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A Minority Within A Minority.

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Racial and Religious Discrimination in Women's Football. “Being on that pitch, with people that looked like me and sounded like me and genuinely just supported me in every way, I’ve never experienced anything like that in all my years as a football player. There’s nothing like it,” says Warda, a 22-year-old student and football player from East London. Warda is talking about being a player for Sisterhood F.C., a women’s football team based in New Cross, South-East London. However, Sisterhood F.C. is truly special in the fact that it is a team made up of solely Muslim women of colour. “We want to show young, minority girls that they are accepted and are welcome to take part in football, no matter who they are, ”   says Yasmin Abukar, the founder of Sisterhood F.C.  “ We’re determined to be a platform that raises important issues and helps in breaking barriers for Muslim women in football”.  Following years of quietly persistent discrimination in football, from the ...
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Sexual Harassment in Clubs is a Big Deal, and Must Be Stopped.

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by Jana Roumie  “I was in the club and I remember this guy just walked up behind me and started feeling my ass, then just walked away so casually. It was so quick, nobody even noticed.” Says Ale Prentice, 21, a Venezuelan student in London. “I was so shocked, it happened so quickly and I felt forced to stay quiet about it.” A recent  NUS report  shows nightclubs as the prime location for sexual harassment. Many students consider unwelcome touching and grinding as a regular part of their night out. For decades’ woman have been experiencing sexual harassment in night clubs and yet not enough is being done to address the issue.  Sexual harassment is defined as unwanted sexual interactions including groping, touching and cat-calling, all of which make the victim feel humiliated and extremely uncomfortable.  A 2017 YouGov poll  found that 72% of young people have witnessed sexual harassment in some form during a night out in pubs, clubs and bars. But...
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How Students Are Navigating Pain, Productivity, and Privilege during a Pandemic.

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By Ella Monnerat ZARE asked three young women in different parts of the world to reflect on the effects of COVID-19 on their studies by highlighting their pain, productivity, and privilege.  Over the past few weeks, the entire world saw the life they built for themselves suffer sudden and intense changes. As COVID-19 cases increase worldwide, people have been forced to stay home and prioritise health in order to keep themselves and others safe. For many students, this has meant transferring to online study and returning home to their families.  In addition to the physical health crisis COVID-19 brings, many have felt that the pandemic has had a strain on their mental health. With overwhelming financial, health, and social anxiety, students have reported feeling unwell and struggling to grapple with their emotions in the past few weeks . However, not enough has been done on part of universities to account for students’ mental health, with many institutions lea...
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The Misidentification of People of Colour in British Media.

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By Furvah Shah Following the sudden death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, on January 26th following a helicopter crash, condolences poured in immediately and media coverage was intense. Amongst those covering the story, BBC’s News at Ten featured a piece about the players' death during their programme. However, they made the mistake of including footage of another black basketball star, LeBron James, instead.  Kobe Bryant (left) and LeBron James (right) Paul Royall, the editor of the BBC programme, tweeted that “we apologise for this human error which fell below our usual standards”. However, this is not the first incident of ‘human error’ in which the BBC, and other notable British media companies have unashamedly misidentified people of colour.  Whether it’s the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, being misidentified for Pakistani cricket player, Wasim Akram, or if it’s member of Parliament, David Lammy, being  mistaken for the journalist, Gary Y...
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How the Coronavirus is Impacting International Students.

By Jana Roumie According to the  Worldometer , the COVID-19 virus has infected over a million people and killed more than 50,000. Due to the severity of the pandemic over the past few weeks, people have been forced to leave schools, universities, and work to stay home and self-isolate as countries begin closing borders.  Statistics show that the number of international students in the UK currently stands at 485,645, meaning that all those students have potentially been distressed by the Corona outbreak. As an international student, I understand how scary and lonely it is to be so far away from family and friends during all of this. I was born and raised in Dubai, UAE. It’s my home, where my family members and loved ones live, but I’ve been studying abroad in London for over three years now.  Isolation is hard, but it becomes even harder when you’re 5000 miles away from your loved ones in the middle of a world crisis. The emotional burden is heavy....
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