Saturday, August 11, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Gold medallist Adams blazes a new trail in female boxing

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 06:30 AM PDT

Alexandra Szydlowska
WVoN co-editor

Nicola Adams has made sporting history by becoming the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in female boxing.

The 29-year-old from Leeds beat Ren Cancan in yesterday’s flyweight final, winning 16-7 against the three-times world champion.

Her victory was echoed that same day by the four times world champion Katie Taylor, 26, who won Ireland’s first medal of the Olympics during a fight with Russia’s Sofya Ochigava in the lightweight final.

Both Adams and Taylor have been commended for blazing a new trail in the cause to see female boxing accepted as an Olympic sport.

Women’s boxing first featured as a demonstration sport at the 1908 Olympics. However, it was banned in the UK until 1996, with the British Boxing Board of Control denying women the right to box until 1998.

When female boxing was finally accepted as an Olympic sport in 2009, it faced some opposition.

Amir Khan, one of Britain’s best-known boxers at the time, said: “Deep down I don’t think women should fight. That’s my opinion. When you get hit it can be very painful. Women can get knocked out.”

However, in light of Adams’ victory, the sportsman has changed his tune, recognising Adams as “the face of British boxing, especially for the women”.

Women’s boxing pioneer Barbara Buttrick, a professional world champion in the 1950s, was in the audience and said she was proud of Adams’ achievements.

“When I was around, I would never have dreamed women boxers would ever get into the Olympics,” said Buttrick.

“But now they’ve got that credibility and that will bring a lot more girls into it because they’ll feel more comfortable going into a gym.”

Independent female Olympian wants own flag

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 04:30 AM PDT

Rachel Salmon
WVoN co-editor

Philipine van Aanholt is an Olympian like no other.  She is the only woman to be competing in the Games without a country.

She is one of just four independent Olympic athletes, who are competing under the Olympic flag. If they win, the Olympic anthem is played.

van Aanholt comes from Curacao, which used to be part of the Dutch Antilles, a group of five islands in the Caribbean, until it voted for independence in 2010.  It has yet to be recognised as a separate state by the UN.

But, as van Aanholt qualified for the women’s laser radial sailing event, the International Olympic Committee allowed her to compete as an independent.

She said some of her friends had been confused by her independent status:

“It’s been quite hard because one of the special things about the Olympics is that you can compete for your country and do them proud.

“People are wearing their team colours. You don’t feel that team spirit.”

She didn't even get to see the other independent athletes, as she was staying in the sailing village in Weymouth, three hours from London. She is now back in the main Olympic village in London.

For van Aanholt the best part of the Olympics was the opening ceremony.

“That was the first time I realised what the Olympics are.

“It overwhelmed me. The reception from the crowd was amazing, with so many school kids waiting for the athletes and asking for autographs.

“We did a dance. We tried to act out our sports which I don't think many people got.

“We wanted to remember this for the rest of our lives. Everyone was clapping and screaming, amazing,” she said.

She has also been to the Olympic Association and met inspirational athletes past and present, including an 84-year-old who competed in the 1948 games.

van Aanholt is now off to study business and economics in Holland.

“It’s important to have a study behind you. It makes you more well-rounded,” she said.

She plans to keep enjoying her sailing, and will take things slower for the next two years before building up for Rio in 2016, but she is not confident that her country will be recognised.

“I don’t think it will happen, I wish it would so I can compete under my own flag,” she said.

HIV-positive women forcibly sterilised, Namibian court rules

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Ed Knight
WVoN co-editor 

In a case being watched closely by human rights groups across the globe, the Namibian high court has ruled that three women with HIV were sterilised during childbirth without their informed consent.

The case of ‘LM&NI&MH versus the government of the republic of Namibia’ has been going on for two years. The three women in question were sterilised between 2005 and 2007 after each being handed consent forms to sign during the latter stages of labour.

All required caesareans, and the women were each presented with a form written in a language they did not understand. One believed it to be concerning only the caesarean procedure, and another was given the choice by a doctor of either sterilisation or no caesarean. The judge, Elton Hoff, remarked that the practice of asking women to sign consent forms during labour was “highly undesirable“.

An unconfirmed amount of damages will be paid to the women, with their demands in the region of $120,000 (£78,000) each.

The Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) has praised the ruling as an affirmation “not only of the rights of HIV-positive women but also of all women to access their sexual and reproductive rights”.

However, Judge Hoff was clear in rejecting the claim that the women were sterilised specifically due to their being HIV-positive, and in turn Harvard’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) has been quick to reassert that HIV was indeed the motive, and Hoff's rejection will not aid in lessening the problem.

A joint research report from IHRC and others claims to detail “widespread instances of discrimination against women living with HIV in Namibia: segregation in health facilities, neglect during labour and delivery, inadequate counselling about HIV testing, and coerced consent to sterilisation procedures”.

IHRC goes so far as to say that “in meetings and interviews in Namibia, we were told both by public healthcare providers and former patients that a government protocol authorised the sterilisation of women living with HIV”. The Namibian health ministry denies the existence of such a protocol.

Nicole Fritz, executive director of the SALC, says that these cases are only “the tip of the iceburg”. According to UNAIDS, the number of people living with HIV in Namibia jumped from 11,000 in 1990 to a staggering 180,000 in 2009. However, the number of new infections and AIDS deaths have been declining for the last 10 years.

The troubling question arises: if indeed there has been a programme of coerced sterilisation, has this played a part in the decline in new infections?

But of course to pit women’s control over their own bodies against a reduction in HIV sufferers as two opposing possibilities is to ignore the role that education and contraception must play in the fight against the disease.

A record-breaking Olympics for female athletes, but will the attention last?

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 01:30 AM PDT

Liz Draper
WVoN co-editor

As distressing as it may be, London 2012 can’t go on forever. But as the Olympics draw to a close this weekend, we can look back on two record-breaking weeks for female athletes.

The first Olympic games to feature women from every participating country; the first games in which women could take part in every sport; the highest ever number of medals on offer for women. The list just goes on and on.

For Team GB, a higher proportion of women taking part (48%) has led to a higher number of medals for British women: 18 in the individual disciplines, as of half past seven on Thursday night. It’s not just about the raw stats: our female athletes have been capturing the hearts of the nation, and crucially, the mainstream media.

The level of media attention lavished on female athletes during the Olympics marks a huge difference from the norm. For the last two weeks, we’ve gloried in the success of our female cyclists, even as Lizzie Armitstead has pointed out the sexism she experiences in professional cycling outside of the Olympics. We’ve bickered over whether bikinis distract spectators from the volleyball players’ athleticism, although most of us couldn’t name the defending champions if we tried.

Will the media attention last? Who knows. But female athletes perform at this level year in, year out, whether the papers notice them or not. And if Team GB’s women have captured your attention this Olympiad, there are plenty of ways to follow their fortunes until Rio 2016 rolls around. Here are our top three sites dedicated to women’s sport.

Sportsister

Sportsister is an online and print magazine dedicated to involving women in sports and fitness. Throughout the games, its twitter feed has been industriously following the successes of each and every female GB athlete.

The site features training plans, race reports and nutrition advice, as well as tips for beginners for sports as diverse as tennis and paddle boarding. Recent features include interviews with Laura Trott, Lisa Dobriskey, and triathlete Chrissy Wellington.

The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation

WSFF is a charity campaigning to “make physical activity an everyday part of life for women and girls”. As it points out on its website, many women are put off by sport because of lack of facilities, the absence of publicity of female sporting role models, and bad memories of school PE lessons.

Its Go Girl campaign aims to capitalise on GB women’s Olympic success to celebrate women’s sport and inspire others to get fit.

Stylist

For the last few months, Stylist magazine has been running the Fair Game campaign, petitioning for gender equality in sports. The stats it highlights are truly shocking: only 5 per cent of sports media coverage features women, and women receive only 0.5 per cent of total sports sponsorship. The campaign hopes to collect 100,000 signatures calling for a House of Commons debate on the state of women’s sport.

Stylist magazine doesn’t just talk the talk: the site is packed with news and features focused on female athletes.