Founded 1973 | ||
Tax ID no. Registered company no SC128433 Registration no. Charity number SC001099 Focus Domestic violence, Women Location 2nd Floor, 132 Rose Street, Edinburgh Origins Inspired by Chiswick Women's Aid | ||
Scottish Women's Aid is a feminist charity campaigning to prevent domestic violence against women and their children. It was founded in 1973 and is an umbrella organisation for the 39 affiliated local Women's Aid groups in the country. It is the largest and oldest domestic violence charity in Scotland and coordinates support and temporary accommodation to women and their children who experience domestic abuse.
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The organisation also campaigns politically on behalf of female victims of domestic violence to influence public policy and conducts advertising campaigns to raise public awareness of the issue.
History
Scottish Women's Aid came into being following visits to Europe's first domestic violence shelter in Chiswick, established by Erin Pizzey. With help from local authorities refuges were set up in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1973. By the mid seventies there were eight Scottish Women's Aid shelters. Stark contrasts arose between Pizzey and much of the feminist anti-violence movement over her endorsement of involving men and acknowledging violence by women, and she left the movement acrimoniously. The SWA network that emerged was strongly anti-Pizzey and her ideas; its campaign against her candidacy for Rector of the University of Aberdeen in 1981 is recalled as a factor in her decision to leave the UK.
SWA has approximately 40 affiliated groups; as of 2007, it noted the presence of six parallel non-affiliated organisations; the balance can fluctuate due to breakaway groups from SWA's feminist ideology. In 2016, the Falkirk group relaunched as Committed to Ending Abuse with a wider remit, and later that year the Moray group broke away after it was found to have had a man on its board for several years.
Funding
Scottish Women's Aid receives the majority of its funding from the taxpayer. In 2009 it had an income of over £1 million.
In July 2009 Scottish Women's Aid controversially rejected almost £1,000 in funding that had been raised by domestic violence vicitms who had produced a semi-naked charity calendar, with the organisation receiving significant criticism for comparing the fund-raisers with sex industry workers. Jacqui Kelly of Scottish Women's Aid defended her organisation's stance stating that they were "a feminist organisation" and they "did not support women taking their clothes off to raise money". Gillian Bowditch of The Times condemned the charity for confusing nudity and pornography, and accused them of being "mean-spirited, humourless dogmatists prepared to put a warped ideology ahead of the sensitivities of the very women they are employed to help." The fund-raisers instead donated the funds raised to the Alloa branch of Women's Aid.