Saturday, March 31, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Pakistani acid victim kills herself after years of pain

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 01:00 PM PDT

Emine Dilek
WVoN co-editor 

A 33-year-old acid attack victim, Fakhra Younus, killed herself  earlier this month by jumping from the sixth floor of an apartment in Rome where she had been receiving treatment.

The young woman had endured more than 35 reconstructive surgeries to repair her severely damaged face and body after her  - then – husband Bilal Khar, poured acid on her in May 2000.

An ex-lawmaker and son of a former governor of Pakistan’s largest province, Khar carried out the assault while her five-year-old son from a previous relationship watched. He was acquitted and freed after a brief trial which many believe was botched.

Younus met Khar in 1998 while working as a dancer and the couple got married shortly after. It was a third marriage for Khar who was in his 30s, Younus was only 18. She left him after three years due to physical and verbal abuse.

Themina Durani, a writer and activist, and also the ex-wife of Khar's father,  became an advocate for the victim and persuaded the Pakistani government to send Younus to Italy for treatment and protection.

The Italian government paid for her treatment and provided her money to live on and send her child to school.

Durani said that the attack was the worst she’d ever seen:

"I have met many acid victims. Never have I seen one as completely disfigured as Fakhra. She had not just become faceless; her body had also melted to the bone.

“So many times we thought she would die in the night because her nose was melted and she couldn’t breathe. We used to put a straw in the little bit of her mouth that was left because the rest was all melted together. ”

More than 8,500 acid attacks, forced marriages and other forms of violence against women were reported in Pakistan in 2011, according to The Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights organization.

UN commission to bring life saving supplies to women in developing world

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 11:30 AM PDT

Kate Townshend
WVoN co-editor

UNICEF and the United Nations Population fund have joined forces to launch a new commission aimed at improving access to vital health supplies for women and children across the developing world.

A key aim for the commission will be to extend availability and affordability of contraception for the 215 million women globally who currently lack access to family planning.

Figures suggest this could result in 53 million less unintended pregnancies and approximately 100,000 less maternal deaths every year.

In addition to this, the commission will focus its attention on high-impact supplies with a proven track record, such as antibiotics for pneumonia and oral rehydration solution for diarrhoea, which can reduce childhood deaths from these two common illnesses by more than 70 per cent.

Similarly, obstetric bleeding, the leading cause of maternal death around the world, results in an estimated 127,000 deaths annually, many of which could be prevented with life-saving medicines.

"Making sure that women and children have the medicines and other supplies they need is critical," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

"The Commission will tackle an overlooked but vital aspect of health systems, and ensure that women and children are protected from preventable causes of death and disease."

Of course, it is not merely providing these services that is important. The commission will also examine systems that could be put in place to reduce obstacles for women when accessing care.

In disadvantaged communities health supplies are often under-utilised but the commission hopes recent successes with HIV and malaria programmes can be replicated to improve women and children's overall health.

By strengthening local production capacities and promoting new technologies they will aim to ensure people are able to access the help they need, and that supplies are stable and affordable.

President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway will serve as founding co-chairs of the Commission on Life-saving Commodities for Women and Children.

It is part of the United Nations Secretary-General's Every Woman Every Child movement which aims to save the lives of 16 million women and children by 2015.

"I am honoured to serve as the Co-Chair of this critical UN Commission because I recognize that the health of women and children is at the heart of all well-being and development in our society," said President Jonathan.

"There is no doubt that lives can be saved by increasing access to affordable and effective medicines and health supplies. We must all make a difference and the time is now."

"The day of birth is the most dangerous day in the life of a woman and her child," said Prime Minister Stoltenberg.

"The fact that women do not get the care they need during childbirth is the most brutal expression of discrimination against women.

“To prevent these tragic and unnecessary deaths is not only a humanitarian urgency of highest priority, but a key investment for social and economic development."

The Commission will pursue the following outcomes:

  • Reducing financial barriers to access through social protection mechanisms, such as fee waivers, vouchers and social insurance, and global financial mechanisms, such as pooled procurement
  • Creating incentives for international and local manufacturers to produce and innovatively package overlooked supplies
  • Identifying fast-track regulatory activities to accelerate registration and reduce registration fees for a special list of products to encourage a focus on quality medicines.

Identity politics fragment society, says Archbishop of Canterbury

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 10:30 AM PDT

Sarah Cheverton
WVoN co-editor

This week, Dr Rowan Williams went on the record to tell racial, sexual and sexuality equality activists that it's time for us to quit talking about the differences between us and start talking about what unites us.

You can find coverage from The Telegraph here, although I can’t help but think the headline would have been more accurate if you took out the colon and added an apostrophe…

He started off by acknowledging what such activists have achieved under the banner of 'identity politics':

"Identity politics, whether it is the politics of feminism, whether it is the politics of ethnic minorities or the politics of sexual minorities, has been a very important part of the last 10 or 20 years because before that I think there was a sense that diversity was not really welcome.

"And so minorities of various kinds and … women began to say ‘actually we need to say who we are in our terms not yours’ and that led to identity politics of a very strong kind and legislation that followed it.”

No problems there, but then he went on:

"We are now, I think, beginning to see the pendulum swinging back and saying identity politics is all very well but we have to have some way of putting it all back together again and discovering what is good for all of us and share something of who we are with each other so as to discover more about who we are."

Funny, because as a feminist activist, I thought that was exactly what social justice movements already do.

'Identity politics', as Dr Williams calls it, is not about asserting a politics of difference that demands to be recognised; it's about demanding an even playing field.

It's not about calling for recognition of difference; it's about promoting inclusion on the basis of what we share.

To understand this, you first have to understand that our culture's dominant viewpoint is that of white, wealthy, middle-aged men.

These men are disproportionately represented in government, the judiciary, business, the media and even (as one glance at Dr Rowan himself might confirm) in religion.

Identity politics is necessary – and will continue to be – all the time this is the case.

Because as long as this small social group dominates, it is necessary for everyone outside it to remind them – and ourselves, and each other – that being different from white, wealthy, middle aged men does not exclude you from membership of the human race.

My own feminist theory and practice, for example, holds that my uterus makes me different from a man, but it doesn't exclude me from humanity.

Revolutionary, but definitely not divisive.

From this view, identity politics does not fragment society – the domination of one social group over others does. Identity politics are not divisive. The social conditions that create these movements – generation after generation – are.

I wonder how Dr Williams would feel if we tossed the ball back into his own court and started talking about the divisiveness of 'identity religion'?

I'm an atheist and know nothing about religion, matters of faith or how believers should organise themselves or each other. Because of this, I like to leave religion to the people I consider to be experts on the subject – like believers and clerics.

It's one of the reasons that while I might often share the beliefs of 'militant atheists' such as Richard Dawkins, I don't feel the need to outlaw or attack religion, religious beliefs, or religious practices (until they start stepping on the safety or agency of others, that is).

I don't feel qualified to make statements about anyone's religious belief, but maybe that's one of the reasons I'm not Archbishop of Canterbury.

And if Dr Rowan Williams really wants to understand identity politics, perhaps his first step might be to reflect on the fact that if he was a woman, he wouldn't be Archbishop of Canterbury either.

The dark side of human trafficking: anti-trafficking

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 09:30 AM PDT

Kate Townshend
WVoN co-editor

When is the anti-trafficking side of the sex work line the wrong side to stand?

It might seem like a joke with no punch line, but a spate of worrying evidence has emerged recently suggesting that some of the movements trying to stop trafficking may themselves be making the problem worse.

Take Nicholas Kristof for example, on paper at least, very clearly one of the good guys.

The Pullitzer prize winning journalist wrote an angry article in the New York Times earlier this year calling out website Backpage.com as a 'godsend to pimps' allowing people to 'order girls online like a pizza.'

It all sounds eminently sensible, but this Guardian article points out the dangers implicit in driving sex work underground, and sex workers themselves further towards the hinterland of society.

Worse still, many anti-trafficking policies fall rather too short of hating the sinner but loving the sinned against.

In the US, current legislation requires organisations seeking to combat HIV and other problems to sign up to an anti-prostitution loyalty pledge, or risk seeing government funding and support slashed.

According to PEPFAR Watch, an initiative for CHANGE (the centre for health and gender equality) set up to monitor the strategies and successes of the US plan to tackle Aids, this frequently means that sex workers are deprived of the very help that is most essential and accessible to them.

And it’s not just an American issue. The Empower Foundation speaks for sex workers in Thailand, asserting their rights and contributions in a society that often wants to reduce them to criminals or victims.

Their report Hit & Run: Sex Workers’ Research on Anti-trafficking in Thailand warns of the dangers of failing to distinguish between sex work and trafficking, stigmatising all of those in the industry and making it harder for real cases of trafficking to be addressed.

Empower director Chantawipa Apisuk claims we are at 'a point in history where there are more women in the Thai sex industry who are being abused by anti-trafficking practices than there are women being exploited by traffickers.'

It’s a huge claim. But one that UK politicians might also see levelled against them.

A recent letter to David Cameron from the Human Trafficking Foundation accused the government of a ‘staggering lack of understanding’ in dealing with sex slavery in Britain.

Currently, those women brought into the country and forced into sex work against their will may find that ‘rescue’ is a relative concept, when it merely means swapping one prison for another.

Little distinction is made between trafficked women and other illegal immigrants so being freed from their pimps and captors may simply mean relocation to a detention centre, or deportation; often returning to the power of the gangs who trafficked them in the first place.

Of course, there are organisations in place that do try to listen to the voices of trafficked women.

Eave’s Poppy Project provides support and practical help for women who have been victims of exploitation.

Their director Abigail Stepnitz is clear that current policy on trafficking is not good enough: 'Imprisoning vulnerable victims is unfair and unjust.

‘The traffickers take away their freedom and force them to do unimaginable things and once they escape, if they escape, the UK Government takes away their freedom yet again.'

So what’s the moral of the story? We all know that trafficking is an evil that no society aiming to call itself civilised with a straight face should tolerate.

But there’s little point in tackling trafficking if we destroy the trafficked themselves along with it. There are no easy answers here, but asking ourselves the hard questions might be a start.

National Cleavage Day – “keep your bra and burn your brain”

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 08:45 AM PDT

With thanks to riotgrrrrrrl.tumblr.com for this image, showing another way in which capitalism uses gender to sell stuff and how feminists often respond.

Sarah Cheverton
WVoN co-editor

Kudos to cartoonist Angela Martin for today’s headline and you can buy her fantastic work here.

So, lots of you have already been in touch with us about National Cleavage Day.

And many of you have been asking what it's all about, or as I expressed it – WTF?

Well, we have Wonderbra to thank for this gem:

"We view this as a day for women to acknowledge that their cleavage is something unique and encourage you all to be proud of it."

Be proud of it? You want me to be proud of my tits?

I'm proud of many things in my life – being a WVoN writer and being part of the feminist movement, for example. Hell, given how hard it is to be female (let alone feminist) in western society, I'm even proud to be a woman.

But I'm no more proud of my cleavage than I am of my feet. Don't get me wrong, they're great feet. It's just that, as with my breasts, I was born with them and as such, don't really count them as achievements.

I mean, most of the time, I'm glad my breasts are there – well, not so much when strange (by which I mean both unknown and freaky) men feel the need to comment on them.

But proud of them? That's taking it a bit far…

Ann Summers are using their Real Women campaign to “empower” women today by sending 30 of their Real Women trooping down Oxford Street as part of Ann Summers promotion to launch a new store.

This is both a stroke of postmodern genius and an illustration of capitalism doing what it does best – making a tit out of everyone it goes near.

Capitalism is what it is: soulless, amoral and resoundingly inhumane in its pursuit of the dollar, for a start. So I don't expect much better from it than the likes of NCD.

The real problem I have with NCD is that it brings to the yard all the usual and more dangerous perils of sexual objectification – even and especially in the mainstream news.

Step forward The Sun which proudly declared:

"NCD is held annually to celebrate women’s independence and power in their careers and relationships."

Really? I'd love to read more detail about exactly how that's working out for us, but the Sun were too busy falling over themselves about women in lingerie to explain.

Meanwhile, at least the Huff had the sense to file its cleavage coverage under 'Weird News'. But the comments following their story highlight how confusing some men find NCD, as one opines:

"Yes, but England wants to pass a law making it a crime to look and whistle. But women want us to. It’s a hypocrisy joke."

Yes, it's awfully confusing for women to have breasts and not want any Tom, Dick or Tosspot to look, comment or perv at them, isn't it?

Particularly as the small number of women walking down Oxford Street for Ann Summers are obviously representative of all women, everywhere, who want nothing more than to be reduced to a selection of our body parts.

And speaking of Tom, Dick and Tosspot, the MailOnline took the opportunity to promote the day with a feature on Wonderbra's empowering survey of 1000 British women, particularly the claim that two-thirds of British women use their cleavage to 'get ahead in life'.

They didn't ask any of us here at WVoN, but I'm sure they'll be in touch now that they realise the absence of women who prefer their achievements to be down to, well, their actual achievements.

In the meantime, I'm eagerly awaiting the result of their survey of British men to find out how many blokes wear tight trousers or go topless to 'get ahead in life?'

And I'm particularly looking forward to National 'Are those socks in your trousers or are you packing a serious bulge and a half?' Day (potential sponsors Speedo, and of course, Nobby's Nuts).

Although unless they come up with a catchy title (National Under the Trousers Suspense Day, perhaps) I admit it's less likely to trend on Twitter.

The Olympic games: a man’s world

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 07:30 AM PDT

Meg Kissack
WVoN co-editor

After reading the following excerpt from the New York Times, you might be forgiven for thinking that women are a special minority group:

'The Summer Olympics in London could be a watershed event for international sports as every participating nation is expected to field one female athlete'.

It's safe to say that the Olympics is perpetuating the same view pushed by society and the media every day; men have privilege for being men, and women are given special treatment, but not in a good way.

Apparently we should be cheering that each country, the majority of which have a higher population of women than men, will be allowed to enter at least one woman.

However tokenistic, you might think that the media would at least be celebrating female athletes, but it seems like the good old dress game is in full swing.

Regardless of the country they are representing, women are being scrutinised in terms of what they’ll be wearing.

A recent article (by the Daily Mail, of course) was titled 'Sorry chaps, there's a volleyball cover-up: Competitors can now wear shorts and T-shirts after complaints from conservative countries'.

It’s written as though the sport was simply created for testosterone filled men to objectify and belittle women's athletic achievement:

'Anyone hoping it will be a mere celebration of the scantily clad female form rather than a serious sport will be in for a disappointment'

The objectification of women is well known in the world of sport. Just read WVoN’s previous coverage of women being forced to wear skirts in badminton and the rise of lingerie football.

The GB women’s team even have a calender which features selected women in their lingerie, hooray!

Since there has to be a woman participating from every country, we might as well make it sexy, right?

Well, no. Athletes have gruelling routines, with years upon years of dedication to their chosen sport. Or is that just the male athletes, as we're meant to believe that women turn up for the sake of looking good in a skirt?

Regardless of how men and women are represented in the Olympics, what should matter is that they all have to work equally hard (though I would argue that women have to work harder to get any recognition as an athlete) and should be respected for that.

But that is often ignored, and we can see what is an extremely frustrating double standard – men are acknowledged for their athletic talent whereas a woman's appearance comes before any kind of ability.

If you need anymore proof, I have compiled a list of WVoN’s stories which reveal the barriers women face in participating in sports, and how the Olympics really are a man’s world:

More women needed in UK sports governing bodies

Female boxers fight for inclusion

UK women’s sport attracts 0.5% of all sponsorship

UK Government’s 2012 campaign sidelines Britain’s great women

Women’s basketball veterans’ last Olympic chance

Beach volleyball champions use bikini bottoms as advertising space

Iranian women’s football team banned from playing in 2012 Olympics 

Short skirts will be worn for Olympics, despite protests

Semenya controversy prompts gender rules for  2012 Olympics

It is safe to say that I am  entirely sick of the Olympics already.

Women hit hard by UK council job cuts

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 05:30 AM PDT

Rachel Salmon
WVoN co-editor

Over two thirds of the 200,000 people who have lost jobs in English and Welsh local authorities since the last election are women, according to research by the GMB union.

According to the research, which is based on government figures, 146,690 women lost jobs in local government between June 2010 and December 2011, 68 per cent of the 210,470 jobs lost overall.

In some regions, such as the south east, women accounted for over three-quarters of the jobs lost, and in some councils like Slough, the number of women who lost their jobs exceeded the number of jobs lost overall.

But a spokeswoman for Slough Borough Council said: "The majority of the people working here are women.

"All our corporate directors, bar one, are women, our chief executive is a woman, all our policy team are women."

Kamaljeet Jandu, GMB national officer for equalities, said the drop was entirely predictable because the public sector employed more women than men.

According to the Local Government Association, 75.8 per cent of all local government workers are women, and whilst male employment in councils fell by ten per cent between December 2010 and December 2011, 6.8 per cent of female workers lost their jobs.

Jandu said the drop in the number of women employed in the public sector represents a serious loss of income for their families.

"Many households depend on having income from two wage earners to pay the mortgage and the household bills.

"The impact will be even worse in the quarter of households with children that are headed by lone parents, 90 per cent of whom are women," he said.

Ukrainian teenager dies after being gang-raped and set on fire

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 03:30 AM PDT

Emine Dilek
WVoN co-editor 

An 18-year-old Ukrainian woman, Oksana Makar, has died after being brutally gang-raped, tortured and set on fire by three men in the southern city of Mykolayiv, Ukraine on 8 March.

The attack has been described as one of Ukraine’s most heinous crimes in recent years by the Kiev Post.

All three assailants were arrested but two who were thought to have connections with local officials, were released without charge. After a public outcry, they were re-arrested and are currently awaiting trial.

The world became aware of the horrific crime after her mother videotaped Ms Makar in her hospital bed telling the horrific story of what had happened.

She was found the morning after her attack by a stranger on an abandoned construction site where she had been left to die.

She had sustained burns to 55 per cent of her body and one of her arms and both feet had to be amputated before she died of her injuries yesterday.

In another disturbing video that was leaked to the Ukrainian media, one of the suspects was shown as calmly explaining to investigators how they raped and tried to kill the victim.

“She was wailing, waving her hands and I raped her. She did not calm down and I decided to strangle her. After that, we sat, we smoked, and then we parted.”

The shocking assault and murder has prompted Ukrainian society to confront what have become known as “bigwig crimes” committed by the children of public officials or by officials themselves.

Often the criminals are not brought to justice or are released after a brief interrogation because of their powerful high level connections to politicians, legislators or police.

If convicted, the three face between 15 years to life in jail. The brutality of the crime has restarted a public debate about the death penalty which was abolished in Ukraine over a decade ago.

Women and girls jailed for fleeing abuse in Afghanistan

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 01:30 AM PDT

Rahcl Salmon
WVoN co-editor

Human Rights Watch is calling on the Afghan government to release over 400 women it says have been imprisoned for 'moral crimes' like fleeing a forced marriage or domestic violence, or zina, sex outside of marriage,

The charity released a report yesterday called ”I had to run away“, which was conducted with 58 women and girls arrested for 'moral crimes' and jailed in three prisons and three juvenile detention facilities in Afghanistan.

The authors estimate that almost all girls and over half of women in prison in Afghanistan have been accused of 'moral crimes'.

"It is shocking that 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban, women and girls are still imprisoned for running away from domestic violence or forced marriage," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

"No one should be locked up for fleeing a dangerous situation even if it's at home. President Karzai and Afghanistan's allies should act decisively to end this abusive and discriminatory practice."

Human Rights Watch says Afghan women face a justice system stacked against them.

They say that while running away, or fleeing home without permission, is not a crime under the Afghan criminal code, the Afghan Supreme Court has instructed its judges to treat women and girls who flee as criminals.

And while domestic violence was outlawed in 2009, police arrest women solely on a complaint of a husband or relative.

Prosecutors ignore evidence that supports women's assertions of innocence. Judges often convict solely on the basis of "confessions" given in the absence of lawyers and "signed" without having been read to women who cannot read or write.

After conviction, women routinely face long prison sentences, in some cases more than 10 years.

Arabic divorce laws make the situation worse, as a man can simply declare himself divorced, but for a woman the process is much more difficult.

"Courts send women to prison for dubious 'crimes' while the real criminals – their abusers –walk free," Roth said.

"Even the most horrific abuses suffered by women seem to elicit nothing more than a shrug from prosecutors, despite laws criminalizing violence against women."

This sends a clear message to others enduring abuse that seeking help from the government is likely to result in punishment, not rescue

"The Afghan government and its international partners should act urgently to protect women's rights and to ensure there is no backsliding,"  said Roth.

"President Karzai, the United States, and others should finally make good on the bold promises they made to Afghan women a decade ago by ending imprisonment for 'moral crimes,' and actually implementing their stated commitment to support women's rights," he said.