Thursday, July 5, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Hampstead Theatre under fire for predominantly male casts

Posted: 04 Jul 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Natalie Calkin
WVoN co-editor

Edward Hall, Artistic Director at the Hampstead Theatre, is under fire for staging plays that feature predominantly all male casts.

It is currently showing Chariots of Fire with a cast of 18 men and three women, followed by the Druid Murphy Trilogy with 13 male and four female roles.

A double bill of Shakespeare – Henry V and The Winter's Tale – will then be played by an all-male cast.

The theatre receives public funding and therefore has an obligation to respect diversity and equality.  However, Hampstead is one of many theatres that could do better in terms of championing these values.

The actor's Union Equity has recently written to 43 subsidised theatres as part of an ongoing campaign to ensure a fair balance in the performing arts.  The letters highlighted the need for better employment of women and asked how they planned to rectify the situation.

They received a less than enthusiastic response — only a dozen theatres responded.

The letter, featured in the Camden New Journal last week, requested that Hall "ensures that the lack of regard shown for gender balance shown throughout this current season is redressed within the future programming of productions on the main stage.”

The theatre's official response stated that "Hampstead does not, and has never, excluded women from its productions as a matter of policy.”  

The response went on to provide statistics on the number of male versus female actors employed and listed the plays that have featured women.

As well as being the artistic director at the Hampstead Theatre, Hall undertakes the same role for a theatre company called Propellor, which stages Shakespeare's plays using an all-male cast.

Hall says this is to "reflect the traditional way of approaching the play…it's simply because that's how they used to be produced.”

This year marks the 448th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth.  When he wrote his plays, women were barred from the stage because it was illegal and considered "indecent" for them to appear.

As Jenni Tomlin states in her blog on Stephen Fry playing Twelfth Night's Malvolio in an all-male cast at the Globe this summer:

"The heritage of all-male theatre serves to highlight our deep history of sexism and inequality. An inequality that raged through the centuries denying women the right to vote, own property, be educated, defend themselves from domestic violence…

“I'm not advocating we should forget this history – but should we be celebrating its existence by re-enacting such a sexist culture today?"

Ugandan women challenge government on maternal health

Posted: 04 Jul 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Natalie Calkin
WVoN co-editor

A group of 50 NGOs have backed a petition calling for the Ugandan government to be charged with failing to prevent the deaths of expectant mothers.  

More than 16 women a day die due to pregnancy complications.

The petition urges the government to boost health services to prevent these deaths and ensure Ugandan women receive their constitutional right to protection.

The petition was presented to the constitutional court but was thrown out on 5 June; however, the petitioners plan to appeal.

The court argued that by upholding the petition, judges would be forced to enter the political arena and act outside of their jurisdiction.

Principal State Attorney Patricia Mutesi, defending for the government, said the petition "was asking the court to do the work of the parliament in reviewing the efficiency of the health sector.” 

The petitioners said that the court relied on outdated international law in making its decision.

Moses Mulumba, executive director of the Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), the group that originally put forward the petition, also felt that the court's decision failed to address the fact that women were being denied rights assured to them by the Ugandan constitution.

"I think it was very wrong for the judiciary to rely on very old United States jurisprudence to inform their decisions on clear violations of human rights,” said Mulumba.

On 14 June, the petitioners filed a notice informing the Supreme Court and the Attorney General's office of their plan to appeal the decision. They have 50 days to finalise and file the appeal.

What they are looking for ultimately is that the government invests more in maternal health care, and the health system in general.

In February this year, President Obama's Head of Global Health Initiatives, Lois Quam, visited Uganda and asked Ugandan officials to "take greater ownership of maternal health.”

Ms Quam told reporters in Kampala:

"Far too many women lose their lives giving birth. When a mother bleeds to death, a nation bleeds.”

For the many thousands of women who have already lost their lives in Uganda, investment and preventative health measures can't come too soon.

Whether the appeal succeeds or fails, the petition has helped to keep maternal health on the agenda and highlight the role of political and legal institutions – as well as the activism and persistence of NGOs – in ensuring change.

Avon helps lift South African women out of poverty

Posted: 04 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Natasha Wilson
WVoN co-editor

Cosmetics giant Avon has helped lift South African women out of poverty, according to a new survey.

Oxford University conducted a three-year study on women working for the company in South Africa and uncovered some positive outcomes.

Of the 300 South African ’Avon ladies’ surveyed, they found that women were earning enough money to cover their basic household expenditures as well as health care.

Professor Linda Scott from Oxford University said:

“Although the amount earned is very small, particularly from a UK point of view, this income, by itself, would put Avon Representatives in the top half of black females in their community and bring them in line with what a black man earns.”

The research discovered that women who worked as an Avon representative for more than 16 months were in the top 10 percent of self-employed black women in South Africa.

Aside from escaping poverty, researchers found that the women learned skills they could take with them to other employers and increased their self-confidence as a result of working for themselves.

Professor Scott added: "Working as an Avon Sales Representative provides some impoverished South African women with an opportunity to make money when they had previously thought this impossible."

She said many of these women were victims of rape and some had contracted HIV, but she was impressed by how enthusiastic the women were about their job and how much the role had empowered them.

Avon sells fragrances, make-up and a range of skincare products and boasts 6.5 million independent Avon sales representatives worldwide.

Mob attacks and the Muslim Brotherhood: what’s next for the women of Egypt?

Posted: 04 Jul 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Heather Kennedy
WVoN co-editor

Activists and political figures called on Egypt's new president Mohamed Morsi this week to take decisive action against gender violence.

Sexual harassment and abuse have a long-standing tradition in Egypt — one that the country’s patriarchal culture has failed to address.

Since the 2011 Arab Spring, political tensions and misogyny have spilled over into ugly scenes of frenzied sexual and physical violence against female protestors.

Gender violence in Egypt intensified in the run up to the presidential elections, with women being viciously assaulted by hoards of men, none of whom have been identified by police.

Most women in Egypt don't expect to be taken seriously, so they rarely report attacks and harassment to officials.

"It was getting so crowded and we wanted to get out," Nihal Saad Zaghloul, who was attacked with two friends at a protest against sexual harassment.

"And suddenly, some men just started to grab us and, like, pull us away from each other. It was groping and, like, hands all over you and it wasn't really nice at all.

“It was really aggressive. Some men were trying to help us out but at some point you did not know who was helping and who was not."

In Tahir Square, British student Natasha Smith was mobbed by a crowd of men who physically and sexually assaulted her, apparently because they believed she was a British spy.

"I was stripped naked,” Smith said.  ”Their insatiable appetite to hurt me heightened. These men, hundreds of them, had turned from humans to animals”.

As the military council maintain their stranglehold over Egypt, Morsi is hoping to build alliances with liberals and secular groups to bolster his leadership, easing himself into the still fragile seat of power.

But people remain deeply sceptical about what his presidential victory will mean for women and other historically persecuted groups.

There have been reports that members of the Muslim Brotherhood have moved to abolish women's rights to divorce and enforce female genital mutilation.

Before the election, the Muslim Brotherhood's 'Freedom and Justice Party' also opposed enhancing the power of the National Council for Women, the group which promotes the role of women in politics and society.

Rewind to before Egypt's revolution, and the Muslim Brotherhood were explicit in their opposition to women in politics. The Women's Minister for the Freedom and Justice Party refused to support a protest in December against women's sexual abuse.

And the statement issued this week, demanding action against gender violence, recounted an incident when members of the Muslim Brotherhood assaulted activist Samira Ibrahim and forced her from Tahrir Square.

In the politically feverish climate of post-election Egypt, it's unlikely that the Muslim Brotherhood will be able to disguise their real agenda for long.  But fired up by revolutionary spirit and a desire for freedom, Egyptian women have been brought out to the streets in droves and it doesn't look as if they're going anywhere any time soon.

Sexual abuse by UK police more common than once thought

Posted: 04 Jul 2012 01:00 AM PDT

Heather Kennedy
WVoN co-editor 

Just how rare are incidents of sexual abuse by the UK police force?

Individual cases tend to be presented as exceptional incidents in which police officers have abused their power and been brought to justice.

But an investigation by the Guardian newspaper, gathered from court cases and misconduct proceedings, suggests that sexual crimes at the hands of police officers are far more widespread than once thought.

The paper reported on 56 cases from 2008 to 2012, in which police raped, abused, groomed and sexually harassed colleagues and the women they were there to protect.

The investigation was prompted by the case of Northumbria PC Stephen Mitchell who was found guilty in 2010 of six counts of misconduct in public office.

Mitchell forced vulnerable women, often drug addicts or sex workers, to perform sexual acts in return for access to bail and favorable treatment.

In 2010, a young woman reported that she'd been raped in Central London by a Metropolitan police officer who'd lured her into a locker room at St. Pancras Station. Prosecutors decided not to bring chargers against the officer.

The same officer was later sacked by an internal conduct panel after they ruled he had had sex with the woman against her consent.

Sexual predators within the police force have unprecedented access to women at their most vulnerable point. And yet, in many cases, when evidence of abuse came to light, the Crown Prosecution Service preferred to deal with the matter internally rather than prosecuting.

One female police officer described how she was raped by a male colleague who told her: "No one will believe you.”

And indeed, they didn't. The attacker was suspended for two weeks but the Crown Prosecution Service did not bring charges against him.

In their report into police corruption, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPPC) will look at sexual predators within the police force. But some women's rights campaigners have little faith in the commitment of the IPPC to oust offenders.

Lisa Longstaff from Women Against Rape said: “Policewomen and police staff, wives of officers as well as women civilians, have disclosed to us rape and sexual assaults by officers which never went to court.”

Debaleena Dasgupta, a lawyer who has represented women sexually assaulted by police officers said:

“The damage is far deeper because they [victims] trusted the police and … believed that the police were supposed to protect them from harm and help catch and punish those who perpetrate it.

“The breach of that trust has an enormous effect: they feel that if they can’t trust a police officer, who can they trust? They lose their confidence in everyone, even those in authority.

“It is one of the worst crimes that can be committed and when committed by an officer, becomes one of the greatest abuses of power.”