Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Amnesty International and women’s rights

Posted: 02 Oct 2012 06:46 AM PDT

Women’s rights are human rights, says Amnesty International UK.

Rights group Amnesty International (AI) runs a Women’s Human Rights programme, to champion the rights of women and girls and hold governments accountable for ending discrimination and inequality.

It focuses on women, peace and security; women human rights defenders; sexual and reproductive rights and violence against women.

And you can help, and make a real impact, right now, by writing emails supporting women Amnesty International is supporting.

With just a few minutes of your time you can apply pressure to the world’s governments to end human rights violations across the globe.

Please do.

One current campaign is to help two Indigenous women, Inés Fernández Ortega and Valentina Rosendo Cantú, who were raped by Mexican soldiers in separate attacks in 2002. They reported their ordeals, but their cases were dealt with by military courts with a poor record in tackling abuse of civilians by soldiers.

So the women appealed to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The government eventually admitted responsibility for the rape and abuse of Inés and Valentina, in March 2012 and December 2011 respectively, and began to fulfil its obligations to the women.

But the perpetrators are yet to be brought to justice, and many other steps demanded in the Inter-American rulings have not been dealt with.

Monday 1 October marks two years since the Inter-American Court published its judgements.

On 1 December Mexican President Felipe Calderón will hand over power to his successor. Amnesty International is urging him to take crucial steps in order to comply with the judgements before leaving office.

Please help urge President Calderon to comply with the judgements of the Inter-American Court in full before he leaves office.

For details of how to help, click here.

Domestic Violence redefined in the UK

Posted: 02 Oct 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Young people now included in the definition of domestic violence.

The Home Office has introduced an amended definition of domestic violence in the hope that more sufferers will receive support following abuse.

Currently, the UK government defines domestic violence as “any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse, psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional, between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality”.

The new definition will include violence towards 16-17 year olds as well as a broader understanding of coercive and intimidating behaviour which is not necessarily physically violent.

In particular, it will accommodate “any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality”.

Although it is not a law change, the refined definition will be used by Government social workers and police officials to be able to combat violence in domestic situations on a much wider scale.

Speaking at a youth club in Westminster, Nick Clegg welcomed the changes.

The new definition, he said, would “help expose the true face of domestic violence, which is much more complex and much more widespread than people often realise”.

Explaining the reasons behind the changes, Clegg said, “When you say domestic violence, people think that’s one act of physical violence, but actually psychological and emotional coercion, abuse over a long period of time is just as unacceptable and that is why we as a Government are saying we are changing the definition. We are saying it’s not just about an act of violence, but it’s also about coercion over a long period of time.

“Secondly we’re saying to youngsters, even if you are 16 or 17, you can be trapped in that kind of relationship, you don’t need to put up with that kind of abuse, so we’re also lowering the age of the Government’s definition of domestic violence.”

Minister for Crime Prevention, Jeremy Browne also added, “We want to raise the profile of domestic violence as an issue.”

He said, “We want particularly women and young girls, but people right around the country, to understand just how seriously the Government takes domestic violence and we want to try and make sure that all of the different agencies of Government, as well as charities, women’s refuges, the police and others, are all thinking in a joined up, co-ordinated way about how they can tackle domestic violence – that people can feel that they can take their concerns, their problems to those agencies and that they can be helped by those people when they find themselves in those desperate situations.”

Deborah McIlveen of Women’s Aid also welcomed the amendment.

She said however, “The challenge is now to ensure that police officers are able to identify coercive control and take appropriate action for both adult survivors and 16-18 year olds. This will require the development and implementation of procedures accompanied by comprehensive training.”

Head of the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the University of Bristol, Professor Marianne Hester, said that new definition would also allow for government and public change in mindset of how domestic violence is perceived across the UK.

“Up to now the Home Office definition of domestic violence has been about individual acts of behaviour when it is often about a pattern of power and control over time,” she said. “By recognising coercive control, you acknowledge such a pattern exists.

“Lowering the age classification was important as the highest rate of domestic violence is for people between the age of 16 and 25 and the 16 to 18 group were not being identified. This begins to overcome that problem.”

The new amendment will take effect in March 2013.

Global day of action abortion rights

Posted: 02 Oct 2012 04:04 AM PDT

September 28 was Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion.

Activists in London made a presentation of 600 wire coat hangers to Jeremy Hunt – the Secretary for Health in the UK – to highlight the fact that, according to the Family Planning Association, 1,500 women from Northern Ireland travel to England to avail of safe, legal abortions each year.

While abortion was legalised in England, Scotland and Wales in 1967, Northern Ireland was excluded from the Abortion Act of 1967.

At that time, the province had its own parliament, and the issue of abortion was left for the local parliament to legislate on.

There was huge opposition – on both sides of the sectarian divide – to the legalising of abortion in the six counties of Derry, Antrim, Down, Armagh, Fermanagh and Tyrone.

When Direct Rule returned to Westminster, the legalisation of abortion was never extended to Northern Ireland.

At the moment, a woman there can only obtain an abortion in order to preserve her own life. Abortions are also allowed if continuing with the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother's mental health.

Initially, a march was planned for Belfast on 29 September, but it clashed with a march to mark the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Ulster Covenant, which had been organised first.

The Belfast march will now take place on Saturday, 6 October, at 3.30pm. Pro-Choice supporters will congregate in Cornmarket Belfast to protest the current laws regarding abortion on the island of Ireland.

In solidarity with their sisters in the Republic of Ireland, women from Northern Ireland travelled south to march in Dublin.

Saturday saw approximately 3,500 men, women and children – including me and my children – march to highlight the lack of access to safe, legal abortions there.

In the Republic, abortion is outlawed even if the foetus has a condition incompatible with life.

This denial of access to safe, legal abortions means that while they are available in England, Scotland and Wales, not every woman can access them.

For most, the procedure will cost them approximately £800; and that's before women organise days off work, childcare and make other necessary arrangements.

Most women don't have access to that kind of money.

Judy Chicago returns to London

Posted: 02 Oct 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Judy Chicago
Aging Woman/Artist/Jew from Retrospective in a Box
© Judy Chicago, 2010
Lithograph, 24″ x 24″
Photo © Donald Woodman
Ben Uri gallery

The art work of renowned American feminist artist Judy Chicago returns to London after a hiatus of 23 years.

In two separate exhibitions at the Ben Uri London Museum of Jewish Art and the Riflemaker Gallery, art lovers will be treated to Chicago's works on paper, paintings and sculpture spanning her career from the 1960s to the present.

Of particular note is a test plate from her 1979 artwork, The Dinner Party, being exhibited at the Riflemaker.

In an interview with WVoN, Chicago explains that the exhibition at the Ben Uri is "intimate and personal in nature," and therefore a side of her work that contrasts with her more renowned art projects that are "monumental in scale and subject matter."

Wanting to give London audiences further exposure to her work, Chicago arranged the Riflemaker Gallery exhibition, which focuses more on her early pieces.

She says, "The London audience will have the opportunity to see work in a variety of materials in which I've worked: sprayed lacquer on car hoods, plastics, ceramics and glass."

Chicago is a groundbreaking artist who has changed the way that art is created and perceived, wrenching it from the hands of male art critics and artists and carving a place for women's artistic expression.

With works such as Womanhouse (1972), The Dinner Party (1979), the Birth Project (1985), Powerplay (1987), Holocaust Project (1993) and Resolutions: A Stitch in Time (1994), Chicago transformed the traditional notion of the artist as a solitary male creator to one that includes collaboration, sometimes with hundreds of women working to produce Chicago's vision.

Chicago has also incorporated techniques and media that have been customarily considered women's crafts.

China painting and needlework, for example, feature prominently in The Dinner Party, a work that encourages us to perceive these techniques as artistic creation rather than feminine pastimes.

Since 2003, Chicago has been working with glass, "exploring issues of vulnerability, mortality and the power of the human spirit."

She says, "For a long time, glass has been under the spell of the decorative but I have been trying to do what I have done with so many other techniques—like china painting and needlework—that is, to use it to express significant subject matter."

Chicago foregrounded women's experiences in her art at a time when appropriate subjects for art works were male-defined.

From her menstruation bathroom in Womanhouse, through exploring women's achievements historically in The Dinner Party, to representing birth and maternity in The Birth Project, Chicago has paved the way for female artists to develop their own terrain.

"[Chicago]has become a symbol for people everywhere, known and respected as an artist, writer, teacher, and humanist whose work and life are models for an enlarged definition of art, an expanded role for the artist, and women's right to freedom of expression."

Viewers of the exhibit at Ben Uri, the London Jewish Museum of Art can expect to see intimate works such as Autobiography of a Year (1993-1994), a visual diary with 140 drawings;, and Retrospective in a Box, a suite of prints showcasing Chicago's career.

Works of contemporary artists Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick and Tracey Emin will contextualize Chicago's work through explorations of common themes.

Chicago describes herself as "an unrepentant radical" and still believes that art can make a difference by responding to social injustice.

WVoN asked Chicago what she hoped viewers of her London exhibitions will take away from the experience.

She responded by saying that she hoped viewers will "find my work meaningful and relevant and that it will remind them that art is one of the few forms that we have to transcend our difference, our isolation and our essential loneliness because at its best, it expresses the human spirit.

"My goal as an artist has always been to reach across these gulfs and share my experiences with others through that which is both accessible and meaningful."

Judy Chicago Exhibition, 14 November – 10 March 2013, Ben Uri, The London Jewish Museum of Art 108a Boundary Road, St. John's Wood, London NW8 ORH.

Judy Chicago Exhibition, 12 November – 31 December, Riflemaker 79 Beak Street, Regent Street, London W1F9SU.

We need to go beyond ‘just add women and stir’

Posted: 02 Oct 2012 01:00 AM PDT

How do we move towards more people-centred, gender-aware climate change policies and processes?

This is a guest post from Alyson Brody, manager of BRIDGE, an organisation set up to address the negative impact of climate change on women, talking about their latest publication, a resource pack called From Recognition to Transformation. 

Climate change is increasingly recognised as a global crisis, but responses to it have so far been overly focused on scientific and economic solutions, rather than on the significant human and gender dimensions.

How then do we move towards more people-centred, gender-aware climate change policies and processes? How do we not only respond to the different needs and concerns of women and men and ensure they have an equal voice in decision-making, but also address and challenge the socially ingrained gender inequalities that mean women are more likely to lose out than men in the face of climate change?

A two-year programme (2010 /11) led by BRIDGE set out to address these questions.

Working collaboratively with a core advisory group from research, policy and activism and drawing on the inputs of a global community of practice key gaps, we identified key concerns and priorities and gathered numerous examples of good practice to shift the focus from problems to solutions.

The result is the latest Cutting Edge Pack from BRIDGE, which was published at the end of 2011.

While the pack acknowledges steps forward in policy and research around gender and climate change, it argues for the need to go beyond a tokenistic 'add women and stir' approach, and to engage with the complex gender dimensions of climate change.

Many of these are not new – rather climate change is magnifying existing forms of gender inequality and poverty, making them an ever more urgent priority.  As we point out in the Pack, these inequalities are being compounded by climate change policies and processes that exclude and marginalise women.

The pack has been distributed in hard copy to around 2000 organisations (including NGOs, government offices and research institutions), particularly in the developing South, and is available to download for free here.

 Some key gender dimensions of climate change

Women and men do not experience climate change equally.

In many developing countries economic constraints and cultural norms that restrict women's access to paid employment mean that their livelihoods are particularly dependent on climate-sensitive sectors, such as subsistence agriculture or water collection.

Yet gender inequalities in the distribution of assets and opportunities mean their choices are severely constrained in the face of climate change. For example, restrictions around land ownership for rural women mean they may not have access to productive land to farm, and lack of financial capital means they cannot easily diversify their livelihoods.

The fact that women and girls are often responsible for most of the unpaid care tasks around the household also means their lives are directly affected by the changes brought about by climate change. They often have to walk further to find increasingly scarce food, fuel and water, as well as caring for family members who are susceptible to the health risks linked to climate change.

As a result, women and girls find themselves with less time for education, income-generating activities or participation in community decision-making processes, further entrenching unequal gender relations.

Men are also negatively affected by climate change, particularly when they are poor.

For example, men may experience deep anxiety and stress when their rural livelihoods are undermined as a result of climate change and they are no longer able to fulfil their socially expected roles as providers.

Research also indicates that men may feel pressured into taking 'heroic' actions, which places them at a higher risk than women and children. For example, after Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in October 2000, a higher proportion of men than women were killed due to risk-taking behaviour.

Climate change policy does not take enough account of gender

Many climate change policies and processes overlook the gender dimensions of climate change or consider them irrelevant. For example the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the overarching international framework for addressing climate change, yet makes no reference to gender at any point.

Most of these policies are market-based, aimed at mitigation and low carbon development, providing economic incentives for the cutting of emissions or preservation of forests.

For example REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) enables industrialised countries to 'offset' their carbon emissions by paying governments for the conservation of forests, often in the developing South, to promote climate mitigation by preserving carbon stored in trees.

This commercialisation of previously free natural resources has been shown to lead to the further exclusion of poor and landless people, often women, who depend on products from the forests for their livelihoods but rarely benefit from the economic incentives.

What needs to change?

Climate change policies and processes will be neither effective nor fair unless they become more gender aware. This means recognising that development actors are women as well as men, that they are constrained in different and often unequal ways, and that they may consequently have differing – and sometimes conflicting – needs and priorities.

Greater gender awareness also means recognising that women have the right to be included in climate change-related decisions and to benefit from them equally.

Simply being aware of gender inequalities is not enough.

Climate change responses have the potential to challenge existing gender power imbalances and, by doing so, can contribute to the realisation of greater gender equality and women's rights – they can play a transformative role. There are unique opportunities for the newly emerging climate change-focused institutions and processes to take a gender-aware approach that contributes to gender and social transformation.

Much can be learned from initiatives that are emerging at all levels.

In addition to the vital lobbying work of national, regional and global organisations and networks at the policy level, many local organisations are already responding to women's and men's actual needs and promoting gender-aware, transformative approaches.

For example, one of the case studies in the pack focuses on FUNDAEXPRESIÓN, a Columbian organisation that is part of a network which raises awareness of global climate change policies and their gender implications. Through the network FUNDAEXPRESIÓN has played an important role in empowering local women and men to challenge them and engage in sustainable, locally relevant climate adaptation and mitigation approaches

It is now imperative to create stronger links between global policy and these local level realities and innovations to ensure that policies are informed by the voices of the women and men who deal with the consequences of climate change every day.

Victoria Pendleton: Between the Lines

Posted: 01 Oct 2012 02:15 PM PDT

The cyclist's account of her journey to nine world track titles and two Olympic gold medals.

Sports stars present such a polished and media friendly image that it can be impossible to know what they are really thinking. But come the inevitable post-retirement autobiography, free from the rigours of competition and the constraints of representing their country, a very different story can often emerge.

This divergence is particularly stark in Between the Lines, cyclist Victoria Pendleton's account of her journey to nine world track titles and two Olympic gold medals.

On the face of it, her story was a fairytale. Most of the British public had never heard of Pendleton before she burst into mainstream consciousness by winning the individual sprint at the Beijing Olympics.

She continued her stay in the limelight with magazine covers, ad campaigns and world titles. Approaching London 2012, she was widely considered the favourite to take three gold medals, and duly proved her worth as the golden girl of cycling by topping the podium in the keirin.

But her glamorous veneer hid a story of deep insecurity and self harm, of a difficult relationship with her father, and of fraught dealings with British Cycling's senior coaches.

Pendleton is, by her own admission, emotionally fragile. Growing up, she felt that her father, an ardent amateur cyclist, loved cycling more than her, and saw the sport as a way to earn his love. Her problems deepened early in professional career, feelings of loneliness and isolation at a training camp in Switzerland leading to self-harm.

Even while training as part of the phenomenally successful GB track squad, at times she struggled. After breaking protocol in 2008 to fall in love with a member of the coaching team, her relationship with the squad's management became turbulent. The mutual animosity was such that several members of the team did not wait to say goodbye to her on her retirement.

Pendleton is clearly keen to lay out her side of the story, but she doesn't stop at her relationships with the squad. Post-retirement, she also clearly feels more able to talk about gender inequality in cycling.

Despite her stated reluctance to become a spokeswoman for the subject, during her career Pendleton often called out the disparities in opportunities and support for women and men. Had equal medals been on offer to women in Beijing, she writes, she could have been as successful as Sir Chris Hoy.

She also notes her difficulty in her translating her track success into mainstream success in the way Hoy could, and writes that she often suspected she was valued less than the men on the squad.

Senior figures within British Cycling are now publicly questioning what can be done about this  inequality, but Pendleton's frank account highlights the difficulties female athletes continue to face.

Aside from these revelations, Between the Lines also offers a rare insight into the pressures and emotions of track cycling.

Avid cycling fans will be gripped by the book's rider's-eye-view descriptions of sprint match races, but these passages could at times challenge the casual sports fan. World Championships and World Cups, Athens and Beijing, individual sprint and keirin; all have a tendency to blur together.

The influence of co-writer Donald McCrae is evident in some of the more imaginative metaphors ("the piney hills" of the track?), and in the rather heavy quoting of newspaper coverage by McCrae's colleagues at the Guardian.

But overall, this is no bad thing. Any difficult passages are more than balanced out by some thrilling descriptions, particularly of those races against Pendleton's Australian arch-rival Anna Meares, which offer vivid and exciting reminders of the thrills of last summer's cycling action in the Pringle.

Predictably, the media has made much of Pendleton's emotional issues and dramatic revelations. But in writing about her experience with such candour, the real story that Pendleton reveals is one of grit and determination despite the hardships she faced.

Sporting heroes, especially men, are often painted as gods. Pendleton's honesty about her imperfections makes her seem more human, but also yet more deserving of her position as one of Britain's sporting legends.