Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Harman rejects claims Labour supports austerity cuts

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Summary of story from The Guardian, January 17, 2012 The deputy leader of the UK’s Labour party, Harriet Harman has defended Labour's agreement to continue the UK's public sector pay freeze but rejects claims the party is supporting cuts. Speaking on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, she said the party continued to believe that the coalition’s [...]

Zarina Bhimji exhibition opens in Whitechapel

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Summary of story from Whitechapel Gallery, January 17, 2012 Landscapes and buildings haunted by their layered histories are the protagonists in British artist Zarina Bhimji's photographs and large-scale film installations currently on show at the Whitechapel Gallery, with India and East Africa the locations for her poetic foray into the archaeology of place. Zarina Bhimji was [...]

Zambian project reduces numbers in sex work

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Summary of story from WomenseNews, January 17, 2012 A grassroots non-governmental organization that aims to eliminate commercial sex work and HIV/AIDS in Zambia is reducing the number of women working in the sex industry. The Tasintha Programme has recruited and provided skills training to 7,000 female sex workers in Lusaka since 1992. About 60 per cent [...]

Online game feeding the hungry played by one million

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Summary of story from WFP, January 5, 2012 An online game raising rice for millions of people around the globe now has one million players. Freerice.com and its now one million registered players are now feeding the world's hungry via donations of rice to the World Food Programme (WFP), a voluntary organisation that is part of the [...]

Daily in Punjab: gender-based murder, rape, kidnap and honour killing

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Summary of story from Dawn, January 17, 2012 More than 3,000 cases of violence against women in the Punjab were recorded in the last six months of 2011. The horrific statistics were released yesterday in Pakistan’s capital, Lahore, in the second bi-annual report on violence against women by the women’s rights group, the Aurat Foundation. The [...]

‘Peace Unveiled’ film reveals Afghan women’s struggle

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Sarah Cheverton  WVoN co-editor On 1 February, No women, no peace will host the UK premiere screening of Peace Unveiled, a documentary following Afghan women as they seek to be included in peace talks in late 2009 and early 2010. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Horia Mosadiq, Afghan women’s rights activist [...]

Illinois bans shackling pregnant prisoners – again

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Summary of story from Boston Herald, January 15, 2012 Pregnant prisoners and women who have just given birth will no longer be shackled in prisons in County Cook, Illinois. The new law, signed by Governor Pat Quinn last week, and which takes effect from June 1, follows a previous law banning the practice which was [...]

Report on smuggled children revealed ‘secret agreement’

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Summary of story from The Guardian, January 17, 2012 The children’s commissioner for England has revealed that trafficked children arriving alone at Dover were sent straight back to France under a secret “gentleman’s agreement”. Maggie Atkinson maintains the practice had being going on since 1995. She reports that unaccompanied children who arrived illegally at Dover [...]

New UK Bill will send thousands of women to jail “needlessly”

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Summary of story from The Independent, January 15, 2012 A group of cross-party peers has warned that a new Ministry of Justice bill could cause thousands of women in the UK to be sent to jail needlessly. The proposed Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishing Offenders Bill (LASPO) currently contains no reference to women offenders in [...]

Feminist archaeologist Elizabeth Brumfiel has died, aged 66

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Summary of story from Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2012 Elizabeth Brumfiel, a widely recognized scholar in the field of feminist archaeology, has died aged 66. Brumfiel studied Aztec culture, and examined not only the functional and economic significance of ancient relics but what scholars learned about changing gender roles and relations in society. She [...]

Gay rights issues in tennis arena

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Summary of story from The Guardian, January 16, 2012 British tennis player Laura Robson wore a rainbow-coloured hairband in support of gay and lesbian rights during her match at the Australian Open yesterday. A gesture of solidarity which has landed her in a political row. Robson claimed she was not making a political statement, and said she [...]

Private cosmetic surgeons in UK not “qualified”

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Summary of story from The Guardian, January 15, 2012 Private cosmetic clinics in the UK are employing surgeons who are not qualified to work as consultants in the National Health Service (NHS) to carry out breast implants, nose jobs and tummy tucks, The Guardian has revealed. Many who trained in the UK reached only a [...]

Girl videos her life in a Nairobi slum

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Summary of story from World Food Programme, January 16, 2012 In the spring of 2011 the World Food Programme gave a small video camera to a 12-year-old girl named Molly and asked her to record scenes from her daily life. The result is a series of videos titled ‘Molly's World’, showing what it is like [...]

Families of detainees in Iraq face extortion

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Summary of story from The Guardian, January 16, 2012 Um Hussein’s living room in Baghdad is hung with the portraits of her four missing sons. Her oldest son was killed by Sunni insurgents in 2005. Three of her remaining sons were kidnapped by a Shia militia group when they left the neighbourhood to find work and were [...]

Magazine launch and ideas for 21st century Muslims

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Summary of story from The Guardian, January 13, 2012 Tehmina Kazi, director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD), attended the launch of the Muslim Institute’s new quarterly magazine, Critical Muslim, recently. It promises to usher in a new era of organised critical thought on issues relating to Islam and Muslims, she says: criticism that [...]