The Maya Centre Women Leaders’ Group came together to host the Women’s Forum on Navigating Support Systems. The conversations centred around barriers to accessing support, and what can be done to improve experiences of women accessing essential systems. Multiple barriers to accessing services are faced by our women.
These areas were highlighted as part of the Forum which included women with lived experiences, members of the council and large organisations. The aim of the Forum is to enact social change and bring together minoritised women and key decision makers at Islington Council and beyond.
At the forum a range of access issues were identified through our women’s lived experiences. With inequality across the UK widening, the Women’s Health Strategy for England investigates why the design of healthcare systems prioritises men.
Lack of funding for accessibility impacts our women, alongside widespread systemic issues. One of our community navigators spoke out at the Forum about her experience of being invalidated by a healthcare professional as a Black woman. The Forum found that the women felt unheard and discriminated against through microaggressions.
Women with mental health issues are not finding that the system is accessible for their needs. They had to fill forms out again and again and again to keep proving how unwell they were.
Language barriers, unemployment and legal status affected the women’s ability to access systems. Homelessness is on the rise as some women asylum seekers in domestic abuse situations are unable to escape their situations, sometimes due to not having papers to remain in the UK, so they are forced to either stay with their abuser or become homeless.
These are just a few of the issues experienced by minoritised women in our society. The Women Leaders’ Group empowers women to come together and speak up on the issues affecting them. The Women Leaders’ Group are passionate about creating change, and empowering women to speak up about their own experiences.
The Women Leaders’ Group has come up with the idea of a Women’s Information Hub, bringing together all the support services in one place, to make navigating services more accessible for all women. The Women’s Information Hub will ensure that services are provided in a way that offers equal access to all, regardless of a woman’s situation.
You can join us for the next Women’s Forum to take part in the next round of the conversation – register your interest by emailing womenshub@mayacentre.org.uk
About the Women Leaders’ Group:
We’ve hosted two large forum style events this year so far bringing women together to discuss the most important issues to them. The first of these was the International Women’s Day event on 8th March 2024. The second was the Women’s Forum on 25th July 2024.
In the run up to the Women’s Forum, six sessions were held training the Women Leaders’ Group, which is a group made up of former service users. The Women Leaders’ Group enables our former service users to have a voice and agency and to input into the conversations had by key organisations and public sector stakeholders, to create change for minoritised women. The women took part in leadership training which equipped them with the skills needed to speak out on women’s issues. The training included a series of two hour sessions on key business skills, community organising, public speaking and strategic planning.