Women struggle to pay off student debt whilst men prosper

It was reported yesterday in The Guardian that women take five years longer than men do to repay student loans.

Obviously this is largely down to the unfair pay gap between men and women's salaries.

However the report also puts it down to 'women taking time out to look after children'- perpetuating yet again the belief that all women are ready to drop their careers any second to have a baby and become chained to their homes looking after it. More likely this assumption means that they do not get promoted to higher paid jobs because they are judged not as reliable in career terms as men.

Just as I was getting worked up I read Kat Stark's comments, who is a women's officer at the National Union of Student's. She said:

"Women are taking longer to pay off their student loans because they are paid less, not because they are taking time off to have children. Within three years of graduating, over 40% of men are earning over £25,000, compared to just over a quarter of women. The pay gap is not a new problem - the government knew when it introduced the tuition fees that female graduates would end up saddled with debt to a worse extent to men...the government should consider whether they wish to perpetuate this injustice."

Thank god someone is talking sense. Although undoubtedly many women do take time off work to have children, others choose not to. As Stark suggests, the main reason women are paying off debt later, is because they are paid less, full stop. Not because every woman gives up her career to have children, this is a smokescreen to hide the fact that women are paid less than men.

Women fight back against unfair pay, but who really wins?

On the front page of The Guardian yesterday it was reported that councils face a £2.8 billion bill in back pay to women who have been systematically underpaid in their jobs over the years.

Apparently "no-win-no-fee" lawyers taking on such cases are only causing the cost of the bill to escalate. The case of care worker manager Rosaline Wilson is highlighted in the article.

Rosaline was only paid £6.50 an hour,a measly 50p more than the staff she managed and was awarded £32,000 by the courts when a "no-win-no-fee" lawyer took on her case. The council had offered an out-of-court settlement worth only £13,000.

Whilst she hailed the lawyer, who took £14,000 of her damages, as a hero, unions and authorities warn that such lawyers are threatening to mess up equal pay deals for all other underpaid women.


So who really wins?

Whilst a few women like Rosaline appear to gain some kind of justice back against patriarchal society's legacy of valuing men over women - its the lawyers who really seem to be cashing in.

As such lawyers have realised, undervalued and underpaid women have now become another kind of commodity, one that can be exploited as usual for financial gain but this time under the guise of 'helping women in their struggle for equality.'

Disgusting as that may be, who can really blame women like Rosaline for fighting back against a cultural bias we all know to be unjust?

The sad fact is that the long term prospects in woman's fight for equal pay may be hindered by this "no-win-no-fee" craze.

What will be left for women after the government have had to pay out billions to opportunistic lawyers? And how will it effect women's pay prospects in the future?

Healer or Fraudster?

I went to interview a Reiki 'master' today for an article I'm planning to write about the health and relaxation benefits of the treatment.

Elaine, an OAP who has been practising Reiki for 12 years, has a full list of clients and pupils and does an immense amount of charity work. She even teaches Reiki to people all over the world - she is going to Bosnia for the third time in January to spread the Reiki message.

However, I cannot help feeling dubious as I arrive in her cluttered, homely living room, stuffed with shelves of books and lacking in a TV. I settle myself on the sofa.

I spend almost an hour listening to her incredible stories of miraculous healing - and I mean that in the 'that's impossible' sense.

First, Elaine tells me about how she sent long distance healing to a woman in hospital with peritonitis whose organs had shut down. Three days later she was home and fully recovered - Elaine swears it was down to the Reiki "what else could it have been?" she says.

Another boy she gave long distance healing to had an 9lb cancerous tumor removed from his chest and after the operation needed no pain relief at all due to the Reiki. Elaine says : "he just knew it was the Reiki we were sending him that cured him."

Elaine has also healed a man who had a hip replacement and was able to walk again after 6 weeks instead of 3 months thanks to Reiki, and practices it on a 73 yr old man with prostate cancer who apparently cannot cope without it. The man is in agony and his wife drives him the hour long distance for the sessions each week.

Elaine tells me she also performs Reiki on a breast cancer patients chemotherapy before it is injected into her.

Now, I'm not a believer in things like this, in spiritual healing, ghosts, acupuncture or even God.

I have an aunt receiving chemotherapy and herceptin treatment for breast cancer at the moment, she is ill with side effects and is having daily immune boosting injections to keep her out of hospital over Christmas. She was told by another cancer patient that Reiki was useful in dealing with the symptoms.
When she told me this it made me angry to think that people are making money out of others desperation and hope in the face of serious illnesses.

Elaine herself claims to have been told that she needed a kidney transplant in 1976. She still has not had the operation and has taken herself off of all the medication thanks to Reiki.

I ask Elaine about the scientific criticisms of Reiki and suggest that any benefits are down to a placebo effect. "Does it matter?," she replies "I don't think it is a placebo effect anyway, but does it matter? if it works don't knock it"

Well actually, yes, it does matter. I voice my concerns to Elaine that people may turn to Reiki in favour of proper medical treatment, and isn't this dangerous?

"I have never told anyone to stop medical treatment," Elaine tells me.

Hmmm, I am even more dubious now and maybe Elaine can tell as she then offers me a trial. Curious, I agree and hoist myself up onto her healing couch. "Now, you may not feel anything, but it doesn't mean it hasn't worked," she tells me before we begin.

I lie there staring at her patterned ceiling for nearly an hour, listening to the soothing music she has put on and smelling the incense she has lit. I wait for something to happen.

My eyes go funny from staring at the ceiling for so long whilst she hovers her hands above my head. Half way through she moves to my feet and grabs hold of my ankles. I bite my tongue to stop myself from laughing.

She then stands up and frantically moves her hovering hands up and down in the air above where I'm lying, shaking what ever it is she imagines is on them, onto the floor. Then, dusting off her hands she tells me we are finished.

I don't quite know what to say. "I can see why people might use it as a relaxation technique" I tell her. Because actually it was quite relaxing lying down for a while and the couch was really comfy.

That's about the only way I'd recommend Reiki, as a relaxation technique. I certainly don't believe, despite Elaine's stories, that people can be miraculously healed of serious illnesses. I think it is immoral and dangerous to pedal these beliefs to seriously sick people looking for cures - and have them pay an arm and a leg to lie on a comfy couch for an hour.

But as Elaine says, 'maybe I just didn't feel it working', or perhaps you really need to believe it's working to fool your mind into believing you've been healed.

What does the judge have to say about rape convictions?

I went to court today with my MA group to do some more court reporting. We were also able to have a Q&A with one of the judges.

As Iv'e been writing about rape conviction I decided to ask the judge whether he also thought that something needs to be done to improve the rape conviction rates. He replied with "I think it's been blown out of proportion..."

I pressed him on the standard of proof issue, that having to be sure the defendant is guilty 'beyond all reasonable doubt', made it almost impossible for juries to convict rapists.

I said that since rape cases often boil down to the mans word against the womans, how can Juries be expected to convict when there is no way of proving 100% that a woman was raped, even if the Jury believe that they were?

He didn't agree that the standard of proof should be amended in rape cases, saying that then we would then have to change the standard of proof for armed robbery,and so on.

He said he thought that Juries got it right 'most of the time' ('so stop complaining' -he seemed to suggest).

This means that, in the Judges' opinion, nearly 95% of women stand up in court and lie about being raped. Does that sound likely to you?

In the end he atleast agreed that perhaps the jury could be briefed more on the nature of rape cases and victim behaviour, to help deliberate on the verdict.

When are people going to start acknowledging that English law as it stands is inadequate when it comes to rape cases?

Think rape victims are protected in the UK? Think again

Following on from the stories of rape victims elsewhere in the world, I was pleased to see David Cameron point out very publicly several weeks ago that England and Wales have the lowest rape conviction rate in Europe,standing at only 5.7%.

Although I acknowledge that there are many reasons for this, I belive the main reason is public opinion. Whilst researching an article on domestic violence in Knowle West, Bristol, which happens to be the area with the highest domestic abuse rate in the south west - I interveiwed a domestic abuse response worker, Karen. She told me just how hard it is to convince a jury to belive that you have been raped.

Karen also worked with rape victims as well as domestic abuse victims. She told me how she would take the women through the degrading process of internal examiniations, extensive police questioning and sometimes ID parades.

After going through all that trauma, the woman has to then stand up in court and be cross examined, often being accused of provoking the attack by wearing provocative clothing, being drunk, or even just knowing the perpetrator. These are all things that women have to apolgise for and are made to feel guilty for. They are also things that some members of the public see as evidence that the woman was asking to be attacked.

One survey shows that 33% of the public thought that if a woman wore a short skirt or was drunk then she deserved to be raped. It is no wonder so many women do not report being raped. Would you?

The problem is not all the misguided and stereotypical opinions that preside in culture, rape cases often boil down to the womans word against the mans. The standard of proof a jury must judge the case by is if it is 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the woman was raped. How can jurys working within this framework be expected to convict rapists? how can you be 100% sure, beyond all reasonable doubt that a man intended to rape a woman when they can plead it was consensual?

The odds are certainly stacked against you, unless you have been attacked by a stranger, were not intoxicated or wearing provoctive clothing and were beaten and bruised - only then does the rapist seem to be convicted. As in the case of Alice Sebold, who writes about her ordeal and the justice system regarding rape in her book Lucky.

Anyone who watched the Channel 4 programme aired last year, Consent, will have seen a powerful example of this 'justice' system at work. I was traumatised myself after seeing the programme, in which a fictional woman was raped by a work collegue. The programme used actors and the fictional trial was played out in a real court with real judges, barristors and jury.

Not suprisingly, the jury did not find the defendant guilty - an example of the outcome of rape cases every day in this country. What sickened me about this programme particularly was watching the jury deliberate over the verdict. Seeing a woman, roughly my age, flippantly suggest that the victim should have been able to fight off the man and was therefore lying about the rape because she was jelous of her colleges promotion at work, was disturbing to say the least.

To think that jurys every day have to make the decision that a woman has lied about being raped - largely because of the framework of the English Law system - makes me realise that we are not much better off than the women locked up in the Middle East.

My first court report

I went to court today to do some reporting as part of my journalism MA. It was actually a lot more interesting and easier to follow than I thought it would be. Unfortunately my shorthand is not quite up to scratch yet so my notes were abit sketchy! Here's my first court news report:

Two men were jailed for four years today for beating a man to the brink of death with a metal bar.

Tony Chapman, 38, from Andover was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months for causing grievous bodily harm with intent. Scott Atkinson, 40, also from Andover, was sentenced to 4 years for conspiracy to rob at Bournemouth Crown Court.

The judge Nigel Lickley said of the two men: “You are both responsible for the terror caused that night which resulted in a man suffering very serious injuries – which he may never recover from.”

Atkinson was found guilty in August of conspiring to rob Lawrence Nolan by breaking into his house in search of drugs. Chapman was found guilty of grievous bodily harm after beating Nolan with a metal weight lifting bar causing him serious brain damage.

The incident happened in February this year. The judge described how both men had been drinking extensively that day and decided to go to Nolan’s flat to steal some drugs, taking with them the metal bar.

Nolan was in bed with his girlfriend that evening when the two men arrived, forcing their way in through the bedroom window.

Chapman then took Nolan into a separate room and savagely beat him whilst Atkinson held Mr Nolan’s girlfriend hostage in the bedroom, seizing her mobile phone.

Mr Lickley told how Chapman believed that Nolan had attacked his nephew in a previous incident - as he was being beaten Nolan was heard to shout: “you’ve got the wrong man.”

Chapman later admitted that he did make a mistake and that Nolan had attempted to protect his nephew from being attacked.

Nolan suffered serious brain damage and blood loss as a result of the attack. He can only communicate through eye movement and remains in hospital as he is unable to even feed himself.

The judge said when sentencing the men: “Mr Nolan will never forget his injuries and is devoid of having any meaningful life…You are both a danger to the public.”

The law that persecutes women

We have all been shocked and appauled by the 'teddy bear' incident this week, the British woman Gillian Gibbons, who was locked up in Sudan for allowing her pupils to name the class teddy bear Mohammed.

This story, although it ran every day in the news for over the past week, was no where near as severe as several stories of 'crime' and punishment in the Middle East which I also came accross in the news this week regarding women and ridiculous punishments.

I was reading about the case of an Iranian woman,Leila, now 22, who was regularly sold for sex by her parents from the age of nine to provide an income for her family. Later, when Leila married, her husband also sold her for money to up to 15 men a night.As horrific as that may sound, this is apparantly a not uncommon occurance in Iran, using women as commodities and sources of income, something which to us, in the western world is unimaginable.


What really shocked me was that Leila was sentenced to be hung for incest after her brothers confessed to raping her. What price did the brothers pay? they got a flogging. The husband who allowed his wife to be raped each night for money? he was sentenced to five years in jail.

Fortunately Leila was freed with the help of human rights activists, but we can only guess at the amount of women under the Iranian justice system who recieve the same treatment and are not helped in time.

Being punished for being raped? what kind of justice system is that?

Another case in Saudi Arabia in the news last week involved a woman who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison after being gang raped. The reason being that she was travelling alone in a car with a man to whom she was not related.Due to Saudi Arabia's strict gender laws, once again a woman is punished for being raped.