Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Pakistan’s domestic violence bill stalled yet again

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 11:00 AM PDT

Aisha Farooq
WVoN co-editor

Attempts to finalise Pakistan’s domestic violence bill have continuously stalled this month following disagreements by major political parties.

The bill, which started its journey through the National Assembly in 2009, was scrapped after only 90 days when the Senate received objections from Islamist groups.

Last week, joint sessions between representatives of all political parties in Parliament sought to agree on a new set of terms, but to no avail.

Right-wing Islamist group, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), opposed the bill outright. They insisted it supported a ‘Western culture’ that conflicted with Shari’a law.

Protests from members of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), who demanded the bill be passed quickly, were also strongly condemned by JUI-F. They claimed the activists were ‘interfering’ in and disrupting matters of state and that legal action should be taken against them.

“We will not let these senseless women, who depend on American dollars, to work against the Constitution and Islamic Shari’a,” said JUI-F member, Jamshid Abbasi.

“Minting dollars in the name of women rights, representatives (women) of these NGOs are earning bad name [sic] for Islam.”

The alleged pro-American, Zionist, Indian, and whatever other anti-Muslim conspiracies these activists supposedly share was also opposed by the Muslim League.

“Monday was a sad day for women as we again failed to evolve a consensus on the domestic violence bill,” said PML-N member, Mushahidullah Khan.

As a result of the opposition, the Pakistan’s People Party (which currently has the highest number of seats in government), gave in to their demands and announced that the bill would not be passed until a full consensus had been reached.

The deadlock over the bill is in stark contrast with the most recent annual report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

The report, released in March, suggested that 943 women had been killed in 2011 in an attempt to uphold family honour.

Concerns over whether enough is being done to protect Pakistani women seem to have been answered by this legislative delay.

A 21 year old divorcee, Mehwish, who was shot dead by her cousin for defiling the family name, was the latest honour killing to hit Pakistani headlines this week.

A few weeks previously, two women were shot by their brother-in-law after he suspected they had ‘suspicious characters’.

A month ago, postmortem results of another female victim indicated that her brother stoned her to death using bricks. The reason: another suspected relationship with a boy.

The list is endless. Considering Pakistan’s current government boasts pro-women opportunities, clearly nowhere near enough is being done to prevent these deaths.

With brothers and husbands being the biggest assaulters of women, the trivial complaints and excuses of these right-wing parties appear to be simply absurd.

Currently, no law exists that prevents a husband from harming his wife. As Karachi based sociologist Afiya Shehrbano recently wrote:

“At the moment, Pakistani women have full legal rights to practice domesticity – including the right to receive violent treatment in the privacy of their homes – without state interference.”

Uzbekistan government secretly sterilising women

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Hannah Boast
WVoN co-editor 

An investigation by the BBC has revealed that women in Uzbekistan are being sterilised without their knowledge or consent.

Doctors say that the practice has been going on for about two years and may be connected to the increasing popularity of Caesarean sections, making it easier for surgeons to secretly sterilise the mother.

Officially, only 6.8% of women give birth via C-section, but a surgeon at a hospital near the capital Tashkent disputed this, the BBC reported.

“Rules on Caesareans used to be very strict, but now I believe 80% of women give birth through C-sections. This makes it very easy to perform a sterilisation and tie the fallopian tubes,” he said.

One suggested explanation of the sterilisation programme is that it is intended as a check on Uzbekistan’s growing population, which currently stands at about 28 million.

Uzbekistan has one of the worst human rights records in the world, and is particularly known for its widespread use of torture. This is often ignored by Western governments seeking to make use of the country’s strategic border with Afghanistan.

UK officials have already held talks with the Uzbek government on withdrawing UK military equipment from Afghanistan through the country, following the release of an activist.

Afghan women brave Kabul streets to protest against violence

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Credit: Young Women for Change

Julie Tomlin
WVoN co-editor

The 30 people who took to the streets of Kabul on Saturday were taking a brave step by publicly airing their anger at levels of violence against women.

Protests can often lead to violence in Afghanistan and so controversial are women's rights that details of a march of this kind are not announced publicly and only trusted individuals were invited to take part by organisers Young Women for Change (YWC).

The protesters who held banners that said "Where is Justice" and “enforce law for violence against women” as they walked to the Afghan parliament, were in fact outnumbered by journalists and the 50 or so Afghan police who flanked them.

The following day Kabul was rocked by bomb attacks carried out by the Taliban across Afghanistan as it launched its “spring offensive”.

Many of the 200 who were invited didn't take part because of concerns about media presence and family pressures to stay away. One 16-year old said she had slipped away to take part without telling her parents.

“A lot of things happen against women in Afghanistan, but no one can bring change without women themselves,” she said.

But the fact that the event took place at all is a credit to YWC, a newly-formed feminist movement with the aim of empowering Afghan women and recruiting them to the struggle for gender equality.

The walk took place following the violent deaths of five women since March. Three women were killed in Herat, one of whom was beheaded by her husband. Another woman was killed by her husband in Khost and another was hanged by a tribal court in Paktya.

Fatima Saidi, a 17-year old protester, said: “We hold this rally on behalf of the Afghan women whose voices are not heard and we came to raise our voice against their killing. Even our government is not helping us to reduce violence against women."

YWC, which was founded in April last year by Noorjahan Akbar and Anita Haidary, outline numerous cases of violence and torture of women carried out by their husbands and family in a statement on its website.

The fact that no charges had been made in the majority of cases was addressed in the statement, which said:

"We, the women and men of Afghanistan who want equality and justice, demand from the people's representatives, who represent the men and women of Afghanistan, the Ministry of Justice, that is responsible for creating a just environment for men and women in Afghanistan, and the Ministry of Women's Affairs, which must protect the rights of the same women who are brutally tortured, that they should no more forget women and when crimes like these happen in front of their eyes, they should remember justice and humanity and raise their voice."

YWC is calling for maximum punishment for those who have committed murder, the freedom of the women who are in jail because they were raped.

The statement also called on the Ulema Council to condemn violence against women.

This demand follows the controversial ruling by the country’s religious council, apparently with President Kamid Karzai’s backing, that women were “secondary” to men and that husbands could beat wives under certain circumstances (see WVoN story).

The ruling has fueled concerns that women's rights will be traded for peace in negotiations with the Taliban.

But at a crucial time for women in Afghanistan, the media-savvy YWC, which has also actively set out to recruit men to its cause, has taken significant steps towards challenging the "suffocating silence" that exists around violence against women.

Last year YWC, which now has 30 women volunteers and 15 men, all of whom are Afghanis, held what it claims was the country's first protest against street harassment.

To mark International Women's Day, YWC also opened a female-only internet cafe that was dedicated to Sahar Gul, the teenager who was tortured and kept for months in a cellar after refusing to enter into prostitution (see WVoN story). There are also plans to set up more in Bamiyan, Kandahar and Helmand.

 

It’s every man for himself when the ship sinks

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Jackie Gregory
WVoN co-editor

It seems that it is every man for himself when it comes to escaping a sinking ship, with women having less chance of survival than men.

The 'women and children first' rule is a myth according to research, released to coincide with the centenary of the Titanic sinking.

In fact on the few occasions when the myth became reality, it was more often 'ladies first' with the lower class women left to fend for themselves in the hull of a stricken vessel.

Swedish researchers Mikeal Elinder and Oscar Erixon, authors of "Every man for himself — Gender, Norms and Survival in Maritime Disasters”, told AFP news that out of 15,141 people who were on board 18 ships they studied, twice as many men survived as women – 17.8 per cent compared to 34.5 per cent of men.

The Titanic and the wrecking of the British ship Birkenhead off the coast of Cape Town in 1852 are the exceptions when women and children went first, but this was down to the captains who banned the men from jumping in to the lifeboats.

Nearly 1,500 passengers were killed when the Titanic sank but just 26.7 per cent of the women on board perished and 50 per cent of children, while about 80 per cent of the men died.

The researchers wrote: "His [the captain's] policy, rather than the moral sentiments of men, determines if women are given preferential treatment in shipwrecks. This suggests an important role for leaders in disasters.”

It was one which the captain of the Costa Concordia which went down in January this year off the coast of Italian island of Giglio seems not to have adopted.

Francesco Schettino is currently being investigated for manslaughter and accused of abandoning ship before everyone on board could be evacuated.  Of the 33 dead or missing just under half were women, and most were passengers rather than crew.

Erixon and Elinder said they were shocked when they studied the Estonia passenger ferry disaster which sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994. A total of 852 of the 989 people onboard perished, with only 5.4 percent of women surviving, compared to 22 percent for men.

Overall the academics found women fared worse on ships sailing under British flags than other nationalities.

Erixon said: "That fact sort of busts the myth about the British gentleman."

Lucy Delap, fellow and director of studies in history at the University of Cambridge, told Discovery News: ”Women and children first was a very patchy, uneven goal in 19th and 20th century shipwrecks. It had strong class, nationality and ethnicity elements, which meant that ‘ladies first’ was more often practised,”  she said.

Delap, who was not involved in the Swedish research, said that people of low economic class weren't divided into men and women, and were generally regarded as "the mob" at the bottom of the ship.

Captain Christer Lindvall, president of the International Federation of Shipmasters’ Associations, told CBC News that the fact that men more often survive is down to training and experience and not because they abandoned passengers. He added that there is no rule to say that women and children should go first.

The research has re-ignited the debate in the media about whether it is right that women and children should have preferential treatment. When the Titanic went down suffragettes made the point that the rule made women out as vulnerable with no self-determination reports The National Post.

Peter Glick, a professor of psychology at Lawrence University in Wisconsin has researched 'benevolent sexism'  and says there is still a belief that men should be the heroes.

He is quoted by the National Post saying: "During the time of the Titanic, there probably was a lot more pressure on men to say 'Well, of course not, you have to defer to the women and children being saved first otherwise you're a coward,' whereas today we have a lot more questions like 'If women are men's equals, what does that mean? Should they still be the protected sex?'

“I think we're uncomfortable, at some level, with completely giving that up."

Cases of lung cancer rise among UK women

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Jackie Gregory
WVoN co-editor

Cases of lung cancer are rising among women in the UK while declining in males, according to figures just released by Cancer Research.

More than 18,000 females were diagnosed in 2009, meaning that rates for the disease are 39.3 for every 100,000 women, compared to 22.2 for every 100,000 in 1975 when there were fewer than 8,000 cases.

Lung cancer still affects more men than women but the rates have fallen from a high of 110 per 100,000 in 1975 to 58.8 per 100,000 in 2009.

The charity says the rise for women and fall for men reflect different smoking patterns in previous decades.

Smoking was high among men during the Second World War and this translated into high incidences of the disease in the 1970s whereas for women, smoking increased during the ’60s and ’70s and the effects are now being seen. It was during these decades that the biggest advertisers in women's magazines were tobacco companies.

A total of 19,410 men and 15,449 women died from lung disease in the UK in 2010.

Jean King, Cancer Research UK's director of tobacco control, said: "Tobacco advertising hasn't appeared on UK television since 1965, but that didn't stop the marketing of cigarettes.

“New, more sophisticated marketing techniques have lured many hundreds of thousands into starting an addiction that will kill half of all long term smokers."

The British Government is about to consult on whether to ban the branding of cigarettes so that they are sold in plain packets. There could be large pictures on the packets showing the effects smoking can have. This is a proposal which Cancer Research backs.

However pro-smoking lobby group Forest is campaigning against the proposed ban and have produced this video.  They say the end of trademarks is anti-libertarian, and a step further towards a nanny state.

Forest's director Simon Clark told the Financial Times: ""Plain packaging is the persecution of minority lifestyle choice. It feels as if we are part of a growing libertarian movement – this is something quite new and, from our point of view, very encouraging."

Democrats on the defensive over stay-at-home moms

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 01:01 AM PDT

Auveen Woods
WVoN co-editor

Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, has found herself in the firing line following an interview in which he said he relied on his wife to connect with women.

Hilary Rosen, a political consultant to the Democratic National Committee, then weighed in, saying in an interview with CNN that Mrs Romney was out of touch, given that she had "never worked a day in her life".

Rosen said:

“She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we — why we worry about their future."

Some commentators think that Rosen has handed Romney a chance at redeeming himself with women just as he is about to secure the Republican nomination.

He is widely thought to have alienated women and moderate Republican voters during the presidential primaries, promising to cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood, a major women's health care provider in the US.

Romney has been trying to woo women voters recently by focusing on the impact of the economy on them, claiming that 92 per cent of jobs lost over the past three years have been lost by women.

The comments have created a firestorm with Tea Party favourite and former presidential candidate Michele Bachman who denounced Rosen's statement as "shocking and insulting".

"When women are home full-time, they probably have a better pulse on their economy than even their husbands have because they're the ones impacted by the price of groceries, by the price of gasoline, by the price of dealing with banking", she said.

Two hours after Rosen made her ill-fated comments, Ann Romney started a new Twitter account @AnnDRomney and wrote: "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work."

Mrs Romney, an accomplished speaker, is popular on the campaign trail and has publicly acknowledged her battle with multiple sclerosis and breast cancer.

Rosen’s comments created a sense of panic in the Obama camp by attacking the president’s largest demographic and a significant voting bloc. According to the latest census data, about one in four women with children under 15 does not work outside the home.

The White House is worried that many suburban mothers who were willing to support the President because of the improving economy, will be turned off by disputes like this.

Within minutes of the broadcast, Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina tweeted: "I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize."

First lady Michelle Obama also tweeted: "Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected”.

Mitt Romney‘s outrage at Rosen’s comments was rather undermined, however, by his remarks in January that poor stay-at-home moms should be required to work outside the home to receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits.

Rosen’s remarks, for which she has now apologised, certainly put American women back in the forefront of the election again.