Firstly, Clause 13 (formerly Clause 14) of the Policing and Crime Bill was passed without amendment and now makes it a criminal offence to buy sexual services from someone who has been subjected to "force, deception or threats". Hitherto, the only recourse for police was to try to charge a punter with rape, which relies on proving that he (or, I guess in theory, she) had reasonable cause to believe that consent was not freely given. As far as I'm aware there was no law against buying or selling sex, only in various activities inevitably associated with prostitution, such as keeping a brothel, streetwalking and trafficking. Clause 13 makes it a criminal offense even where the punter didn't know that the prostitute was controlled for gain. I'm no lawyer, but at face value this seems sort of analagous to it being an offense to handle stolen goods even if you didn't know ... that is to say, it puts the onus on the person receiving the goods or, in this case, services to be sure of their provenance before buying them. It's a clear shift of responsibilty towards the men buying sexual services (obviously I don't mean to compare women who work as prostitutes to stolen objects such as TVs, I'm just trying to make an analogy...)

The other clause of interest, Clause 26 (formerly Clause 27), reclassifies lap dancing clubs so that they require licensing as sex establishments rather than as cafes and bars. This gives much more scope for local objections to the granting of licenses, and allow the police to shut down lap dancing clubs where they're near 'sensitive locations' such as schools.

The Act also modifies existing offences such as kerb crawling and loitering.

There was a huge amount of work and pressure for this legislation from the feminist Demand Change! coalition, headed by Eaves and Object. Sasha Rakoff, Director of Object, said:

"These provisions in the Policing and Crime Bill mark a major victory in the fight against the dehumanisation of women in the sex industry. The mainstreaming and glamourisation of lap dancing and prostitution promote sexist stereotypes of women as objects, and not real people. It is a no brainer that purchasing a woman who has been exploited should be illegal, and that lap dancing clubs should be regulated as part of the sex industry and we are delighted that Parliament has prioritised the voices of those who have been exploited and who care about equality above the voices of profit and sexual entitlement. Today's victory in Parliament shows that treating women like sexual objects is not inevitable or unstoppable and that it has no place in the twenty first century"

There were movies in the evening, a choice of Fried Green Tomatoes and Joy Luck Club, and just lots of sitting around chatting with other girls in a context where our experiences as people were important, were valued, where we were assumed to have interesting thoughts ourselves, where we weren’t assumed to have value based only on what we brought to the table in performed femininity.

Where was it, Kenzie, and how can I get my (hypothetical) daughters a place there?!

Homophobia? .... check.

Transphobia? .... check.

Misogyny? ... check.

What a refreshing start to the day.

The Abortion Support Network aim to help:

While campaigners fight for the rights of women to have access to safe and
legal abortion in their own countries, the Abortion Support Network will
seek to make their journey a little less of a hardship. Our volunteers will
provide women with a place to stay, a meal, and transportation to and from
the clinic. The Network will begin in London but hopes to expand to
Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, and other areas of England where Irish
women travel. Ultimately, we will also raise funds to help women pay for
the cost of the procedure and travel.

To that end, they're looking for volunteers: if you have a spare room, a sofa, or even an airbed that you'd be willing to offer to a woman seeking an abortion, get in touch with them on info@abortionsupport.org.uk. If you're not in one of those cities, or don't have the space but would like to help, they're also seeking financial support. There's more information on their website.

What we know about Bercow: he's a social liberal, and one of the few outspoken Tory pro-choice MPs (and possibly the only outspoken male one - he spoke convincingly at a campaign meeting for Abortion Rights I attended last year); he's rumoured to have considered 'crossing the floor' (defecting to the Labour party); and the Conservatives are not happy about his election. The Daily Mail's 'Black Dog' political columnist calls him the leader of the party's 'pro-ethnic and progay' wing, although he has apparently grown out of some quite dubious political views he held when he was a student. And he's the first Jewish person to be elected Speaker. More on Bercow here (and pretty much everywhere in the news today).

Is it childish to think that if Nadine Dorries doesn't like him then I probably do?!

Sima Valand is desperately fighting to stop the Home Office sending her to India where she is at risk of murder at the hands of her in-laws. She was not flown on Fri 8th May for reasons that are still unknown but a new removal date has been set for this Wednesday (20th May). She remains in an immigration prison.

Please take the time to send a letter or an email to the Home Office and to Virgin Atlantic Airways demanding that they do not fly this woman into an extremely dangerous situation.

-------
You can help keep Sima in the UK by:

1) Emailing/Faxing Steve Ridgeway, Chief Executive Officer Virgin Atlantic Airways and urge him not to carry out the forced removal of Sima Valand.

You can copy, amend or write your own version using this model letter.

Please be sure to include all the following details: "Sima Valand, Indian national, due to be forcibly removed from the UK on Wednesday 20th May 2009. Full flight details are being withheld from publicly circulated documents for Sima’s protection”.

Email: customer.services@fly.virgin.com

Fax: 01293 444124 / +44 1293 444124 if you are faxing from outside the UK

2) Please send urgent faxes/emails immediately to Rt. Hon Jacqui Smith, MP, Secretary of State for the Home Office, requesting that the removal order is lifted and that Sima Valand is released from detention.

Please use this model letter or write your own version. If you do so, please remember to include HO ref: A1374200

Fax: 020 8760 3132 / + 44 20 8760 3132 if you are faxing from outside UK

Emails: Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
UKBA: publicenquiries@UKBA.gsi.gov.uk
"CIT - Treat Official" <CITTO@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk>

--------
BACKGROUND

Sima is unlikely to survive with any dignity if removed to India. Indeed, her life will be at considerable risk if she is returned due to her status as a divorced woman which carries immense stigma. In India, women who are divorced or separated are treated as outcasts and vilified and there is no social welfare system to help them survive. She will be subject to abuse, harassment and violence from which she will not be adequately protected by State institutions, such as the police, because they have the same social values with regards to women in this position.

Sima arrived in the UK, from India, legally in 2006 with her husband. During the 15 years of their marriage Sima was subjected to frequent verbal, physical and sexual abuse by her husband. Following their arrival in the UK, the violence escalated. It culminated in a horrific rape in May 2008. The attack was so severe that Sima made the decision to report it to the police.

While her husband was on bail, the threat to Sima was sufficient to force her to move to cities for her safety. She was subjected to frequent death threats from the husband and from his family in the UK and in India because she was pursuing the court case. In spite of this, Sima continued with the case and her husband was eventually convicted and given a lengthy prison sentence.

As a result of the persecution, Sima applied for asylum on the grounds that she had a genuine fear of being killed by her husband or his family if she were returned to India. Before she left India, she had been treated as a slave and beaten by her husband’s family. Their treatment of her was so bad that she attempted suicide. Her husband’s jail sentence and the fact that she has begun divorce proceedings are seen as publicly shaming her husband's family and have exacerbated their desire to take revenge. Her in-laws have contacted her on frequent occasions to tell her that they will cut her up and kill her if she returns to India.

India has a deeply entrenched patriarchal system and women are expected to conform to a strict social code. As a result, although it is Sima’s husband who has been responsible for appallingly violent behaviour, it is Sima’s action in reporting that behaviour and giving evidence against him that is considered shameful amongst her family and the community as a whole.

It is extremely common in India that incidents of serious domestic violence against women are not taken seriously. The police and courts are often unwilling to intervene in such matters and frequently help the husbands' families to destroy evidence of murder or register murdered women as suicides. Amnesty International have noted that it is very difficult for women to seek justice through the criminal justice system in India and that women victims of crime are at a severe disadvantage. This means that it is highly unlikely that Sima will get the protection that she needs should she be returned. Indeed, there have been many cases where women from South Asia have been sent back to India and Pakistan by their families to be murdered as it is thought to be easier to get away with such crimes there.

Sima was born and brought up in Sudan although she is of Indian origin and has an Indian passport. She has few family members in India and following the court case, even these ties have deteriorated. The Home Office have argued that Sima could live with her uncle if she is returned to India. However, the details of the rape case have become widely known and he will no longer speak to her.

Sima’s in-laws in India are aware of Sima’s movements and since being given a removal notice she has received threatening messages stating that they know she is about to be removed from the UK and that they will track her down. Experts on so-called 'honour crimes' point to the existence of informal community networks that exist to track down and punish, with death if necessary, women who are perceived as having shamed the community. Sima will be at great risk if she is returned.

It is because the highest compliment you can pay a woman is to proclaim that you find her fuckable.

Always and forever and as simple as that.

If you admire a woman and like her, if you find her witty and attractive, if you like the way she thinks, well obviously, you want to fuck her. Because if you were a straight man, that’s where that would lead. But if you’re someone who isn’t sexually attracted to women, you might think you are feeling that too, you might even feel that you are insulting that woman if you don’t want to sleep with her (dishing out the ultimate insult by calling her unfuckable).

[...]

this I’d-so-sleep-with-her phenomenon is pretty much just a side shoot from the whole damn dirty deal where women are mainly for fucking and generally supplying sex and men are the choosers and enjoyers of that sex.

The rest of the post, which is well worth reading in its entirety, is over here (this post fairly safe for work, but the rest of the site, including the banner heading, perhaps not so much).

We received this from Nimda at Women in London... time is of the essence so I'm posting it directly ...

Sima Valand due to be forcibly removed from the UK on Friday 8th May 2009

Sima arrived in the UK, from India, legally in 2006 with her husband. During the 15 years of their marriage Sima was subjected to frequent verbal, physical and sexual abuse by her husband. Following their arrival in the UK, the violence escalated. It culminated in a horrific rape in May 2008. The attack was so severe that Sima made the decision to report it to the police.

While her husband was on bail, the threat to Sima was sufficient to force her to move to Nottingham for her safety. She was subjected to frequent death threats from the husband's family in the UK and in India because she was pursuing the court case. In spite of this, Sima continued with the case and her husband was eventually convicted and given a lengthy prison sentence.

As a result of the persecution, Sima applied for asylum on the grounds that she had a genuine fear of being killed by her husband or his family if she were returned to India. Before she left India, she had been treated as a slave and beaten by her husband's family. Their treatment of her was so bad that she attempted suicide. The husband's jail sentence and the fact that she has begun divorce proceedings have only exacerbated their malice towards her. Her in-laws have contacted her on frequent occasions to tell her that they will cut her up and kill her if she returns to India.

India has a deeply entrenched patriarchal system and women are expected to conform to a strict social code. As a result, although it is Sima's husband who has been responsible for appallingly violent behaviour, it is Sima's action in reporting that behaviour and giving evidence against him that is considered shameful amongst her family and the community as a whole.

It is extremely common in India that incidents of serious domestic violence against women are not taken seriously. The police and courts are often unwilling to intervene in such matters. Amnesty International have noted that it is very difficult for women to seek justice through the criminal justice system in India and that women victims of crime are at a severe disadvantage. This means that it is highly unlikely that Sima will get the protection that she needs should she be returned.

Sima was born and brought up in Sudan although she is of Indian origin and has an Indian passport. She has few family members in India and following the court case, these ties have deteriorated. The Home Office have argued that Sima could live with her uncle if she is returned to India. However, the details of the rape case have become widely known and he will no longer speak to her.

Sima's in-laws in India are aware of Sima's movements and since being detained on Tuesday, Sima has received threatening messages stating that they know she is about to be removed from the UK and that they will track her down.

In addition, Sima has been diagnosed with and was being treated for deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Her treatment for this has been disrupted by being put in detention and putting her on a long-haul flight would be extremely dangerous to her health.

Please E-mail/fax attached model letter to:
CEO Steve Ridgeway
Virgin Atlantic Airways
Manor Royal
Crawley
West Sussex
RH10 9NU
Fax: 01293 444124
Email: customer.services@fly.virgin.com

Halfway down the article it's finally clear that PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education), the currently optional element of the school curriculum that aims to teach kids about life, the universe and everything, will be made compulsory. The proposed new curriculum includes lessons on how to manage bank accounts, how to deal with cyber bullying, how to resist gangs and, of course, all that stuff about sex and bodies. Sounds eminently sensible to me.

5 year olds won't be rolling condoms on bananas quite yet, though. Instead they'll be learning about how their bodies will change as they go through childhood. At 9 they'll be learning about what to expect from puberty, at 11 they'll learn the basics of human reproduction and not until secondary school will they get the full on sex, contraception, STD and relationship stuff (including about homosexuality and civil partnerships).

Confusingly, sex education will both be 'mandatory' for the first time for secondary school kids, but opt-outable. Actually, they'll be allowing faith schools to teach sex and relationships 'in the context of their religion'. But parents will still be able to pull their kids out. Apparently, 0.04% currently do so, mostly on religious grounds.

Shorter Mail: they're teaching kids to be gay!

Shorter Telegraph: teach them when they're grown up

"The Labour government has forced us into this", grumbles the Lib Dem deputy leader of the council, David Baker. Angela Smith, a councilor concerned about the way the process has been undertaken, says it's ironic that a piece of legislation intended to tackle the pay gap between men and women has been used to justify cutting the pay of some of the most poorly paid people in the workforce.

The BBC interviewed Michelle Brindley. Michelle is a teaching assistant at a school for children with special educational needs. She used to earn £17,000. Soon she'll be earning £14,000. She's been in the job 25 years.

Sheffield council say to bring workers' pay to parity by lifting them up to the same level rather than imposing 20-25% pay cuts would cost in the region of £2m. For comparison, that's one third of one percent of their annual operating budget. They're operating a budget deficit, of course, but who the hell isn't operating a budget deficit these days?

Meanwhile, Michelle has taken a 20% pay cut. And she has to take a calculator around with her when she goes to the supermarket.

Jender at Feminist Philosophers sums it up nicely:

A gross injustice is being carried out in the name of feminism, and we MUST fight it. It is deeply offensive to call this feminist, and it is precisely the sort of thing that convinces people that feminists are elitists happy to sacrifice the pay of low-paid workers for some deeply confused notion of gender equality

***update: you can complain to Sheffield City Council here***

Hat tip to Jender @ Feminist Philosophers

Susan got an incredibly hard time from audience and judges alike, and is now the subject of article after article expressing shock at the loveliness of her voice. Not just in Britain, but all intentionally. Hell, I live in America, and I saw being interviewed live on breakfast news this morning, asked a perky blonde news anchor via a satellite link where she finds her courage. Nobody's asking the pretty, lithe young ones that. They're just assumed to be gagging to show off. Since the original series' of Popstars and Big Brother the default personality is exhibitionist.

And still, we're all shocked. Surprised that she even has the courage to do it. Pleased, perhaps. But shocked. I was. Why?

Why are we so shocked when "ugly" women can do things, rather than sitting at home weeping and wishing they were somebody else? Men are allowed to be ugly and talented. Alan Sugar looks like a burst bag of flour. Gordon Ramsay has a dried-up riverbed for a face. Justin Lee Collins looks like Cousin It from The Addams Family. Graham Norton is a baboon in mascara. I could go on. But a woman has to have the bright, empty beauty of a toy - or get off the screen. We don't want to look at you. Except on the news, where you can weep because some awful personal tragedy has befallen you.

As Gold goes on to say, this doesn't happen in the same way to the male contestants:

I know what you will say. You will say that Paul Potts, the fat opera singer with the equally squashed face who won Britain's Got Talent in 2007, had just as hard a time at his first audition. I looked it up on YouTube. He did not. "I wasn't expecting that," said Simon to Paul. "Neither was I," said Amanda. "You have an incredible voice," said Piers. And that was it.

She told the girls,

"I want you to know that we have very much in common. For nothing in my life's path would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first lady of the United States of America. There was nothing in my story that would land me here. I wasn't raised with wealth or resources of any social standing to speak of...

"If you want to know the reason why I'm standing here, it's because of education. I never cut class. Sorry I don't know if anybody here is cutting class. I never did. I loved getting As. I liked being smart. I loved being on time. I loved getting my work done. I thought being smart was cooler than anything in the world."

This Guardian article looks at the impact her words had on girls at EGA school, who are still visibly excited and starstruck by the visit, which was a complete surprise to them.

"You can relate to her story. She said, 'I'm a working-class girl.' And more or less all of us are working-class. She made it. And it made me think: if she can do it, so can I."

The desire to have a boy - both culturally and economically imposed - is so strong for some that they resort to 'buying' sons from gangs of traffickers who are snatching toddlers and children. Boys as young as 9 months are taken from outside their houses, sometimes snatched out of the arms of their siblings as they're playing.

“If you have only girls, you don’t feel right inside,” said Ms. Zhen, who has one child, an 11-year-old son. “You feel your status is lower than everyone else.”

“A girl is just not as good as a son,” said Mr. Su, 38, who has a 14-year-old daughter but whose biological son died at 3 months. “It doesn’t matter how much money you have. If you don’t have a son, you are not as good as other people who have one.”

You can read the remainder of the article here.

Rebecca Hooper, who is 9 years old, had become the first female Cub Scout to earn all 33 available badges, and it is believed she is the youngest ever to do so. When her Scout leader jokingly told her she had to get all the badges that exist if she wanted her silver award, Rebecca took her at her word.

She spent her summer holiday doing things like visiting an observatory (astronomer badge), cooking her family a roast dinner (cook badge), taking part in a litter picking campaign (global conservationist badge), growing beans and sugar crystals (scientist badge) and learning how to repair a bicycle (cyclist badge) .

She'll be old enough to join the Sea Scouts next year, and she's already got her eyes set on their 60 badges. And she wants to be a vet when she grows up. Anyway, I seem to remember a discussion a while back when we were talking about girls needing to have more positive role models in life than soap stars and singers, and I reckon this lass just might turn out to be one. Go, Rebecca!

Some economists have been taking an increasing interest in how we really measure and understand wellbeing both as economists and public policy makers. After all, most economists would agree that maximising social welfare efficiency is the goal - they just disagree on how to go about it and, more fundamentally, what it looks like when you get there.

For various reasons, this is actually rather hard to measure. As our closest proxy, we tend to use Gross National Product (GNP, or the similar GDP) per person. These are really just measures of a country's wealth, accounting for the size of its population. But wealth doesn't necessarily equate to happiness and wellbeing, and it certainly says nothing about equity. There's a famous Robert Kennedy quote from 1968, which says:

“Gross National Product counts air pollution, and cigarette advertising and … the destruction of the redwood, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play … the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”.

Everyone acknowledges GNP and GDP are imperfect measures, but policy makers need some standard against which to measure progress and, to date, nobody has really been able to point to a better way. The new economics foundation is stepping into the breach, and has spent a number of years progressing towards the point where they have compiled a new index which they believe is systematic, reliable and practical way to measure progress.

They are calling on governments to "shift the goalpoasts" in what they call success, and to begin to measure that success based on a direct measurement of people's subjective wellbeing. You can read the full report here, and calculate your own wellbeing here (as well as compare it to European averages, different age groups etc) .

In the meatime, though, a quick look at the statistics confirmed a few interesting findings about the relation between gender and happiness. It found that, across Europe, men are generally happier than women. There are, of course, exceptions. The men and women of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Austria, Switzerland and Ireland are about equally happy. The men and women of Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and Estonia are about equally unhappy.

But in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Bulgaria, women are systematically less happy than men. And where are women happier? You guessed it ... nowhere.

In the UK, they find that being female is statistically significantly associated with lower personal wellbeing, lower emotional wellbeing (absence of negative feelings), lower resilience and self esteem, and lower vitality. I wonder what we could blame for that .... ?

On the other hand, in some positive news, being female is statistically significantly associated with greater social wellbeing, and greater feelings of trust and belonging.

The nef say that there is a "strong case" for evaluating all policy decisions not in terms of how they will affect GDP (ie 'the economy') but in terms of how they affect wellbeing. This, they say, "could work on the model of UK race, gender and disability equality legislation, which places a legal duty on public authorities to undertake impact assessments to determine whether new an existing policies have the potential to impact diverse groups of people differently" (p.47 of the report). Go, have a look at the site, it's completely fascinating.

The images are captured from the nef website; they hold the copyright. I've put them up here because I figure they're keen to have their work talked about as much as possible. If you're from the nef and object to our using the images, please get in touch and we'll take them down!

This legislation has been campaigned for by Object and Fawcett amongst others. Have a look at Object's Stripping the Illusion campaign for more.

Also included will be a new equalities bill, to "promote fairness, fight discrimination and introduce transparency in the workplace to address the pay gap between men and women".

Secondly, capitalising on its success, there has been talk amongst various feminists, including those from the London Feminist Network, Object and the London Pro-Feminist Men's Group, of organizing a 'Death of Laddism' parade.

The purpose would be to challenge the notion that laddism defines men (indeed is offensive to them), and rally round the anger at high profile 'laddish' behaviour such as the recent Brand/Ross controversy. Planning has yet to get off the ground in a formal sense, but ideas being batted around have included a New Orleans-style 'funeral for the lad' parade, a positive, fun parade asking "what would your life be like without sexism"?

If you'd like to be involved, everyone is welcome and the more hands the better. A yahoo group has been set up for those who'd like to help.

Sarah, who set up the yahoo group, says:

The aim of the parade is to challenge heterosexual middle-class white male privilege, and anyone, however they identify themselves, as long as they are also against heterosexual middle-class white male privilege, is welcome to take part.

Have fun!

Then, on Sunday night in Memphis, Duanna Johnson was shot dead in the street. Duanna was in the process of bringing charges agains the Memphis police for a brutal assault (she was beaten in the face by a police officer who had wrapped handcuffs around his fist, an attack that was caught on CCTV). Witnesses saw three men fleeing the scene of her murder, but there are some suspicious circumstances which, if true, may implicate the police. Helen has more over at BoP.

There is so little we can say when awful things like this happen, except that our thoughts are with the family and friends of these two women. And that it seems apposite to take a moment to mention two new initiatives related to preventing male violence against women. Please let's all lend our support to the people who are working to prevent things like this from happening.

First, a new grassroots online project, Our Voices Matter (OVM):

OVM is a project of the Artemis Fund, Inc. which is a non-profit that works to promote the human rights of women and girls and to end violence against women in all its forms.

OVM is a collection of testimony by individuals who have been harmed by prostitution, pornography, and trafficking. OVM seeks to provide a safe space for survivors to give voice to how prostitution, pornography, and trafficking have impacted their lives.

Secondly, Millon Women Rise are launching their 2009 campaign with an event in Bradford on the 25th November (the UN Day to End Violence Against Women). Speakers will address the systematic rape, torture and mutilation of women and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has continued although much of the country is now at peace. For more information see MWR 2009's Facebook page.

Image of Amy Leigh from Manchester Evening News. Image of Duanna via transgirlriot

Plenty of people expressed justified outrage at this ad, which normalises rape culture, reducing the implied sexual assault to some sort of nudge-nudge, wink-wink joke.

Now Pepsi have taken steps to deny this advert is anything to do with them, through blog comment boxes and personal emails, assuring bloggers and complainants that this was an unsolicited pitch from an advertising agency, and that "it inadvertantly made its way to the internet". Bullshit.

This is what viral marketers *do*. They pay some ad agency to put out an ad that's so offensive it'll be guaranteed to have everyone writing blog posts about it, sending links to the You-Tube ad for it and generally be talking all over the place about it. You know, the sort of ad they'd never get on TV because it contravenes all sorts of regulations on discrimination or incitement to hatred. Then after people have started talking about it, they issue a statement denying all knowledge (guaranteeing people talk about it a while longer - and, look, Pepsi - it's working!). Finally, they get to have their cake and eat it. Everyone's talking about it, they spend minmal money circulating it, and they get to look like the good guys by saying things like:

"Please know that we would never use this type of imagery to sell our products".

.. and have people like Melissa McEwan (who I love, I'm not having a dig!) say things like:

"their response is about as good a corporate reply to a concern raised about misogynist advertising as I've seen"

Meanwhile, Melissa herself points out that Pepsi actually is a listed client of the advertising agency in question. There is no question that this could have been for prior work. It could be that what Pepsi said to Cara, that they had genuine "respect and understanding for our offense at the ad" is true. Cara spoke to them, not me, and she might have a different take on it.

All I'm saying is.... it worked out pretty well for Pepsi, huh?

Sounds like bullshit to me.

** this is all my opinion, I could be wrong yadda yadda, please don't sue me **

• Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, both the first female doctor and the first female mayor in England;


• Millicent Garrett Fawcett, President of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and campaigner for the female vote;


• Claudia Jones, campaigner for black rights and founder of the Notting Hill Carnival;


• Eleanor Rathbone, campaigner for Family Allowances;


• Marie Stopes, pioneer of birth control; and


• Barbara Castle, campaigner for the 1970 Equal Pay Act.

You can read more information about the stamp issue, and see the designs, here.

(Thanks to Romy for the tip off!)