Women's Views on News |
| Making every woman and girl count Posted: 29 Sep 2016 02:43 PM PDT
Building on commitments made in May this year on 21 September, during the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly, UN Women launched a new public-private partnership called "Making Every Woman and Girl Count". This 5-year, USD65 million initiative has been set up to close the gender data gaps for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) monitoring and accountability and build an integrated evidence base that can inform more effective and targeted decision-making. It is being co-organised with the government of Australia, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Data2X initiative of the UN Foundation. It brings together developed and developing countries, multilateral agencies, private foundations and civil society organisations under a new, issue-based "flagship programme", which provides a collaborative and fund-raising framework. The launch was the first of these programmes, and was directed at ensuring a radical shift in the production, availability, accessibility and use of quality data and statistics on key aspects of gender equality and women's empowerment. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women pointed out that on any given day, it is estimated that globally we produce 2.5 quadrillion bytes of data, yet when it comes to measuring gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, in both developing and developed countries, we are "data-poor". There are, Mlambo-Ngcuka said, gaping holes in data for some of the most rudimentary information about women's and girls' lives. These range from a complete lack of hard facts on how many women and girls live in poverty to biased measures of women's engagement in economic activities that are based on sexist assumptions about women's roles in the household. Whether as governments or as individuals, she continued: to make sound decisions we need precise and reliable information. As citizens, we need data on service delivery and government spending to be able to hold our leaders accountable for progress. Currently, the data gap is so wide that there is adequate information for less than one quarter of the key performance indicators selected to monitor the gender-specific elements of the new Sustainable Development Goals. When it comes to gender data, the traditional North-South, Developed-Developing and public-private divides no longer hold: very few developed or developing countries can truly claim to have good enough information systems. This has a direct impact on our ability to quantify an issue and make the right decisions on solutions. For example, we need time-use data in order to understand the extent of women's paid and unpaid work and the challenges they face in balancing the two. Unpaid care work is a key barrier to women earning a decent living and moving out of a repeating cycle of poverty. Yet only about half of developed countries have any time-use data since 2000, despite their relatively well-resourced statistical systems. The cost and complexity of collecting data on these issues is often given as a reason for failure. Yet, in a world where sufficient data and resources are available to achieve self-driving cars, it seems hard to see why we can't afford navigational aids for society. Ample evidence exists for the gains to be made from improving gender equality, Mlambo-Ngcuka said: a McKinsey Global Institute report last year indicated that USD12 trillion could be added to global growth by advancing women's equality. Speaking at the launch, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said: "Gender data is foundational to all this work. We can't make good decisions without good data." When asked about a top priority, Gates said: "I would collect data on women's unpaid care work."  |
| Posted: 29 Sep 2016 02:12 PM PDT
Little Matchstick Factory‘s The Other Mozart is the true, forgotten story of Nannerl Mozart, the sister of Amadeus. She was a prodigy, keyboard virtuoso and composer, who performed throughout Europe with her brother, to equal acclaim, but her work and her story faded away, lost to history. Maria Anna – called Marianne and nicknamed Nannerl – was, like her younger brother Amadeus, a child prodigy and when the two were children they toured most of Europe, including an 18-month stay in London in 1764-5, performing together. There are contemporaneous reviews praising Nannerl, and she was even billed first. The Augsburger Intelligenz, for example, on 19 May 1763 said ‘Imagine an eleven-year-old girl, performing the most difficult sonatas and concertos of the greatest composers, on the harpsichord or fortepiano, with precision, with incredible lightness, with impeccable taste. It was a source of wonder to many.’ The touring ended when she turned 18; a woman performing and touring risked her reputation, Milo explained. And so she was left behind in Salzburg, and her father only took Wolfgang on their next journeys around the courts of Europe. She never toured again. But Wolfgang repeatedly wrote that nobody played his keyboard music as well as she could, and her father Leopold described her as "one of the most skilful players in Europe", with "perfect insight into harmony and modulations" and that she improvises "so successfully that you would be astounded". The Other Mozart is based on facts, stories and lines pulled directly from the Mozart family’s humorous and heart-breaking letters. Created by Sylvia Milo, The Other Mozart is a monodrama set in a stunning 18-foot dress designed by Magdalena Dabrowska from the National Theatre of Poland and is directed by Isaac Byrne. Along with music composed by her famous brother and Marianna Martines, a female composer who inspired Nannerl, original music was written for the play by Nathan Davis and Phyllis Chen, featured composers of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, BAM and the International Contemporary Ensemble, for the instruments Nannerl knew intimately, such as clavichords, music boxes, and bells, as well as teacups, fans, and other ordinary objects that might have captured her imagination. A pianist, toy pianist and composer, Chen has been praised by the NYTimes for her "delightful quirkiness matched with interpretive sensitivity". Chen is one of the founding members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and the founder of the UnCaged Toy Piano, a composition competition to further expand the repertoire for toy piano. Period style movement directed by Janice Orlandi creates a world of opulence and elegance through articulate delicacy of expressive balletic gestures, reverent court bows, and fan language. With the opulent beauty of the dress and hair design, the sweet smell of perfume, and the clouds of dusting powder rising from the stage, the performance creates a multi-sensual experience and transports the audience into a world of outsized beauty and delight – but also of overwhelming restrictions and prejudice. There, in communion with the audience, The Other Mozart at last tells her story.  |
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