Battle cry for a system in crisis

The woman heading the Women's Resource Centre (WRC) is remarkably upbeat for someone who admits she is watching many of her hardest-won victories systematically dismantled before her eyes. Vivienne Hayes, who as chief executive at umbrella body WRC represents over 350 small women's charities and community groups across the UK, says she is working in a sector facing a "fundamental crisis" both in terms of funding and the seeming lack of political will to support the existence of single-issue women's services at local and national level. While the UK's 30,000 women's groups make up 7% of all charities, they collectively receive just 1.2% of central government funding.

"After all that the women's sector fought for decades ago, to see refuges and rape crisis centres closing, to hear our members struggling to live hand to mouth while literally saving lives every week, well, in many ways it just feels like we're regressing," she says.

Organised resistanceThe plight of rape crisis services is especially painful for Hayes, who started her career working in grassroots women's domestic violence services and local support networks. Hayes was one of those campaigning long and hard for a national network of dedicated local health and counselling services for rape survivors in the 1970s. By 1984 there were 68 centres in England and Wales. Now only 38 are left, with fears that half of those remaining could close in the near future unless local partnerships step in to fund specialist services.

"At a time when the UK has one of the worst rape conviction rates in Europe, we've got local authorities saying that they don't think these services are deemed worthy to fund," says Hayes with a shake of her head. "It beggars belief."

Hayes says the problems faced by the women's sector are indicative of a wider problem of funding for single-issue voluntary organisations.

"The government doesn't want to talk about there still being a need for gender-specific services or single-issue services, which is frankly laughable," she says. "It's easier for them to farm out big public service contracts to big providers and wash their hands of the impact this will have at local level."

Last year as Hayes saw more and more of the WRC's members being forced to close their doors, she decided to get organised. "We've got 350 members across the country, many that are just a handful of women sitting in a room somewhere trying to help other vulnerable women in their community," she says. "They don't have the time or the capacity to respond to what became clear was a sector-wide funding crisis, and it was our job to step into the breach and pull the whole thing together."

The response was the first mass lobbying campaign the women's sector has ever run. Called Why Women?, the campaign, which unites women's groups across the UK, calls for more recognition from the government for the need for women's services, more secure funding streams and increased support for its campaigning work.

Force for changeAs part of the campaign, the WRC commissioned the first comprehensive and qualitative research into the impact and work of women's groups helping some of the UK's most disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. Armed with their findings they have launched an assault on local councillors, Westminster MPs, journalists and policy makers.

"We got very focused," says Hayes. She sweeps her arm around the WRC's crowded but cramped office in Clerkenwell, in central London. "We may look disorganised but when we got the bit between our teeth there was no stopping us."

They have already seen their efforts pay off. Earlier this year, the Why Women? campaign helped win £1m in emergency funding to try to halt the closure of rape crisis centres. The WRC's campaign research also led to the UN criticising the UK government's funding to women's groups. Last month a report by the UN's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw), which outlined the findings of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland stated that "changes in the allocation of government funding from a needs-based to a commissioning framework have negatively impacted on funding to women's organisations."

"I do feel like we're managing to change the perception of women's groups, slowly but surely," says Hayes.

In December last year the umbrella group was appointed by Capacitybuilders, the £88.5m programme launched to build the capacity of the voluntary sector, to run the national equalities and diversity infrastructure programme.

Capacity building"WRC running a national infrastructure programme? It would have seemed impossible even 18 months ago," says Hayes. "Now, suddenly I'm being asked to sit on all these panels and take part in all these meetings and they wouldn't have even let me through the door six months ago. People were able to dismiss the women's sector as a bunch of crazy old feminists before, but we're showing we're actually a relevant and much needed force for change."

Just hours after the interview, Hayes was on hand to see Southall Black Sisters (SBS), one of the UK's most high-profile and best-known women's groups, win its high court case against Ealing council in west London over the decision to withdraw funding for SBS's domestic violence services for black and minority ethnic women. She believes the experience of SBS should be a rallying cry to the rest of the sector not to "sit down and take it" when funding is cut or withdrawn from them.

"It's so easy for small voluntary groups to feel like they can't do anything to change the funding decisions being passed on high, but I think what we've done is show that working together and being organised and focussed can bring real change."

"We've still got a really long way to go, we could still fail in our mission to stop this sector from dissolving, but we're not going to take it lying down."

wrc.org.uk

southallblacksisters.org.uk

CV: Vivienne Hayes

Age: 46

Status: Lives with partner, one daughter

Lives: South London 

Education: Layton Hill Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, Blackpool; University of Warwick, sociology (BA); University of Essex, comparative history specialising in women's history (postgraduate diploma)

Career: 2004: chief executive, Women's Resource Centre; 2001-2004: director, Wandsworth Women's Aid; 1999-2001: manager, Newpin Centre for Young Mothers; 1998-2001: chair, Lambeth Women's Aid; 1995-1997 Bar manager for civil servants club; 1983-1996: full time single mother doing various part time jobs including cleaning, selling organic vegetables and cab driving.

Public life: chair, Lambeth Women's Aid; membership committee Lambeth Women and Children's Health Project; trustee, Rosa, a women's funding group; part of the National Abortion campaign

Interests: gardening, music and driving