Giving a Voice to the ‘Hard to Hear’ - Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement - page 91

The objective of the project was to enable women suffering domestic
violence to communicate directly with parliamentarians to convey the true
nature of the issues involved.
Participants in this project were women in the UK suffering domestic
violence. They came from a variety of social backgrounds, including dif-
ferent ethnic and minority populations. Respondents represented a variety
of social backgrounds from across the UK, although 22.4% were from
Greater London. The project was gender neutral but almost 100% of con-
tributions came from women.
ICT was used as a means to facilitate the goal of enhancing communica-
tion for these women. The organizers set up a secure website which
women could use to communicate with MPs. The website needed to be se-
cure, so that abusive partners could not detect what the women were doing.
Security procedures involved the women ringing the moderator to be allo-
cated a username and password to gain access to the secure site. To
achieve robust security only specified moderators and women in women's
aid or outreach groups could provide these details.
Many women needed training to enable them to interact online, as well
as means of safe, secure access, often in community centres and schools.
Announced by e-Minister Patricia Hewitt early in March 2000, the interac-
tive discussion continued throughout that month.
Flyers were sent out to women's aid refuges, women's and disability
groups and outreach organisations five months in advance of the consulta-
tion. The time lead was essential in order to ensure that the widest range of
experience could be heard. Media coverage was targeted to contact women
who might never have contacted a refuge or agency dealing with domestic
violence. In total 204 women were registered for the consultation, of
whom 199 participated by logging on to the website. Several of these
women came from ethnic (Bangladeshi) and minority (Irish travellers)
groups.
At first sceptical about politicians, many women valued the opportunity
of being able to talk to legislators as a result of the exercise. Initially, “ only
5.2% of respondents were members of a political party. 62.7% had voted
in the last election, compared with 71.3% nationally. Only 17.9% thought
that their MP did take an interest in the issue of domestic violence ” (Margaret
Moran, MP for Luton South), (Moran 2000).
An important outcome of this exercise was that women were able to
demonstrate the diversity of their circumstances, report their experiences
of responses from the police, the judiciary, and lack of provision in state
aid and support structures. They were also able to suggest mechanisms to
overcome these problems. As a result, these experiences of survivors have