Hello everyone, my name is Martha Clarke and I’m in my third year studying Politics and International Relations at Cardiff University.
I have always been conscious of the issues that affect me as a woman and about a year ago I realised how prevalent these issues are and I decided to become more active in combatting gendered issues. I am involved in many activities attempting to raise awareness about violence on campus in the hopes to one day, eradicate it. I remember the first event I attended was the women’s march on London in January. I remember I told my Granddad I was doing this and his response was: “but women already have rights”. This made me laugh at the time but now I realise that’s such a common misconception. The march was organised in response to Trump coming into office and there were marches all over the world to show that as women we weren’t going to let a man come into power and reverse all the progress we’ve made so far. I still find it shocking that a man who talks about women the way he does and a man that admitted he uses his power over women to assault them has been elected by America to be President but at the march I felt so empowered by all the people, men and women, who had come together to show we weren’t going to take it lightly.
I am involved with Full Circle's Youth Advisory Panel. We get together once a month to discuss the issues that affect us most. We are about to start a programme called ‘Stand With Girls’ where we will be trained to go to people in power and make recommendations to how improving the lives of girls in Wales can be achieved. Being part of it makes me feel like I am making a difference in Wales, empowering girls to be more confident and comfortable with themselves and to grow into the women they want to be - in a safe & secure environment, free from violence, or the threat of violence. Although I have always been sure of what I wanted to be - no matter how many times that has changed - I have not always been confident about who I am, or what I look like - and neither have any of my friends. That is why I think the work of Full Circle and its sister company Girls Circle is not only important, it is essential. Women & girls everywhere and I mean everywhere, not just in Wales, should be free to not only feel good about themselves, but to feel amazing about their bodies, their race, their gender identity, their jobs, their role in society, whether that be student, or lecturer, or mother, or daughter, cleaner or company CEO. Full Circle & Girls Circle aim to work wherever & however possible to empower women to be themselves and stand up to sexual & gender prejudice wherever it occurs and I'm delighted to be a part of an organisation giving young girls this kind of support.
At university, I am one of two Presidents for the Domestic Violence Awareness Society and we have hosted many fundraising events and awareness campaigns. Recently I was working with the wellbeing team who launched a team of staff to respond to disclosures of campus violence. We organised a week of events, including an empowerment workshop by Full Circle, to promote this service and raise awareness of violence on campus and signpost women & girls to help whenever it is needed. I started getting more actively involved in trying to change the stigma surrounding violence on campus because there had been far too many situations where someone felt something wasn’t quite right but that wasn’t always seen as sexual harassment, violence or assault. However, I would disagree. Unfortunately as statistics suggest one in three female students will experience some form of sexual assault on campus and 90% of these incidents won’t be reported. It saddens me to say that I believe the numbers are even more shocking in reality as every one of my female friends has a story, some have more than one, of inappropriate behaviour by men, yet none have reported a single incident. Ask any female student if they’ve been groped and the answer will be yes. Sexual harassment in the form of groping appears to have been normalised and perceived as ok and some boys have even told me they see it as the same thing as giving a compliment. This makes me question – where has it all gone wrong? Thinking back to school, I didn’t have sexual and healthy relationship education – perhaps if we had been taught about the most important aspects of sex and relationships such as consent and the right to your own body, many of the incidents I’m aware of might never have happened. There is a lack of international conversation about harassment that leads to behaviour that is inappropriate at best, and in all too many cases, illegal. This is a cultural & societal crisis that in light of the hashtag Me Too campaign I hope is on the cusp of change.
One issue I have found is the reaction people have to the fact I study politics. I’ve been told I am too pretty to study politics and instead I should be a model. This reaction illustrates that there are still people out there that believe a women’s greatest and only achievement is our looks and our bodies. Our outer shell is of far more importance than our intelligence, our capabilities and our potentials. I’ve also had people shocked that I study politics and they’ve expressed how fantastic they think it is that as a woman, I am allowed to study politics at university. I think this reaction, as great as it is that they are on board with women being able to do as men do, is problematic because they were shocked and felt the need to comment on it, something which wouldn’t have happened if I were a man. These reactions prove that equality has not yet been achieved. There should be no comments made on what anyone is doing regardless of what it is, who they are, what gender they identify as, what race, what sexuality or what age because it shouldn’t be relevant.
However, being a politics student has taught me many skills, one of the most valuable has been to stand up and use my voice to influence change in areas I care about most. Being part of all these great activities has really pushed me to do more about women's empowerment, raise awareness of campus violence, and hopefully change attitudes & cultures so that anybody coming to this university and this city knows that violence is not okay, it is wrong, and if you're doing it, you have to stop! Violence diminishes us all, the transgressed & the transgressors, & only leads to unhappiness and it is the things we feel most unhappy about, that we must be most determined to change.
Whilst there is still lots of work to do, there is lots of work being done. Companies like Chwarae Teg and Full Circle are trying to bring about change. Let's rewrite the story for women. Let's come together as we have today, men and women, and raise awareness of what is going on and what needs to be done. Let's support the people and the companies that are trying to help us. Let's fight until we have equality.
Thank you.
I have always been conscious of the issues that affect me as a woman and about a year ago I realised how prevalent these issues are and I decided to become more active in combatting gendered issues. I am involved in many activities attempting to raise awareness about violence on campus in the hopes to one day, eradicate it. I remember the first event I attended was the women’s march on London in January. I remember I told my Granddad I was doing this and his response was: “but women already have rights”. This made me laugh at the time but now I realise that’s such a common misconception. The march was organised in response to Trump coming into office and there were marches all over the world to show that as women we weren’t going to let a man come into power and reverse all the progress we’ve made so far. I still find it shocking that a man who talks about women the way he does and a man that admitted he uses his power over women to assault them has been elected by America to be President but at the march I felt so empowered by all the people, men and women, who had come together to show we weren’t going to take it lightly.
I am involved with Full Circle's Youth Advisory Panel. We get together once a month to discuss the issues that affect us most. We are about to start a programme called ‘Stand With Girls’ where we will be trained to go to people in power and make recommendations to how improving the lives of girls in Wales can be achieved. Being part of it makes me feel like I am making a difference in Wales, empowering girls to be more confident and comfortable with themselves and to grow into the women they want to be - in a safe & secure environment, free from violence, or the threat of violence. Although I have always been sure of what I wanted to be - no matter how many times that has changed - I have not always been confident about who I am, or what I look like - and neither have any of my friends. That is why I think the work of Full Circle and its sister company Girls Circle is not only important, it is essential. Women & girls everywhere and I mean everywhere, not just in Wales, should be free to not only feel good about themselves, but to feel amazing about their bodies, their race, their gender identity, their jobs, their role in society, whether that be student, or lecturer, or mother, or daughter, cleaner or company CEO. Full Circle & Girls Circle aim to work wherever & however possible to empower women to be themselves and stand up to sexual & gender prejudice wherever it occurs and I'm delighted to be a part of an organisation giving young girls this kind of support.
At university, I am one of two Presidents for the Domestic Violence Awareness Society and we have hosted many fundraising events and awareness campaigns. Recently I was working with the wellbeing team who launched a team of staff to respond to disclosures of campus violence. We organised a week of events, including an empowerment workshop by Full Circle, to promote this service and raise awareness of violence on campus and signpost women & girls to help whenever it is needed. I started getting more actively involved in trying to change the stigma surrounding violence on campus because there had been far too many situations where someone felt something wasn’t quite right but that wasn’t always seen as sexual harassment, violence or assault. However, I would disagree. Unfortunately as statistics suggest one in three female students will experience some form of sexual assault on campus and 90% of these incidents won’t be reported. It saddens me to say that I believe the numbers are even more shocking in reality as every one of my female friends has a story, some have more than one, of inappropriate behaviour by men, yet none have reported a single incident. Ask any female student if they’ve been groped and the answer will be yes. Sexual harassment in the form of groping appears to have been normalised and perceived as ok and some boys have even told me they see it as the same thing as giving a compliment. This makes me question – where has it all gone wrong? Thinking back to school, I didn’t have sexual and healthy relationship education – perhaps if we had been taught about the most important aspects of sex and relationships such as consent and the right to your own body, many of the incidents I’m aware of might never have happened. There is a lack of international conversation about harassment that leads to behaviour that is inappropriate at best, and in all too many cases, illegal. This is a cultural & societal crisis that in light of the hashtag Me Too campaign I hope is on the cusp of change.
One issue I have found is the reaction people have to the fact I study politics. I’ve been told I am too pretty to study politics and instead I should be a model. This reaction illustrates that there are still people out there that believe a women’s greatest and only achievement is our looks and our bodies. Our outer shell is of far more importance than our intelligence, our capabilities and our potentials. I’ve also had people shocked that I study politics and they’ve expressed how fantastic they think it is that as a woman, I am allowed to study politics at university. I think this reaction, as great as it is that they are on board with women being able to do as men do, is problematic because they were shocked and felt the need to comment on it, something which wouldn’t have happened if I were a man. These reactions prove that equality has not yet been achieved. There should be no comments made on what anyone is doing regardless of what it is, who they are, what gender they identify as, what race, what sexuality or what age because it shouldn’t be relevant.
However, being a politics student has taught me many skills, one of the most valuable has been to stand up and use my voice to influence change in areas I care about most. Being part of all these great activities has really pushed me to do more about women's empowerment, raise awareness of campus violence, and hopefully change attitudes & cultures so that anybody coming to this university and this city knows that violence is not okay, it is wrong, and if you're doing it, you have to stop! Violence diminishes us all, the transgressed & the transgressors, & only leads to unhappiness and it is the things we feel most unhappy about, that we must be most determined to change.
Whilst there is still lots of work to do, there is lots of work being done. Companies like Chwarae Teg and Full Circle are trying to bring about change. Let's rewrite the story for women. Let's come together as we have today, men and women, and raise awareness of what is going on and what needs to be done. Let's support the people and the companies that are trying to help us. Let's fight until we have equality.
Thank you.
