Saturday, January 12, 2013

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

UK puts India rape statistics to shame

Posted: 11 Jan 2013 08:00 AM PST

From Irresponsibility.

Violence against women in India is big news, thanks to heavy coverage of the 16 December 2012 rape and murder of a student in New Delhi. Five men accused of the crime are on trial for their lives; a 17 year-old suspect is being tried as a juvenile.

The British media has feverishly repeated the gruesome details of the assault and devoted yards of column-inches and god knows how much TV time to discussing, pondering, chewing over, commentating upon, musing, considering, and condemning the way India treats women.

This is not, in itself, a bad thing, or necessarily mendacious.

It is, however, disingenuous to the point of hypocrisy.

Let's look at the numbers for India, population 1.2 billion (about 48% of whom are women):

In 2011 there were 24,206 reported rapes. Of these 26 per cent resulted in convictions.

The UK has a population of about 56.2 million. Fifty-one per cent are female. In 2011 there were 14,624 rapes reported. Of which 24 per cent resulted in a “conviction or caution”.

These figures shame both nations but the mainstream media is comparatively mute about the UK's rape rate. It's worth noting that it took me three times as long to dig up reliable UK statistics as it did to find the India numbers.

The global outcry about the New Delhi rape case is right and proper, but it isn't enough.

Like charity, the campaign for women's safety must start at home. Finger pointing is at best a cop-out and at worse tacit xenophobia.

However soothing it may be to pretend that horrifying sexual violence is something "they" do the facts tell a different story.

We need to be as outraged about sexual violence here as we are when [it's] there.

Rape Crisis UK

Cila Warncke is a freelance writer, editor, and explorer, based between London, Ibiza and the USA.

Irresponsibility is her blog on media, feminism, education, politics, and economics.

You can read more of her work, which includes journalism, criticism and reportage on topics including music, food, travel, literature, yoga and the writer’s life, at Cila Warncke.

Minister calls for end to fad diets

Posted: 11 Jan 2013 03:32 AM PST

“You owe more to your readers than the reckless promotion of unhealthy solutions to losing weight.”

Scottish Lib Dem Minister for Women and Equalities, Jo Swinson, wrote an open letter to popular national magazines recently urging them to avoid promoting ‘fad diets’ following the Christmas break.

Targeting the magazines’ editors in particular, Swinson wrote, “I am sure that you want to promote a healthy lifestyle for your readers but at this time of year in particular far too much of magazine coverage tends to focus on irresponsible, short-term solutions and encourages readers to jump on fad diet bandwagons.”

She also warned that all of these ‘get thin quick’ claims which promised maximum weight loss in a minimum amount of time were unhealthy and could result in dangerous long term effects.

“Every January we see these fad diets promoted. These aren’t promoting healthiness, these aren’t promoting a way of embracing exercise and eating fruit and veg and doing things which will actually help people.

“They’re actually suggesting that you can suddenly lose lots of weight very quickly and there are no negative health consequences,” she said.

Speaking in favour of Swinson’s appeal, Rick Miller, spokesperson for British Dietetic Association, said: “A lot of them [fad diets] promote cutting out whole food groups, but the problem is that you end up with massive nutritional imbalances.”

Jane Johnson, former editor of Closer magazine, however, insisted that Swinson’s appeal was no longer relevant or necessary.

She argued that reader appeal had already altered significantly over the years and that magazines no longer sought to offer ‘quick-fix’ solutions for them.

“Most magazines now are very much about holistic wellbeing,” she said.

Swinson has long been a campaigner for healthy body images for women and teenage girls.

As a co-founder of Campaign for Body Confidence, Swinson has been tackling the media, fashion and beauty industries since 2010, urging them to offer fairer images that promote real women and their bodies.

The campaign itself also lists the following aims and targets: to “ensure honesty and transparency in advertising; promote diversity of body shapes and sizes used in magazines, advertising, broadcast and catwalk; introduce media literacy and body confidence education in school; give children positive examples of using their bodies by promoting active lifestyles and less sexualised imagery.”

Swinson said that both women and magazines should endeavour to “celebrate the beauty of diversity in body shape, skin colour, size and age” rather than to pressure them into a glorified norm.

“As editors you owe more to your readers than the reckless promotion of unhealthy solutions to losing weight. If your aim is to give practical, sensible advice about losing weight – and not how to drop a stone in five days – you should encourage reasonable expectations, instead of dangerous ones, along with exercise and healthy eating.”

Swinson went on to say: “There’s a resolution here that we all could make, women up and down the country.”

“[Magazines] have got these features because they think people want to read them and part of that is because there is an obsession about being thin, so maybe one of the things we all need to do is support each other not to be so self-critical.”

Family planning law passed in Philippines

Posted: 11 Jan 2013 01:53 AM PST

Popular support is significant given that approximately 80 per cent of the population is Catholic.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines has suffered a defeat with the recent passing of the controversial Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act, a law which mandates state-funded contraceptives for poor women.

The Senate and the House of Representatives approved the bill on December 17, with the approval of both Christian and Muslim leaders but with strong opposition from the Catholic Church.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, a co-sponsor of the bill said that the bill took 14 years to be passed because of Catholic opposition.

"We were like David against Goliath," she said.  "We fought long and hard, and in the end we prevailed."

The law's popular support is significant given that approximately 80 per cent of the Philippine population is Catholic.

The Catholic church's widespread power has prevented the government legalizing abortion and divorce and teaches against its congregations using any kind of birth control.

In fact, the Church threatened to excommunicate Filipino President, Benigno Aquino, if he signed the bill into law.

Filipino women particularly have suffered as a result of these highly restrictive rulings.

The Philippines has one of the highest birth rates in Asia, and United Nations Population Fund statistics show that of the 3.4 million pregnancies that  occur in the Philippines every year, half are unplanned and one third are aborted in unsafe conditions.

The United Nations Population Fund also says that nearly 70 percent of women use no contraception.

 Giselle La-badan, a 30 year-old roadside vendor and practicing Catholic, is one of the few who uses contraceptives and is in support of the new law.

“If the church can provide milk, [nappies] and rice," she said, "then go ahead, let’s make more babies.”

“But there are just too many people now, too many homeless people, and the church doesn’t help to feed them.”

The Responsible Parenthood Act is vital for women in the Philippines and will go a long way to improving the lives of poor women by allowing them to plan their families and, therefore, get out of the cycle of poverty.

In recent years, Filipino women have left their homes and families on Overseas Contracts to work in the service industry of many developed countries, including the UK.

In the last 30 years the Filipino population in the UK has increased by more than 800 per cent; approximately 200,000 Filipinos work and live in UK – where they have ready access to family planning.

Carlos Conde of Human Rights Watch said in a statement: ‘(T)he Reproductive Health Bill is a victory for Filipino women, who have waited long enough for this day to happen.

‘This bill marks the start of an era in which public policies in the Philippines can save lives, promote healthy family planning, and respect human rights.’

And gay rights group ProGay Philippines argues that the law will help to stem the spread of HIV.

The law not only provides state-funded contraception for those who cannot afford it; it also mandates that schools offer comprehensive sex education and provinces provide family planning counseling, support for breast-feeding, and reproductive and maternal health education for women and men.

The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act will take effect on January 17, if the Catholic appeals do not succeed.

Even though President Aquino has called for reconciliation with the Church after the passing of the law, the Church has already begun the process of challenging the law in court.

On January 2 Catholic lawyer James Imbong and his wife Lovely-Ann filed a suit in the Supreme Court to stop the Act being implemented because, they argue, it is unconstitutional and "mocks" the nation's cultural values.

This challenge is not unexpected and Representative Edcel Lagman expects that the courts will see more suits filed to prevent the law from taking effect.

“We are prepared for this,” he said. “We are certain that the law is completely constitutional and will surmount any attack on or test of its constitutionality.”

In the meantime Giselle La-badan argues that faith alone cannot help women control their fertility.

"I have prayed before not to have another child, she said, "but the condom worked better."