Friday, July 27, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

New fund encourages young women to challenge body image

Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:00 PM PDT

Harri Sutherland-Kay
WVoN co-editor

Rosa, the UK fund for women and girls, has this week announced the first grants awarded under her new Girls and Young Women’s Fund.

The grants have been awarded to two year-long projects.

Platform 51 and the End Violence Against Women coalition (EVAW) will be working with young women through online resources for UK schools and organisations alongside a national lobbying campaign.

This project aims to educate and empower young women to speak out and change attitudes through encouraging them to challenge their portrayal as nothing more than sex objects in the music video industry.

The second funded project is dedicated to challenging women’s devastating acceptance of body hatred. Endangered Bodies London, convened by Susie Orbach, will launch a new collaboration with schools and youth groups in London and the South East called ‘Making Media Mine’.

Both of these exciting new projects are placing the voices of young women at their centre, providing young women with the skills and platforms to make themselves heard to their peers as well as decision makers.

At the conclusion of the projects, a summit will be held by the NGO AnyBody at London’s Southbank to bring all of the girls and mentees together to share and celebrate their work.

Rosa’s Girls and Young Womens Fund is a response to young women's concerns about how they are portrayed in popular culture and the impact on their daily lives. Young women and girls see how airbrushed media messages affect self-image, personal development and sense of possibility.

Rosa’s new fund recognises the importance in understanding that there is a direct connection between the objectification of and violence against women and girls today.

Rise in women seeking ‘designer’ vaginas

Posted: 26 Jul 2012 08:30 AM PDT

Natasha Wilson
WVoN co-editor 

Following a dramatic rise in women seeking 'designer’ vaginas, a research charity has released an animated documentary to highlight the issue.

The film called Centrefold was funded by the Wellcome Trust and features three women who have had labiaplasy- the surgical reduction of the inner labia – discussing their reasons for having had the procedure.

The surgery involves reducing the length or changing the shape of the inner labia or reshaping the outer labia to alter the external appearance of the genitalia.

According to recent figures, labiaplasty has increased fivefold in the last five years with 2000 procedures taking place last year alone on the NHS.

This figure is probably significantly higher in the private sector, where the procedure can cost up to £3,000.

One of the women interviewed explained how she searched pornographic websites, looking for women whose genitals were similar to her own and when she couldn't find any she concluded it was "yet another piece of evidence that there was something was wrong with me."

Although the procedure is a low priority, the NHS can offer the surgery if there is evidence of pain during intercourse, recurring infections or the need for reconstruction after trauma.

Despite the increase in labiaplasty there are no universal NHS guidelines on what 'normal' female genitalia should look like.

There is growing concern that women seeking labiaplasty should discuss the psychological reasons behind their need for it.

Dr Lih-Mei Liao, clinical psychologist at University College London Hospitals said: "When a woman says she is worried about her labia, surgeons may hear the word ‘labia’ and operate; I hear the word ‘worry’."

She added that psychologists "simply aren’t being accessed as surgery is being presented as the obvious solution."

One woman said:  "I thought it was going to be the end of all my problems – I thought it was going to look lovely, like a little designer vagina."

Though after the procedure she confessed:" Six or seven weeks on my labia is smaller but I still hate it. It looks like a big fat piggy's nose peeking out of a pair of curtains."

The two other women said they were fairly happy with the result, with one admitting: "It's such a shame that was such a big stigma for me."

Women in stressful jobs at higher risk of heart attacks

Posted: 26 Jul 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Natasha Wilson
WVoN co-editor

Women with stressful jobs are at a higher risk of heart attacks, a new study shows.

The Women's Health Study tracked more than 22,000 female health professionals over a period of 10 years and discovered a link between work and heart problems.

Researchers grouped women into four categories: passive job strain (low demand and low control jobs), active (high demand and high control), low strain (low demand and high control), or high strain (high demand and low control).

The findings, published in PLoS ONE show women in high stress jobs are 67 per cent more likely to have a heart attack than women in low stress jobs.

It also showed that 38 per cent of women in high stress jobs are more likely to have any kind of cardiovascular event such as a stroke, high blood pressure or heart surgery.

Dr. Michelle A. Albert, of Brigham and Women's Hospital said: "The stress we're talking about here is stress that exceeds the body's capacity to manage or adapt appropriately.”

Surprisingly, the results showed that women with a high level of control in their jobs still experienced elevated health risks, whereas previous findings suggested having more control at work reduced stress levels.

Positions where women could be seen as having a high level of control suggests they have a level of authority, such as a manager or executive, or someone with power to make major decisions.

Dr Albert suggests this new discovery may be due to an increased pressure on women to perform in high level jobs and prove themselves against men in the same positions.

Also trying to balance work and family life could be a factor with many women taking work home with them and not getting the chance to relax.

Dr Albert said physical activity is important to reduce stress and women should set aside time each day for yoga and meditation for relaxation.

During the 10 year study, there were 170 heart attacks, 163 strokes, 440 procedures such as angioplasty to bypass or unblock coronary arteries — and 52 deaths from cardiovascular disease.

Will ‘Clare’s Law’ protect women from domestic violence?

Posted: 26 Jul 2012 05:30 AM PDT

Heather Kennedy
WVoN co-editor 

Imagine you're enjoying the first flush of a new relationship and you have the chance to apply for access to your new partner's criminal history – would you do it?

Under Clare's Law, which is being piloted in four areas across the UK, individuals or family members can apply to vet new partners for violent convictions.

The law takes its name from Clare Wood, the 36 year old from Greater Manchester who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend George Appleton in 2009, a man with a string of violent convictions against women including kidnapping one girlfriend at knifepoint.

Call me a cold hearted bureaucrat, but I'm suspicious of laws which name themselves after murdered women or children. It's true for Clare's Law as it's true for Sarah’s Law which went before it, named after abducted eight-year old Sarah Payne.

There's more than a slither of manipulation at work in the naming of these laws and the desire seems to be to stifle debate: No one wants to be accused of trampling the legacy of a murder victim.

But when Clare's Law is exposed to scrutiny, the cracks become blindingly obvious.

Behind the fanfare surrounding its launch is the fact it offers very little that's new; under current legislation individuals can apply for information on a partner's past convictions if they think they might be at risk.

So if it offers little more protection, what's behind our enthusiasm for Clare's Law? Its arrival speaks of a society where faith in the criminal justice system to keep us safe sits alongside full employment and free school milk, as a vague and distant memory.

Of course, arming yourself with any information that might protect you from violence makes good common sense. But the premise of Clare's Law flies in the face of everything we know about human nature and the sometimes mesmerising force of relationships.

Would I have given bad boyfriends the elbow if, before things got serious, I'd had the chance to peruse a dossier of criminal convictions, psychological assessments, a complete breakdown of their full relationship history? Almost certainly not.

For men and women alike, affairs of the hearts are rarely decided according to rational, informed judgement. And even if they were, the vast majority of people prone to interpersonal violence have never been anywhere near a courtroom, let alone convicted.

It seems much more likely Clare's Law will become a tool in the armoury of the disgruntled mother in law or estranged spouse, keen to dig dirt on their loved one's new beau.

The truth is that domestic abuse often creeps up, out the corner of your eye, by a process of escalation and normalisation. Most of us will have some experience of the eye watering things that pass for acceptable behaviour, behind closed doors, between people who are supposed to love each other.

If you're trapped in a violent relationship the chances are you won't need a criminal records disclosure to tell you what your partner is capable of. Before the attack that puts a victim in hospital or brings the police banging on their door, they're likely to have endured a lot already.

But Clare's dad Michael Brown is convinced the new law would have saved her:

"I have said time and time again that, had this been in place and had my daughter had any inkling of what this laddie was capable of, she would have been long gone."

Sadly, by the time she died, Clare Wood was acutely aware of George Appleton's brutal tendencies. She had already reported him to the police several times for threatening to kill her and for violence and sexual offences.

Police arrested him but let him go. Clare's death doesn't highlight the need for a new law. It highlights the need for existing ones to be properly followed by police as they respond to cases of domestic violence.

For Michael Brown, his campaign to introduce Clare's Law has been a brave struggle to draw some hope from his daughter's senseless death.

But when the scheme will be so expensive to set up and even domestic violence charity Refuge says it will do more harm than good, why is the government supporting it?

Clare's Law will score easy popularity points for a government that desperately needs them. By backing it, they can be seen to answer the demand made by successive tabloid campaigns, to put victims rather than criminals at the heart of the criminal justice system.

But if the government was really concerned about the UK's domestic violence epidemic, would they be pursuing cuts to services like Women's Aid, which mean scores of victims at severe risk are turned away?

In an age of austerity, surely politicians should be channelling money into schemes that help the greatest number of people?

Victims need much more than information on their partner's past convictions if they're to escape the noose of domestic violence.

Rather than setting up Clare's Law, here are five things the government should have spent their money on:

  1. Specialist training for police officers to improve their responses to complaints of domestic violence, so women like Clare Wood can receive proper protection.
  2. Abuse starts young– we need more education in schools to teach children acceptable behaviour in relationships and how to navigate and escape domestic violence.
  3. More treatment for perpetrators of domestic violence – never the most popular use of government money but the woeful lack of schemes mean future partners are left exposed to a perpetrator’s violence.
  4. More resources and support for women and men fleeing violence including refuges, floating support and permanent housing.
  5. What about the men and women who decide to stay? Sympathy often runs dry for people who stay in abusive relationships, but abuse works by severing escape routes and there's no room for idealism when we're talking about domestic violence. With the right support, victims can make their situations safer which could mean the difference between life and death.

First female head of African Union elected

Posted: 26 Jul 2012 04:00 AM PDT

Natalie Calkin
WVoN co-editor 

South Africa's Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has become the first woman to head the African Union (AU).

She was elected earlier this month in a six-month leadership contest that saw her beat incumbent Mr Jean Ping, from Gabon.

Dr Dlamini-Zuma, the former wife of the South African President Jacob Zuma, gained the 60% of votes she needed from the 54-nation bloc at an AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The election victory was far from easy.  According to the Irish Times, it took eight months of behind the scenes lobbying and two separate elections for her to secure the majority she needed.

The election also highlighted tensions between African Union countries, with Francophone countries backing Ping and Anglophone countries supporting Dlamini-Zuma.

Dlamini-Zuma now faces the task of "unifying the African-Union" according to Dirk Kotze of the University of South Africa.

Alex Vines of the British Think Tank Chatham House said she will "have to focus on rebuilding relationships, especially with a number of francophone states", adding that her election was “highly significant” because it would strengthen South Africa’s position on the continent.

However, that is not how Dlamini-Zuma sees things. ”South Africa is not going to run the AU. It is Dlamini-Zuma who is going to come to make a contribution” she said after her win.

Dlamini-Zuma comes to the job with an impressive track record. She was a minister in her native South Africa, boasting more time in government than her former husband, the President. She held health and foreign office posts and, more recently, a post within the home affairs ministry where she was credited with successful reforms.

She joins a number of African women appointed or elected to leadership positions in Africa: Joyce Banda, elected the first female President of Malawi; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the current President of Liberia, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, who was appointed the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Mariam Aloma Muktar who became the first woman Chief of Justice in Nigeria.

The Woman's League of the ruling ANC in South Africa welcomed her appointment, saying that it "speaks volumes for the gains made in fighting patriarchy on the African continent”.

World Bank and US Government launch new initiatives to close the gender data gap

Posted: 26 Jul 2012 02:30 AM PDT

Natalie Calkin
WVoN co-editor

The World Bank and the US government last week announced major new initiatives to help address data and information gaps about women and girls around the world.

US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and the World Bank’s President Jim Yong Kim addressed leaders in business, academia, government and the international community about how to collect and use data to ensure better policies and outcomes for women and girls, and thereby improve entire economies and societies.

Clinton announced the creation of a new US Government initiative called “Data 2X” which she said “will develop new curriculum standards to ensure data producers and users train in gender-sensitive techniques.

“Working with key data organizations, including the UN, World Bank, OECD, PARIS21, and Gallup, the project will also publish a roadmap on how we together can fill priority gaps in gender-sensitive data as quickly as possible”, she added.

The World Bank, in parallel, is launching a new “Gender Data Portal” which will allow visitors to access results from surveys, analytical work and reference materials.

Information will cover issues like women and girl’s employment and their access to health, education and decision making.

Both Clinton and Jim Kim are unanimous about the reasons for launching these two inititives now.

As Clinton said: ”we are living in the midst of a data revolution. Massive amounts of information is being shared faster, through more channels, and reaching more people in more places than ever”.

Despite this progress, however, data on women and girls is still lacking and this is inevitably weakening planning and decision making processes at all levels.

In his speech, Jim Kim discussed information available for women in the agricultrual sector, a hugely important industry for women, especially those in poorer countries.

At present, there is no available data for how many women in Sub-Saharan Africa use fertiliser to help grow their vegetables. With this information, donors and governments would know where best to target development funds.

Clinton continued the agricultural example by suggesting that “if women farmers had access to the same seeds, equipment and irrigation as men, they could increase their crop yields by 20 to 30%” and feed up to an additional 150 million people.

Yet, as she added. “we lack the critical information on women’s land use, property rights and access to seeds and fertiliser”.

Data 2X and the World Bank’s Gender Data Portal come at a critical time for advancing the gender equality agenda.

The combined weight of these two international agencies is sure to nudge other governments and agencies into addressing the gender data gap that is holding so many women back from advancing within their societies.

Pathological poverty: the divide between deserving and undeserving poor

Posted: 26 Jul 2012 01:00 AM PDT

Heather Kennedy
WVoN co-editor 

For years, a high number of poor mothers in America have been diagnosed with  anxiety disorder.

But a new study suggests that the cause of anxiety for many of these women is not psychiatric but rather a reaction to the severe deprivation of their lives. The study examined nearly 5,000 families and their children living in urban areas of America.

What might look like a psychiatric disorder to a comfortable, high earning doctor was often a mother reacting rationally to her circumstances.

So whilst mothers have struggled with the pressure of providing for their families with scarce resources, they've been hit with the added stigma of being diagnosed mentally ill and all the implications that comes with it.

And on the other side of the Atlantic, we are witnessing a more deliberate attempt to reframe what it means to be poor.

It was back in late 2011 when work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith announced plans to change the way poverty was to be measured in the UK.

Both Smith and Prime Minister David Cameron distanced themselves from the current indicator of poverty, enshrined in law under the last Labour Government, which measures it in relation to national income averages.

They argued that rising income doesn't always lead to rising wellbeing and that state provided welfare could in fact make you less happy.

"Take a family headed by a drug addict or someone with a gambling addiction: increase the parent’s income and the chances are they will spend the money on furthering their habit, not on their children.

“According to the relative income poverty figures they might be above the line, but by any reasonable measure of long-term life chances they would be stuck firmly below" Smith said.

Embedded in another Tory policy, the Troubled Families programme represents an insidious bid to shift the goal posts on what it means to be poor.

When it launched earlier this year, this programme was billed as a policy that would ”turn around the lives of 120,000 troubled families by the end of this parliament”.

It was sold to us as the families we all love to hate; noisy neighbours, drug addicted mothers, welfare scroungers and other disreputables who sap far too much state funding.

But what does the government really mean by 'troubled families' and where did the figure of 120,000 come from?

Closer inspection reveals that it was taken from a 2004 study which measured extreme deprivation in UK families.

The Troubled Families agenda lays bare a deliberate attempt to repackage poor and struggling families as feckless, anti-social drains on the public purse.

Interestingly, a mother with mental health issues was one of the factors that allowed a family to be defined as severely deprived (or severely troublesome, to use the new Tory lingo).

And recent public debates about whether parents should be given their benefits in food stamps rather than money, to stop them squandering it on gin, drugs and fags, are likely to have had Smith and Cameron grinning from ear to ear, feeling that their work was done.

The idea that there's a scrounging, malignant underclass that can be separated from the virtuous poor is not new.

In Elizabethan England, the Poor Law separated people into 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor to dictate how they should be treated by the public and the state.

Now, over 500 years after the Poor Law was introduced, we are seeing the same ideology resurrected.

The stage is being set for a return to social policy which dismisses vast swathes of people below the breadline as deserving to be there.

As rising numbers of families and individuals find they can't sustain a basic standard of living, we should be even more sceptical of policies that write people off as pathologically poor.

Because once this has happened, it won’t be long before the rich and powerful begin to fully relinquish their responsibility to those most in need.