Saturday, July 28, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Irish parliament passes female quota bill

Posted: 27 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT

Laura Mowat
WVoN co-editor

A bill has passed in the Irish parliament declaring that unless 30% of parliamentary candidates are females, half of state funding will be withdrawn from political parties.

This stems from the country's poor record of attracting women to put themselves forward as parliamentary candidates.  Currently, 15.1% of Irish members of parliament are women.

The quota will rise to 40% female candidates after seven years.

The Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogel, said that a financial penalty was the only way for the parties to take the issue seriously.

Deputy Nolan said: "The introduction of gender quotas for nominations will change the dynamic in the Dáil [Irish parliament]. I hope it will create a new atmosphere that will spread to other areas of society."

Chairwoman Edel Clancy suggested the quotas be extended for local elections in 2014.

"International research continually shows that candidate gender quotas are a successful contributor to increasing women's political representation worldwide,” she said.

However, the Women for Election group have claimed that this legislation would not be enough to fight the unbalanced ratio, and the lobby group has suggested mentoring and training to encourage women to stand to be members of parliament.

In the UK parliament, 22% of MPs are female. It is believed that childcare, cash and confidence are among the reasons that far fewer women are in governments worldwide.

Saudi Arabian women to compete in Olympics

Posted: 27 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Laura Mowat
WVoN co-editor

Saudi Arabian women will be competing in the Olympics for the first time, but barriers to end sporting gender discrimination remain.

Sarah Attar will run the 800m race and Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani will compete in Judo.

Attar said: “I hope it can really make some big strides for women over there to get more involved in sport.”

The International Olympic Committee was considering banning Saudi Arabia from taking part if they did not allow any female competitors. The committee is allowing the two athletes to take part for equality reasons, even though neither of them met during the initial qualifying period.

Although many see this as a milestone event for women’s rights, others fail to see the significance.

Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi researcher at Human Rights Watch said: “It is unlikely that the Saudi government or the Saudi sporting authorities of their own volition will make changes inside the country as a result of sending two women to the Olympics.”

The Saudi Arabian government only agreed to allow the females to compete if they adhered to Muslim women clothing regulations. However, the International Judo Federation have ruled that Woodjan is not allowed to wear her headscarf while competing.

The authorities have also asked the athletes not to mix with men and stay with a male guardian at all times.

The IOC have been urged to give women more freedom to do sport, such as the creation of women’s gyms.

Generally in Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to practise sport and it is the only country in the world that bars women from doing sport at government schools.

This is the first Games where every country will have a female athlete to represent them, as women from Brunei and Qatar will also compete for the first time.

Women’s football kicks off London 2012

Posted: 27 Jul 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Penny Hopkins
WVoN Olympics editor

The 2012 Games began on Wednesday not in London, but in Cardiff, with UK women taking on New Zealand in the first of six matches on the opening day.

There had been concerns voiced about the number of tickets sold for both the women's and men's football, with some venues up to two-thirds empty, but a crowd of nearly 25,000 saw the home side win 1-0 with a 25-yard free kick by Stephanie Houghton.

Earlier on in the day broadcaster James Naughtie embarrassed Culture & Sport Minister, Jeremy Hunt, on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, by asking him to name Great Britain’s (GB) star player.

After a prolonged bout of evasion it became clear that he couldn't name any at all, although he did manage to trot out a few well-worn female names, such as Rebecca Adlington, as GB medal hopefuls.

It didn't take long for controversy to hit the Games, however, when the kick-off for the North Korea vs Colombia match was delayed by over an hour.

The North Korean team walked off the pitch after the big screens at Glasgow's Hampden Park mistakenly showed the South Korean flag alongside the players' pictures.

The game finally took place after some deep diplomatic discussion and the North Koreans went on to win 2-0.

In the other games, tournament favourites Brazil won 5-0 against Cameroon with other favoured teams USA beating France 4-2 and World Champions Japan winning 2-1 against Canada.

In the day's remaining game, Sweden beat South Africa 4-1.

London Games are first to include women from every country

Posted: 27 Jul 2012 01:00 AM PDT

Ed Knight
WVoN co-editor

In the London 2012 Games there will be, for the first time in the history of the Olympics, a female athlete from every participant nation.

The last few nations to abstain from sending sportswomen were Qatar, Brunei and, the most publicised of the three, Saudi Arabia.

As has been pointed out on WVoN, however, the matter of Olympic equality is far from resolved.

The threat by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban Saudi Arabia from the Games entirely unless they included women has worked, but this does not mean that the state will now encourage women to participate, or work to diminish the stigma on women athletes.

Qatari swimmer Nada Arkaji has benefited from the use of Doha's substantial sporting facilities. Qatar is seemingly now doing its utmost to include women, since establishing a Women's National Sports Committee in 2001.

Saudi runner Sarah Attar, on the other hand, trains in California, where she lives and grew up, and covers her hair and limbs only while representing her country. She has spent only a small amount of time in Saudi Arabia.

She may be an example of an impending transitory phase in women's sport in the country, where initial participants will hail from diasporic communities while the training infrastructure is established.

Equally, this may  be wishful thinking as there is still considerable resentment about very idea of women's sports within Saudi Arabia.

While the common perception is that Saudi Arabia's reservations are due to religion, many Saudi commentators are keen to point out that it is less an issue of dogma and more of cultural norms.

Often left unsaid by the media, the more extreme of these perceptions are exemplified by Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Zuhayyan, an academic in Riyadh.

His primary concern is the hymen:

“Saudi families equate a broken hymen with the loss of virginity, and a girl losing her virginity/hymen by any means other than legitimate marriage, such as participating in strenuous activity, damages the family’s honour.

“For this reason… saving girls’ virginity is deeply entrenched in their culture, and this tradition should be respected.”

Citing the claims from various groups that human rights of Saudi women were being violated by their exclusion, Al-Zuhayyan said:

“[The] Saudi government would not force its citizens, specifically, parents, to let their girls participate in the Olympics against their will.

“In fact, by doing so, it would be in clear violation of their human rights… Also, complete disregard of culture and tradition is a violation of human rights.”

He further claimed that “cultural and structural conditions are not conducive for Saudi female athletes to present an impressive performance, or win an Olympic medallion.”

By pressuring Saudi Arabia to include female athletes, international organisations such as the IOC are “intentionally and knowingly subjecting the entire Saudi population, particularly these female athletes and their families, to a degrading treatment in front of billions of people around the globe. This is also a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 5.”

“Thus,” he concludes, “one can easily discern that Saudi women’s participation in the Olympics is against human rights.”