Sexually Exploited Girls & Young Women:Gender across the life-course

Sara Scott & Di McNeishDi@dmss.co.uk

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Draws on work carried out for new strategic alliance on women and girls at risk (AGENDA)

Funded by LankellyChase, Barrow Cadbury & Pilgrim Trusts

Origins in 2007 Corston review of women in criminal justice system

Consultation highlighted need for more ‘upstream’ approaches – DMSS commissioned to conduct review

Background

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There are groups of women and girls with similar clusters of extreme vulnerabilities in very damaging circumstances and systems.

For some, the trajectories towards these damaging outcomes are driven by unaddressed trauma (including abuse, neglect and exploitation).

Girls may respond to these experiences differently to boys.

Some women have been failed as children and adults by the services meant to support them

There are opportunities to address these issues and support women and girls by taking a ‘life course’ approach.

Hypotheses

To inform the Alliance’s goal of making a difference to the lives of women and girls who are at risk of:

homelessness sexual exploitation mental health problems contact with the criminal justice system drugs and/or alcohol problems

The review asks:

What are the risk factors affecting women and girls across the life-course?What do we know about potentially effective support?

Purpose of review

Gender Matters

Money Work Freedom Caring Gender links with other inequalities –

ethnicity & poverty Gradient of disadvantage

Inequalities

Pink and blue Maintain inequalities Risk for women’s mental health Double whammy for women who don’t

conform

Gendered expectations

Girls & women at greater risk Abuse in childhood Domestic violence Accumulation – ‘poly-victimisation’ Violence greater risk more

violence Poor women at greater risk

Violence & abuse

Proportion of each violence and abuse group who have attempted suicideAPMS Analysis, 2013

Little

viol

ence

/abu

se

Physic

al fro

m p

artn

er

Exten

sive

phys

ical/c

oerc

ion, p

artn

er

Sexua

l, on

ly as

chil

d

Sexua

l adu

lt, s

omet

imes

chil

d

Exten

sive

phys

ical,

sexu

al as

chil

d/ad

ult

2

1012

10 10

29

%

Gender impacts on the experience of abuse and violence by:

Early yearsPrimary yearsTeenage yearsInto adulthood

Risks & interventions across the life-course

Lots from the US Little about gender differencesLittle about girlsLittle outcome focused evaluation of UK women’s services

Problems with the evidence

Early yearsPrimary yearsTeenage yearsInto adulthood

Risks & interventions across the life-course

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Well-being in the teenage years

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Resilience in the teenage years

Creating a demand for gender differences to be more routinely analysed and reported in research findings;

Influencing the agenda of research funders to give a higher priority to studies which explore issues of gender and risk;

Advocating for replication of evaluations which have already been robustly evaluated to assess the extent to which they are a) transferable to the UK context and b) have a positive impact on girls and women;

Using the Alliance as a vehicle for developing common outcome frameworks across services for girls and women at risk to enable more substantial evaluation to be implemented;

Developing wider use of feminist approaches to evaluation which measures what matters to women and girls and enables greater reflection of the realities of women’s lives.

Implications for research agenda

Influence the gender awareness of providers of services for children in the early and primary years.

Make connections between policies and services for at risk women and those concerned primarily with children.

Advocate for early interventions that are shown to have longer- term benefits for women and for more robust evaluation/explanation of these gender effects.

Encourage cross-sectoral working and research for women at risk. Promote the need for staff in services to have training into the

impacts of inequalities, violence and abuse on women’s lives and enables them to work with women at risk in ways that are helpful and empowering.

Support, evaluate and showcase integrated, holistic women-centred services for women at risk.

Implications for services

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New project on women & girls facing severe and multiple disadvantage

Aim to develop a conceptual framework and profile

Partnership with Herriot Watt university Will involve consultation with services and

those with lived experience

Where next

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How do gender expectations, structural inequalities and experience of violence and abuse interact in the lives of the women and girls you work with?

How does your understanding of gender and risk shape the way you work?

How can we create more opportunities to work (as practitioners and researchers) outside silos and across the life-course?

For discussion