Campaigns

Royal Holloway Feminism Society provides many opportunities throughout the year for people to get involved in active campaigns to tackle sexism on and off campus. Here are some of our big campaigns.

Miss Representation - Part of feminism is looking at the misrepresentation and under-representation of women. Rhul Fem Soc Miss Representation campaign will ask people from all genders to think about the effects of the representations of women they see around them—particularly the ways media affects women and girls’ ability to aim as high as men is society. We'll be working with different clubs and societies, looking at different stereotypes and forms of discrimination, as well as success stories and ways to combat misrepresentation and under-representation of women. We will be launching the campaign with a screening of Miss Representation, a documentary by directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

The Zero Tolerance Campaign is an anti-sexual harassment campaign which we launched in late 2011. In February 2012 we managed to get a motion passed at a SURHUL general meeting to make us a Zero Tolerance union. The Zero Tolerance accreditation was created by the NUS Women’s Campaign- though of course it would apply to ALL students, regardless of gender!  Read the motion here We will be continuing to help the SU raise awareness of Zero Tolerance and we'll be also helping develop a domestic violence campaign with the SURHUL Campaigns officer and addressing street harassment. We'll be also campaign against slut shaming and victim blaming and to strengthen support services.

Royal Holloway Feminists Against Cuts is a campaign which works towards highlighting and fighting against gender discriminating public sector cuts. Women in the Uk make up around sixty percent of public sector workers. Cuts to Legal Aid, Welfare benefits and social care budgets mean that is going to be a negative impact on women: employment, housing, incomes and poverty, education, safety, health, social care and other support services. There's a load of things we want to do this year, a few of them being campaigning around how cuts effecting students who are also carers and cuts that are effecting women’s reproductive health and safety. Current campaigns include: Better Care to Learn and Save the Women's Library. If you want to know more or if you have any other ideas please visit the blog.

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LIBERATE SURHUL - On the 29^th of May 2012, the Students' Union Annual General Meeting at RHUL voted to introduce four liberation officers onto our executive committee: a Disabled Students Officer, Black & Ethnic Minority Students Officer, LGBT+ Officer and Women & Marginalised Genders Officer. The new positions will not come into effect until the academic year 2013/4, and in the next year, the Equality & Liberation Officer who currently sits on the executive committee, as well as all liberation activists on campus, will need to work hard to build energy and awareness around the liberation campaigns in order to build towards a position where these roles can elected next year. Royal Holloway Feminism Society has been one of the many groups on campus which have worked towards introducing these positions. We will continue to be involved in building awareness around women's issues, and also – importantly – of issues of intersectionality in the liberation forums which will happen throughout the next year running up to the liberation officer elections.