Big beauty brands like L’Oréal must remove toxic ingredients from hair relaxers. The price of Black women’s beauty should never be our health.
We are a feminist community campaigning for gender justice in the UK. We create digital tools and campaigns that interrupt cultural moments to fight for gender justice – like flying a plane banner over a football match to break the silence around rape in sports, pushing ITV to drop plastic surgery adverts from Love Island and producing the UK’s first media guidelines on reporting domestic abuse deaths.
We’re working towards a world where people of all genders are loved and liberated from bodily and systemic violence. We do this in our campaign coalitions, and through gathering with community like our monthly workshops on bystander intervention and intervening in police violence.
Our movement includes feminists from a range of backgrounds and all genders, centering the voices and liberation of people who experience gender injustice: women, gender-nonconforming and trans people.
Level Up’s vision is a world where everyone is loved and liberated. We believe that collective care is the route to building this world. Level Up co-directors Seyi and Janey explained what this means in a TedxLondon talk in March 2023.
Abortion is healthcare, and it’s time to decriminalise it in the UK. Add your name to demand change.
Abortion is healthcare, and it’s time to decriminalise it in the UK. Add your name to demand change.
Contrary to popular belief, abortion is still a criminal offence in the UK due to an old Victorian law passed fifty years before women won the right to vote.
According to the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, anyone who ends a pregnancy without permission from two doctors can face up to life in prison.
Abortion is healthcare. It’s time the law treats it as such. We should all have our healthcare needs met safely, including abortion.
It’s a basic ask. Abortion is available on request in 22 European countries – including France, Greece and Iceland. 85% of the UK public already believe women should have the right to abortion – it’s time to decriminalise it.
JOIN US if you agree that abortion should be removed from criminal law in England, Scotland and Wales.
Why is this important?
The fact that an old criminal law still stands means that pregnancies can be policed – with devastating impacts.
In 2021, a 15-year-old girl who had an unexplained early stillbirth was subjected to a year-long criminal investigation that involved having her phone and laptop searched.
In another case in 2022, a woman was kept in a prison cell for 36 hours after having a stillbirth – because of suspicions she’d had an abortion after the legal cutoff point.
Even if the worst doesn’t happen, toxic stress during a person’s pregnancy affects foetal development. Do you believe people suffering miscarriages and stillbirths should be locked in prison cells and interrogated?
The body doesn’t know the difference between miscarriage and abortion – neither should the law.
Criminalising abortion stigmatises this form of healthcare and can cause significant harm to a person’s health and wellbeing. It can delay or prevent access to post abortion care, intensify shame and stigma, heighten barriers in access to legal care and create a chilling effect on medical professionals’ provision of information.
Most European countries have abortion on request. This means that if you want an abortion, nobody (not even a doctor) can stand in your way. This means the ultimate decision on whether to continue or end a pregnancy belongs to the pregnant person alone.
Abortion is healthcare. It’s time for the U.K. to decriminalise it.
Let’s end the imprisonment of pregnant women.
Prison will never be a safe place to be pregnant. In the last five years, three babies born to women in prison have died. Even if the worst doesn’t happen, prison causes toxic stress and trauma to both mother and child. Short sentences can have a long-lasting, lifelong negative impact, with many mums and babies being separated by the prison system. The government can and must put an end to imprisoning pregnant women and new mothers by changing bail and sentencing laws.
Prison will never be a safe place for pregnant women and new mothers. Pregnant women in prison are seven times more likely to suffer a stillbirth than women in the community, and twice as likely to give birth prematurely. One in ten pregnant women give birth in their cell or on the way to hospital.
Toxic stress during a mother’s pregnancy affects her baby’s development. Prisons are extremely stressful places that negatively impact your mental and physical health – and if you’re pregnant, the impact on you and your child is long-lasting.
The majority of women enter prison for sentences of six months or less – which is enough time to lose your home, job and be totally cut off from your family and support networks. When a woman is supported in her community, she is able to tackle the issues that swept her up into crime in the first place. In her community, she’s able to get support to give her child the best start in life, including easy access to antenatal and postnatal healthcare.
All evidence shows that pregnant women and mothers should be kept in the community – but without public pressure, the system is slow to change.
Level Up’s campaign has already secured some changes to sentencing. Thanks to our lobbying, the Sentencing Council introduced a new mitigating factor for pregnancy in April 2024, which means that courts have to consider the impact of prison on a woman, her pregnancy, and her baby when deciding whether or not to send her to prison.
However, this doesn’t go far enough: the government must act too.
Prison is not a safe place for pregnant women.
The whole time I was there, I felt worried about my health and the health of my baby. From sleeping on a paper thin mattress with the metal frame hurting my hip bones, to no adequate nutritional food or supplements besides a pot of folic acid, it was inhumane. I was taken to my first baby scan in handcuffs.
— Olivia
Big beauty brands like L’Oréal must remove toxic ingredients from hair relaxers. The price of Black women’s beauty should never be our health.
For years, Black women have used hair relaxers – a cream that straightens our curls and coils. This week, Oxford University published a shocking study that found that Black women who repeatedly use hair relaxers containing a chemical called lye are at a 30% increased risk of breast cancer.
Lye, also known as sodium hydroxide, is a heavy-duty chemical used to unblock drains.
Brands including L’Oreal, Revlon and Motions all sell products that include lye – and some of these products are targeted at young girls.
It’s time to demand that all beauty brands remove lye and other hydroxides from their hair products.
Lye, also known as sodium hydroxide, is a heavy-duty chemical used to unblock drains. It’s also a key ingredient, alongside other harmful hydroxides, in big brand hair relaxers used by Black women. A long-term scientific study has shown that its repeated use is connected to serious health effects, including breast cancer.
Even products that are marketed as “no lye”– but still contain harmful hydroxides including calcium hydroxide and lithium hydroxide – have been linked to hair loss and scalp burns. It’s time to demand #NoMoreLyes in Black hair products
As long as these products are still being sold, Black women are at risk of serious health conditions. It’s time to demand that all beauty brands remove lye and other harmful hydroxides from their hair products.
Let’s end the culture of gender-based violence in football.
Over the past year, several players from different clubs have been charged with sexual violence. There is no process for how these cases are dealt with, and no recognition of the culture that contributes to gender-based violence. It’s time for the Premier League and the Football Association to break the silence, take accountability and change the culture on gender-based violence in football, and enforce a policy for players who are suspected of causing harm.
As long as the Premier League protects players, this culture of impunity will persist. Several survivors have already come forward to share their experiences of assault from footballers, and what needs to change.
