Guest Blog by Charlie Weinberg:Understanding the world to change it – the women’s sector, sex and sexismWhat is the Women’s Sector?

Project Resist welcome Charlie Weinberg to be our inaugural Guest Blogger. One of the founders of our sister organisation Women’s Liberation Alliance, Charlie has published extensively about criminal justice and women as well as consulting to organisations, speaking at and facilitating events. Charlie runs August.org, you can learn more about her work below.

Understanding the world to change it – the women’s sector, sex and sexism. What is the Women’s Sector?

There is no clear definition of what the women’s sector is. There are various formulations and expressions of its composition:

 “Women’s voluntary and community organisations are a cornerstone for sustainable and stable communities and are crucial to the advancement of equality and women’s rights” (Women’s Resource Centre).

 “…organisations tackling complex and systemic issues faced by women and girls in the UK” (Esmée Fairbairn website).

 …“women’s and girls’ focused activity” (Rosa UK, April 2023).

In practice, the women (and girls’) sector is the range of service provision aimed at women and girls, especially (but not solely) in crisis or extreme difficulty due to violence, housing, dependency and abuse, exploitation, migration status, criminal justice involvement, debt, parenting, individual or family welfare need.

This is a significant brief by any means. It illustrates the breadth and depth of the work women do (and are required to do) in support of each other’s safety and well-being.

Taking the real problem seriously

If a women’s sector exists at all, it should be a state accountable department tasked with the appropriate analysis and understanding of how sexism impacts women’s lives through the realities of race, sex and class.

The disintegration of the welfare state and declining resource across public services leads to highly skilled, often highly stressed, over-worked, doubly and triply exploited women doing their best to meet the needs of women who are increasingly refused or denied support from probation, housing, social services, police or mental health teams.

This is not a new circumstance.

 “Individual charities are exposed to greater demand as the scaffolding of public services falls away... Projects for women offenders … report increased caseloads as other services vital to their shared clientele close down.” (Corcoran, 2016)

Sexism

Although an unpopular statement, sexism and patriarchy continue to define women’s conditions globally. Despite often cited examples of female prime ministers, leaders and emancipation, rates of violence, abuse, sexualised exploitation and oppression remain principle features of women’s lives around the world (Zawisza, 2025). Women’s global incarceration rates continue to rise (Fair and Walmsley, 2025), maternal death continues to be a significant issue (especially for Black women) (Khalil, 2023) and low pay, poor conditions and multiple demands remain women’s working realities.

Driver, cause and result

Sexism drives most of women’s trauma- it is through cultural, national and religious variations of sexism that gender, social and cultural norms and expectations, relations and relationships are filtered.

Sexism creates the conditions for women’s abuse, violence and coercion. Black women experience double and triple impacts of sex, race and class-based exploitation and oppression yet sexism remains an unnamed factor in women’s lives and in the systems, structures and institutions that surround us. This has practical impact in women’s lives.

In the UK during the year 2024, there was an increase in referrals and charging of cases of violence against women. Significantly however, there was a reduction in conviction rates across domestic abuse (2.1%), rape (7.2%) and hate crime (0.5%) cases in 2023 (Criminal Prosecution Service, Quarter 2 2024-2025).

In case recent high-profile cases of abuse by police officers weren’t enough[1], the statistical evidence compounds the fact that women in the UK are unlikely to receive operational ‘justice’ through the legal system in response to violence.

Given the relevance of systemic problems as a focus of the work in the women’s sector, it is possible to think of this dynamic through a systems or therapeutic lens.

 The concept of mirroring (Foulkes 1948, 67) means in this case, that women’s needs, experiences and real-life conditions are reflected, through the ‘sector’, into the wider civil society. It also means that the ‘sector’ experiences and mirrors much of the experience of the women it is designed to support.

Women’s services are underfunded, insecure and undervalued.

It is well publicised women’s sector funding is miniscule (1.8%) in relation to the wider social sector (Rosa UK, April 2023). In this respect, the sector mirrors the financially dependent woman trapped in an abusive home.

Mirroring another traditional gender norm around the world, it seems women can’t be trusted with money:

 “In 2021, one third of grant funding (£24.7 million) for women’s and girls’ focused activity was awarded to organisations which were not women’s and girls’ organisations.”

The money was given to the (usually) large, generic organisations for whom work focused on women plays a small part of their overall delivery or function.

Reality v Rhetoric

In the first quarter of 2025, it has been revealed that the £4.2 million  (National Audit Office, 2025) Government has spent on the ‘national threat’ (Reem Alsalem, 12 - 21 February 2024) that is violence against women and girls, is found to achieve little impact.

“The Home Office has not improved outcomes for victims or the safety of women and girls more widely…. the Home Office cannot be confident that the government is doing the best it can to keep women and girls safe.” (National Audit Office 2025)

Perhaps ironically, in the same period, workers in a domestic abuse support service have voted to strike indefinitely in response to cuts being made to a third of their delivery team (Legraien, Léa Charity News , 2025).

It’s not getting better

Women are experiencing higher levels of abuse and violence around the world than at any time (WHO UNDP-UNFPA, 2021). This is not the time for women’s crisis services and emergency support systems to be reduced.

The recent development of the Women’s Justice Board might shine some light into the darkness left in the wake of the largely ignored Corston report into women in prison after the 14 self-inflicted deaths of women in prison during 2003.  (Corston, J. Baroness , 2007)

Six years after the report, inaction and denial continued to be the principal response from policy makers in its receipt.  

“While the nature of the needs of women offenders has been recognised, there has been a weakness in the organisational capability and capacity to commission services which meet them” (Justice Committee , 2013) 

Indeed, 10 years post Corston, only 2 of the 43 recommendations were found to have been implemented (Women in Prison, 2017).

The Government response to the Corston report exposes the lack of robust attention to single sex services and a failure to commission or promote female only services. It is in this context that women in crisis have access to an uncertain, insecure and unclear sector.

A new look

A women’s sector that mirrors the women who need its attention in terms of instability, crisis, lack of security and low status, is not a solution to violence against women and girls.

Women don’t want to be ‘looked after’, we want to be safe, secure and liberated from the impacts of racism, sexism, and economic exploitation.

While there is a great deal of expertise, experience, energy and effort being made to improve women’s lives through the women’s sector, until or unless the issues at the centre of women’s experience can be identified, none of this work changes reality for women.

Sexism leads to gender norms. Gender norms encourage ‘weak’ women and ‘strong’ men. Women are cross-culturally expected to care for others, put others’ needs first, accept responsibility for the violence they endure, look better, keep safer, be smaller and want less in order to avoid danger.

Sexism is the problem, not women’s needs

Bibliography

Clearview, L. a. (2024). Girls involved in youth violence: Key findings and recommendations. Association, Local Government.

Corcoran, M. (2016). cjm 85: Women, violence and harm. Criminal Justice Matters Centre for Crime and Justice Studies .

Corston, J. Baroness . (2007). ofA review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the Criminal Justice System . The Home Office.

Crown Prosecution Service . (2024-2025). CPS data summary Quarter 2.

Damm, C. D. (AprilL 2023). Mapping the UK Women and Girls Sector and its Funding: Where Does the Money Go? CENTRE FOR REGIONAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH Rosa UK/(CRESR).

Justice Committee (2013) Women offenders: after the Corston Report - Second Report. Parliament UK.

Legraien, Léa Charity News . (2025). Charity staff announce indefinite strike action in response to ‘devastating’ job cuts.

Mirroring in group analysis as a developmental and therapeutic process (1984). In M. L. Pines (Ed.), Spheres of group analysis (p. 118*137 (121)). Group Analytic Society Publications .

National Audit Office. (2025). Value for Money- Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls. London: Home Office.

Office for National Statistics . (2021). Census data. Gov.uk.

WHO UNDP-UNFPA. (2021). Global, regional and national estimates for intimate partner violence against women

Women in Prison, G. S. (2017). CORSTON+10 THE CORSTON REPORT 10 YEARS ON How far have we come on the road to reform for women affected by the criminal justice system? Women in Prison supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust.

Zawisza, M. K.-B. ( (2025)). Worse for Women, Bad for All: A 62-Nation Study Confirms and . Worse for Women, Bad for All: A 62-Nation Study Confirms and Extends Ambivalent Sexism Principles to Reveal Greater Social Dysfunction in Sexist Nations. Social Psychological and Personality Science.

[1] From 2018 to 2021, 66 officers and members of police staff faced disciplinary proceedings – 42 of them in the last year alone – after being investigated for APSP. Misconduct was proven for 63 of these.  Independent Office for Police Conduct 2021. Subsequent to this, rape, murder, assault and inappropriate use of social media by serving police officers have occurred several times in the UK and the inquiry into Spy Cops (Undercover policing in women’s lives since the 1990s), continues.

About Charlie

Charlie Weinberg began working as a youth worker and political educator in 1992.

In 2001 Charlie spent six years working on an award-winning social soap opera in Nicaragua and was a visiting facilitator on the Democracy Begins in Conversation project in Johannesburg in 2007.

In 2009, Charlie designed and delivered the only therapeutic development programme for girls in prison in the UK.

In 2010, Charlie became Director of Safe Ground, leading award-winning therapeutic group work with children, men, women and staff in prisons, secure and community settings nationally until the end of 2022.

Charlie holds an MA in Refugee Studies from the University of Essex, a Diploma in Psychodynamic and Systemic Consulting and Leading in Organisations (Tavistock Institute) and is completing Group Work Practitioner status at the Institute of Group Analysis.

Charlie has published extensively about criminal justice and women as well as consulting to organisations, speaking at and facilitating events. Charlie runs August.org.