Welcome. This website comprises mostly Hilary's sociological papers and articles about patriarchy, (gendered) harmful practices (e.g. female genital mutilation / FGM) and thoughts on science, health, environmental issues, sociological analysis, social policy and good practice.
HS2: A Necessary Challenge To Which We Must Rise
Current debate about high speed rail in the UK [HS2] is marked by commentary talking across those of differing opinions. Little wider acknowledgement has to date been made of the fact that big changes will happen over decades to come, whether or not they’re managed. Stasis is not an option. Energy, demography and inequality are all part of the mix. What follows is a letter from me on HS2 and the triple bottom line, published in The Guardian on 30 October 2013:
Dr Karen Ellison is a physician and lawyer, whose thesis, just published, asks: Female Genital Mutilation – Can the Law Protect Our Children?
Dr Ellison concludes that
‘… the law in the UK including its signatory to the many human rights declarations, has the ability to protect children but is failing our children. This is to a large extent due to the lack of cohesion between law and what happens on the ground.‘
Given the current debate about approaches to eradicating FGM, the views of an experienced UK-based practitioner qualified in both medicine and law are singularly important.
I invite you to read them here.
Fighting Female Genital Mutilation With Our Keyboards: The Feminist Statement On FGM Is Launched Today
Today a small group of women, me included, launched our Feminist Statement On Female Genital Mutilation. We hope many people around the world will choose to support us by putting their names also to this Statement against this Mutilation – for such it is.
The basic premise of our Statement is this:
Patriarchal oppression is the bedrock of female genital mutilation (FGM) and related harmful traditional practices….. Female genital mutilation (FGM) in all its forms is cruelty and abuse.
Please add your support:
FGM abolitionists internationally: Support the Feminist Statement on Female Genital Mutilation … and (for the UK) …
UK Government: Enforce the UK law which forbids FGM (Female Genital so-called ‘Cutting’)
Needed Right Now: A ‘Keep Safe’ Phone-Line To Stop Female Genital Mutilation in Britain
Female genital mutilation is an abhorrence, yet little to stop it has been done even in countries like Britain. With the summer ‘cutting season’ upon us, there is an urgent need to move beyond moralising, to finding real, practical ways to eradicate FGM. One approach would be to have a single-number national phone-line, co-ordinated to cover all aspects of FGM and similar abuse, as the first point of call for everyone whether concerned professionals or neighbours, family friends and neighbours, and even (older) children themselves.
Since this article was written the NSPCC have introduced a free FGM hotline which can be used by anyone, anonymously or by name as preferred:
0800 028 3550, or email fgmhelp@nspcc.org.uk
FGM: When The Deeply Personal Is Fundamentally Political
This post, first published in the Morning Star, is in response to the Prime Minister’s announcement on International Women’s Day 2013 that the UK will donate £35 million towards the United Nation’s work (research and delivery) on eliminating female genital mutilation.
Political and policy aspects of this commitment are examined, along with some suggestions about how the issue can be brought into focus in Britain, where top-level formal responses to FGM until now have been very slow.
To some it may seem heartless, but surely it’s obvious: If we really, seriously want to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM) we have to move beyond the moralising – essential as it is – and follow the money. And we must understand the market. Yes, female genital mutilation is irreducibly a moral and cultural issue. But, absolutely correctly, no modern western state can leverage, or justify, much in the way of legally imposed moral and cultural determinism.
Culture change on its own is difficult. It’s money which talks.
The Sande Society, Sororities, Sex Education And Female Genital Mutilation: Why PSHE Is So Important
Today is One Billion Rising Day, celebrated in many ways across the world and in the UK marked by a Parliamentary debate about violence against women and girls, and the need for Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) curriculum. One objective of that debate is to gain agreement from the UK Coalition Government that all children will be given age-appropriate Sex and Relationship Education (SRE), so they know how to protect themselves, and also understand which behaviours are acceptable, and which are not….
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a cruel legacy of patriarchal societies and traditions stretching back millennia. Yet still it occurs, even in Britain and the developed world: in the UK over 20,000 girls are at high risk or victims annually. So to mark today, 6 February – the tenth annual International Zero Tolerance to FGM Day – I have created a NoFGM Page for this website. I also attach below (draft) model resolution-proposals which you may like to consider and/or adapt to take forward in your own organisations.
FGM Is Child Abuse – But UK Perpetrators Go Free
Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman shares her impressions of ‘traditional feminism’: we should concentrate on the big stuff like ‘pay inequality, female circumcision in the Third World, and domestic abuse’ – all, she affirms, ‘pressing and disgusting and wrong’, but she insists that the day-to-day problems of woman kind are just as deleterious to peace of mind. By such a yardstick the growing awareness that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a gross reality in Britain, in 2013, is a tragic and shocking double whammy.
What Is Female Genital Mutilation? Why Does It Occur? What Are Its Health And Wellbeing Impacts?
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is an horrific act, agreed by all the major global humanitarian and legal organisations, and by many nations, to be a gross violation of human rights.
FGM is a grim manifestation, along with ‘honour’ killings, breast ironing, beading (sanctioned child rape by young warriors) and other harmful traditional practices inflicted on women and girls, of patriarchy incarnate.
But still FGM continues, perpetrated on some three million small girls and young women every year, often under barbaric conditions.
What follows is a description and examination of ‘explanations’ of this act. Possible consequences for those who have undergone FGM are also listed.
If you are seeking a more detailed, referenced discussion of FGM, you may like to read this updated (2016) post Female Genital Mutilation: An Introduction To The Issues, And Suggested Reading and see my two books on this subject:
* Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: A UK Perspective (Hilary Burrage, Ashgate / Routledge 2015). Contents and reviews here.
* FEMALE MUTILATION: The truth behind the horrifying global practice of female genital mutilation (Hilary Burrage, New Holland Publishers 2016). Contents and reviews here.For a general introduction to FGM please continue reading here….
NB: The ** material below is very distressing**, but knowledge of FGM is essential to eradicating the practice.
Call The Midwife: It’s More Than ‘Just’ Clinical Care
The service provided by a midwife is uniquely significant, intimate and daunting: to attend to women and babies at their most dependent and vulnerable. The choice of another episode of Call The Midwife for BBC One prime time viewing on Christmas Night this year (2012) perhaps therefore reveals a new seriousness underlying perennial requirements to entertain. Is there a fear that current UK health service changes mean something we have come to value, but is unnamed and unacknowledged, will be lost?
The Momentum Increases: Leveson On Human Rights And The UN’s FGM Announcement, All Within A Week
It’s has been quite a week on the human rights front for big news, both national and – has anyone noticed? – international. Not often do we see massive steps towards gender equality coming thick and fast; but that’s what’s happening now. In the UK, Lord Justice Leveson’s Report has brought a very bright light to shine on issues such as the objectification of women by the media; whilst at the United Nations we have at last seen the historic achievement of consensus on the total unacceptability of female genital mutilation (FGM).
The UK Can Learn From France On Female Genital Mutilation Prosecutions
My previous post on the inertia of the UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over the years concerning female genital mutilation (FGM), and their new Action Plan published this week, has resulted in our being sent some extremely helpful information.
Linda Weil-Curiel, the steadfast lawyer who has been securing convictions again FGM perpetrators in France, has written to me and has kindly agreed I may quote her as follows:
The Crown Prosecution Service Finally Responds To The Horrors Of Female Genital Mutilation In The UK
In early October 2012 I responded to a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) consultation on revisions to the Code for Crown Prosecutors – i.e. the criteria by which prosecutions are brought. My response, focused solely on the absence so far of even one successful prosecution for female genital mutilation in the UK, follows below. Some 24,000 British girls are thought to be at risk of this horrific ‘procedure’ every year, so the new CPS Action Plan published today is not before time.
Cynical Silo Thinking Is Not Policy For The Green Challenges Ahead
This week we learned that the UK Coalition Government wants to deregulate farm workers’ wages, permit support allowances for only two children in any family, and lower ‘subsidy’ (? really, investment) levels for green power plants.
It’s commonplace that the Coalition abandoned intentions to be the greenest government ever many moons ago. It seems however that they have also now jettisoned any intention even to give a nod to the serious greening agenda.
Female Genital Mutilation Is Child Abuse Too; So Why NO Enquiries About Ignoring It?
In May this year an e-petition demanding an end to female genital mutilation (FGM) in Britain was submitted to the UK Government website. I was lead author of that petition, which can be viewed here.
Well over 20,000, perhaps 25,000, under-age British girls are thought to be subjected to, or at serious risk of, FGM every year, so we might expect that a petition seeking to stop it would be accepted by the Government, as encouragement to action and greater awareness.
The political conference season is one point in the year when it’s quite reasonable to feel confused. So many claims and so much talk; but with what real effect, for whom?
Perhaps though we can learn more about politicians and their parties than we first imagine, if we ask a few questions about the phrases they regularly trot out as they make their speeches and pronouncements to the faithful and the nation.
The Problem Isn’t Badgers, It’s (Politically Led?) Bad Science
Animal and land husbandry are rich with examples of how scientific research doesn’t always mix easily with politics.
Extraordinary intervention excepted, we are about to see the hugely controversial beginning of massive badger culls authorised by DEFRA to in an attempt to eradicate Bovine (cattle) TB – aka bTB – across parts of the English countryside which some see as our enduring, unchanging birthright, where contented cows, cosy badger setts and comfortable farmers all happily co-exist….
A similar version of this post has also been published in The Huffington Post.
Female Genital Mutilation: Why Does This ‘Holiday’ Horror Endure?
‘Summer Holidays are for Fun not Pain’ declared the (London) Metropolitan Police Force as school broke up for the Summer 2012 break. A strange thing to remind us, we might think; everyone knows the Summer Hols are for fun. But then perhaps we recall that hundreds, if not thousands, of young British girls are forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) during that long break when school is out. Hence the message of the Met’s London Safeguarding Children Board…..
This paper is a more detailed version of a post with the same title published by the Huffington Post.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), Britain’s Foremost Black Classical Composer: The Centenary Legacy
Just a few days after this year’s Slavery Remembrance Day, on 23 August, we mark also the centenary legacy of the black British music composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who died one hundred years ago, on 1 September 1912.
What follows is a version of the article which, as Executive Chair of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation, I posted on the Huffington Post UK website to acknowledge this significant milestone.
Hilary Burrage 