Our Liberty Place - Women's sanctuary

Aim

Raise funds to open a women only refuge.

We are going to open a woman only domestic violence shelter.  It will be open for all women from all communities and circumstances.  

The war on women is no better illustrated by the fact that women's domestic violence services are no longer providing women only shelters.  

Most of the UK's women's domestic violence shelters are not women only, ie not single sex.   Councils and government make it impossible for any such provisions to explicitly exclude men, specifically using the single sex exemption of the Equality Act.  It is now rare that women's services even attempt to use the following exemption to enable them to keep all men out.  Even the staff can be mixed sex. 

(26(1)A person does not contravene section 29, so far as relating to sex discrimination, by providing separate services for persons of each sex if—

(a)a joint service for persons of both sexes would be less effective, and

(b)the limited provision is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

(2)A person does not contravene section 29, so far as relating to sex discrimination, by providing separate services differently for persons of each sex if—

(a)a joint service for persons of both sexes would be less effective,

(b)the extent to which the service is required by one sex makes it not reasonably practicable to provide the service otherwise than as a separate service provided differently for each sex, and

(c)the limited provision is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.)

We want to ensure that women in the UK have a choice to be in a women only environment when they are in their most vulnerable state.  We can only do this with independent funding, free from the restrictions imposed by grants.

When these women need to leave it's essential that there is a place for them to escape to at any time of day or night that is run by women for women.   The staff will be female only.  

We have rape crisis centres with men working in them, men running female only psychiatric wards, men manning the phones in front line call centres dealing with women who are victims of sexual violence.  We are rebuilding the women's movement and this shelter is the first step in affecting real change.  

Over the last few years women have dug deep to protect our sex based rights.  This is the very essence of what we're protecting, vulnerable women in need. 

Are you on board?  If not you, then who? 

If not now, then when?  

For clarity, woman and female mean biological adult human female.  

This project successfully funded on 22nd July 2021