Womcam, OUSU’s autonomous feminist campaign, is introducing “working groups” into colleges which look to change the way colleges approach feminist issues.
This new “Feminist Makeover” campaign has expanded at an unprecedented rate this term, prompting an important debate about whether there is a need for further feminist support in the colleges.
Chris Pike, a third year at Teddy Hall, has been running the campaign. He commented, “I’m delighted by the huge expansion in participation with WomCam which we’ve seen so far this term. We had an enormous turn-out to our first week event and loads of people signing up to be involved in working groups.”
These working groups work on a much smaller scale than the rest of the campaign, and will be taking motions to JCRs and MCRs, as well as setting up feminist societies and discussion groups within colleges. This campaign adds to the great number of existing societies within colleges. Eva Sprecher, Women’s Welfare representative at Jesus College told Cherwell, “We’ve found at Jesus increasingly everyone wants to get in on debating women’s issues, with the introduction of ‘feminars’ by the gender equality reps on our equal ops committee.
“We have good attendance from men and women to discuss issues relating to gender and especially after hosting Vagenda last Trinity it’s been great to hear the whole college getting involved in the discussion.”
Students at Magdalen College have had experienced success with the campaign and their new feminist group, ‘Raising Consciousness’, which meets on a fortnightly basis to discuss issues of misogyny as well as the possibility of restructuring the JCR committee to make it better equipped to handle the issues surrounding gender equality.
This week saw the launch of the campaign zine ‘It Happens Here: Stories of Sexual Violence & A Victim-Blaming University’. The booklet features analysis of the situation in Oxford and stories from survivors of ‘rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, relationship abuse, and other forms of personal violation’.
An event held on Wednesday at Hertford college saw campaign organisers speak on issues of sexual violence in Oxford and encourage students to become part of a campaign committee to help fight rape and rape-culture in Oxford.
Yet due to the extent of existing support at college level, some students have queried why there is a need for a large-scale campaign from OUSU. Sarah Pine, Vice President for Women at OUSU, explained that this is not just a “top down” campaign.
She said, “The content of the college-based projects has come from the membership of the campaign, not from the committee. Also, there is more autonomy for different groups of women through the working groups. For example, the committee doesn’t tell queer women, women of colour or disabled women what their liberation looks like; this comes from those communities themselves.”
On a practical level, this means that the ‘working groups’ are designed by individual colleges to suit their own needs. Because of this there is generally a great deal of support for WomCam from colleges’ independent societies.
Yet Miriam Goodall, who runs the Magdalen ‘Raising Consciousness’ campaign, stressed that there is still work to be done.
She said: “I would like to say we are 100 percent successful in our aims but I still believe there’s a lad culture which proliferates throughout the college and the university. That is why I wholeheartedly think that there is a need for an OUSU campaign and for all the other feminist groups working within the university. People often criticise OUSU as being bureaucratic and ineffective but I would support any organisation which is raising its voice against sexism.”
Individual colleges have had successes with the campaign, but there are clearly still challenges that a centrally organised but locally administered initiative can face. Instances like the ‘Mr. and Mrs. Christ Church’ competition in Trinity 2013 that ended with “get your tits out” chants show that sexism is yet to be eradicated from Oxford.
