Category Archives: Women

Politicians seek meeting with Travelodge CEO after Maidenhead sexual assault case

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Call for urgent meeting comes after woman was assaulted by man who had been given her key card by hotel staff

More than 20 MPs have demanded an urgent meeting with the CEO of Travelodge after a woman was sexually assaulted by a man who had been given her room number and a key card by hotel staff.

The MPs said the case of Kyran Smith, 29, who was jailed for seven-and-a-half years last month, raised “deeply concerning” questions. He attacked the woman after a party in December 2022.

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Peruvian state responsible for mother’s death in forced sterilisation, court rules

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Landmark ruling in Celia Ramos case finds 310,000 women, most Indigenous, were targeted in brutal 1990s campaign

The highest human rights court in Latin America condemned Peru on Thursday over the death of its citizen Celia Ramos, who died at the age of 34 in 1997 after undergoing sterilisation “under coercion”.

The landmark ruling by the inter-American court of human rights (IACHR) is the first on Peru’s forced sterilisation programme, which operated between 1996 and 2000 and was directed against poor, rural and Indigenous women.

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UK parliament to debate whether all suicides linked to domestic abuse to be investigated as homicide

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Lib Dems table amendment to crime and policing bill, saying system ‘simply not doing enough to protect women’

Parliament is to debate whether all suicides in cases involving victims of domestic abuse should be investigated as homicide.

The Liberal Democrats have tabled an amendment to the crime and policing bill saying that if “there is reasonable suspicion that a death by suicide has been preceded by a history of domestic abuse committed against the person by another person, the relevant police force must investigate that suicide as if it were a potential homicide”.

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EU opens up funding to guarantee abortion rights across bloc

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Women from countries with near-total bans on terminations will be given help to access services elsewhere

EU states will be able to tap into a social fund to help citizens access safe abortions, in an announcement hailed as a “victory for women”.

The roots of Thursday’s announcement go back to a long campaign for the European Commission to create a funding mechanism that would allow women from countries with near-total bans on abortion, such as Malta and Poland, to go where it is legal.

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Survivor of financial abuse invited to advise ministers after Guardian report

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City minister Lucy Rigby acts after woman faced repossession of house burned down by controlling husband

A woman who was nearly killed by her abusive husband has been invited to advise the government on measures to support victims of financial abuse after the Guardian highlighted her story last weekend.

Francesca Onody was left homeless and penniless when her husband doused their cottage with petrol while she and her two children were inside. Her husband, Malcolm Baker, died when the property exploded.

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Police ‘determined’ to target abusers who drive women to suicide but say they lack of resources

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NPCC lead for domestic abuse says officers dealing with huge caseloads, made worse by justice system backlogs

Police are “determined to do more” to hold to account domestic abusers who drive victims to kill themselves, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has said.

Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, the NPCC lead for domestic abuse, has said that “more posthumous investigations are taking place”, but that officers struggle with a lack of resources, adding that 20% of all crime relates to domestic abuse in most forces.

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Quarter of police forces missing basic policies on sexual offences, says Sarah Everard report

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Official report says forces in England and Wales yet to implement recommendations for investigations

A quarter of police forces in England and Wales are yet to implement “basic policies for investigating sexual offences”, an official report has found, with women still being failed despite promises of change after the murder of Sarah Everard four years ago.

The report by Dame Elish Angiolini follows an inquiry set up after Everard was murdered by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, in March 2021. She was abducted off a London street while walking home.

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Impasse over EHRC single-sex spaces guidance ‘distracting from other issues’

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Staff at human rights body said to be ‘desperate for regime change’ over inertia after court’s legal definition of a woman

The ongoing impasse over guidance from the UK’s human rights watchdog on access to single-sex spaces is distracting from other pressing issues, including the rise of the far right, insiders have told the Guardian.

Some members of staff at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are described as “desperate for regime change” ahead of the new chair, Mary-Ann Stephenson, taking up her post in December.

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Rage rooms: can smashing stuff up really help to relieve anger and stress?

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Venues promoting destruction as stress relief are appearing around the UK but experts – and our correspondent – are unsure

If you find it hard to count to 10 when anger bubbles up, a new trend offers a more hands-on approach. Rage rooms are cropping up across the UK, allowing punters to smash seven bells out of old TVs, plates and furniture.

Such pay-to-destroy ventures are thought to have originated in Japan in 2008, but have since gone global. In the UK alone venues can be found in locations from Birmingham to Brighton, with many promoting destruction as a stress-relieving experience.

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Anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe claims her employer gave her immunity from complaints by pro-choice campaigners

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University of Adelaide, who employs Howe as a law professor, states that it ‘considers each matter on its merits’

A prominent anti-abortion campaigner who was banned from the South Australian parliament and accused of bullying, claims her employer has granted her immunity from complaints from anyone who is pro-choice.

Anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe, who has pledged to make abortion “unthinkable”, says the University of Adelaide, who employs her as a law professor, has agreed that those with ideologically opposed viewpoints to hers will be deemed “vexatious”, and any complaints they make about her will not be acted upon.

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South Africa declares gender-based violence a national disaster amid G20 protests

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Women’s groups welcomed the announcement on the eve of the international leaders’ summit in Johannesburg

Hundreds of women gathered in cities across South Africa on Friday to protest against gender-based violence in the country before the G20 summit in Johannesburg this weekend.

Demonstrators turned out in 15 locations – including Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban – wearing black as a sign of “mourning and resistance”.

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Row over definition of ‘gender’ hangs over Cop30 plans to support women

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Advocates say conservative states’ push to define gender as ‘biological sex’ would backslide on decade-old language within the UN

A row over the definition of the term “gender” threatens to bog down pivotal talks at the Cop30 climate summit.

Before the UN talks in Brazil, hardline conservative states have pushed to define gender as “biological sex” over their concerns trans and non-binary people could be included in a major plan to ensure climate action addresses gender inequality and empowers women.

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Nandy rules out taking action to remove Robbie Gibb from BBC board – as it happened

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Culture secretary also condemns MPs who dismiss BBC as ‘institutionally biased’ in swipe at Badenoch and Farage. This live blog is closed

Here is a round-up of what various lawyers and commentators have been saying about Donald Trump’s legal case against the BBC.

Joshua Rozenberg, the legal commentator and a former BBC journalist, has said in a post on his A Lawyer Writes Substack that the corporation should settle. He explains:

Given what Brito is claiming, the lawyer is unlikely to be impressed with the BBC’s assertion that “the purpose of editing the clip was to convey the message of the speech made by President Trump so that Panorama’s audience could better understand how it had been received by President Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground at that time”.

So the BBC would be well advised to draft a retraction and apology in terms that the president’s lawyer finds acceptable. Brito is also calling for this to be broadcast as prominently as the original programme. And the corporation will have to pay compensation.

George Peretz KC, chair of the Society of Labour Lawyers, says on Bluesky, commenting on Rozenberg’s blog, that the BBC might be better off with a more robust approach.

So at the moment, despite @joshuarozenberg.bsky.social’s piece, I wonder whether a better BBC response would be the Arkell v Pressdram one. proftomcrick.com/2014/04/29/a...

(At least to the extent he’s seeking more than a formal apology limited to the obvious mistake and a very modest offer of compensation.)

There is, after all, the risk of a dangerous precedent here. The BBC will often offend foreign leaders – some worse than Trump. Sometimes it will make factual mistakes in reporting on them. Yield to Trump now, and who next?

Mark Stephens, a media lawyer, told BBC Breakfast that a court case could reflect badly on Trump. He said:

Every damning quote that he’s ever uttered is going to be played back to him and picked over – not great PR.

Trump risks turning what’s currently a PR skirmish with the BBC very much on the back foot into a global headline that the court finds Trump’s words were incendiary …

George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center in New York and a former lawyer for the New York Times, told the BBC that Trump “has a long record of unsuccessful libel suits – and an even longer record of letters like the one you received that don’t end up as lawsuits at all”.

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer who is trying to recover costs from Trump after the president sued him unsuccessfully in the UK, says Trump’s latest threat is preposterous.

Donald Trump’s threat to sue the BBC in London is preposterous. He remains in breach of English High Court orders in a case he brought and lost against Orbis 18 months ago. So any further abuse of the UK courts by him for such legal tourism and intimidation should be prohibited.

Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, says the BBC has been told Trump does not have a case.

The legal advice to the BBC I am told is that President Trump was not meaningfully damaged by Panorama’s manipulation of his 6 January speech, and that therefore there is no legal necessity to pay him compensation. The BBC board is therefore likely to resist and fight his demand to be “appropriately compensated” out of court, and will risk him carrying through on his threat to seek $1bn in damages by going to court.

These times are difficult for the BBC but we will get through it. We will get through it and we will thrive. This narrative will not just be given by our enemies. It’s our narrative. We own things.

I see the free press under pressure. I see the weaponisation. I think we have to fight for our journalism.

We have made some mistakes that have cost us but we need to fight for that.

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UK to reconsider decision to deny Waspi women pension payouts

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Millions born in 1950s lost out because of government failings over changes to state retirement age, campaigners say

Millions of “Waspi women” have been given fresh hope that they might receive compensation after the UK government announced it would revisit a decision to deny them payouts.

As many as 3.6 million women born in the 1950s are said to have lost out because of government failings in the way changes to the state pension age were made, prompting the Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) campaign to launch in 2015.

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Bad Bridgets podcast about crime among Irish women in US inspires film

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Margot Robbie’s company to make movie based on Northern Ireland academics’ stories of poverty and prison

It started as a trawl of dusty archives for an academic project about female Irish emigrants in Canada and the US by two history professors, a worthy but perhaps niche topic for research.

The subjects, after all, were human flotsam from Ireland’s diaspora whose existence was often barely recorded, let alone remembered.

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Hit for six: why India’s Women’s Cricket World Cup win is victory for equality

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Sacrifices made to reach final – defying social stigma, lack of resources and juggling jobs between training – makes victory still more extraordinary

Growing up in rural India, Shafali Verma always knew she had a hunger to play cricket. But in her small town of Rohtak, in the north Indian state of Haryana, cricket was not a game for girls. Aged nine, desperate to play, she cut her hair short, entered a tournament disguised as her brother, and went on to win man of the match.

Verma’s determined father, Sanjeev, in the face of refusal from every cricket academy or training centre who would not accept his daughter, enrolled her as a boy. “Luckily, nobody noticed,” he recalled, as Verma made her debut for the national women’s team at 15 years old.

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Phillipson calls for ‘less public debate’ from EHRC on gender recognition rules

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Minister responds to calls from watchdog’s chair to approve new guidance on transgender rights ‘as soon as possible’

Bridget Phillipson has urged the equalities watchdog to focus more on helping ministers do their jobs and less on having public debates as a row continues about how long it will take to implement new rules on gender recognition.

The comments by Phillipson, who is the equalities minister as well as the education secretary, come after the Equality and Human Rights Commission took the unusual step of urging the government to “act with speed” in approving its statutory guidance on responding to a landmark supreme court ruling on transgender rights.

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NHS makes morning-after pill available for free across pharmacies in England

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Those in need of free emergency contraception no longer have to see their GP or attend a sexual health clinic

The NHS has made the morning-after pill available for free across pharmacies in England in an effort to reduce a “postcode lottery” of access to emergency contraception.

Almost 10,000 pharmacies are now able to offer the pill without charge, saving those in need of free emergency contraception from having to visit their GP or to get an appointment at a sexual health clinic.

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Women launch class action against ADF alleging widespread sexual violence, misogyny and harassment

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Female members of the military shouldn’t have to fight off their colleagues on a daily basis, lawyer says

Women who allegedly suffered widespread and systemic sexual abuse, harassment, discrimination and victimisation while serving in the Australian defence force are taking part in a class action against the commonwealth.

There are four applicants in the class action, whose names are withheld for legal reasons, but any woman subjected to sexual violence, sexual harassment or discrimination while working in the ADF between 12 November 2003 and 25 May 2025 is eligible to join them.

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Pregnant women report medical neglect in ICE detention, rights groups say

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Women report miscarriages, delayed care, being shackled and being held in solitary confinement, letter says

Pregnant women have reported bleeding, miscarriages, being shackled and other instances of medical neglect while in US immigration custody, according to a group of prominent civil rights organizations.

The groups – which include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its Louisiana chapter, the National Immigration Project, Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, Sanctuary of the South and Sanctuary Now Abolition Project – sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Senate committees on Wednesday, describing interviews with more than a dozen women.

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