Thursday, May 31, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Changes in mining industry in Zimbabwe should help women

Posted: 30 May 2012 10:30 AM PDT

Sibongile Mpofu
Freelance journalist, Zimbabwe

Since its launch last year, the Government of Zimbabwe's ”indigenisation” programme has resulted in significantly more local ownership of the country's mineral resources.

It is also hoped that it will empower and improve the participation of women in one of the country's critical economic sectors.

President Robert Mugabe launched the Community Share Ownership Scheme (CSOS) in Gwanda, Matabeleland South province, one of the country's poorest regions, whose population depends on both formal and illegal gold mining.

The province is in the southern part of the country and is very rich in gold and limestone deposits.

The CSOS is a nation-wide government initiative to empower rural communities by giving them a ten percent stake in all businesses that exploit natural resources in their areas.

The scheme has already been launched by other mining powerhouses in the country including Zimbabwe Platinum Mines in Chegutu, Unki Mines in Shururgwi and Mimosa Mine in Zvishavane.

The idea is to change the lives of the rural poor and vulnerable communities so that they too own and benefit from the natural mineral resources in their areas.

The programme is expected to help small scale women miners improve their productivity.

According to the Zimbabwe Chamber of Mines, women miners make up about ten per cent of miners overall and the share ownership scheme is expected to increase that number.

In the last few years, mining has  become the mainstay of growth in Zimbabwe, contributing a projected 13 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in 2011 and 4.5 percent employment.

According to the 2012 national budget, mineral exports grew by 38.7 percent, generating revenues of about USD 2.1 billion. For 2012, the sector is expected to grow by 13.3 percent.

From 1999 to 2008, the mining sector's contribution to total GDP has been averaging about four percent.

The contribution increased phenomenally to average 11 percent between 2009 and 2011, owing to a cocktail of measures to increase the capacity of small to medium scale producers.

Most women miners fall under this category.

It is a tough business for women due to the physical nature of the work, but also because they often lack the necessary equipment.

This was evidenced by the recent revelation of the president of Zimbabwe Women in Mining, Evelyn Musharu, that the association would have to use manual methods when they started work on the 16 claims allocated to them last year as they had failed to attract investors.

This lack of mechanisation would in the process reduce their capacity to fully exploit the claims.

While it is premature to start counting the actual benefits of these community share ownership schemes on women, they could, if implemented properly, provide a platform for women living within the mining areas to actively participate in the mining of minerals and form consortiums to acquire shares offered by mining companies.

The government has also announced plans to review the Mining and Minerals Act to formalise illegal gold panning and make sure miners work within the law.

Mines minister, Obert Mpofu, recently told local media that this change would help small scale miners, including women, to access mining equipment.

Although none of this will not be easy for the government (legalising gold panning conflicts with legislation to fight illegal panning because of the damage to the environment), it will reduce unemployment and possibly ease the lives of thousands of poor workers, many of them women.

Where are all the women?

Posted: 30 May 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Crystal Huskey
WVoN co-editor

I had a conversation with a friend the other day about the lack of headlines celebrating accomplished women.  My friend had, for one, never noticed, and two, thought I was exaggerating.

On any given day, you will see headlines featuring political commentary (which rarely focuses on women), nonprofits making a difference in the world, and your typical newsworthy headlines.  Women are strangely absent.

Unless their bodies or marital choices are being discussed.

We talk about this discrepancy in theory so often.  I’ve decided to bring some visual examples of this.  The following pictures are snapshots taken from various mainstream news sites at 22:14 EST.  Click the images to enlarge them.

fox fox2 fox3 fox4 bbc bbc2 CNN CNN2

The minimizing of women’s success is such a regular part of our life that most of us don’t even realize it’s happening.

We are featured if we are being harmed, exploited or if we shout loudly enough, like Sandra Fluke, the American woman who catapulted to fame after she gave testimony about the need for contraceptives being covered by birth control.

Of course, her fame really came after Rush Limbaugh called her a slut and prostitute.

Mrs Obama is apparently important enough to receive attention.  Her headline reads: “Mrs. O:  I’m smarter than the president.”

The BBC does not have quite the assortment of half-naked women as Fox, but the absence of stories featuring women is striking.  CNN is a bit better, but take note of who is in the pictures: the majority of images are of powerful men.

While I am grateful for sites like this one, the Feminist Wire and the Women’s section of the Huffington Post (kind of), it would be wonderful to have an equal presence on mainstream news sites and have our accomplishments celebrated alongside those of men.

Catholic institutions sue Obama administration over contraception mandate

Posted: 30 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Polly Trenow
WVoN co-editor 

Last week, a dozen Catholic institutions filed a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration.

The plaintiffs, including The Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington and The Catholic University of America, are fighting a mandate that would require them to cover contraception in their employee health insurance.

Although other religious groups filed lawsuits earlier in the year, last Monday’s action was only by Catholic groups and included Washington’s own Bishop.

Forty-two separate Catholic institutions, including the University of Notre Dame and 13 dioceses, filed 12 separate lawsuits.

The institutions accuse the US Department of Health and Human Services of violating the First Amendment, which protects freedom of religion.

In a statement made by the Archdiocese of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl said the mandate required Catholic institutions to pay for medicines and procedures that “violate their religious beliefs.”

Last August, as part of Obama’s ‘Affordable Care Act,’ all health insurance was required to include birth control for women.

After an outcry from religious groups, the mandate was amended to allow religious organisations to apply for an exemption if their purpose is to spread religious belief, and if they primarily employ people of the same faith.

Another amendment ensures religious organisations would not have to pay anything towards contraception as these costs would be covered by the insurers.

But many institutions such as the University of Notre Dame may not receive such an exemption.

Father Jenkins of the University said:

“A narrow exemption was given to religious institutions that serve and employ primarily members of their own faith, but, departing from a long tradition in federal law, organizations like Notre Dame—schools, universities, hospitals and charitable organizations that serve and employ people of all faiths and none—were granted no exemption, but instead were made subject to the law to the same extent as any secular organization.”

He also stated that the lawsuit was “not about preventing women from having access to contraception, nor even about preventing the Government from providing such services.”

Experts have claimed there is nothing unconstitutional about the law which requires Catholic employers to adhere to the same laws as all other employers.

Similar lawsuits have already been rejected in New York and California.

The New York Court of Appeals ruled that "[t]he employment relationship is a frequent subject of legislation, and when a religious organization chooses to hire nonbelievers it must, at least to some degree, be prepared to accept neutral regulations imposed to protect those employees' legitimate interests in doing what their own beliefs permit.”

The California court ruled years ago that any exemption for religious groups “sacrifices the affected women's interest in receiving equitable treatment with respect to health benefits.”

The Obama administration is reported to have asked the lawsuits to be dismissed. They claim that given the mandate will not come into effect until August the lawsuits are premature.

Women’s FA Cup Final coverage cut short by Sky

Posted: 30 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Naomi Wilcox
WVoN co-editor

Football fans were disappointed on Saturday when live coverage of the Women’s FA Cup Final between Birmingham City and Chelsea was cut short by Sky.

The score stood at 2-2 after the full 90 minutes, stoppage and extra time; however, as the game went to a tense penalty shoot-out, SkySports 2 switched coverage to the red button channel to make room for the warm up to the men’s League One play-off final  between Sheffield United and Huddersfield.

While Sky viewers could watch the shoot out via the red-button, many watching the game via Virgin Media were left on the edge of their seats as the coverage failed to appear.

The winners of the game, Birmingham City Ladies FC, have criticised the TV channel’s decision. Club Secretary, Mike Maybury said:

“It was disappointing that Sky stopped broadcasting the game before it was finished.  Sky had taken the contract to air it, they should have fulfilled their obligation.

“The match on Sky was a good advertisement for women’s football, which is another reason it’s so disappointing that it was not aired to the end of the game.”

Karen Carney, who scored the equalising goal at the end of extra time expressed her disappointment, but added: “… that is how it is.  We will leave that to Sky and the politics of it.”

Other female footballers were slightly less forgiving.  Liverpool Ladies Captain Vicky Jones tweeted:

“Absolutely shocking — would this have happened with the men’s FA Cup final?  An embarrassment to women’s football.”

A spokesperson for Sky Sports responded on Monday, saying: “Sky Sports covered the Women’s FA Cup Final live in full but due to exceptional scheduling issues we had to cover the climax through the red button service rather than on Sky Sports 2.

“It was a difficult scheduling decision, caused by the wealth of live sport shown at the same time across five Sky Sports channels.”

Despite Sky’s decision, the Birmingham team was clearly elated about their historic win — the first major trophy the team has won since it was founded in 1968.

Karen Carney shared her delight:  ”It’s unbelievable. “We’ve worked so many years for this.

“I’m ecstatic on a personal level but it’s not about me, it’s about the squad and the staff and the whole of the Birmingham City family.”

Speaking out against child marriage in Ethiopia

Posted: 30 May 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Gillian Gaynair and Jeff Edmeades*
International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)

Bosena, who lives in Ethiopia, learned she was going to be married one week before the ceremony.

She told her mother and father “no.”

She didn't want this – after all, the man was a stranger to her and quite a bit older. Her parents told their daughter it was her duty.

"I didn't understand what was going on," she said. "I was just playing around when they did the ceremony."

She was 12 years old.

Today, Bosena is 17, and the mother of a 2-year-old boy.  She never had a chance to go to school.

She lives with her husband in a traditional hut, far away from her parents. She doesn't see them much. Most of her days are devoted to caring for her family, gathering firewood, fetching water, cooking.

Bosena's story is similar to that of many teenage wives and mothers in Ethiopia's Amhara region, which has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world.

Despite laws against marriage under the age of 18, girls sometimes as young as six continue to be forced to wed much older men.

And it's not just here in Ethiopia. The practice plays out in many other countries too, from Nepal to Nicaragua, with at least 60 million girls married worldwide.

If present trends continue, 100 million girls will wed before they turn 18 over the next decade.

The tradition occurs most often in poor, rural communities where options are very limited for girls. In many regions, parents arrange their daughter's marriage unbeknown to the girl, who is usually sent to live in another village with her husband and his family.

For young brides like Bosena, there is little benefit to the arrangement. Their childhood ends abruptly with the exchange of vows, and they become vulnerable to a host of health problems, including becoming at risk of HIV and domestic violence and suffering complications – even death – during childbirth.

The good news is that the world is finally beginning to take notice and speak out against child marriage. Today there is an unprecedented spotlight on the issue, with ever-louder calls to prevent the practice and eliminate it in a generation.

Our organization, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), was among the first to document the causes and consequences of child marriage, and we continue to not only develop solutions to end the practice, but we're also identifying ways to support girls who are already married.

Young brides' lives are often painfully isolated – especially, ICRW has found, in the first few years of marriage. Most drop out of school even before they wed and being married effectively guarantees they'll never return.

In villages in Amhara, many young married girls aren't allowed even to go to church, a fundamental social activity in the region. As a result, they miss out not only on worship, but also on information about community happenings and the chance for social interactions with other girls.

For many young brides in developing countries, their movements outside of the home are usually allowed only with permission from their husbands or in-laws.

Parents-in-law also traditionally decide when it's time for young wives to start sleeping with their husbands. That decision is usually made when the girls' physical changes at puberty become visible.

ICRW – in partnership with CARE-Ethiopia – is working to change the reality that many girls like Bosena face in Amhara. Our hope is to create an environment where married girls can have more say over their life path and where others can recognize their value to the community.

Called TESFA, which means "hope" in Amharic, our program aims to arm 5,000 married girls with skills that can help them live healthy, productive lives — not only now, but years from now.

The program centers on educating married girls about their sexual and reproductive health and providing them with training on saving and investing money. It's the kind of information girls don't learn in school or from their families, but it's critical, as they are only just starting their families and their economic lives.

We're confident that what they learn during their time with the TESFA project will be useful both immediately and throughout their lives, influencing both their prospects and those of their children over the short and long term. As such, the "returns on investment" of the program are potentially multiplied many times over.

What's more, TESFA also involves people from girls' villages, who act as liaisons between the project and the broader community. This sense of community ownership over the project provides the girls with advocates who fight for their right to attend meetings, speak at events and help smooth over any conflict that may arise with their households.

The local liaisons – from village council members to priests – have become agents of change in their own right, actively intervening to prevent child marriages and encouraging others to recognize the rights of girls.

Through our work in Ethiopia, ICRW is striving to give girls a chance – a choice – to broaden their life horizons beyond being only mothers and wives.

The program provides very few direct incentives for participation beyond this chance – but that's more than most of the girls in this area have been given so far in their lives.

And we're witnessing a transformation: the most compelling change is in the girls' self confidence. They look you in the eyes. They're expressive.

You can tell that the opportunity to be seen and to be heard has helped them find their own voice.

And they are quick to use the information they learn during the program, often in unexpected ways – many report that they are using the negotiation skills they learn around finances or health to maneuver a wider range of issues with their husbands and in-laws.

As a result, the girls say there are fewer conflicts in their homes and better relationships, both of which contribute to their enthusiasm for the project.

Child marriage remains a deeply-rooted tradition around the world. But it's clear that when communities – like where we're working in Ethiopia – learn about some of the consequences of the practice, and when they're offered alternatives to it, norms can change. Long standing cycles can be broken.

Taken together, these small changes can mean a healthier path to adulthood and a better quality of life for Bosena in Ethiopia, and the millions of married girls around the world like her.

*Gillian Gaynair is a senior writer and editor at ICRW.

*Jeff Edmeades is a social demographer at ICRW and directs the TESFA project in Ethiopia.

 

 

Misogyny in (anti) social media

Posted: 30 May 2012 01:00 AM PDT

Sarah Cheverton
WVoN co-editor

Of 2,000 men and women surveyed in a recent study by BT Infinity, over 45 percent of participants said that they use social media more than any other online content.

Almost a fifth of women (18 percent) would miss online socialising more than anything else if the internet ceased to exist.

This compares to a somewhat more misanthropic 7 percent of men who would pine for the likes of Twitter or Facebook should someone ever succeed in breaking the internet.

Surprisingly, over twice the amount of men (13 percent) than women (6 percent) regularly share videos and pictures online – providing a long awaited answer to where exactly the 'Serious Cat' meme came from.

But if there are more women spending more time on social media, why do so many of us struggle to be heard there?

A number of recent cases of online misogynist abuse – highlighted on WVoN earlier this week by Julie Tomlin – may be acting to prohibit women from raising their voices in the virtual world.

With so many women on social media, solidarity isn't always the result. The vast number of perpetrators of online abuse may be men, but women aren't exempt from turning a digital knife on the sisterhood either.

After all, a disappointing number of supporters of — and four of the arrests made in — the recent 'Justice for Ched' campaign were women.

The same phenomenon can be found wherever women are writing or being written about (sometimes, we even dare to do both).

And while there may well be more women than men plugging in to social media, you wouldn't know it from mainstream media coverage of the worldwide webosphere.

As Tomlin highlighted in her article last week, not even a fifth of the Independent's recent Twitter 100 were women (18 percent).

The Huffington Post spotted this lack of recognition and even dedicated a regular column to women on Twitter to even up the balance.

In her WVoN article, Tomlin asked: "…a lot of questions remain about women in both the mainstream and social media. Are women de-selecting themselves or are the selection processes themselves at fault?"

Maybe a bit from 'a' and a bit from 'b'.

The viral popularity of violent and threatening misogyny against female internet commentators and social media pundits certainly prohibits many women from raising their heads above the digital parapet.

But even when they don't, mainstream media isn't that interested.

Little coverage was given to last week's study from Rice University, for example, which highlights the crucial role of social media in bringing a political voice to women in the Arab Spring.

Courtney Radsch, who conducted the research said: "While women and men struggle valiantly to bring about social change, these women cyberactivists stand out for their use of new media technologies and access to platforms that transcended national boundaries and created bridges with transnational media and activist groups."

For better or worse, the virtual world can only reflect the real world of humans in all its glory — from the cruel repression of our social and power structures to our individual choices to resist.

For the contribution of women to be equally recognised and celebrated, a fundamental shift has to happen in our perceptions of women, our perceptions of their experiences and of our ability to listen without prejudice when women put a voice to their experiences.

That's why our central mission at WVoN is this — building a world where the voices of women are heard by all.

This is not only about women offering, being offered and taking opportunities to speak. It's about all of us questioning what it is that’s stopped us from listening, including why, as a society, we feel entitled to hurl gender-based abuse at women for the strange offense of possessing and voicing an opinion.

This requires us to ask some important – and frequently disturbing – questions.

Some of these questions are overdue and are becoming increasingly urgent, like questions between media coverage of rape and the dire rape reporting and conviction rates in the UK.

This issue is now seen as so important to cyberfeminists that the expressed misogyny inherent in the supporters of Ched Evans has given birth to its own resistance movement: We believe her.

Yep. Welcome to 2012 and the era of equality. We’re busy creating a solidarity campaign to support the victim of a convicted rapist from a significant amount of the public. And we’re talking about a witchhunt being launched on Rebekah Brooks?

In a world where women are dominating social media, solidarity is powerful and vital. But we can only understand the importance of standing together when we know how equally vital is the need to do exactly that.

For many, the absence of women in the media is still not seen as problematic, but as an issue of individual choice. Women don't 'choose' to be journalists, broadcasters, film-makers…or politicians, barristers, footballers (delete as appropriate) in equal numbers as men.

But in a world where rape culture is now so pervasive that calling a female MP a 'whore' is becoming a routine news day, we do have a problem.  A serious one.

And it's a problem that belongs to everyone, men and women alike.