Thursday, May 30, 2013

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Immune system clue to why women outlive men

Posted: 29 May 2013 06:02 AM PDT

ScienceJapanese study suggests that women’s immune systems age more slowly.

The life expectancy in the UK is 79 years for men and 82 years for women.

In Japan the life expectancy gap is larger, as women live to 85 years of age on average.

Scientists at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University analysed blood samples from 356 men and women aged between 20 and 90 to assess the link between lifespan and immunological changes.

Professor Katsuiku Hirokawa, who led the research, wrote: 'It is well known that ageing is associated with a decline in the normal function of the immune system, leading to increased susceptibility to various diseases and shortened longevity.

'However, specific dysfunctions in the immune system directly responsible for this have yet to be identified.'

Hirokawa and his team found that the number of T-cells and B-cells, both of which help to protect the body from infection, decreases with age significantly more quickly in men than in women.

Men also showed an age-related decline in red blood cell levels and two types of cytokines that play an important role in keeping the immune system under control.

Additionally, although two cells that attack invaders, CD4 T-cells and natural killer cells, increase in number as both men and women age, the rate of increase is higher in women.

The Japanese scientists published these findings in the journal ‘Immunity & Ageing’ on 15 May.

'Our findings indicate that the slower rate of decline in these immunological parameters in women than that in men is consistent with the fact that women live longer than do men,' they said.

The scientists think that the rate of decline is slower in women because female sex hormones help protect the body and the immune system.

Hirokawa said: "The process of ageing is different for men and women for many reasons.

"Women have more oestrogen than men which seems to protect them from cardiovascular disease until menopause. Sex hormones also affect the immune system, especially certain types of lymphocytes."

In particular, oestrogen has been found to reduce inflammation and boost antibody numbers.

Hirokawa and his colleagues believe that their work could help scientists to determine people's biological age.

"Because people age at different rates, a person’s immunological parameters could be used to provide an indication of their true biological age," he said.

Facebook agrees to address our concerns

Posted: 29 May 2013 02:45 AM PDT

wamFacebook will evaluate and update its policies, guidelines and practices relating to hate speech.

Last week on 21 May, Women, Action & the Media, the Everyday Sexism Project and author-activist Soraya Chemaly launched a campaign to call on Facebook to take concrete, effective action to end gender-based hate speech on its site.

Since then, participants sent over 60,000 tweets and 5000 emails, and the coalition has grown to over 100 women's movement and social justice organizations.

One week later – yesterday – Facebook responded with a important commitment to refine its approach to hate speech.

And in doing so, Facebook has done more than most other companies to address this topic in regards to content policy.

In a statement released on 28 May, Facebook addressed our concerns and committed to evaluating and updating its policies, guidelines and practices relating to hate speech, improving training for its content moderators and increasing accountability for creators of misogynist content.

Facebook has also invited Women, Action & the Media, The Everyday Sexism Project and members of our coalition to contribute to these efforts and be part of an ongoing conversation.

As part of these efforts, we will work closely with Facebook on the issue of how Community Standards around hate speech are evaluated and to ensure best practices represent the interests of our coalition.

For details regarding Facebook's response, please visit here.

Facebook has already been a leader on the internet in addressing hate speech on its service.

We believe that this is the foundation for an effective working collaboration designed to confront gender-based hate speech effectively.

Our mutual intent is to create safe spaces, both on and off-line.

We see this as a vital and essential component to the valuable work that Facebook is doing to address cyber-bulling, harassment and real harm.

"It is because Facebook has committed to having policies to address these issues that we felt it was necessary to take these actions and press for that commitment to fully recognize how the real world safety gap experienced by women globally is dynamically related to our online lives," explained Soraya Chemaly.

"We have been inspired and moved beyond expression by the outpouring of energy, creativity and support for this campaign from communities, companies and individuals around the world.

“It is a testament to the strength of public feeling behind these issues." said Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project.

Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of Women Action and the Media (WAM!), said: "We are reaching an international tipping point in attitudes towards rape and violence against women.

“We hope that this effort stands as a testament to the power of collaborative action."

We are hopeful that this moment will mark an historic transition in relation to media and women's rights in which Facebook is acknowledged as a leader in fostering safer, genuinely inclusive online communities, setting industry precedents for others to follow.

We look forward to collaborating with these communities on actions both big and small until we live in a world that is safe and just for women and girls, and for everyone.

E-petitions fuelling female activism

Posted: 29 May 2013 02:07 AM PDT

no more page threeMore and more women are taking to e-petitions to fight for feminist causes.

If you haven’t heard of Change.org, might I ask, politely, where you have been these last few months?

The online petition site Change.org has helped several campaigns hit the headlines recently, including Lucy Holmes’ No More Page Three campaign and the call for Disney to keep Princess Merida ‘Brave’.

In a similar vein, online activist network Avaaz has driven huge support for political and human rights campaigns which have also grabbed column inches, including a petition to President Mohammed Waheed Hassan of the Maldives.

Over two million people signed the petition to call for changes in the law in the holiday hotspot, after a 15-year old girl was sentenced to be flogged for sex outside marriage, with the man who raped her.

The UK government has also jumped on the bandwagon and launched its own e-petition portal with the generous promise to consider any petition that has more than 100,000 signatories for debate in the House of Commons.

One of the most popular at the moment with over 200,000 signatures calls on the government to stop the badger cull.

It seems e-petitions have become the latest social media tool for campaigners and activists, but they have also made it easier for ordinary people to blaze a trail for a cause they believe in.

Since Change.org launched in the UK just a year ago, 2.5 million of us have become users of the site, either through signing a petition or taking the step to start one.

And according to the organisation’s UK director, Brie Rogers Lowery, on average two users a week win their campaigns.

Just under 50 per cent of the site’s petitions are started by women, but a massive 70 per cent of people who sign petitions on the site are female – and the campaigns that generate more than 1,000 signatures are generally started by women.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Rogers Lowery said: “This data suggests that women are more likely to hear someone else’s story and respond in a supportive way by signing their petition.”

“Women are great story tellers, [they] share more online – they use social media more than men, who use the internet to gather information – and so they often use personal stories behind their campaigns. It means people can instantly empathise with them and think about why it matters to them.”

Online petitions attracting support from women include one to the Bank of England urging it to keep a woman on British banknotes, another calling for the big fashion chains to ensure safety for garment factory workers in Bangladesh and one demanding protection for women from the cosmetic surgery industry.

And from a petition by the University of Warwick Anti-Sexism Society against sexist wallpaper in a student bar to Stylist magazine’s Fair Game For Women In Sport campaign, women across the country are calling on each other to support causes that might previously have been isolated to small groups or specific geographical areas.

We are showing people that petitions can work – and that they can challenge powerful institutions this way.

“The opportunity to make a difference is bigger than ever before, with technology making everyone much more connected," said Brie Rogers Lowery.

Perhaps one of the most high profile campaigns to date has been the call to Take the Bare Boobs Out Of The Sun.

Created by Lucy Holmes, the campaign may not have succeeded in getting rid of page 3 – yet – but it has generated plenty of press coverage and has got people talking about the outdated and sexist portrayal of women in mainstream media.

The online petition has to date collected more than 100,000 signatures, but the real secret to Lucy Holmes’ success is everything else she and her small team have been doing.

The petition is part of a social media campaign which includes Facebook, Twitter and a website where women can share their experiences.

Several student unions across the UK have passed motions to boycott the newspaper as long as it continues to publish pictures of topless women, and the campaign has received support from the Girl Guides movement.

Critics of ‘clicktivism’ as it has been called suggest the campaigns are short-lived and that the internet has made it too easy for people to click on a petition.

But surely that can’t be a bad thing? Online petitions are giving feminist issues another voice, and even the short-lived ones have had success in generating debate, quite often across national media, on issues that are important to women.

The success of the No More Page 3 campaign is based on something much much bigger and it has motivated women, and men, to get involved and share their own experiences.

But it all started with an online petition.