker drop-in centres with menstrual products.

No doubt you are already reaching deep into your cavernous pockets to fetch your card and donate to this incredible lady’s organisation, which you can do RIGHT HERE.

Back to the blog!

together, we can eliminate period poverty

In 2016, Gabby began volunteering at a drop-in centre for asylum seekers and refugees. After reading a Maya Oppenheim article on period poverty among women experiencing homelessness, Gabby raised the issue of sanitary products in the centre. She learnt that menstrual products, a necessity for half of the population on a monthly basis, were classed as “emergency” items, to be given out only to those who really needed them.

Recognising that all menstruating people really need menstrual products, Gabby began asking friends to donate sanitary products for her to take to the centre on Facebook. This was the beginning of Bloody Good Period.

WHAT IS PERIOD POVERTY?

In May this year, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty described poverty in the UK as “systematic” and “tragic”. The report showed a fifth of the UK’s population, some 14 million people, living in poverty, with 1.5 million people experiencing “destitution”, meaning that they had less than £10 a day after housing costs, or that they had to go without at least two essentials such as shelter, food, heat, light, clothing or toiletries during a one-month period.

Period poverty refers to having a lack of access to sanitary products due to financial constraints. Surveys have found that somewhere between one in four to one in 10 women and girls in the UK have experienced period poverty, with one survey finding that over a quarter of those experiencing period poverty had missed school or work as a result.

While period poverty can affect women of any background, certain groups are more likely to be affected. These include women experiencing homelessness, asylum seekers and refugees.

A SUSTAINABLE FLOW
OF MENSTRUAL PROTECTION FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T AFFORD IT

Bloody Good Period now supplies 25 asylum seeker drop-in centres based in London and Leeds. The organisation also directs regional collections to other food banks and centres in the UK. To anyone coming to one of their drop-ins, their products are available to take away without without judgement, prejudice or charge. Bloody Good Period is also cognisant of temporary intensive relief efforts, supply around 1500 packs of pads to survivors of the Grenfell fire disaster in June 2017.

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CPS ANNOUNCES TEN CONVICTIONS FOR NEW UPSKIRTING OFFENCES

Ten men were convicted of 16 upskirting offences in 2019, with three of the offenders jailed for taking pictures up women’s skirts.

The CPS revealed the first set of convictions under the new law this week, brought into force when the Voyeurism (Offences) Act 2019 amended the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in September. Before the law was passed, victims and prosecutors in England and Wales were only able to pursue offences of outraging public decency or voyeurism.

The new laws came about due to tireless campaigning spearheaded by Gina Martin, who was the victim of upskirting at a music festival.

On reporting the incident, Martin learned that upskirting was not a specific offence, and the case was closed. A few days later she wrote about what had happened on Facebook. Her post went viral with other women sharing similar experiences. Martin was also subject to vitriolic and misogynistic online abuse throughout.

The campaign was picked up by Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, who brought a private members’ bill backing the creation of an upskirting offence. Progress was initially blocked by Tory MP Christopher Chope who objected to the bill. However, Martin’s campaign secured government backing on 15 July 2018 and the Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill was put before Parliament days later. The new legislation was approved in the House of Lords and passed the formality of Royal Assent to become law.

The new offences apply in instances where:

  • without consent or reasonable belief in consent, a person takes pictures beneath another person’s clothing with the intention of observing their genitals or buttocks, whether covered or uncovered by underwear, or the underwear itself; and
  • that person has a motive of either gaining sexual gratification for herself or another or causing humiliation, alarm or distress to the victim.

Upskirting was already an offence in Scotland, but is still not a specific offence in Northern Ireland.

Siobhan Blake, CPS national lead for sexual offence prosecutions, said of the figures: “The fact women are being violated in this way while shopping or going about their daily business is appalling… I would like to pay tribute to the vigilance of the victims and witnesses – many of them store security guards – who refused to let this conduct go unchallenged.”

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MYRA BRADWELL

Myra Bradwell (née Colby) was born in the US state of Vermont on 12 February 1831. 

In 1873 the US Supreme Court sat for the case of Bradwell v. State of Illinoisin which Myra challenged Illinois’s refusal four years prior to grant her a licence to practice law on the basis of her sex.

Although her application was refused, in 1890 the Illinois Supreme Court granted Myra a law licence with the US Supreme Court following suit in 1892. As both courts granted the licence as of the date of her original application, Myra is known as the first woman lawyer in the state of Illinois and the first woman to be admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court.

THE ABILITY AND POWER OF THE LITTLE WOMAN

As for many girls at the time, Myra’s formal schooling consisted of literature and the arts, with an emphasis on training girls for their expected roles as wives and mothers.

While working as a teacher at the seminary in which she finished her schooling, Myra met a young James Bradwell. Born into a family of poor English immigrants, James financed his education by doing manual labour. The Colby family did not approve of him as a suitor for their daughter, and when the couple eloped Myra’s brother pursued them with a shotgun in an attempt to stop the marriage. Nevertheless, they were married in Chicago on 18 May 1952. 

In 1854 the Bradwells settled in Chicago, Illinois, where James completed his legal studies. In 1855, he was admitted to the Illinois bar and in time became a Cook County judge and a state legislator.

IT WOULD SEEM TO BE A NOVEL ENTERPRISE FOR A LADY

On 3 October 1868, Myra began publishing the Chicago Legal News. In its maiden edition Myra wrote,

“[in] presenting to the public the Chicago Legal News, we offer no apology and make no promises, except to say that we shall do all we can to make it a paper that every lawyer and business man in the north-west ought to take.”

The publication of the paper caused a stir, with the Chicago Sunday Times noting that, “it would seem a novel enterprise for a lady.” However, the paper soon gained in popularity and success, with the American Law Review observing in 1894 that, “[p]ractical newspapermen and prominent lawyers at once predicted its failure, but they underestimated the ability and power of the little woman.”

At the paper’s inception a legal doctrine known as coverture was still in force whereby, upon marriage, a woman’s legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband. Coverture prevented married women from owning property or making contracts in her own name. With her husband’s notoriety and the family’s influence within the legislature, approval was secured for Myra to act as president of the Chicago Legal News Publishing Company without the usual legal disabilities that accompanied married women’s attempts to enter business.

The “little woman” made sure that the publication was indispensable to every lawyer in Illinois, and eventually the nation. The statutes printed in the Chicago Legal News were valid as evidence in court, making a subscription to the publication an essential tool for lawyers. 

In the great Chicago fire of 1871, Myra had the presence of mind to save the subscription book for the newspaper. Myra solicited advertisements from legal book publishers, recognising that lawyers in Chicago would have to replace their law libraries. In addition, Myra printed and sold back copies of the Chicago Legal News to replace those that were lost in the fire, and the Illinois legislature designated the Chicago Legal News as the official publisher of all legal records lost in the fire.

Legal news was not the only component of the newspaper. Myra used the paper to advocate many social and legal reforms and women’s issues, particularly in her weekly column “The Law Relating to Women”. 

THE DISABILITY IMPOSED BY YOUR MARRIED CONDITION

Before she began the Chicago Legal News Myra had been studying law for several years. At the time the study of law could be undertaken at a law school or under the supervision of a practicing attorney. As a woman Myra was prohibited from attending law school, so she read law with James. 

In 1869, at 38 years old, Myra passed the Illinois bar exam with high honours and applied to practice law in Illinois. Myra submitted to the Illinois Supreme Court a certificate of qualification signed by a circuit judge and a state’s attorney. 

On 7 October 1869, Myra received a written reply from the court reporter in which her application was denied due to the “disability imposed by your married condition”. Until the legislature removed Myra’s coverture declared marital disability, the court regarded itself powerless to grant her application. 

In Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 130 (1873), Bradwell appealed to the United States Supreme Court, claiming that refusing to admit her to the bar on the basis of her sex violated her 14th Amendment rights.

In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court rejected Myra’s application. In his concurring opinion, Justice Bradley referred only to “the law of the creator” as interpreted by the “founders of the common law”: 

The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of civil society must be adapted to the general constitution of things, and things cannot be based upon exceptional cases.

Myra never again requested entry into the Illinois bar.

THE LAW RELATING TO WOMEN

Myra was also heavily involved in the women’s suffrage movement, with her audience of lawyers, judges, and lawmakers giving her enormous influence as a women’s rights advocate. It is possible that Myra has been ignored as a leader of the suffrage movement because of her differences with Susan B Anthony of the National Women’s Suffrage Association, the movement’s leading historical figure. 

The rift with Anthony occurred over a disagreement about supporting the 14th and 15th Amendments. Anthony did not support the Amendments that gave black people the right to vote because she felt the amendment should also have included women. Myra and other suffragists disagreed and urged a break with Anthony. They formed a second women’s suffrage organisation, the American Women’s Suffrage Association. Both Myra and James served on the Association’s legislative committee.

Myra also used her considerable influence and drafting skill to further the cause of women’s rights. For example, in 1873, Myra drafted a bill that James introduced to the Illinois legislature giving women the right to run for office in the Illinois public school system. The bill passed, allowing women to be elected to an office for which they themselves could not vote. James and Myra also ushered legislation through the state legislature allowing women to become notaries public, to keep their own earnings and giving women equal rights to the custody of their children. 

In 1890, upon a request from James, the Illinois Supreme Court admitted Myra to the bar without a reapplication. The court recognised her status retroactively to the date of her initial 1869 application, making her the first woman to be admitted to the Illinois state bar. In 1892, she became the first woman admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court. 

Myra died on 14 February 1894. Myra took great pride in the fact that her work made it possible for other women to enter the legal profession. Her own daughter, Bessie Bradwell Helmer, became a practicing attorney in 1882. After Myra’s death, her daughter continued her mother’s legacy and took over the running of the Chicago Legal News.

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“THE COURTS ARE NOT CONCERNED AT ALL WITH THE MERITS OF LEAVING OR REMAINING IN THE EU”: JUDICIAL REVIEW OF DECISION TO TRIGGER ARTICLE 50 REJECTED

In a judgment handed down on Monday the Court of Appeal rejected an appeal for permission to judicially review the prime minister’s decision to notify the European Union of the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU, as well as the notification itself.

BACKGROUND

On 13 August 2018, four applicants issued a claim for judicial review. The applicants sought orders quashing the prime minister’s decision to serve the article 50 notification, and the notification itself.

Susan Wilson, the lead applicant, is the chair of Bremain in Spain, a pressure group campaigning for the rights of British expats and a second referendum on Brexit.

On 21 September 2018, Supperstone J refused permission to proceed. The applicants sought reconsideration of that decision at an oral hearing, which Ouseley J heard on 7 December, delivering his judgment on 10 December 2018 and refusing the application. In Wilson and others v R (on the application of ) v the Prime Minister [2019] EWCA Civ 304 the applicants appealed against Ouseley J’s decision.

APPLICATION

The applicants claimed that the prime minister’s decision to notify the EU of the UK’s intention to leave the trading bloc was unlawful. This claim was premised on the contention that the decision and subsequent notification were based on the result of a referendum that was itself unlawful as a result of corrupt and illegal practices, notably offences of overspending committed by those involved in the campaign to leave the EU.

JUDGMENT

While acknowledging that some bodies and individuals involved in the referendum campaign breached campaign financing requirements, the Court found that these breaches did not mean that the referendum result was “procured by fraud”.

Giving judgment for the Court, Hickinbottom LJ held that:

[T]here is simply no evidential basis for the proposition that the breaches, or any of them, are material in the sense that, had they not occurred, the result of the referendum would have been different.

Aware of the precarious position the Court occupied, he went on to say that:

[F]or the court to declare void the decision to notify withdrawal or the notification itself would clearly be a constitutionally inappropriate and unlawful interference in the due democratic process.

The Court considered that the applicants had no real prospect of success on the merits of the claim, and for these reasons the Court refused the applicants permission to proceed with the appeal.

HOUSE OF COMMONS COMMITTEE CHAIRS ISSUE STATEMENT ON CORONAVIRUS AND THE CONTINUATION OF THE HOUSE

The Chairs of the Administration Committee and the Procedure Committee of the House of Commons have issued a statement announcing temporary measures attempting to guarantee the continuation of the House during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The measures will be subject to “regular review”, and are to be made in line with developing public health guidance and official advice on social distancing and self-isolation.

The statement ends on a note of humility, indicating that this experience may show areas in which procedures and services to MPs and the public can be improved when we return to normal life.

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