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Welfare and Human Rights

The Women’s Campaign aims to ensure the wellbeing and safety of women students by tackling structural and societal barriers to welfare services and ending stigma around sexual health and mental health. We believe that it is our duty to defend and fight for the human rights of women students, at home and internationally. 

#FeelingMySelfCare

Our campaign believes that self-care is a radical act and should not be an afterthought but central to good mental health and wellbeing. That is why we developed the #FeelingMyselfCare workshop toolkit to aid student feminist activist groups in discussing and engaging in radical self-care. The #FeelingMyselfCare workshop toolkit consists of workshop briefing, PowerPoint presentation and feedback form.

#FreePeriods

Periods are bloody expensive and it’s for this reason the #FreePeriods movement exists, a campaign which calls on the government to eradicate the cost of sanitary products. On #PeriodPrideDay we launched the #FreePeriods Toolkit to help students’ unions to cut the cost of menstruation by providing cheaper or where possible, free sanitary products to all students who need them. Students’ unions can also order organic tampons and towels as well, through the NUS purchasing consortium.

Reproductive Justice

NUS Women’s Campaign is proudly pro-choice and a member of the national pro-choice campaign, Abortion Rights UK. We are also an official supporter of the #TrustWomen campaign to decriminalise abortion across the UK. We’ve worked in partnership with Abortion Rights to produce Keeping Campuses Pro-Choice, a guide that clarifies the legal position for students' unions who wish to pass policy to take a pro-choice position on the issue of abortion and who want to affiliate to Abortion Rights.

Sex Worker Rights

In December 2014 NUS passed a motion to support decriminalisation of sex work so that sex workers can have access to full labour rights, including the right to unionize. NUS believes the decriminalisation of sex work will provide a range of protections for sex workers against labour exploitation, discrimination and violence. We’ve written this model motion on the issue of decriminalising sex work.

#StandByMe

NUS Women’s campaign with Rape Crisis England & Wales launched the #StandByMe on 25 November 2015 to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. We called for institutions to reject the Zellick guidelines and join us in calling for a consultation including the student movement and specialist services for the creation of new robust reporting and disciplinary guidelines and survivor support. Find out more about how you can take part in local and national action to improve student survivor support here.