Women's Views on News |
- Kenya: colonial abuse was policy
- Sexist degrading advertisement banned
- Major toy signage victory
- Three ways to achieve equality after 2015
| Kenya: colonial abuse was policy Posted: 14 Jun 2013 08:21 AM PDT
The claimants in the court case that won an apology for Kenyans who suffered at the hands of colonial Britain from the UK's foreign minister offer a small glimpse into the experiences of thousands of people over 50 years ago. The colonial security forces in Kenya at the time adopted a counter-insurgency strategy based on collective punishment, meaning that Africans living in the so-called Kenya Emergency areas were deemed guilty until proven innocent. The majority of Kikuyu, Embu and Meru people were either sent to detention camps or, on an even greater scale, forced into new villages under close surveillance. During the process of decolonisation, the eight-year insurgency known as the Mau Mau uprising was possibly the most bloody conflict in which the British became embroiled, with up to 30,000 Kenyan deaths, both insurgent and loyalist. Until recently association with the Mau Mau was illegal in Kenya, and having been detained put the claimants at risk of prosecution if they spoke out, which is why the allegations, including sexual assaults, beatings and torture, have taken so long to reach a courtroom. Only when they were contacted by the Kenya human rights commission did they become aware that any legal remedies were open to them for their ill treatment years before. Atrocities and torture during armed conflicts always raise the question of whether the abuses were caused by “rotten apples” or by policy, but the claimants presented a strong case that the abuses they suffered – and which were acknowledged by the UK’s Foreign Office to be true – stemmed from systemic factors not individual criminality. Policy then, not just rotten apples. And in his two judgments, Justice McCoombe ruled that a reasonable case could be made for attributing torture in Kenya to government decisions. The evidence base for such a stance was already strong before the lawyers went into the courtroom. Historical research by David Anderson, Caroline Elkins and Huw Bennett showed that the security forces inflicted indiscriminate suffering on Kenyans from 1952 until the Emergency ended in 1960. And then the 1,500 Kenya files discovered among the secret Hanslope Archive added further grim details to the patterns already identified – and that both the colonial authorities in Kenya and the government in Britain knew the interrogation and detention practices carried out by their agents were resulting in widespread abuses. The reaction was to cover up rather than clean up the brutal mistreatment. The apology – and settlement – was preceded by four years of dogged courtroom battles during which the UK government’s lawyers repeatedly resisted the claims. One of these claimants was Jane Muthoni Mara. Now 74, she was about 15 when she was taken from her home in the Embu district, accused of being a Mau Mau sympathiser, and arrested. In her testimony she told how she suffered a violent sexual assault during interrogation at a screening camp. She was then pinned down to the floor by one man who held her shoulders, two other men held each arm and one man prised open and held her thighs apart. “Edward,” she explained, “was sitting on a chair directly in front of my spread legs and was pressing on my bare feet with his spiky army boots. She was screaming and resisting and trying to wriggle free from the men who were holding her down when Edward produced a glass soda bottle. “Waikanja told him to push the bottle into my vagina, which he did,” she continued. “I felt excruciating pain and then realised that the glass bottle contained very hot water. “I was in so much pain and I could not stop crying and screaming. I felt completely and utterly violated by this sexual torture, but I continued to insist that I had not taken an oath. “This lasted for about 30 minutes and was very painful. …I saw this being done to the other three women. “I had never seen anything so brutal and terrifying in all my life. “The abuse has affected my whole life and I relive the events I lived through on a regular basis. “I do not understand why I was treated with such brutality for simply having provided food to the Mau Mau. “I killed no one, I harmed no one, all I wanted to do was to help those who were fighting for the dignity and freedom of our people. “I want the British citizens of today to know what their forefathers did to me and to so many others,” she said. “These crimes cannot go unpunished and forgotten.”  |
| Sexist degrading advertisement banned Posted: 14 Jun 2013 06:49 AM PDT
With the fantastic recent news that Facebook has committed to refining its approach to gender-based hate speech, it is disappointing to see further derogatory portrayals of women in the media. Very disappointing. Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of Women Action and the Media (WAM!), the group behind the success of the recent #fbrape campaign said: "We are hopeful that this moment will mark a 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's safe and just for women and girls, and for everyone." That was on 28 May 2013. A week later and we are offered a television advertisement featuring Pamela Anderson playing a businesswoman chairing a meeting with businessmen. In the advertisement Anderson's – female – assistant pours cream into coffee while showing her cleavage. being seen to be showing her cleavage. One of the men present in the meeting is then shown fantasising over Anderson and her colleague, envisioning them covered in cream and dancing about in bikinis. Anderson then suggestively calls out to the man… You can see the ad here if you wish to. The ad, for a domain and web hosting company, was initially only approved for broadcast after 9pm after vetting company Clearcast ruled that Anderson was "a celebrity who was known for flaunting her body," and arguing that the women were portrayed as "attractive, dynamic and confident business people", but four viewers complained the content was sexist and degrading to women. The client company defended the ad saying they considered it "anything but degrading to women" believing it to portray women as "attractive, dynamic and confident business people." They said they felt the majority of women would see the content as "fanciful and humorous". How many times do we hear people defend the derogatory content on their production by claiming its content is "humour" ? The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) disagreed with the client and said it considered "the ad was likely to cause serious offence to some viewers on the basis that it was sexist and degrading to women". And it was banned. The Herald Sun reports that the ad was banned in Australia in 2010 after the country’s Advertising Standards Board decided the bikini sequence was sexist, exploitative and had “no relevance to the product.” While these are positive moves and show the increasing drop in tolerance of the portrayal of women as sexual objects, perhaps what we need are women to refuse to take these roles in the first place. It is difficult to see what Pamela Anderson thought cleavage, coffee and cream and bikinis could be doing in promoting an IT company package. Perhaps we need female actors to take a proactive approach in society’s fight against the media’s willingness to show women in a derogatory manner. Perhaps then, writers will be forced to re-think their advertising slants and portray women more positively in the media. Perhaps then we wouldn’t have to rely on the ASA taking a reactive approach by responding to complaints and banning such media – and the company wasting its money. Ms Anderson has, at the time of writing this, yet to issue a public comment in regard to the ad.  |
| Posted: 14 Jun 2013 03:46 AM PDT
The consumer action group Let Toys Be Toys scored a victory this week as toy retailer The Entertainer agreed to drop ‘boys toys’ and ‘girls toys’ signs from all its stores, following a sustained campaign from the parent-led group. The new layout and signage can be seen at the Entertainer’s flagship shop in Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, and will be rolled out to all their UK shops in time for Christmas 2013. Toys will be organised by themes such as ‘Action and adventure’, and ‘Games and puzzles’ instead of gender, and signage will feature pictures of boys and girls. This is a significant change for the retailer. The Let Toys Be Toys campaign, which is calling for retailers to organise toys by theme and function instead of by gender, had identified The Entertainer as one of the worst culprits for gendered toy segregation, and customers from all over the UK took part this successful social media campaign to stop sexist stereotyping in the store. The Entertainer is the latest in a series of stores to bow to rising consumer pressure to end the sexist marketing of toys, with Tesco and Boots also promising similar changes. Megan Perryman, of Let Toys Be Toys, said, "We commend The Entertainer for responding to consumer opinion. It’s great news that retailers are catching on that shoppers don’t want to buy sexism.” For it is, as she said, time to take down the gender signs and let toys be toys, for girls and boys. It really is. And you can help, by following Let Toys Be Toys on facebook; signing the petition asking retailers in the UK and Ireland to stop promoting toys as only for boys, or only for girls; or by contacting retailers directly.  |
| Three ways to achieve equality after 2015 Posted: 14 Jun 2013 01:17 AM PDT
Progress on achieving global equality for women has been stalled because the structural causes of violence and discrimination have not been addressed, according to Lakshmi Puri, the acting head of UN Women. Lakshmi Puri said that while strides have been made towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of 2015, some have not been reached and the focus must continue on improving women’s lives. She said: "World leaders recognized the pervasiveness of discrimination and violence against women and girls when they signed onto the visionary Millennium Declaration in 2000. Among the eight Millennium Development Goals, they included a goal to promote gender equality and women's empowerment. “With these goals set to expire in 2015, we are now in a race to achieve them. “We are also in the midst a global conversation about what should replace them. It's time for women to move from the sidelines to the centre." The least progress, she said, has been on MDG 5, which is to reduce maternal mortality. “The fact that this has been the hardest goal to reach testifies to the depth and scope of gender inequality,” she said. The Guardian reported recently that research published by the Guttmacher Institute showed that more than 280,000 women in developing countries died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth in 2010 – and the majority of deaths were preventable. UN Women is now setting three goals for after 2015, to ensure that the fight to improve women’s lives worldwide continues. 1. Ending violence against women and girls needs to be made a priority; 2. Equal access to land and credit, natural resources, education, health services including sexual and reproductive health, decent work and equal pay needs to be addressed with renewed urgency. 3. Women’s voices must be heard, with women participating equally in decision-making in the household, the private sector and institutions of governance. And she said that to achieve this any new development agenda must be grounded in the human rights agreements which countries have already signed up to. “The activism of the women's movement everywhere has been critical in demanding and driving change in all of these areas,” said Puri. “The discussions to shape the post-2015 global development agenda offer a real opportunity to drive lasting change for women's rights and equality. “A strong global goal can push our societies to the tipping point of rejecting violence and discrimination against women and girls and unleash the potential of half the population for a more peaceful, just and prosperous world and a sustainable planet." These issues were debated recently at the Women Deliver conference held in Malaysia, a conference billed as the largest event in the decade to focus on the health and empowerment of women and girls. More than 4,500 delegates attended from 149 countries, and guests included Melinda Gates; the head of the UN development programme, Helen Clark, and Puri. The conference ended with government ministers from participating countries pledging to ensure that sexual and reproductive health is central to the post-2015 developmental agenda. Women Deliver’s president Jill Sheffield said: “We have joined together to raise our voices in a single call to action — girls' and women's health and rights must be prioritised today, tomorrow, and every day until our work is done.”  |
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