British Ladies Tackle Sex Traffickers
Eleanor Tuohy is a freelance assignment editor at the CBS News London bureau. She has worked with CBS for more than a decade.
First, the quintessentially English organization — usually associated with cake fairs and flower arranging — shocked the country when a renegade group of its ladies posed naked for a calendar to raise funds for cancer research. The ladies, all of a certain age, were photographed with discreetly positioned jam buns, sunflowers and vegetables preserving their modesty.
It was an instant hit. The calendar raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the cause, and attracted the attention of 60 Minutes. Helen Mirren stared in Hollywood's version of "Calendar Girls," and slew of imitators have cashed in on the novelty calendar idea to raise funds for a range of causes ever since.
While the members of the venerable Women's Institute, or WI, as it's more commonly known, are still likely to be proficient at embroidery and growing award-winning vegetables, they've become increasingly vocal on some more contentious issues; from renewable energy to hospital funding.
Now, in their latest campaign, the WI is taking on the gangs of human traffickers who force women into the sex trade.
The Institute is urging its 200,000 members to take the fight to the illegal traffickers, albeit through the gentle approach of "A Letter to the Editor."
Click here to see the "Campaigns and Projects" page on the Women's Institute Web site.
Women are being urged to search out ads selling sex in their local newspapers, and when they suspect the women have been trafficked, write to editor of the newspaper urging them to drop the ads.
In the course of researching the issue, mild mannered Ruth Bond from the National Federation of Women's Institutes has been shocked at the very direct nature of ads selling sex.
"I was surprised to know how many ads there were in local papers; ads like 'fresh girls every week' and 'beautiful girls, all nationalities,' and it makes you think... these women are being trafficked," said Bond. "I don't think editors would be happy if they realized they were perpetrating this."
The campaign's main aim is to help women who are unwilling workers in brothels.
"We just want to be there for those who don't choose to be in this position, we have no stance on prostitutes — absolutely none — it's the trafficked individuals that this campaign is aimed at," explained Bond.
She said this latest campaign was just a natural progression for the WI movement, which was created in 1915.
"We were established for women, to help women within their communities, to better their life, that's how we originally started. This campaign is very true to that ethos."
The group's history isn't all cakes and tea. They were campaigning for equal pay in 1942 (something U.S. presidential candidates were still discussing in 2008), and spoke out for AIDS awareness starting in the mid-80s.
Bond hopes that with pressure, the local and national governments will address the problem of women forced into prostitution, providing safe houses and help where it's needed.
And the WI has a good track record; lobbying the European Union over dangerous chemicals and supermarket giants on behalf of dairy farmers, their understated approach tends to undercut their rivals.
It remains to be seen whether that same approach can effect any change in the altogether darker world of human trafficking. But, as Bond gently puts it, the campaign will be worthwhile, "even if it's only one woman who's been saved from doing what they don't want to."