Women’s Mental Illness Is A Reaction To Oppression

The first step is to invest in mental health services that can support and heal. Current services are overstretched and underfunded, meaning that many women are unable to access support until they reach crisis. When women are detained they report inappropriate staffing, including male staff delivering close observation. There have also been sexual assaults on mental health wards and breaches of single sex accommodation rules.

An investigation by Agenda in January 2019 found that of 35 Mental Health Trusts that responded to a freedom of information request, only one had a women’s mental health strategy and fewer than half of those who responded had a policy on asking about experiences of violence and abuse.

We need single-sex provision – spaces in which women who have been attacked or threatened because of their sex can recover and recuperate. We also need mainstream provision that better recognises sexism, abuse and violence, and can ask women about their experiences and signpost them to additional support. 

And we need to end sexism. Without that, we’re simply asking for money to build bunkers while the war around us continues. 

Young Women’s Trust is part of a coalition of 29 charities who have launched a Manifesto for Women and Girls this election. In it we are calling for an end to violence against women and girls – via a bill that will fully ratify the Istanbul Convention and provide a comprehensive framework of equal protection and support for all survivors. 

We also want fully-funded, high quality sex education to tackle endemic sexual harassment and violence in schools and society. We want the introduction of a legal duty on employers to prevent harassment happening in their workplaces. We want women’s equal representation in politics and equal pay at work. And we want equal investment in the social infrastructure that women are pushed into providing for free, to support economic advancement of men.

Our YWT Advisory Panel of young women said that they felt young women experience more sexism because they’re seen as an easier target. We know too that young women might now have greater awareness of sexism and be more likely to report it. And that is the light at the end of this tunnel. Other Young Women’s Trust research – conducted with Dr Ruth Hackett at University College London – has shown that more young women identify sexism as a major problem in the UK; more young women identify as feminists; and more young women demand better from our politicians. Young women are our future. They are breaking down the barriers of our past. We should all be allies to them.

Sophie Walker is CEO of Young Women’s Trust.