Nell Frizzell speaks at our 50th celebration.
Talking about the importance of women’s centres in the community and how sometimes a woman can better understand what another woman needs, Nell spoke eloquently and emotionally about “a quiet, everyday magic to women’s spaces”.
“I believe that there is a quiet, everyday magic to women’s spaces. And nowhere has given me a more profound sense of that magic than Brighton Women’s Centre.
As a writer and just as a person, I have spent a lot of time in women’s spaces – libraries, maternity units, swimming pools, playgroups, even a nunnery. But when, while teaching a course up North, a woman mentioned to me that she volunteered at the Brighton Women’s Centre, my ears pricked up. A women’s centre, founded and run by women, for women, addressing our most serious and most subtle needs, every day, with wisdom, kindness and knowledge? I had to see it for myself.
But what do I mean by everyday magic? I mean sitting with a group of women in a warm, bright hall, watching someone get their eyebrows threaded, someone else filling in a housing form, a mother looking through a rail of donated bedding and another woman, who has walked for an hour to be there, just drinking her cup of tea, safe in the knowledge that she is safe. Everyday magic is turning up to a room on a freezing cold day in sandals, because your trainers got stolen, and being given tins and tea bags and toiletries, by a woman who knows you, who texts you the reminders, and who genuinely cares that you stay healthy for the next fortnight. Every day magic is gathering around a small formica table and plate of biscuits, talking about the damp of a hostel bedroom, of missing your daughter, of your fears about an upcoming court case; and knowing that you are being listened to, without judgement, by women just like you.
Brighton Women’s Centre opened in 1974 – just four years after the first women’s liberation conference in the UK laid out the four, foundational demands of the movement: Equal pay. Equal educational and job opportunities. Free contraception and abortion on demand. Free 24-hour nurseries. I wish I could say that, fifty four years later we had achieved these things; that women’s centres were places we could go simply to revel in our state of power, equality and liberation. But no.
Just two years later, in 1976, BWC had already helped 1160 women. If you lined all those women up they would form a line over half a kilometre long. They would, in fact, be longer than Brighton pier – and that was just in the first 24 months. In the years since, despite the occasional looming threat of closure, the battle for funding and the insecurity of premises, Brighton Women’s Centre has remained, steadfast, a lighthouse, a haven, an example to us all. They have supported hundreds of thousands of women, their families and their children. Through their creche, counselling, the foodbank, housing advice, wellbeing services and assistance with everything from the criminal justice system to where to source a lamp, they have pulled women out of distress, danger and depression. They have kept families functioning, women healthy and this community, well, a community.
When I talk to people about women’s spaces and women’s centres one of the most common responses is why: why do we need them? To which I say, firstly, we need these spaces because we haven’t even achieved those first four demands yet. Equal pay. Equal educational and job opportunities. Free contraception and abortion on demand. Free 24-hour nurseries. Not to mention the litany of other demands and challenges that can and have now been added to the list: quality housing, safe sex, equal healthcare, legal representation, self expression, financial independence, freedom from intimidation, racial equality, warmth, wellbeing and the right to self determination within a caring whole.
Like many women’s centres, BWC was established as a collective, to help women of all backgrounds, facing all kinds of issues, to live happier lives. During my first visit to the centre last winter, on a table, near the entrance to the counter, I found a pile of forms. ‘Welcome to Brighton Women’s Centre’, they said at the top. ‘Tick any of the following if you are currently experiencing: domestic abuse, difficulties with children or family, accommodation difficulties, financial problems or debt, mental health difficulties, physical health difficulties, drugs or alcohol, sex working, employment difficulties.’ Of course, these aren’t the only reasons a woman might end up using a food bank but it is a pretty good answer to the question: why do we need women’s centres? Also, by taking the time to actually visit a women’s centre: to look at the carpet, see if the radiators are on, listen the conversations at the sink, you can learn something extremely useful about public services, public funding and public opinion. You can see where, as women, we have achieved great triumphs and where we are still vulnerable.
A women’s centre is, essentially, the product of the women who work in it. And the attitude of the staff I met at Brighton Women’s Centre allowed their users to operate with dignity, confidence and sometimes even humour. I watched a woman at the foodbank wrap a butternut squash in a teatowel and pretend to burp it like a baby. Standing behind the table, writing in my notebook, I heard the same kind of exchanges I’ve heard in every space I’ve ever shared with women: ‘I love your hair’, ‘How’s your little one?’ ‘That looks warm’. And yet, when a woman came in with a small child, Emma – the foodbank manager – made a point of quietly pulling out a box of children’s toothbrushes and toothpastes from under the table and giving her one of each, without asking. That, I think, is what a safety net is. It is knowing what your users need, perhaps before even they do.
It is also an example of how sometimes a woman can better understand what another woman needs. Years ago, I remember reading how in 1975, as Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, Barbara Castle introduced the Child Benefit Act, making it mandatory that child benefit would be paid directly to mothers, not fathers. From her time working in communities, speaking to women and living in an area of relative poverty (her mother ran a soup kitchen for coal miners in Bradford) Castle understood the subtleties of how families operate, how money is spent, and where it’s most needed. Of course, walking the line between support and interference is difficult; applying a general system to individuals will always be imperfect; but this one small act, of handing over a child’s toothbrush without having to be asked, strikes me as the action of an organisation that has spent thousands of hours, on the ground, watching and listening to their users, learning what is needed by the women they support.
Since first getting in touch with Brighton Women’s Centre, I have also visited one of the Women’s Accommodation Support Service hubs they run in Eastbourne. According to BWC, 87.5% of women they see are securely accommodated as a result of their engagement with the Women’s Accommodation Support Service in West Sussex, partly because the service is specifically designed to meet the needs of women. I spoke to one service user, who had lost both her passport and her UK citizenship paperwork after being made homeless. I put that same old question to her. Why a women’s space? Why do we need them? Her answer was simple. “I love this space,” she told me. “When you come, you can say everything that’s inside you. Some people out there don’t want to hear it. But in here, I feel so much more comfortable.”
That is every day magic. Every day magic is having shelves you can reach and women you can laugh with and case workers who have been where you are now and want to help move you forward. Every day magic is in packets of pasta and text messages and mothers handing on their old cot sheets and remembering who takes milk in their tea. Every day magic is having buildings and staff and policies and partners, all dedicated to helping self-identifying women, of all backgrounds, to live happier lives. Every day magic isn’t found in Narnia; it’s found behind a yellow door on Richmond Place.”
Nell Frizzell is a journalist and author, find out more about Nell here.