Saturday, May 5, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Zimbabwean ‘female rapists’ cleared of rape charges

Posted: 04 May 2012 11:30 AM PDT

Rachel Ogbu
WVoN co-editor 

Zimbabwean prosecutors have dropped charges against three women accused of raping male hitch-hikers to collect semen allegedly for ritual purposes (see WVoN story).

Sisters Sophie and Netsai Nhokwara and Rosemary Chakwizira were arrested in October 2011 after police found 31 used condoms in a car boot after a string of sexual assaults on men that were first reported three years ago.

According to AFP reports, the case was thrown out of the court after DNA evidence cleared them. “The state has withdrawn the charges,” Dumisani Mthombeni, their lawyer said.

Mthombeni told Voice of America that ”The police arrested the wrong people. We have always been saying that and the prosecution was buying time to delay the trial because they knew they lacked any evidence.

However, two of the women were prosecuted on the lesser charge of ‘loitering for the purposes of prostitution’, punishable by a fine.

The BBC reported that the three women were detained last November in the central town of Gweru, 275km (170 miles) south-west of the capital, Harare,

Police think that there is a nationwide syndicate of women raping men, possibly to uise their semen in rituals that claim to make people wealthy.

Reports of women rapists have persisted across Zimbabwe, even after the arrests of the three women.

State media in January reported two separate incidents of men being forced by two women at gun- and knife-point to have sex and Zimbabwean newspaper The Standard reported that the semen may have been collected for sale in Dubai, where it fetched high prices.

Poll reveals that one in four women in London feels unsafe on public transport

Posted: 04 May 2012 09:30 AM PDT

Naomi Wilcox
WVoN co-editor

A YouGov poll published by the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) Coalition this week revealed that over a quarter of women living in London feel unsafe when using public transport.

The poll was published before yesterday’s London mayoral elections along with a 10 point plan to help “make London the world’s safest city for women”.

Over 1,000 people took part in the poll, of whom 523 were women. It found that 28% percent of women felt unsafe when using public transport during day or night, compared to 15% of men.

Women surveyed admitted to moving carriages and changing buses  in an attempt to feel safer when travelling alone. Sexual harassment was identified as one of the main causes of unease.

One woman said;

“”I feel safer on public transport than I do walking around, but I have still experienced several nasty incidents of sexual harassment on the tube where I have been forced to change carriage or leave the train a stop early to avoid harassment from men.”

Marai Larasi, co-chair of EVAW Coalition said:

“These poll results are truly disturbing. They confirm what many women already know – that thousands of us are worried about our safety if we choose to travel alone. And that many women and girls in London actually do not feel able to travel after dark because of these fears.”

I spoke to several female Londoners to ask them how safe they felt on London transport. Interestingly, they all said that they felt relatively safe on buses and the tube, mentioning CCTV and the security of being with other passengers.

One common theme soon became clear however, which was summed up nicely by this woman’s comment:

‘I always feel fairly safe on public transport, it’s when I get OFF I don’t feel safe’.

One 24 year old who lives in Hackney added that ‘people feel more anonymous when walking down the street, when on transport you’re contained and in a sense you’re more accountable for your actions…. There are more witnesses generally on public transport’.

‘What needs to be addressed’ she said, ‘are people values, respect for another and their environment.’

The sad truth is that whether on public transport or in other public spaces women face harassment.

This can be clearly seen on even a cursory glance at some of the stories on the Hollaback London webpage, and it doesn’t take much to know that London isn’t an exception.

So it’s crucial that the newly elected mayor makes the safety of women in all areas of their lives a priority.

For its part, EVAW urged all candidates to commit to its manifesto which covers a range of concerns facing women in the capital, including domestic violence, forced marriage and FGM.

Professor Liz Kelly, co-chair of the Coalition concluded:

“London’s mayor has already led the development of an excellent strategy on ending violence against women and girls – which has been admired by other UK cities and around the world.

“We need to see a commitment to renewing and improving this strategy, and truly leading London to become the world’s safest city for women.”

My own hope, as the election results are announced, is that not just London, but all our cities make the safety of women a high and urgent priority.

Sign petition against use of photoshop in Seventeen magazine

Posted: 04 May 2012 07:30 AM PDT

Naomi Wilcox
WVoN co-editor

A 14 year old American girl, Julia Bluhm, launched a petition last week asking US teen mag Seventeen to curb its use of photoshop.

In it she wrote: ”I'm asking Seventeen Magazine to commit to printing one unaltered — real — photo spread per month. I want to see regular girls that look like me in a magazine that's supposed to be for me.”

Bluhm’s call has clearly struck a chord – at the time of writing the petition had attracted just over 48,000 signatures.

On Wednesday she took it to Seventeen Magazine’s New York headquarters and staged a protest outside the building, holding a sign that read ‘The magazine’s for me, make it look like me!’.

She was invited into the magazine’s offices to meet with Seventeen’s Editor-in-Chief, Ann Shoket, which released a statement saying:

“We’re proud of Julia for being so passionate about an issue – it’s exactly the kind of attitude we encourage in our readers – so we invited her to our office to meet with editor in chief Ann Shoket this morning.

“They had a great discussion, and we believe that Julia left understanding that Seventeen celebrates girls for being their authentic selves, and that’s how we present them.”

Whether Bluhm was convinced remains to be seen, but her rationale on the Change.org petition is clear:

“Girls want to be accepted, appreciated, and liked. And when they don't fit the criteria, some girls try to "fix" themselves. This can lead to eating disorders, dieting, depression, and low self esteem.

“I'm in a ballet class with a bunch of high-school girls. On a daily basis I hear comments like: "It's a fat day," and "I ate well today, but I still feel fat."

“Ballet dancers do get a lot of flack about their bodies, but it's not just ballet dancers who feel the pressure to be "pretty". It's everyone.

“To girls today, the word "pretty" means skinny and blemish-free. Why is that, when so few girls actually fit into such a narrow category? It's because the media tells us that "pretty" girls are impossibly thin with perfect skin.

“Here's what lots of girls don't know. Those "pretty women" that we see in magazines are fake.”

Although the use of photoshop in fashion magazines has become very common, with models often having their bodies and faces digitally ‘improved’ post-shoot, some magazines are bucking the trend.

Following a recent poll of readers for Glamour, it pledged ‘not to manipulate body size in the photos we commission, even if a celebrity or model requests a digital diet’.

And Vogue has  just unveiled a ‘Health Initiative’ in its June edition in which it pledged to ”work with models who, in our view, are healthy and help to promote a healthy body image”.

It is inspiring to hear of a young girl with so much passion and confidence, and encouraging to see the support which her cause has attracted.

It’s just a shame that she has to live in a world that makes her feel this way in the first place. It would be great if her actions help other girls her age realise, as she did ‘that we have the power to fight back’.

To sign the petition, click here.

Concerns for women’s rights in Mali as result of new family law code

Posted: 04 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT

Aisling Marks
WVoN co-editor

Following the introduction of a new family law code in the west African country of Mali earlier this year, women’s rights groups say that it has led to greater discrimination.

"The new law brings women's rights back to more than 50 years ago because some rights women had in the former law have been banned," said Safiatou Doumbia, a member of the Malian Association for Care and Assistance to Women and Children.

A strongly patriarchal society (only 31 per cent of women compared to 47 per cent of men can read and write), women activists have been campaigning for years for a new family code to improve the legal rights of women.

Although an amendment to the 1962 code was adopted by the National Assembly in 2009, it was withdrawn following uproar from conservative Muslim groups.

The amendment would have recognised only civil marriages, entitling divorcees to a share of the inheritance; given women greater inheritance rights than those allowed under Shariah law; and raised the legal age for marriage to 18, among other changes.

But women in Mali are facing other challenges as a result of the rising power of fundamentalists in the north of the country.
In an interview on the Open Democracy website, a leading women’s rights activist warned that as Islamic fundamentalists gain power in the north, they have started to talk about imposing restrictions on the ways that women dress.
She says she is “deeply concerned about the way that the fundamentalists have begun to limit women's rights -  starting with the way that women dress. It is a sign of what is going to happen next.
“Women in Mali have a long history as market traders, they move around and interact freely in public and wear the clothing that they want. These changes are going to have a major impact and cause a lot of stress for women”.  

Obama’s ‘Life of Julia’ criticises Republican policies on women’s welfare

Posted: 04 May 2012 03:30 AM PDT

Alexandra Szydlowska
WVoN co-editor

US President Obama’s tech-savvy election campaign has rolled out a new online infographic which it hopes will help to boost support from female voters.

The Life of Julia is an online step-by-step guide to how the current administration’s policies help American women at every age – and how the policies of rival candidate Mitt Romney would potentially cripple them.

It follows Julia’s progression from infancy to adulthood, witnessing her starting school, going to college, embarking on a career, starting up a family, setting up a small business and eventually retiring at the age of 67.

An unfair blueprint perhaps as not all women’s lives follow this trajectory, but one which serves a political purpose.

During her ‘life’, Julia is seen to benefit from Obama-endorsed education programmes like Head Start and Race to the Top, the Pell Grant for college students, low-interest loans, free health care, retirement benefits and the like.

She even goes on to file a lawsuit under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. How’s that for ‘girl power’?

Meanwhile, Romney’s policies are counterpointed as doing more harm than good, including cuts to education programmes and college grants, raising interest rates on federal student loans, as well as stamping out ‘Obamacare’.

The Republicans have slammed the campaign as ‘patronising’ and ‘simplistic’, while waging their retaliatory war on Twitter and tumblr.

Under the hash tag #Julia you can find comments which include ‘Julia is bummed. Her share of the national debt went up $16,345 under Obama’ (courtesy of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus).

However, it’s not just Republicans who are annoyed by ‘Life of Julia’. According to conservative columnist David Harsanyi, “What we are left with is a celebration of how a woman can live her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people’s money rather than her own initiative or hard work.”

So is it possible that ‘Life of Julia’ deprecates women in as much as it attempts to champion women’s rights? Or does it in fact not matter as all is fair in love, war- and attempting to win an election.

As Guardian journalist Ana Marie Cox suggests in her article, “baiting the Republicans into mocking the Julia feint is a form of engaging them on the gender issue.

“Whether or not you believe Romney’s policies are bad for women is an ideological issue, but the Obama campaign can point to the real consequences those policies have.”

Anti-HIV drug, tenofovir, can be used during pregnancy

Posted: 04 May 2012 01:13 AM PDT

Rachel Ogbu
WVoN co-editor 

New research suggests that the use of the anti-HIV drug, tenofovir, during pregnancy is safe for infants.

According to HealthDay, the new findings from the National Institutes of Health network, should reassure pregnant women with HIV who are taking tenofovir.

Science Codex reports that babies born to women who took it as part of an anti-HIV drug regimen during pregnancy, did not weigh less at birth and were not shorter than babies born to women whose drug regimen did not include tenofovir.

Previous studies had shown that laboratory animals exposed to the drug in the womb were smaller at birth than those who were not exposed to it.

The new study included 2,000 infants born to HIV-positive mothers between 2003 and 2010 in the United States. The researchers said, however, that further studies should be conducted to  identify any potential long-term effects of taking tenofovir during pregnancy.

Dr. George Siberry, of the Pediatric, Adolescent and Maternal AIDS Branch of the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the first author of the study said that, overall, it provided reassuring information regarding the use of the drug during pregnancy.