Last Friday I emailed Emma Ritch, the Chief Executive of Engender, a Scottish radical feminist campaigning organisation, asking her to direct me towards ‘lots of evidence’ she claims exists, showing that increasing female representation on corporate boards leads to enhanced corporate performance. If our previous experiences of challenging radical feminists are anything to go by, she won’t be responding by the deadline of 5pm on Friday 29 May, after which we’ll present her with our ‘Lying Feminist of the Month’ award.
A supporter has emailed me to ask if I know anything about how Engender is funded. A Google search soon led me to their 2013/14 annual report. Their funding and outgoings are broken down on p7. Of their £237,927 income, the Scottish government provided £210,868, 88.6% of the total.
A further £10,000 was obtained from Awards for All, i.e. the Big Lottery Fund, a sum which Engender say is ‘funding the development and dissemination of a film about women in the economy’. Hmm, we wonder if the film will mention Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory (2000)? She found that in the UK only one in seven women is work-centred, in contrast with four in seven men.
We’re sure the film will at least cover the long-running scandal that most people registered as unemployed are men, yet taxpayer-funded initiatives aimed at getting people into fields of work historically the preserve of the opposite gender, are always aimed at women. Well, at least when the fields of work are well-paid, secure, amenable to flexible working, little commuting involved, plenty of social contact, indoors…
£120,000 is listed as coming from the Scottish government, a further £90,868 from VAF CSU. The acronym refers to Voluntary Action Fund – Community Safety Unit. The VAF manages a number of grants on behalf of the Scottish government – here. The three funds from which we assume Engender might apply for grants are as follows. At this stage – from exploring their website – we’re only sure Engender have obtained funding from the first:
1. Tackling Sectarianism. From the Engender website page on their work in this area:
Engender have worked over the past eighteen months to bring women together to talk about what sectarianism means to them. We have held focus groups, discussion forums and our ‘Women, Faith and Feminism’ event, as well as engaging with organisations working on a variety of different anti-sectarianism initiatives.
There you have it. ‘Women, Faith and Feminism’. Even when spending taxpayers’ money in relation to sectarianism, these women introduce their toxic ideology, which need not be introduced. It should have been a condition of the grant that it wouldn’t be used to introduce a third faith – feminism – into this already difficult area.
2.Violence Against Women and Girls Fund. £9.5 million available in 2015/16. Sometimes public bodies assert (ridiculously) that the term ‘violence against women and girls’ includes men and boys. There’s no such pretence here. From the website:
The Violence Against Women & Girls Fund: the purpose of which is to support organisations to tackle all forms of violence against women. This includes projects delivering frontline services or building capacity in local partnerships to strengthen responses to violence against women. It also enables children and young people experiencing domestic abuse to receive direct support and ensures that rape crisis services, in current receipt of funding, can also continue providing direct support to women.
3. Equality Fund. I invite you to check it out. Who can possibly doubt that the money will be hoovered up by feminist organisations, to advantage women?
It’s a familiar pattern. Feminist-run organisations are often parasites on taxpayers, although almost three-quarters of the income tax collected in the UK is paid by men. Radical feminist ‘academics’ running Gender Studies courses are parasites too, and would surely otherwise be unemployable.
Male taxpayers are funding the women (and sometimes men) who assault their interests, the people who lie relentlessly about domestic violence, rape, gender pay gap, employment, and so much else, decade after decade. And yet the mainstream media never expose them as the hate-driven liars they are. With rare exceptions academics don’t expose them either, even anonymously.
