Anybody wonder why we need a UN women's agency? Maybe the latest report from Human Rights Watch - out today - will offer some clues. It's about Argentina - not the poorest or the least sophisticated or illiberal country in the world. It voted to legalise gay marriage, after all. It has a woman president. Yet thousands of women and girls there, says the report, "suffer needlessly every year because of negligent or abusive reproductive health care".
Argengtina has far from the worst record in Latin America. No less than five countries ban abortion under any circumstances. Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic refuse to allow it even if it means the woman's death. Argentina and the others are not quite so harsh.
But international human rights law says that women have a right to make decisions about if, when and how many children they have, says Human Rights Watch. In Argentina, those rights have been "systematically flouted for years", it says.
Dedicated to the women who have graced the pages of history, from ancient to modern times.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Argentina: Illusions of Care
Women Defy With Symbolic Action
A group of Israeli women say they smuggled a dozen Palestinian women and four children into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for a day of fun in defiance of Israeli law.
The Palestinians were treated to a meal at a restaurant, swimming in the Mediterranean and a bit of sightseeing about two weeks ago, Haaretz reported Tuesday.
The Israeli women, including writers Ilana Hammerman and Klil Zisapel, picked up the Palestinian women in their villages, after meeting with them twice previously, and brought them into Israel, avoiding security forces at West Bank checkpoints.
Hammerman had accomplished a similar outing with three teenage Palestinian girls in May, Haaretz said. Peace activists approached her about doing the second trip, the Tel Aviv newspaper said. None of the Palestinians had permits to enter Israel.
"We all came, we met the women, we took them in our own cars. We pulled a fast one on the army," Hammerman said.
"We passed the checkpoints in our cars, knowingly breaking the laws of entry into Israel," the Israeli women said in an ad published in the Hebrew weekend edition of Haaretz.
"We don't recognize the legality of the entry law into Israel, which allows every Israeli and every Jew to move freely throughout most of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and denies this right to the Palestinians, to whom this land also belongs."
Hammerman called it "a symbolic act" meant to fuel debate.
New Face of Kashmiri Women
The freedom movement in Indian Held Kashmir has received fresh impetus with its women taking up the cause of freedom. The situation in Kashmir has greatly deteriorated since the death of a 17-year-old student, who succumbed to his injuries after being hit by a teargas shell. Protest rallies have been baton charged, teargassed and brutally fired upon, with more than 50 lives being lost. However, just as the freedom struggle seemed to be stagnating, the women emerged on the streets, beating on their utensils, throwing stones at the Indian forces and chanting slogans for freedom.
Over the years, Kashmiri women have played an important role in the struggle for freedom. Names like Asiya Andrabi, who led protest rallies comprising Kashmiri women, have filled volumes. However, the image of Kashmiri women in the liberation struggle has been mostly of wives, mothers, sisters or daughters mourning over the dead body of a relative, who embraced shahadat as a result of the atrocities of the Indian army. The new face of the Kashmiri women is unparalleled. Hundreds of women and girls, many in shalwar kameez, have since been regularly out on the streets chanting “we want freedom!” and “blood for blood!” Indeed, their message is loud and clear. Although the Indian army has not refrained from targeting the unarmed women, dealing with female protesters is a fraught challenge for the police and paramilitary troops. Many women who do not directly take part in rallies carry drinking water to the protesters and also direct youths down escape routes as they flee from baton charges, teargas and gunfire.
Exasperated by the deteriorating situation in Kashmir, India’s Interior Minister P. Chidambaram has alleged that Pakistan may have instigated these protests. This is the first time New Delhi has linked Pakistan to the recent spate of violence in the Kashmir Valley that began on June 11. Earlier, India had said Pakistan-based militants were inciting trouble in the region. “Pakistan appears to have altered its strategy in influencing events in Jammu and Kashmir,” Chidambaram told the Indian Parliament during a debate on the protests. India, however, remains confident that it can foil Pakistan’s “evil designs” if it is able to win the hearts and minds of the people.
Women of the Wall: Kotel Services
Despite the raucous and sometimes violent uproar that has at times accompanied their previous gatherings inside the women’s section at the Western Wall, Women of the Wall, a group that promotes, “the right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray and read from the Torah at the Western Wall,” will hold their monthly Rosh Hodesh service at the holy site on Wednesday morning.
“On Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 7:00 a.m., Women of the Wall will return to the Western Wall (Kotel), with over one hundred women in attendance, for their regular monthly Rosh Hodesh services, to celebrate the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul 5770,” a statement released by the group on Tuesday read.
Divorced Muslim Women on the March
The Muslim women are beginning to demur with patriarchal notions of bias and control. At least this much was evident when 100-odd angry women marched down the congested alleys of old city here, waving placards and shouting slogans. It was a sight none must have ever seen before.
The 1.5-km walk in this uber conservative neighbourhood ended at the residence of Abdees' and marital home of Hina and Arshi, the two among three women who had roughed up some maulvis of the Shariat court in June for issuing ex-parte talaqnama. Amid tight security and after much drama, the two muscled their way in, leaving their morose looking in-laws with no option but to watch them in silence. The fierce army of chaperones then left, promising to keep in touch.
"The incident proves that Muslim women have had enough of mullah interference,"declared state convener of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan Naaz Raza, who led the march. This could just be the beginning, warned her colleague Naish Hasan. The feisty lady spells big trouble for the maulvis with her outspokenness. This year has seen at least a dozen anti-women fatwas from Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband. Women are forbidden to ride bicycles, join public office without hijab, talk loudly, join judiciary or even talk to their fiance before marriage. And now they have one question, said Naish, "Just why not?''
"When a woman puts a 'daliya' (wicker basket) on her head and carries bricks, no mullah advises her not to work beside men. But the moment she dons a stethoscope or a black coat, there are restrictions galore,"complained Shahnaz Begum.
The semi-literate chikan worker from Bansmandi says, "Maulvis are scared they may lose their importance once women begin to exercise their brains. And each issue, from condoning triple talaq to pronouncing anti-woman fatwa, only shows their insecurity."
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Ebell Club
... the Ebell Club, a women’s social club that still operates in one of its original buildings, erected in 1927 in the Hancock Park neighborhood. Established in 1897 as a substitute for the university education that women were largely denied, the club had 2,500 members in its heyday in the 1920s, and activities included Shakespeare, gardening and art appreciation.
The club, one of the first of its kind in the country, is now struggling with a 21st-century problem: how to convince modern women that such a club has contemporary value to them.
Women’s clubs were established in American life shortly after the Civil War. “It was a time women all over the country decided a woman’s place is not in the home, that they needed to get out,” said Karen J. Blair, a history professor and expert on women’s clubs at Central Washington University. “So they got together to study literature, history, philosophy and poetry.”
In 1868 in New York, a journalist named Jane Cunningham Croly founded her own club, Sorosis, after she was denied entry at an all-male press club where Charles Dickens was speaking. Ms. Croly was instrumental in the creation of clubs throughout the country, whose missions soon began to include various political and social welfare agendas, from women’s suffrage to child labor to public health.
The Ebell was named after Adrian Ebell, a German professor who traveled around California forming study groups for women. In the beginning of the 20th century, the Ebell was one of the largest and most elite clubs in the nation, rivaled only by the Friday Morning Club in downtown Los Angeles.
SA: Women Remember Tshwane Women's March
In 1956 more than 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings to inform the apartheid regime they were tired of being oppressed and were opposed to having to carry passes.
Yesterday, women again marched to the Union Buildings, but to celebrate the stalwarts who risked their lives in the 1956 march.
While thousands gathered at venues across the country, Tshwane executive mayor Gwen Ramokgopa led a group of women from Lilian Ngoyi Square (formerly Strijdom Square) to the Union Buildings where they celebrated and discussed issues affecting them.
"Exactly today on August 9, 1956, 20 000 brave women led by our great struggle icons and woman stalwarts, Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn embarked on a historic march here in Tshwane - one of the largest demonstrations staged in this country's history," said Ramokgopa.
AFL: All-Girl Umpires in SA League
THE first all-female umpiring panel will soon hit the ground for a Southern Football League game to help raise the profile of women umpires.
Eight young women will umpire the A-grade match between Port Noarlunga and Aldinga on Saturday, August 14, in a first for South Australian footy at this level. One of the organisers is ump Steph Morrison, 21, from the Combined Southern Leagues Football Umpires Panel.
“We were out with girls having a movie night when we got into discussing how we could promote female umpires and we decided to start with our local leagues,” Morrison, of Glengowrie, said.
Last month, she was invited to be part of an umpiring team that made history in the Barossa Light & Gawler Football Association when all but the two goal umpires were women.
Morrison said the group had come up with the idea of an all-female panel early in the season but decided to hold off until the SFL’s White Ribbon round.
Ireland: More Women Needed In Politics
GREATER POLITICAL involvement by women in decisionmaking in Irish politics will help Ireland progress as a society, an academic has predicted ahead of a conference that will discuss women’s political representation.
Dr Sandra McAvoy, historian and lecturer in women’s studies at University College Cork, said Ireland had slipped internationally to 82nd in a world classification table of women’s representation in parliament.
There are 23 women in Dáil Éireann, accounting for just 13.85 per cent of seats. The figure for Seanad Éireann is only marginally better, where 12 of the 60 senators – or 20 per cent – are women, she said.
Women account for 17 per cent of members of local authorities and just 12 per cent of the members of regional authorities, while in the last general election only 82 women out of 470 candidates were women, representing the lowest number of women since 1989, she said.
“Back in 2002, I think it was estimated that it would take 360 years for women to achieve equal representation in Irish politics, but given that the proportion of women in politics has decreased since then, it’s going to take even longer,” said Dr McAvoy.
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