Recently in International Category

File this under WTF. From the New York Times:

The 200 women who answered a Rome modeling agency's advertisement for tall, attractive party guests thought they would be attending an elegant soirée on Sunday. They were -- only the host turned out to be the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and instead of hors d'oeuvres he offered them copies of the Koran and urged them to convert to Islam.

Colonel Qaddafi, by the by, was in Rome for the World Summit on Food Security of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. While Qaddafi was trying to convince young Italian cuties of his political and religious philosophies over glasses of wine and fancy apps, international leaders were pledging to substantially increase aid to agriculture in developing nations, where the majority of the world's 1 billion hungry people live.

Be warned Italian supermodels, according to ANSA News Agency, Colonel Qaddafi is cooking up similar bizzaro schemes with other groups of women through out the week.

Last week in my hometown of Sydney, Australia, news broke that members of an all-male residential college at the University of Sydney had created a "pro-rape" group on Facebook. Creators of the group, which was called "Define Statutory," described it as "anti-consent," and "pro-rape." In addition to members displaying their group membership on their personal profiles, the group and its membership list was publicly available to anyone with access to Facebook, suggesting that the men in question were perfectly comfortable being identified as being in favour of sexual violence.

I wish I could say that the news from Sydney surprised me, but it didn't. When I graduated from high school in Sydney five years ago, many of my fellow graduates matriculated at the University of Sydney and some of them joined women's or co-educational residential colleges. Many of our male friends, including those from our brother schools, joined St. Paul's, the college in question in the Facebook scandal, or all-male colleges like it. The residential colleges are a small and tight-knit subculture on a campus where most students commute; with the exception of students from the country, Australians rarely move away from home to go to university. While some who live in the residential colleges are from out of town, there a good number of students who live within a commutable distance from campus, but choose to join exclusive colleges like St. Paul's, an old and stately cluster of buildings separated from the rest of campus by high walls and green lawns.

The young men I knew who ended up at St. Paul's and at colleges like it had graduated from Sydney's best and most expensive private boys' high schools. In my interactions with them - I confess I dated one or two - I was quite appalled by what I saw: a culture in which sexism, racism and homophobia were rampant, and where class privilege and an almost laughable sense of male superiority combined to make women like me feel deeply uncomfortable. On their own, most of these young men were lovely. When they got together, something truly awful was created.

Via CNN:

The government of Argentina's capital will not appeal a court decision this week that legalizes same-sex marriage, Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri said Friday.

The court ruled that two articles in the city's civil code that say only people of different sexes can get married are illegal. The court decision applies only to Buenos Aires. Same-sex unions in most of the rest of Argentina remain illegal.

As Miriam noted the other day that it's Sesame Street's 40th anniversary, Global Voices Online brings attention to one character in particular that is making a significant impact in efforts to destigmatize HIV and AIDS in South Africa - the world's first HIV-positive muppet, Kami. Says Global Voices:

While Sesame Street is seen in over 140 countries, each version addresses local issues and has different Muppets. Golden-yellow Kami made her debut on the South African Sesame Street co-production, called Takalani Sesame, in 2002 in response to the country's HIV/AIDS problem. The world's first HIV-positive Muppet, she helps educate kids about the disease and confronts issues related to being HIV-positive. The name Kami is derived from the Setswana word "Kamogelo," meaning "acceptance."

She's also a child, a 5-year old orphan nervously came onto Sesame Street, scared the other characters wouldn't accept her - but they did with open arms. She informs viewers about the virus in easy-to-understand ways like showing folks that hugging someone with HIV is okay, as well as talks about coping and loss (as she lost her mother to HIV). She was also interviewed by Katie Couric, gave a message with Bill Clinton about HIV/AIDS and was named a UNICEF ambassador for children.

So we should have been surprised when folks in the U.S. were apparently up in arms about the character, saying she wasn't appropriate for children, despite the fact that South Africa is - as Global Voices reminds us - believed to have the highest number of people with HIV in the world. This is not to mention that 280,000 are children and there are 1.4 million orphans in South Africa because of AIDS.

So the question of an HIV-positive muppet on the American version of Sesame Street? Pshhhh, it's not even a question to be considered. But what folks don't seem to recognize is - how 'bout that, people in the U.S. are living with HIV/AIDS too! This does come from a personal place of hope; my friend Ebony from high school was born with HIV. She was an orphan too. She had a wonderful life full of people who loved her, but if she maybe had Kami to grow up with, I don't doubt that could have helped her childhood in a significant way.

For now, props to Sesame Street on their anniversary for addressing the reality of the world, and the reality of people's lives.

On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the UN, released its first-ever study of women's health worldwide, Women and Health: Today's Evidence, Tomorrow's Agenda. The findings of the study, although perhaps not surprising to those of us who work in the field of international women's health, are still pretty outrageous: H.I.V. is the leading cause of death and disease among women between the ages of 15 and 44.

This is a sad and somewhat overwhelming statistic for me personally, since I view so many HIV infections among women as preventable with the right policy steps by the U.S. government and other governments of the world, and the right knowledge and information

Yes, I said it. Preventable. Although the WHO reports that unprotected sex is the leading risk factor in developing countries, don't let that statistic fool you. "Unprotected sex" may technically be the leading risk factor, but that doesn't tell the whole story. As the president of my NGO points out, women's vulnerability is increased by preventable conditions such as unmet need for contraceptives, insufficient legal and social protection for women against widespread sexual coercion and violence, social encouragement of the marriage of young girls to much older men, and lack of access to information about HIV, sexuality, and the availability of reproductive services.

Lastly, although this particularly disturbing statistic is deservedly getting a lot of coverage, check out some of the report's other findings, as summarized on Akimbo:

• Women provide the bulk of health care, but rarely receive the care they need
• Women live longer than men but these extra years are not always healthy
• Despite some biological advantages, women's health suffers from their lower socio-economic status
• Perhaps least surprisingly, policy change and action is needed within the health sector and beyond to ensure full protection of women's health and rights

Yesterday, the World Economic Forum released the Global Gender Gap Report 2009 at the India Economic Summit. The United States is 31st. A quick glance at the rankings:

About. Damn. Time.

Via The Advocate and Akimbo:

"The United States is one of a dozen countries that bar people with HIV from entering the country," Obama said as he announced the lifting of the U.S. policy banning travel and immigration to the U.S. by people who are HIV-positive.

"If we want to be the global leader in HIV, we need to act like it."

This should go a long way towards battling the seemingly ubiquitous stigma and discrimination HIV-positive people face worldwide. What a great way to end the week!

Today is Equal Pay Day in the United Kingdom. The pay gap there, for full-time workers, is 17.1%. Meaning women make on average 17% less than men make.

This website has some interesting graphics that breakdown the details of the pay gap for two different cities in the UK, where the pay gap is actually reversed in the city with lower income overall.

More information here.

I definitely took pause reading this excellent column by Michele Goldberg at the American Prospect about the potential for a feminist justification of war. She writes,

Women for Afghan Women (WAW), a nongovernmental organization that runs women's shelters, schools, and counseling centers in three cities in Afghanistan, has watched with alarm as American opinion has turned against the occupation. An American withdrawal, its board members say, would be catastrophic for the women they work with. "Every woman who we have talked to in Afghanistan, all the Afghan women in the NGOs, in the government, say the United States and the peacekeeping troops and NATO must stay, they must not leave until the Afghan army is able to take over," says Esther Hyneman, a WAW board member who recently returned from six months in Kabul.

As an anti-war feminist, it is hard for me to hear that women in Afghanistan would want to keep the troops. She goes on to write that there has been reluctance in coming to this positive, however many activists believe this is what is best for women. Part of what makes this challenging to read is because these types of sentiments are often interpolated by the right to justify military expansion covertly for the purpose of the war on terror, not actually feminism. In their book Just Advocacy, Wendy Hesford and Wendy Kozol, write about the strategic use of women's rights as a justification to expand troops in Afghanistan.

Both the events of 9/11 and the subsequest use of women's rights to sell the Bush administration's war on terrorism in the weeks following 9/11 (Smith) renewed interest in the anonymous Afghan girl depicted on the 1985 cover. In her radio address to the nation on November 17, 2001, Laura Bush claimed that, "the brutal oppression of the women is a central goals of the terrorists....Civilized people throughout the world are speaking out in horror--not only because our hearts break for the women and children of Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan, we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us...I hope Americans will join our family in working to insure that dignity and opportunity will be secure for all the women and children of Afghanistan.

This is a compelling narrative, if it were not drenched in racism and colonial fantasy. A feminist narrative for increasing troops in Afghanistan is not a new one, however, it is new when it is coming from women in Afghanistan, or is actually feminist, not just a cover up. And like any other country women have different positions on the presence of troops and align themselves with different parts of the political sphere in Afghanistan, some for and others against the occupation, but it still forces us to ask what role should the military have in Afghanistan?

This competition in narrative from what they want and what we want, is a plague to US based progressivism, where often what we are calling for is not what "others" may want in their home countries, but our ideology on war, terror, justice and feminism guides our political affiliations nonetheless. I suppose I am at a loss in finding a way to reconcile this difference, but I do wonder if Obama truly has democracy as his intention for increasing troops in Afghanistan, we have greater leverage to demand that military presence be for feminist good. But I don't have that kind of faith. Will the American public or military support such an initiative or is the focus perpetually on the terror threat?

The UN recently released a report on "Protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism" by Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin that focuses on gender. The report (which can be accessed in pdf form here) is mostly about human rights abuses experienced by "women," by which it seems the author means cis women. However, it takes a broad approach to gender, looking at intersections of race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity:

Gender is not synonymous with women but rather encompasses the social constructions that underlie how women's and men's roles, functions and responsibilities, including in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, are defined and understood. This report will therefore identify the gendered impact of counter-terrorism measures both on women and men, as well as the rights of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. As a social construct, gender is also informed by, and intersects with, various other means by which roles, functions and responsibilities are perceived and practiced, such as race, ethnicity, culture, religion and class. Consequently, gender is not static; it is changeable over time and across contexts.Understanding gender as a social and shifting construct rather than as a biological and fixed category is important because it helps to identify the complex and inter-related gender-based human rights violations caused by counterterrorism measures; to understand the underlying causes of these violations; and to design strategies for countering terrorism that are truly non-discriminatory and inclusive of all actors.

The report includes some discussion of how security measures negatively impact transgender folks:

Counter-terrorism measures disproportionately affect women and transgender asylum-seekers, refugees and immigrants in specific ways. For example, enhanced immigration controls that focus attention on male bombers who may be dressing as females to avoid scrutiny make transgender persons susceptible to increased harassment and suspicion. Similarly, counter-terrorism measures that involve increased travel document security, such as stricter procedures for issuing, changing and verifying identity documents, risk unduly penalizing transgender persons whose personal appearance and data are subject to change.

I have written previously about the dangers of travel document security measures for trans folks. I am very happy to see the UN acknowledging this reality.

Good news (via Matt Yglesias): Women in Kuwait have been granted the right to travel without their husband's permission.

The article abolished by the court dated back to Kuwait's 1962 passport law which required a husband's signature on a woman's passport application.

Aseel al-Awadhi, one of the new MPs, welcomed the passport law ruling as a "victory for constitutional principles that puts an end to this injustice against Kuwaiti women".

Women's political rights have really improved in Kuwait over the past few years. Women were granted voting rights in 2005, and first voted and ran for office in 2006. This year, the first female members of parliament were elected. And this month, two of the four women MPs, Rula Dashti and Aseel Al-Awadhi, announced they would not wear the hijab in parliament. When a fatwa issued shortly after their announcement, the Dashti tabled an amendment to repeal a rider to the 2005 law that says women must follow sharia law. But that doesn't mean she's given up.

[Dr Dashti] said Kuwait's constitution stipulated freedom of choice and equality between the sexes and did not incorporate sharia.

"There's a group of people who know they cannot Islamise the constitution so they try to Islamise every issue when it comes up," she said. "I'm going to examine anything that violates the constitution, taking it law by law."

Bad ass. The new passport rights are a step in the right direction. And make no mistake, this would not have happened without the activism of Kuwaiti women like Dashti and Al-Awadhi.

In an effort to offer an alternative to "leering drivers," a new fleet of taxis driven by women, that cater exclusively to women, have been launched in the Mexican city of Puebla.

Oh, and they're pink and come with a beauty kit. Sigh.

Providing spaces for women on trains and other forms of transportation has become a bit of an international trend in terms of preventing sexual harassment. And while offering women a respite from what can be a hostile environment (anyone who has ever ridden the NYC trains to school as a female high school student can tell you all about that!) is a nice idea, does it really get to the root of the problem? As I've written before: Shouldn't we be targeting the gropers and harassers? The onus should be on men to stop harassing women, not on women to escape them.

Vianeth Rojas, of the Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Puebla, seems to agree: "We are in the 21st century, and they are saying women have continued worrying about beauty and nothing more...They are absolutely not helping eradicate violence against women."

The good news about the taxis in Puebla, however, is that they're opening new job opportunities for women in what has traditionally been a male profession. Now if we could just get them to ditch the pink...

Related Posts: Japanese men angry over women-only train cars
Tehran introducing all-women transportation
Women-only train cars in Brazil

Pic via AP.

IXCHEN, a Nicaraguan NGO named after a local goddess, provides a diverse array of affordable services for women in and near Masaya, Nicaragua. Providing healthcare for women and their children, empowering Nicaraguan women to handle situations of domestic violence, and using educational materials to open dialogues with local women about their access to rights.

In July, a fluke electrical fire destroyed the office and all of IXCHEN's educational materials. They have no insurance, and not enough money to continue paying rent and rebuild their space. Ixchen needs help.

A fellow feminist and UC Berkeley student, Molly Green, works there and writes:

All that IXCHEN is quickly approaching the end of their abilities to rent out an office space. I am currently collecting donations to help them rebuild their building. Here in Nicaragua, every penny goes a long way. I know money is tight for most of you, but I have, with the help of my sister, set up a blog where you can pay with just the click of a button: www.ixchenmasaya.blogspot.com

On this site there is more information and will soon be, as soon as I can get the internet to work, more pictures of IXCHEN working in the community. I regret to say that currently the donations are not tax deductable but still are much needed and appreciated. I will be providing updates on the situation in IXCHEN and ongoing activites. Thanks to everyone, vaya bien.

Molly Green

Please, please donate if you can.

Here are before-and-after photos of the fire:

Egypt's most powerful Muslim cleric, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, has announced an impending religious edict against the wearing of full, face-covering, headscarves, or niqab. He apparently announced that full-face veiling was a custom independent from Islam, and seeks to ban it from schools of Al Azhar University.

From AP:

A security official also told The Associated Press that police have standing verbal orders to bar girls covered from head to toe from entering al-Azhar's institutions, including middle and high schools, as well as the dormitories of several universities in Cairo.

Saturday, a handful of women protested the ban outside the university, and despite such backlash, it appears Tantawi will not be "dismissed."

Unfortunately, his announcement came after he visited a local school, witnessed schoolgirls wearing the niqab, requested that one girl take hers off, and was surprised when she didn't, saying "Niqab has nothing to do with Islam...I know about religion better than you and your parents." Inappropriate!

The challenge now facing Egypt is that of deciding next steps. Some doubt the ban will be enforced, like a ban on full-face veils for nurses declared but not implemented last year. Just last month, Egypt's Mufti encouraged women to wear pants. Additionally, judicial precedence in Egypt does not favor a ban on the niqab:

A researcher wearing the niqab prevented from using the library at the American University in Cairo in 2001 took her case to the Egypt's supreme court and eventually won. The court ruled a total ban on the niqab to be unconstitutional.

Additionally, these young women students will be denied government-subsidized housing and food as a result of their classification as "extremists." The Egyptian government seems to be demonstrating a blatant disregard for recruitment and retention of women students, creating one more social obstacle for women in their journey to education. Thanks for making it that much harder for women to stay in school.

(BBC has this helpful guide on the types of head-covering scarves for Muslim women.)

Related:
Sarkozy Supports Burqa Ban
Muslim Women Can Keep Veils On

As we've noted briefly, last week soldiers in Guinea attacked unarmed civilians at a political demonstration in a stadium. Reports and cellphone camera photos of the attack have continued to surface, and today's New York Times has a horrifying account of what occurred in the stadium that day:

I can't sleep at night, after what I saw," said one middle-aged woman from an established family here, who said she had been beaten and sexually molested. "And I am afraid. I saw lots of women raped, and lots of dead."

One photograph shows a naked woman lying on muddy ground, her legs up in the air, a man in military fatigues in front of her. In a second picture a soldier in a red beret is pulling the clothes off a distraught-looking woman half-lying, half-sitting on muddy ground. In a third a mostly nude woman lying on the ground is pulling on her trousers. [...]

The exact number of women who were abused is not known. Because of the shame associated with sexual violence in this West African country, victims are reluctant to speak, and local doctors refuse to do so. Victims who told of the attacks would not provide their names because they were afraid of retribution.

But the witnesses were adamant. "I affirm, in categorical fashion, that women were raped, not just one woman," said Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, 34, an opposition leader who said he had been severely beaten himself. "I saw many rapes."  [...]

"They especially tore into the women," said another former prime minister, François Lonsény Fall, who was also at the stadium. "They were seeking to humiliate them."

The U.S. government has called on Guinean leaders to ensure the safety of the people, but by all accounts the ruling military junta is actually to blame for the violence.

Amnesty International is asking for "an immediate halt to all supplies of security and police equipment to the Guinean government until it has taken practical steps to prevent violations by the security forces and has brought those responsible for Monday's acts to justice."

Lately, Europe seems to be eons ahead of us regarding their recognition that the fashion and media having a significantly unhealthy effect on women's body image. The latest is Germany's most popular women's magazine's announcement of their intention to omit professional models from their pages in an effort to combat unrealistic social beauty standards:

The editor-in-chief of Germany's bimonthly Brigitte told reporters that, starting next year, the magazine will feature a mix of prominent women and regular readers in photo spreads for everything from beauty to fashion to fitness.

Andreas Lebert said the move is a response to readers increasingly saying that they are tired of seeing "protruding bones" from models who weigh far less than the average woman.

"We will show women who have an identity -- the 18-year-old student, the head of the board, the musician, the football player," Andreas Leberts said in Hamburg, where the magazine, published by Gruner+Jahr, is based.

I like this sentiment; we should humanize models not just as "more realistic" subjects of voyeurism. I just worry these kinds of efforts (cough, Dove, cough) often end up having some contradicting issues to contend with - like if the new magazine's campaign consists of shaming underweight women, that's not very productive either.

Either way, it's interesting to see how fast the efforts to combat body image issues and eating disorders are spreading among the fashion and media industries on one continent, while others (ahem) seem to be at a standstill.

I went to a great book party last night for Emily Pilloton's Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People. Emily, a visionary designer still in her late 20s, started Project H Design in January 2008, a nonprofit aimed at supporting product design initiatives "for humanity" (such as more vivid and engaging foster home facilities, playgrounds that double as math teaching laboratories etc.). In Design Revolution, she has gathered together 100 products from all over the world and profiled them. It is not only beautiful and charged with an undeniable spirit of outrage and imagination, but there is so much for the non-designer to learn.

In the introduction, Emily writes:

As a whole, today's world of design (specifically product design) is severely deficient, crippled by consumerism and paralyzed by an unwillingness to financially and ethically prioritize social impact over the bottom line. We need nothing short of an industrial design revolution to shake us from our consumption-for-consumption's-sake momentum. We must elevate 'design for the greater good' beyond charity and toward a socially sustainable and economically viable model taught in design schools and executed in design firms, one that defines the ways in which we prototype, relate to clients, distribute, measure, and understand. We must be designers of empowerment and rewrite our own job descriptions.

Amen. When you flip through her book, you really get a sense of the breadth and purpose that she's talking about. Everything from sugarcane charcoal to montessori toys make sense for real people; they simply make our lives better and healthier. What a refreshing re-visioning of the design and consumer market place, one where conspicuous consumption is replaced by quality-of-life enhancing tools for the world over, not just "stuff and things" for the top 5%.

As if the book weren't inspiring enough, Emily will be taking it to the streets next spring in her very own traveling museum of sorts--a biodiesel-powered truck and an airstream filled with many of the products she writes about. To meet her in a city near you, check out the schedule here.

From the BBC:

The 7.6-magnitude quake struck close to the city of Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province. The earthquake brought down hospitals, schools and shopping malls, cut power lines and triggered landslides. The social affairs ministry gave the latest confirmed death toll of 529, but Rustam Pakaya, head of the health ministry's disaster centre in Jakarta, said: "Our prediction is that thousands have died."

Our hearts, of course, go out to the people of Pandang and we hope that relief efforts will be comprehensive, quick, culturally-attuned, and egalitarian.

Related posts:
Women suffer in aftermath of natural disasters.
Reproductive Justice in Times of Crisis

Of the "60 Most-Influential Foreigners Shaping the Last 60 Years of Chinese Development", the China Global Times decided that Margaret Thatcher was the only woman who made the cut. 70 percent of the finalists were selected by readers, while 30 percent were recommended by "academics".

Margaret Thatcher is best known as Britain's shining example of virtue, who opposed the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. She earned a spot because she gave Hong Kong back to the People's Republic of China. Meanwhile, even Michael Jackson and the former soccer coach for Yugoslavia made the list.

A China-friendly choice would be Svetlana Orlova, who led a delegation of Russian women to China for Russia's National China Week. Other figures such as Hillary Clinton, who has been interacting with China professionally for decades, and Aung San Suu Kyi, are too controversial.

Will Michele Flournoy, the current U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, make the list in another 10 years? Let's hope the next decade yields more recognition for smart women leaders like Flournoy who continue to interact with China.

While Japan is under fire from the U.N. for paltry efforts toward gender equality, their massive tax change proposal promises to push more women into the workforce.

Japan's August 30 election saw the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) soundly defeat the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Yukio Hatoyama was installed as the Prime Minister. By American standards, DPJ could be simplified as the more fiscally progressive party; their platforms include a freeze on sales tax, increases in minimum wage, free public education, and most notably, a $289-per-child monthly allowance for families.

How will DPJ possibly fund such a large monthly child allowance? The Japan Times reports that the DPJ proposes cutting tax deductions for spouses, which would force wives employed in part-time work into full time work. Since 1961, tax deductions for dependent spouses have discouraged women from finding full-time work. To remain qualified as dependents on their breadwinner husbands, Japanese wives operate under an effective income ceiling of 1.3 million Japanese yen, or $14,456.

I have had the opportunity to see a lot of really powerful speakers at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting. Talk about internalized patriarchy: I was most excited to see Presidents Obama and Clinton speak, and though I was excited to see Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she was not at the top of my list. I have to tell you all, I was most personally affected by Secretary Clinton's words. Our politics differ in a number of ways, but seeing her speak in person her morally motivated passion is undeniable. As she talked about fundamentally shifting our approach to hunger I got chills and even teared up a little. I have heard Secretary Clinton be accused of acting only out of a desire for power probably more than anyone else in politics. I think this stems partly from an insidious assumption that for a woman to be successful she must lose part of her humanity, which is supposed to be focused on nurturing others.

In his introduction of Secretary Clinton, President Clinton said that in the second half of 20th century the U.S. government gave up on helping those in poverty feed themselves. The thinking became that those with food would just give some to others. "This persisted through Democratic and Republican administrations, including my own. We were all wrong." By focusing on aid in situations of crisis instead of empowering small farmers and creating structures for them to sell their crops locally, "We forgot the dignity element of being able to feed yourself."

As you all know, Jos, Vanessa and I have been attending the 5th Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initative this week in Manhattan. We've put up several posts already about the event, including coverage of the opening session, photos from the first day, and coverage of Wednesday morning's Plenary Session on Investing in Women and Girls.

I'd like to offer a different kind of coverage here, one that tries to understand if and how the broader thematic goal of the Meeting- namely, cross-sector participation in addressing the world's problems- works, and how it will ultimately affect women and girls globally.

In other words- Can business interests and NGO interests ever align productively? Can the World Bank really make positive contributions to social change, given its rather horrific history of debt-mongering and culturally insensitive politics? Or are these interests mutually exclusive, in constant battle over zero-sum resources and therefore doomed to clash? CGI suggests convergence and collaboration can benefit all. I ask- what kinds of compromise on women's issues does such an ambitious mandate demand?

Today the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting hosted a press conference on human trafficking headlined by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Women's Issues. I am very glad to see a focus on this incredibly important and too often ignored issue.

Mira Sorvino, who is a Goodwill Ambassador with a focus on human trafficking, framed the lack of knowledge about modern day slavery in the U.S. through her personal experience: "Like many Americans I thought slavery had ended with Lincoln... It's this unbelievably subterranean crime."

President Clinton opened the second day of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting by reciting damning statistics about women's economic marginalization, including that only 30% of the world's workforce is made up of women. Women do 66% of world's work, make only 10% of world's income, and own only 1% world's property. He said investing in women "can unleash an estimated $15 billion in annual productivity."

Investing in Girls and Women was hosted by Diane Sawyer. The panelists were: Edna Adan, Director and Founder, Edna Adan Maternity and Teaching Hospital; Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO, The Goldman Sachs Group; Zainab Salbi, Founder and CEO, Women for Women International; Rex W. Tillerson, Chief Executive Officer, ExxonMobil Corporation; Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Women's Issues, U.S. State Department; and Robert Zoellick, President, The World Bank Group.

It's Day 2 of the 5th Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Manhattan, and I'm sitting next to Jos in the press room trying to organize my thoughts on everything that's been going on. I mean, wow. I'm surrounded by conference participants, which range from diplomats to heads of state to movie stars to business executives to NGO presidents and CEOs to prestigious journalists and high-powered bloggers. I've got to be honest- I don't think I've never been in the same building as so many smart, powerful, and- let's face it- rich people before in my life.

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting kicked off yesterday with an Opening Plenary hosted by President Clinton. Thanks to Lori's crowd navigation skills we were able to be in the room for the plenary (instead of watching it on TVs in the press room) and even sat within 100 feet of the podium.

In his opening remarks President Clinton told CGI members this is the only conference they will attend where the gift bag is just that - a bag. Sounds like every activist conference I've been to!

Gary White and Matt Damon (*swoon*) spoke about access to water and sanitation. Many of us in the U.S. take clean water for granted. For much of the world, though, access to water is perhaps the largest health issue. White and Damon were there to promote water.org and their new focus on Haiti.

Linda Lockhart, founder of Global Give Back Circle, spoke about her work on education for girls in Kenya. Lockhart said, "Our goal was never to be the voice of the girls. It was to give them a voice." This was demonstrated through a video (which reminded me of this) and a powerful spoken word performance by three young women from St. Martin's School for Girls.

Dorte Kiilerich, CEO of tourist marketing campaign Visit Denmark, has been pressured to issue an apology over a hoax in which an actress posing as a hot, single mother talks about how a one night stand--or the Danish custom of "cosiness"--with a tourist has left her wondering where the father of her baby is. The video appeared on YouTube. Apparently Visit Denmark thought that it would be a great way to attract male tourists who were looking for some boozy, no-strings-attached loving with Danish women.

This is all kinds of offensive and confusing. Insinuating that all Danish women are eager for a one night stand is insulting, of course. The idea that men are shallow enough to want to visit a country just to get laid is also pretty debasing. And finally, if you want to play on archaic stereotypes about hot women and no-strings-attached sex for a one night stand, why the hell do you depict a woman who has a baby? Did Visit Denmark think being an absent father was going to be a turn on to all those philandering men across the globe? So. Weird.

If you feel like letting Visit Denmark know how you feel about their campaign, here's the email address: info@goscandinavia.com

Thanks to a reader for the heads up.

This video is really poignant in addressing the ways in which Africa is so often overgeneralized, pitied, romanticized, historicized, and misrepresented. Check it out:

Thanks to my girl Kate for the heads up.

Tired of sexual harassment in the form of pinches, stares, taunting, groping, and catcalling, Indian women now have access to all-women commuter trains, dubbed the Ladies Special, in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta.

India would seem to be a country where women have shattered the glass ceiling. The country's most powerful politician, Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress Party, is a woman. The country's current president, a somewhat ceremonial position, is a woman. So are the foreign secretary and the chief minister of the country's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, and the new minister of railways. India's Constitution guarantees equal rights for women, while Indian law stipulates equal pay and punishment for sexual harassment.

The New York Times article concerning the new trains details the shocking increase in incidents of violence against women and kidnappings from 2003-2007, demonstrating the need for increased personal safety for Indian women. So far, "The eight new trains represent a tiny fraction of the nation's commuter trains."

But this act by the government, which runs the commuter trains, recognizes physical mobility as a tenet of women's empowerment. It allows greater access to employment, metropolitan areas, and financial independence. With greater personal safety, it follows that women will be more comfortable and more willing to travel, as well as to enter the workplace. Finance Canada, a microloan organization, notes:

Women's status within the home increases as their self-confidence and economic self-sufficiency grow. They demonstrate significantly greater empowerment as measured by physical mobility, ownership and control of productive assets such as land, involvement in family decision-making, and legal and political awareness and participation.

Similarly, public transportation has long been an American issue of class. Even in a recent episode of Mad Men, Joan, the head secretary, discusses the subway only with the disclaimer that her fiancé would "never" allow her to take it. Taking public transportation, like driving, is a step toward equal opportunity for women. through The backlash against the new train service, such as public urination by men in the trains and protests by men, suggests this is a significant change in the government's treatment of women in India's metropolitan areas.

But still, to stop men harassing women, the police removed the women instead of educating those who harass. Perhaps this is a first-world concern about a developing nation, but the message sent is that the presence of women causes harassment, rather than the idea that those who prefer to objectify women and project their sexual desires onto strangers cause harassment. And lastly, women deserve that increased personal safety regardless of the presence of men.

As said by a Dr. Kumari at the end of the NYT article,

"You really need to make every train as safe as the Ladies Specials."

Related:
Women-only train cars in Brazil
Japanese men angry over women-only train cars
Tehran introducing all-women transportation
Taking up space: The Blank Noise Project
Subway gropers exposed
Raise your hand if you've been harassed on the subway

As mentioned in Friday's What We Missed, 19 year-old Tegan Simone Leach could go to jail for up to seven years for having a home abortion. Leach's 21 year-old boyfriend is also going to stand trial for "supplying drugs to procure an abortion."

Police allege a family member obtained the abortion pill misoprostol from a doctor in the Ukraine and smuggled it into Australia on a flight to Cairns on December 25.

The pill was then allegedly successfully used by Ms Leach to terminate her pregnancy and induce a miscarriage at 60 days.

In their first court appearance on Thursday, it was alleged the pair did not ask about the lawful process to have an abortion.

Medical abortions are legal in Queensland but are often expensive with 90 per cent or more terminations performed in private clinics for a minimum out-of-pocket cost of about $370. But it remains an offence under the 100-year-old criminal code to access or procure an abortion.

Kate Marsh, of Children By Choice, said, "It comes as such a shock that someone can be charged with this offence in this day and age...We'd like to see abortion removed from the criminal code and be regulated like any other health procedure."

Leach is believed to be the first woman charged in Queensland in nearly 50 years for having a home abortion.

The Feministing crew is still at the Women & Power retreat at Omega. Kicking off today's speakers is Sakena Yacoobi, who founded the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995. After the Taliban closed girls' schools in the 1990s, AIL opened underground home schools and women's learning centers. Today AIL is still working to empower Afghan women, and Yacoobi continues her work despite constant threats to her safety.

One of the biggest consequences of her nation being at war for decades, Yacoobi says, is the loss of the educational system. If people can defend themselves through communication, they don't need a weapon. But through years of war, the educational system was demolished. So she wanted to do more than teach people to read and write -- and think critically. And so she began opening schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

In a matter of one year, her classes went from 300 students to 1500. All girls. "These girls are very bright. They wanted to have a future," she says.

Since the government has taken over many of the schools AIL founded, many people have become distrustful of the schools. So AIL began opening Women's Learning Centers as an alternative. The centers teach some curricula that the government-run schools don't: peace education, democracy, ethics, health, family planning, sex education. These are the topics, she says, that lead to electing better leaders, making a more peaceful country, empowering women.

Why has her organization been so successful? "We work with tradition, culture, religion." No matter how much the technology advances, people's traditions must be treated with respect.

"A lot of good things are happening in Afghanistan," Yacoobi says. "But the government is not doing that much. We don't have roads, electricity, clean water, shelter, basic rights of human beings. The Taliban, day to day, are getting more power. And our people are tired of fighting. Those people close the door of education. Women can't even walk down the street. They have no mercy."

On the recent election: "The men are scared to go to the polls because the Taliban announced that if you go and vote we'll cut your finger. And they did that. But women did go. They went to those polls. Through the leadership workshop we teach them how to choose their leader, why it's so important you get involved in politics, why it's so important for you try to negotiate and communicate. So women are going and voting."

Yacoobi continues, "The news is that Afghan women are empowered. They are intelligent. They are courageous."

"You might hear there is war. People are killed. Acid poured into faces of girls. Every day there is bombing, rocket shelling, torturing. But the women of Afghanistan get up in the morning and say goodbye to their family and go to work and go to the learning center. They found out that this is the only way they can stop the problem. They must be educated. And they are learning. And they are not afraid."

Check out this awesome news! From the AP:

"Uruguay lawmakers Wednesday adopted a trailblazing law allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt children, in an unprecedented move in Latin America."

This is hugely exciting, and a true sign of progress towards equal rights! I would be remiss not to note, though, that, as the article mentions, religious leaders and right-wing politicians continue to push a conservative agenda and hold great influence in Uruguay (abortion remains illegal there, for example). So there is much work still to be done. But today, we can celebrate this exciting landmark victory for progressive values and equal rights in Latin America!

P.S. I can't quite make it out, but I'm pretty sure the banner in the pic reads "No Mas Homofobia" or "No More Homophobia"!

A couple weeks ago The New York Times published a compelling and far too brief article titled Afghan Youths Seek a New Life in Europe. The focus is on "Afghan boys" immigrating to France.

Thousands of lone Afghan boys are making their way across Europe, a trend that has accelerated in the past two years as conditions for Afghan refugees become more difficult in countries like Iran and Pakistan. Although some are as young as 12, most are teenagers seeking an education and a future that is not possible in their own country, which is still struggling with poverty and violence eight years after the end of Taliban rule.

The boys pose a challenge for European countries, many of which have sent troops to fight in Afghanistan but whose publics question the rationale for the war. Though each country has an obligation under national and international law to provide for them, the cost of doing so is yet another problem for a continent already grappling with tens of thousands of migrants.

European nations have a much greater obligation than that created by national and international law. The article frames poverty and violence in Afghanistan as existing despite the war. In reality aggression from countries including the U.S. and European nations is productive of increased instability and refugee populations. The article discusses the experiences of "Afghan boys" now living in France but hardly addresses their reasons for leaving home in the first place.

Age and gender are obvious features of the population discussed in this article so it's strange they are not addressed directly. I am particularly interested in young men immigrating to France as a result of war given the country's history of gendered immigration.

I want to discuss the history of immigration to France from North Africa as I see a lot of potential parallels and think it will provide context. Knowledge of North African immigration should show how important it is to explore the reasons for young male immigration, why it is this particular part of the population that is moving to France and how this might impact individuals, families, and communities. It can give us hints as to how the country may treat this population and the potential for more people from Afghanistan to follow. France's history with immigrants who are understood as Muslim is a history of exploitation and marginalization that has led to extreme social and political exclusion and violence. So this current moment when similar or related patterns could occur deserves a historical perspective.

North Africa and Afghanistan are very different places, but both have populations understood as Muslim. I am interested in how these populations may be understood as similar, not claiming any inherent similarity or spreading the idea of the so-called Muslim World.

Under pressure from the international community, President Karzai has secretly pardoned Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student imprisoned and sentenced to death in Afghanistan for trying to promote women's rights. The 24-year-old journalist-in-training has been flown to an undisclosed foreign location. The Independent reports: "Prior to his departure, he spoke of how his relief was mixed with deep regret at knowing he was unlikely to see his family or country again."

Earlier this year Kambaksh was doing some research when, according to reports:

He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without - say his friends and family - being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

Ruthie Ackerman has written a lot of amazing work about Liberia--both past and present--as well as Liberian immigrants in the U.S. I had the good fortune of having coffee with her a month or two ago and was so struck by what a committed, courageous journalist she is, but even more, a truly incredible person. In her bio she explains:

It was following my second trip to Africa that I decided I had to do something. I could no longer just write and photograph people in communities far away from my own and then slip back into my comfortable life as if nothing ever happened. There had to be a way to show the world what I had seen, and that is when I made the decision to pursue a career in journalism. After one year in Cape Maclear and countless stories of adventures and hardships traveling in the region, I applied to New York University's Master's program in journalism and received a full scholarship. But before I left I promised myself that I would return to Cape Maclear someday to write stories that mattered about the women and people I encountered.

Ruthie has a sophisticated understanding of the complexity of telling others' stories (she and I hashed this out at length), and a real commitment to vivid reporting that reveals something about human nature, war, gender etc. She's actually in the process of working on a book about a group of Liberian immigrants in Staten Island, and meanwhile, is managing a really interesting blogging project that involves those folks--as well as a whole crew still in Liberia--to create their own content, use their own voices, tell their own stories. It's called Ceasefire Liberia.

It's exciting to see a forum where Liberians are speaking on their own behalf, instead of having their stories told through the lens of a white, Western journalist. I appreciate that while Ruthie is working on her own version of this story, she's inspiring her subjects to develop their own work as well. It's the kind of model I'm interested in following as journalism, as a field, starts to acknowledge the fallacy of objectivity and the intimacy (for so many) between writing or documentary work and activism.

I wanted to introduce the feministing community to one of the amazing artists that I had the honor of being in residency with while in Italy last month. Her name is Sharlene Khan--a young South African artist who wrestles with themes of identity, work, race, class, gender, community, and so much more in the many genres that she works in.

Her work, in her own words:

My work (which comprises of oil paintings, installations and mixed media drawings) hopes to bring to the fore this sector of society that is so sadly ignored, to depict the 'humanness' of these people we pass by daily - their dreams, hopes, struggles, wit and dignity. My work also combines oil painting and ink drawing to portray this 'lower class' society in what once was an upper class indulgence and to continue to question these attitudes towards the 'fine arts', by turning oil paintings into functional everyday objects e.g. clothes, bedspread, curtains, haircut salons. My work is a visual representation of my identity and all the influences upon it. Needlework in my paintings, as well as the depiction of Indian mehndi designs, biblical scriptures and poetry are meant to reflect my African, Indian, Chrisitan, female identity as well as my early apartheid education, and later tertiary education.

Khan describes her distaste with the word diaspora: "It chiefly recognises similarities at the expense of equally important localised differences. I don't really consider myself as part of such a diaspora, I am a South African Indian who is very located in this specific country at this specific juncture in time. And while I realise that the sense of 'Indianness' is probably a valid one among many migrant communities, in South Africa it was promoted by the apartheid government to ensure that Indians in this country were made to feel like outsiders. Indians have been in SAfrica since the 1820's."

Her work is bold, controversial, deeply emotional, and truly original. A couple more examples are featured after the jump.

This is pretty distressing:

Tens of thousands of people in Mali's capital, Bamako, have been protesting against a new law which gives women equal rights in marriage.

The law, passed earlier this month, also strengthens inheritance rights for women and children born out of wedlock.

Sigh. Perhaps even more depression-inducing is this quote from Hadja Sapiato Dembele of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations: "A man must protect his wife, a wife must obey her husband...It's a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law - the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country - the real Muslims - are against it."

Like most of you, I'm sure, I was excited to see the package of articles in The New York Times Magazine yesterday on the state of women's rights globally. Times columnist Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, authors of the lead article, have a forthcoming book on the subject. This is their attempt to show that women's rights are not a niche concern or a "soft issue," but are core to fixing the major problems that plague the world today. The simple fact is that in places around the globe where women are doing well, everyone is doing well. If only our foreign policy reflected that fact. (Hillary is working on it, I know. But it's a long road.)

I am thrilled to see this point made so prominently. But there's also something about the article that rubbed me the wrong way. I think the banner on the Times' website sums it up:

Saving the World's Women? When I tweeted last week that the "we Westerners must save women!" phrasing rubbed me the wrong way, a few folks piped up to offer alternatives. Emily Douglas suggested, "How about getting out of the way so women can save the world?" I like that perspective a helluva lot better.

The international women's rights groups that have worked on these issues for years (WEDO, MADRE, AWID, etc.) are absent from the articles. And, consequently, so is their framing that in order to build a better world, women need to be empowered to be an active part in making that change. The U.S. swooping in to "save" them will not actually fix things in a sustainable way. International women's rights groups, most of whom are working in collaboration with women on the ground, emphasize the importance of supporting grassroots movements and change that is driven by women rather than imposed on them. (Yes, microlending is a way of directly supporting women, but Kristof and WuDunn fail to make this broader point about how Western nations should approach international women's rights.)

Anna N. at Jezebel has another critique of their approach:

It may be true that a society is more peaceful when women are empowered, but the idea of promoting women's equality in order to reduce terrorism is still problematic. First, as WuDunn and Kristof are no doubt aware, there are plenty of examples of female terrorists. But the very idea of helping women because they behave the way we want -- not drinking, whoring, or planting bombs -- implies that we have a certain ideal of how developing countries should operate, and we want to shape them according to that ideal. It's also not necessarily good for women, who must continue to behave well in order to retain their status as model recipients of aid.

Just to be clear, I am really happy to see global women's issues brought to the forefront. However, the way we look at these issues is just as important as the fact that we're looking at all.

Check out this really in-depth article following up on the some of the big picture questions I raised in my post last month about the new Google AdWords policy disallowing abortion ads in over a dozen countries.

The article was written by Masum Momaya of Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) and gives a dope analysis of this truly multi-dimensional topic. Also the article explicitly mentions Feministing commentors and a lot of the points you all brought up in my first post on the subject, which is awesome and a testament to all of your thoughtfulness!

*pause to reflect on the greatness of this community*

Anyway, one major reveal from the article is that, legally and practically, "those submitting the ads, and not Google Inc., should be doing the screening for legal compliance." So there goes the theory about Google AdWords initiating the abortion policy just to abide by local laws.

Also, the article gets to what I think is the heart of the issue by exploring the various competing interests that are informing Google AdWords decision-making behind closed doors: legal, social, and financial, and more, and then asking:

"So do we want Google Inc. sorting, accrediting and ordering our information for us, ads or otherwise? And is doing so in a truly unbiased way possible for a for-profit company whose major source of revenue is dependent on advertising?"

Yeah, and I would add that reproductive health care information in particular requires special defense, because it is so often under attack as being "controversial" or "politically risky" when it is just health care for women, who, need I remind you, constitute half of this earth's population!

Anyway, before I begin to rant more about that, let me get back to the article. Overall, I agree with the article's conclusion:

"It is important for women's rights activists and social justice advocates more generally to understand the issues and limitations behind what does - and does not - show up when Googling for "abortion" or any other topic, for that matter, and continue to be on the lookout for this 'invisible' violation of women's rights."

Word.

An excerpt from Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's forthcoming book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, is up at the New York Times. It begins:

In the 19th Century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

You likely recognize Kristof's name from his dogged reporting on women and trafficking around the world, rape in the Congo, and so many other issues facing poor women throughout the globe. I have to admit that I sometimes find his style repetitive, and therefore not as effective as I believe it could be, but I'm thrilled that he's calling attention to these issues (and has been with such precious column inches). It's cool that he and his partner collaborated to put this book together, as well.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but wanted everyone to be aware that's it has launched, along with a couple of interesting contests that feministing readers may want to enter.

A group of women gather at the National Stadium, where Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke at a rally in Kabul. Photo by Nikki Kahn - The Washington Post

Tomorrow, Afghanistan goes to the polls -- and many people are questioning whether it's even possible to hold a "legitimate" election given the potential for low turnout due to recent threats of violence by the Taliban.

But, as Jeanne Brooks reminds us at Women's eNews, it's not just violence that threatens democracy in Afghanistan -- it's the disenfranchisement of women. President Hamid Karzai recently signed a law that severely restricts women's rights. Among many other appalling provisions, it prevents Shia women from casting a vote without their husband's permission.

As Rachel Reid writes in the Washington Post,

Things got much worse recently when President Hamid Karzai officially promulgated legislation that would make the Taliban proud. Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern: As Karzai's government has grown weaker he has increasingly turned to some of society's most conservative elements for support.

In other words, Karzai has shored up his own power at the expense of women. Among Afghans who are risking their lives to vote, he is seen by many to be the only "real choice" in tomorrow's election.

We've got a feminist Secretary of State who has professed her commitment to keeping women's rights central to her agenda. And yet, Brooks points out, the U.S. and British governments decided not to raise a political uproar about the latest restrictions on women's rights "out of fear of disrupting the election." But if women's voting rights are restricted, the election is already disrupted and illegitimate -- violating several articles of the Afghan constitution and international treaties that Afghanistan has signed.

MADRE (an international women's rights group) has created a survival fund that "supports an underground rescue network of women committed to providing shelter and secret transport to women who have been targeted because they dare to speak out for human rights." Click here to donate to the fund.

Related:
Alternatives to Military Escalation in Afghanistan
An On the Ground Perspective on Afghanistan
What do the Women of Afghanistan Want?
The military's disingenuous talking points on women's rights

A new post on Akimbo displays this graph of women's attitudes towards domestic violence. As you can see, in many cases a disturbingly high percentage of women say it is sometimes OK for their husbands to hit them.

The graph depicts figures as high as 90% (Jordan) of women aged 15-49 responding in the affirmative when asked if a husband or partner is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances.

The information in the graph comes from the UNICEF site Child Info: Monitoring the Situation of Women and Children and was collected between 2001 and 2007. There's no info on attitudes of women in the U.S. in the study, but I'd be really interested to know if the U.S. figures were very different (based on the amount of "she deserved it" that went on during the whole Chris Brown/Rihanna escapade, I somehow doubt it).

You can view a chart with more country info and sources here.

A new report from Human Rights Watch, "They Want Us Exterminated": Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq, says that Iraqi militias are torturing and killing men suspected of being gay.

Scott Long, director of HRW's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Programe, says the report "documents a campaign of violence against men in Iraq who are suspected of being gay or who simply don't act masculine enough in the eyes of their killers."

Download the report here.

Tagline: "The only reason to choose black. Time for Green."

This German campaign poster (tagline above) for the Green party was recently removed after folks quite aptly pointed out that it was a racist, sexist piece of crap.

The poster put up by the environmental Greens party in the western town of Kaarst contains a play on words: "Black" in German party politics refers to the color colloquially used to describe Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. Other major parties are described as red, yellow and, of course, green.

Sexualizing and dehumanizing black women and their bodies is hardly new, but I still was shocked at the blatant racism/sexism combo at play. Even worse, though, was the Green party's response even after the posters were removed:

The Greens more than anyone else have always stood for policies characterized by tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and equality. Issues such as integration and women's politics stand at the center of the Greens' political work. Accusations that this poster is racist or sexist are thus untenable. (Emphasis mine)

You see the posters can't be racist or sexist because they're the "good guys." Yeah, okay.

Thanks to Susanna for the link.

Absent from reporting on the imprisonment and release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, which has taken the disturbing turn of focusing on the power dynamic between the Clintons, is the story the journalists were investigating in the first place. A piece by Ji-Yeon Yuh at the Women's Media Center discusses this story: human trafficking.

Proportionally, the trafficking of North Korean women into China is a small part of an enormous worldwide criminal enterprise. However, of North Korean women and girl refugees in China, an estimated 80 to 90 percent are victims of trafficking. This is likely the highest percentage of trafficking in a single population.

...

The available evidence points to a dramatic expansion in the trafficking of North Korean women over the past decade. Based on the aid workers' estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the female refugees are trafficking victims, there could be as many as 168,000 trafficked North Korean women and girls in China, and thousands cross the border each year.

It is no longer a case of local Chinese gangsters tricking North Korean women already in China and selling them as wives to rural bachelors. It is now a systematic, albeit sprawling industry operating in both North Korea and China that lures North Korean women with promises of jobs and then sells them into commercial sex work or into servitude as personal laborers and sex slaves--"wives"--for men. While once North Korean women were sold primarily in areas bordering North Korea, now there is evidence that they are being sold throughout the area north of Beijing.

The fact is, the slave trade has not gone away. Two women just went through hell because of this. Millions more people, the overwhelming majority of whom are women and girls, are trapped in this horrific reality. Human trafficking deserves much more of our attention.

While Kelly Clarkson's body has apparently been airbrushed away in SELF magazine's September cover, members of the UK Parliament are calling for disclaimers on advertisements that have been airbrushed. Love it.

Airbrushing is sadly no new trend in women's magazines and ads, but the thing about Clarkson's "slimmed down" cover that's particularly disturbing is that September is SELF's "Total Body Confidence Issue," not to mention Clarkson talks about her (non)issues with weight fluctuation in the piece and the media's hissies that she just doesn't get:

"My happy weight changes. Sometimes I eat more; sometimes I play more. I'll be different sizes all the time. When people talk about my weight, I'm like, 'You seem to have a problem with it; I don't. I'm fine!'"

In the meantime, UK Democrats from the House of Parliament just released 42 recommendations to "help improve the lives of women in the UK," with one of the most controversial being the suggestion that airbrushed ads have a disclaimer saying so.

What really pisses me off is the contention by fashion folks supportive of airbrushing that it somehow benefits the subject being airbrushed. Photographer Nigel Baker said in response to the proposal:

"The idea is that you want to produce the most flattering image possible . . . The reason why talent in the modeling industry is so young is because of this desire to have flawless-looking women. But with good retouching, you can have older-looking women working longer. You can show her maturity, but perhaps you don't show every wrinkle and line. What you are seeing are older models having longer careers that they never would have had because of retouching.''

See, airbrushing is good for women! We're allowing older, "flawed" women to continue to work even though they shouldn't be! In response to Clarkson's airbrushed cover, SELF editor Lucy Danziger says the "retouching" was "only to make her look her personal best." But how could that be her personal best when it's technically not even all of her there?

h/t to Ethan for the link.

My day job is with an amazing organization called the International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC), which works to promote and protect the sexual and reproductive rights and health of all women and young people, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I work in communications there, doing research, writing for the blog , and, of course, performing admin duties :-) I've been working there for a few months now, and one of the most interesting parts of my job, in my estimation, is identifying and outlining the parallels between the challenges women face in the United States and the challenges we face internationally. I'm constantly reminded of the interconnectedness of our struggles, but I don't know that this interconnectedness is always on the radar of all U.S. based feminists. To that end, I draw your attention to recent happenings in the Dominican Republic surrounding reproductive rights and health.

The same drive to exert control over women's bodies that manifests in the U.S. in anti-choice efforts such as "fetal rights" laws is showing up in the Dominican Republic as, well, this. Proposed changes to a piece of legislation in the Dominican Congress called Article 30 would define life as "beginning at conception" and thus could effectively make any type of abortion unconstitutional and outlaw several forms of birth control. More after the jump.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the PM-elect of Burma, was sentenced Tuesday to 18 additional months of house arrest for being secretly visited by an American who swam to her house.

Of the last 20 years, Suu Kyi has been imprisoned for 14. For the first time, other South-East Asian nations have condemned the Burmese government's sentence, widely seen as a preventative measure against allowing Suu Kyi mobility to participate in the Burmese elections, scheduled for May 2010. In the 1990 multi-party elections, Suu Kyi's party won 392 out of the Burmese Parliament's 485 seats and was denied power. Suu Kyi, the Prime Minister-Elect of Burma and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is the daughter of General Aung San, the "father" of Myanmar. She has been offered freedom if she leaves her country, but refuses under fear of being denied re-entry, remaining under house arrest even while the father of her children died of prostate cancer in Britain. She is widely referred to as "Daw Aung San Suu Kyi," as "Daw" roughly means "aunt."

Women are frequently rallying points for political movements, and even more frequently referred to as relatives, "Mothers" or "Daughters" of political activism. The familial rhetoric serves not only to endear these leaders to their followers, but also to uniquely characterize each movement as friendly and nurturing in media coverage to the international community.

Don't miss Judith Warner's awesome piece on Hillary, and so-called "women's issues." An excerpt:

Women's issues are being framed by this administration in terms of realpolitik: U.S. security depends on women's empowerment. Global economic growth depends on women's participation.

Women's empowerment won't be delivered at the end of a gun or through economic sanctions or even overt criticism, if it cuts into accepted cultural practices. This is messy stuff; some of our most sensitive allies have horrific records on women's rights. Programs that show success tend to be slow-moving and incremental. Can all this complexity attract -- much less sustain -- the attention of the public?

Maybe -- if we stop viewing everything Clinton does as entertainment.

Check out Katha Pollit's piece about UN press officer and general badass Lubna Hussein, who is standing up against the sexist Sudanese government. Hussein was one of the 13 women charged under Sudan's Article 152 Criminal Code, prohibiting "indecent" dress, on July 3rd. Their crime? Um, pants. 10 of the 13 women accepted a plea bargain, but not Hussein. Pollit reports:

Lubna Hussein and two others insisted on going to trial-- even though losing in court will mean forty lashes and a much bigger fine. In fact, Hussein resigned her UN post so as not to have immunity -- she wants to win this battle on principle, not a technicality, and have the dress-code law abolished. 'I will take my case to the upper court, even to the constitutional court,' she told The Guardian . 'And if they find me guilty, I am ready to receive not only 40 lashes, I am ready for 40,000 lashes. If all women must be flogged for what they wear, I am ready to be flogged 40,000 times.'

Support Hussein and her crew here.

Check out this interesting round up of responses to the controversial New York Times article on Japan's hostess culture. In the original article, the following phenomenon was explored:

with that line of work, called hostessing, among the most lucrative jobs available to women and with the country neck-deep in a recession, hostess positions are increasingly coveted, and hostesses themselves are gaining respectability and even acclaim. Japan's worst recession since World War II is changing mores.

It would be easy to say that the downturn economy has done these young women a favor by destigmatizing their work, and therefore, allowing them to earn a living without the previously requisite shame. But the economic reality reveals a far less simplistic picture:

But behind this trend is a less-than-glamorous reality. Employment opportunities for young women, especially those with no college education, are often limited to low-paying, dead-end jobs or temp positions...Even before the economic downturn, almost 70 percent of women ages 20 to 24 worked jobs with few benefits and little job security, according to a government labor survey. The situation has worsened in the recession.

Aya Ezawa, a sociology lecturer in the Japanese Studies Program at Leiden University in the Netherlands, seems to have hit one of the major missing points smack on the head:

At a time of economic downturn, it is worrisome that the media in Japan and abroad portray hostessing as a glamorous job and a woman's road to success. Instead of focusing on the hostesses, it would make more sense to examine the attitudes of the men who are willing to pay a high price for being entertained, served, and pleased by women with short skirts and heavy makeup.

And, of course, I would add, expanding economic opportunities, especially for young and low-income women so that they can make a true choice about being involved in hostess work or doing other kinds of work that more genuinely match their interests and gifts.

A very common right-wing anti-feminist argument is that women in the United States need to STFU and be happy we have it as good as we do, because we could be in *insert so-and-so 3rd world barbaric country* where we would really be treated badly. It is the old one two, first asserting that women have nothing to fight for in the States so, "quit yer bitchin" and second, that we are better than other countries, less barbaric, more civilized, etc. It is an old and tired attack, but unfortunately, sometimes it works.

Bob Herbert's Op-Ed from last week rightfully discussed the idea that in the United States we live in a culture of misogyny.

I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women -- not so much of an uproar.

According to police accounts, Sodini walked into a dance-aerobics class of about 30 women who were being led by a pregnant instructor. He turned out the lights and opened fire. The instructor was among the wounded.

We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation's entertainment.

To much surprise, Double X ran a piece by Anne Applebaum in protest to this idea of a culture of misogyny and I think it speaks to some of the arguments that feminists have been trying to make with regard to cultural appropriation, relativism and clear ignorance to the role of US backed mis-treatment of women, world-wide.

Herbert's thesis echoes the drumbeat of self-pity that has been coming out of paleo-feminist groups and women's studies departments for decades: America, in their view, is a country where "barbaric treatment of women has come to be more accepted," where we are all so inured to the victimization of the female half of the population that we don't even notice it anymore. Presumably because he is unable to prove this ludicrous proposition in any other way, Herbert uses the case of a single, certifiably insane mass-murderer to argue that all of American culture is anti-woman. The implication: All American men are, deep down, in sympathy with this crazed killer, thanks to our mass media that denigrates women, etc.

I realize Applebaum is blinded by her patriotic lust for the United States (after all, that is her wrapped in an American flag isn't it?), but I think it is clear that for her the US is a safe-haven. As in for her and other people like her, that don't live in poverty, are white, haven't been victim of nefarious immigration policy, the prison industrial complex, homophobia or lack of access to health care and/or reproductive rights. Right, for her, the US is a safe-haven and if you keep yapping, she thinks you should go to Iran so you can see what it is really like to not have rights. Perhaps she needs a crash course on what not to say about Muslim women and I wonder if that is what the feminists in Iran are thinking, who have explicitly defined a feminist movement for themselves outside of the purvey of the Western gaze as have many feminist movements around the world, but I digress. (Oh yeah, and doesn't Germany have a female president?)

In academia, there has been a move in studying women around the world from a relativist approach to one that is relational and understands that based on where someone is and what community they are part of, they experience life and therefore misogyny differently. It is a useful exercise and informs activism to the sense that, we can only work within what we know, for when we try and work elsewhere, it is our agenda that is put forth. It is step one in any type of effective coalition building across difference.

So while we may sometimes have the urge to suggest that we have it better here, what I consider better and what you consider better might be two different things. Applebaum and I have seen a different America, and that difference rests in who we are and what communities we have been part of her. As someone who studies the ways that patriarchy functions in the United States and as someone who is a woman of color in the United States born to immigrants that have struggled through sexism, racism and poverty, Herbert's point resonates clearly for me. Frankly, I don't really need to have had this experience to agree with Herbert says, since the evidence is so clear, but I can't deny standpoint.

I suppose, when you are functioning in a frame of fear and don't want to assess the level at which patriarchy afflicts life in the United States, it is much more comforting to suggest that Sodini's act was not informed by his hatred for women, as Jessica put it yesterday. But since so much evidence has come out to the contrary, it is hard to deny, that there is a relationship between misogyny and his deplorable act.

If we are to build any type of feminist movement and/or stop violence against women we have to acknowledge the ways that misogyny produces hatred towards women and the role the media, popular culture and the government have in it. We have to structurally recognize the way that misogyny plays out in day to day life in the United States and what that looks like here, may be different than what it looks like somewhere else, but the implications are relationally unjust.

Is this kind of stuff really still happening?

Well, today it is in Canada. While the news has been flying around about Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien's recent acquittal on the charges of influence peddling, not many are mentioning that the key witnesses' recollection of a conversation was deemed "of little weight" by the judge in part because she commutes to work every day while her kid stays at home with her husband.

That's right, politician Lisa MacLeod's testimony was declared unacceptable for corroboration by Justice Douglas Cunningham of Ontario Superior Court, implying that being a working mom has made her life too complicated for her to appropriately account her statement. Said the judge:

"The defence was able to demonstrate that there were a number of rather significant things going on in her life when she gave her statement to the police. ... "

"She was commuting regularly to Toronto for her work, leaving her husband and child in Ottawa,"

Because the overwhelming combination of working while a mom (gasp!), leaving your kid with the stay-at-home dad (double gasp!) on top of a long commute to work (wowowow!) is just too much for our little lady brains. MacLeod, the Conservative MPP for Nepean-Carleton, said the judge's comments were "pathetic" and "surreal."

"I didn't know truth had a gender or a family."

Pic via the Globe and Mail.

In Kinshasa, Congo yesterday, a Congolese student asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton her husband's opinion on an international economic issue.

"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not secretary of state, I am," she replied.

Since Pres. Bill Clinton's productive visit to North Korea, Secretary Clinton has faced this line of questioning, which endangers American foreign policy efforts.

On the day that Pres. Clinton went to North Korea, I predicted there would be a media backlash about her absence. Now we see U.S. media, including not only Fox but also Huffington Post, perpetuate the idea that Bill Clinton succeeded where Hillary failed. Why send a woman to do a man's job? Clinton had obviously lost credibility with the North Koreans, but U.S.-North Korea relations had soured during the Bush administration, long before she arrived.

Fox News may have started it with the declaration that Hillary was excluded from negotiations, because she had to "eat crow" after calling North Korea an "unruly child", and couldn't "show her face" in the country. But Huffington Post continued the insult with their front-page headline, which dangerously falsifies an imagined rivalry between Bill and Hillary.

Why not Hillary?

The Women and Work Commission have released a new report (PDF) with research and stats on the current gender pay gap as well as a call to action to work on the ground and address various problems that contribute to the gap.

According to their findings, while the pay gap has narrowed in the last 10 years, it has widened again since 2007. I like their suggestion for smaller, local approaches as well as policy changes:

The commission pointed to a failure of "small scale and sporadic" efforts to break down gender stereotypes in schools and urged the government to focus its efforts there.

"Often without even thinking about it, young girls can choose to role-play at being 'teachers' for example, while boys might choose 'builders,'" it said.

"This segregation is ingrained in our culture and has significant implications for the career choices that young men and women make and, in the long run, their future earnings."

It also said women often faced penalties because they take time out of the labour market to care for family members or work part-time in a bid to balance work and home responsibilities.

New laws would also be needed "to ensure that a step change actually takes place," it said.

Women in the UK currently earn, on average, 22.6 percent less than men. The gap for women who work part time is significantly larger, at a nearly 40 percent gap.

Trigger warning.

Prepare to seethe. On a popular Australian 2DayFM radio show segment where hosts "Kyle and Jackie O." have guests on to undergo a lie detector test, little did they know that the 14-year old girl who was brought by her mother and subjected to the test was a rape victim.

The girl had told Kyle Sandilands she was scared before the questions began, but they continued, in which they knew the mother intended to ask them about her daughter's sex life and drug use:

The mother then asked her daughter: "Have you ever had sex?"

The 14-year-old replied: "I've already told you the story about this ... and don't look at me and smile because it's not funny."

After a pause she then raised her voice and said: "Oh OK ... I got raped when I was 12 years old."

Sandilands hesitated before asking "Right ... is that the only experience you've had?"

The girl's mother interrupted, saying she found out about the rape only "a couple of months ago". (Emphasis mine)

The mother also added she just wanted to know if she had had any other sexual experiences. (As if the rape wasn't enough to be alarmed.) The girl also hadn't received any counseling, which the hosts claimed they'd provide if needed, telling the girl she was "off the hook" from answering any more questions.

It's hard for me to fathom how someone could subject their child to that kind of public scrutiny after surviving a rape. But whether her mother is ill, just in complete denial or the issue is more complex than it seems, it's still very upsetting. Not to mention Sandilands' complete dismissal of the rape; while he's obviously no crisis counselor, are you fucking serious dude?

You can hear the entire segment here. Community poster mindprovender also covered this.

h/t to reader Claire.

Amnesty International has released a report on how last year's Nicaragua ban outlawing abortion in all cases has already begun to effect the girls and women of the nation, primarily in low-income communities.

While the Nicaraguan health ministry has declared its commitment to reducing maternal mortality in the past, banning what they call "therapeutic abortion" in cases where the woman's health is in danger has potentially resulted in an increase in maternal mortality in the last year.

Doctors have also reported that it is as if their "back is to the wall" when pregnant women with complications come to their hospital. In the video, health care professionals talk about the fact that pregnant women are often passed from doctor to doctor because everyone is in fear of being accused of intervening in the pregnancy. And if the woman dies from complications, they're held liable for negligence by the woman's family.

Amnesty International's Executive Deputy Secretary General Kate Gilmore says,

"Nicaragua's ban of therapeutic abortion is a disgrace. It is a human rights scandal that ridicules medical science and distorts the law into a weapon against the provision of essential medical care to pregnant girls and women."

Thirty-three girls and women in Nicaragua have died from pregnancy complications this year (compared to 20 last year). And I don't doubt it will only get worse.

You can download the report here, and take action here.

The Irish town of Irvinestown held a contest on Wednesday to decide who would win the championship of best "wolf whistler":

On Wednesday Irvinestown played host to Ireland's first ever wolf-whistling championships, complete with scaffolding, hard hats, and plenty of women.

The men of the town were more than eager to show their appreciation of the fairer sex, eagerly donning hard hats and lining up along the pavement to demonstrate their whistling skills.

"We're all here for the good-looking women," joked Jimmy McKenna. "It just comes naturally."

"I'm 73," said Conal O'Hanlon, "and I'm still whistling away, still on the lookout."

Julian South came all the way from Staffordshire to whistle. "I heard the women were worth whistling at," he explained.

Interestingly, the contest was taken place at the town's annual Lady of the Lake Festival, where the community and their children come to enjoy each other. The Lady of the Lake is a mythical character who is supposed to be a good omen for the town. I wonder how she'd feel about being whistled at.

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And this is just what's being reported, according to new research just released on violence against trans people worldwide. Transgender Europe (TGEU) is working with the multilingual online magazine Liminalis on a collaborative project titled, /Trans Murder Monitoring Project/. According to their results:

The very preliminary results of the first step of this project have revealed a total of 204 cases of reported murders of trans people world wide in the last 1 1/2 years. 121 cases of murdered trans people have been reported in 2008. From January to June 2009 already 83 cases of murdered trans people have been reported.

Furthermore, the preliminary results show an increase in the number of reports of murdered trans people over the last years. Since the beginning of 2008 the murder of a trans person is reported every third day, on average.

Via Questioning Transphobia.

Decidedly no, but this case is really interesting. A female politician in Utter Pradesh, India representing the Congress Party, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, suggested that the leader of opposing group, Bahujan Samaj party, Mayawati, be raped in order to understand the suffering of rape victims. Her attempted "criticism" was about how the state of Utter Pradesh is treating rape victims,

In her speech Joshi criticised the Uttar Pradesh government for paying Dalits who had suffered rape compensation of just 25,000 rupees (£315). "I had simply sought to draw the people's attention to the fact that Mayawati's dole of 25,000 rupees to every Dalit rape victim was quite ironical as the state police chief was spending lakhs [hundreds of thousands] on the helicopter ride that he undertakes to hand over that paltry amount to the victim," she said.

While it is common for people to say incendiary things in politics, especially in India where people take very dramatic creative liberties in their political speeches, I think this is taking too many liberties, especially since the point is to have either a decrease in sexual violence or better reparations for instances of sexual violence. Suggesting sexual violence against a woman kind of defeats the purpose.

But that is not what people are protesting in Joshi's statements. According to the article, "She faces charges of insulting a woman's modesty, insulting a person of a lower caste and promoting enmity between groups. The charges all carry possible 10-year jail sentences." Joshi's house was burned down and she was put in jail. The crime however was not hatespeech, it was violating a woman's modesty, or suggesting that she is not modest. So, basically, if a woman is raped, she is the one that is immodest, not the person that raped her. Sounds like classic victim blaming to me.

So while, I don't necessarily agree with Joshi using such dramatic word choice to get her message out, I think it is interesting that her house was burned down and she was jailed, not because this was a hateful and potentially violent thing to say, but because she threatened a woman's assumed modesty.

This is horrible. Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped and killed yesterday in Chechnya, where she dedicated her life to human rights work despite warnings from Chechnya's president, who is being blamed for her murder:

Human rights campaigner Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped and murdered this week in Chechnya, and a human rights group blames Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov for her death. Estemirova was seized from her home in Grozny, and her body was found Wednesday in the neighboring region of Ingushetia.

...

Estemirova worked for the Chechen group Memorial and in conjunction with Human Rights Watch. One of her greatest achievements was bringing the issue of Chechen victims to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in their favor and demanded Russia pay retribution to more than a dozen victims.

She was 50 years old, and had a 15 year old daughter.

See a video and get more information here.

Congress has been busy lately, and there are currently a number of pieces of reproductive and sexual health-related legislation moving through both the House and Senate. A roundup of what I've been following after the jump.

Disappointing news: Porn is now illegal in the Ukraine.

Ever the optimist, I see a silver lining here. At least the whole "unless it's for medicinal purposes" clause unwittingly points to the health benefits of masturbation :-)

File this one under good news.

Via Akimbo:

In a landmark Indian Supreme Court ruling today, Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah struck down Penal Code 377, overturning a colonial-era law criminalizing "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal."

The victory is a historic step forward for human rights only days after people worldwide took to the streets for gay pride, particularly in a country where LGBTQII individuals face discrimination, stigma, and violence on a daily basis.

While the original petition against 377 cited its adverse impact on HIV/ AIDS prevention efforts, the Supreme Court ruling statement was far more progressive, citing the value of an inclusive society:

"The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone... It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is antithesis of equality, and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster the dignity of every individual."

While reports indicate this will only impact New Delhi, it may open doors for the rest of the country as well.

More from community blogger bifemmefatale here.

Dr Neera Desai, a founder of India's first women's studies program, the Research Centre for Women's Studies at SNDT Women's University, passed away last Thursday from cancer at the age of 84. Professor Vibhuti Patel, a colleague and friend of Desai and the director of department of Post-Graduate Studies and Research at SNDT said:

"I had been working with her since 1977. In all these years that I had known her, I thought of her as a warm person who was forever motivating and ever ready to experiment with new ideas. She was a major institution builder. This is a period when women's studies is coming of age. However, she started work in this field in the early 50s and for over two decades fought a lone battle to raise awareness about the same till the 70s when she began garnering support from several quarters."

She wrote a number of books on women's rights and feminism in India, including Women in Modern India (1952) and Feminism in Western India (2004). She was nominated for 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Via (including pic) FeministsIndia.

Also check out community blogger ramlath's post.

Twenty-three year old Giorgia Boscolo just became the first female gondolier after nine centuries of exclusively male rowing in the canal in Venice. Boscolo had to pass a grueling six-month, 400 hour course, but told reporters that she had no fear that she couldn't handle the physicality of the job: "Childbirth is much more difficult." Boscolo is the mother of two.

Her father, also a gondolier, has doubts about her participation in this historically male tradition: "I still think being a gondolier is a man's job, but I am sure that with experience Giorgia will be able to do it easily," he said.

Damn skippy Papa Boscolo. Better get used to waving across the canal at your diesel daughter.

Thanks to Tiffany for the heads up.

A military coup in Honduras this weekend deposed President Manuel Zelaya. The Honduran Congress has stripped Zelaya of his office and appointed the president of the Congress, Robert Micheletti, to be head of state. It is Central America's first military coup since the Cold War.

Eva Gollinger in Caracas, Venezuela reports:

The text message that beeped on my cell phone this morning read "Alert, Zelaya has been kidnapped, coup d'etat underway in Honduras, spread the word." It's a rude awakening for a Sunday morning, especially for the millions of Hondurans that were preparing to exercise their sacred right to vote today for the first time on a consultative referendum concerning the future convening of a constitutional assembly to reform the constitution. Supposedly at the center of the controversy is today's scheduled referendum, which is not a binding vote but merely an opinion poll to determine whether or not a majority of Hondurans desire to eventually enter into a process to modify their constitution.

Such an initiative has never taken place in the Central American nation, which has a very limited constitution that allows minimal participation by the people of Honduras in their political processes. The current constitution, written in 1982 during the height of the Reagan Administration' s dirty war in Central America, was designed to ensure those in power, both economic and political, would retain it with little interference from the people. Zelaya, elected in November 2005 on the platform of Honduras' Liberal Party, had proposed the opinion poll be conducted to determine if a majority of citizens agreed that constitutional reform was necessary. He was backed by a majority of labor unions and social movements in the country. If the poll had occured, depending on the results, a referendum would have been conducted during the upcoming elections in November to vote on convening a constitutional assembly. Nevertheless, today's scheduled poll was not binding by law.

Kim Pearson has a great summary this morning over at BlogHer.

I'm left wondering about the safety of the women in Honduras during military coup and state instability--these are often the times when sexual assault increases, women struggle to get access to the medical help they need, not to mention all the other basic resources that are necessary to keep families going. We'd love to hear from readers with family in the area...

There will be a protest of the military coup of Honduras at the United Nations today from 3 to 6 pm for those in the New York area.

Update: Christy Thornton, the head of NACLA, recommends this post on the subject. She'll be writing something for us tomorrow on the topic.

Click to see larger.

Amnesty International has released a pretty high-tech public awareness campaign against domestic violence: in bus shelters, the poster has an "eye tracker," making the image change from a seemingly happy couple (if you're looking directly at it) to an image of violence when you look away.

The text on the ad says, "It happens when nobody is watching." Thoughts?

h/t to Shara.

Conservative Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in Canada Doug Elniski has been catching a ton of shit for posting the text of a speech that he gave a couple of weeks ago to junior high school students on his blog, where he supposedly told the girls that "men are attracted to smiles":

Part of the posting included advice to girls saying, "Ladies, always smile when you walk into a room, there is nothing a man wants less than a woman scowling because he thinks he is going to get s--t for something and has no idea what."

It continues, "Men are attracted to smiles, so smile, don't give me that 'treated equal' stuff. If you want Equal, it comes in little packages at Starbucks."

Elniski's blog was taken down on Monday afternoon.

Blog gone or not, the real damage was done to the female students he reached that day. While Elniski clarified that the comparison between equality and a sweetener wasn't actually said at the speech and publicly apologized for the "stupid, inappropriate" comment on his blog, his creepy reference to smiles was said. He actually defends that one, claiming he was merely trying to say that "men and women should be friendly and approachable in dealing with others."

Nice try, dude.

...but is he really the only one? Public moral outcries of elected officials sexual behavior is complex, often tedious and not really in the name of justice. The prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, likes to hire woman to attend parties and do who knows what else. Barbara Montereale, one of the women in the much reprinted picture of two women photographing each other in Berlusconi's bathroom sent the pictures to the press to be published for the truth to come out. She was paid and flown down to spend time with him. The Italian authorities are starting an investigation according to the Telegraph UK.

The three women, whose accounts of their evening with Mr Berlusconi apparently largely corroborate each other, have been questioned by police in Bari who are investigating Mr Tarantini for allegedly inciting prostitution.

Mr Berlusconi faces increasing pressure to explain whether he knew if the women were being paid to attend his parties and whether he slept with a prostitute.

He is under attack not only from the press and the opposition but also the Roman Catholic Church.

I don't actually care what the Catholic church deems moral and immoral, or what makes them upset. This is not a matter of morality, but a question of exploitation and the use of women by men in power. And this is not the only story, it is a trend with men in power to hire women to do whatever they want with and their bloated sense of self and ego that comes with having so much power creates a vacuum where anything is for sale and purchase. Isn't that what happened with Eliot Spitzer?

I find moral panic and outrage over the often grotesque, exploitative sexual behavior of politicians hilarious. My instinct is to suggest that it is a private matter, just as I don't want you to talk about my private sex life, I don't think anyone's should be fodder for news material. On the other hand, that fact that stories like this come up over and over again merely shows us what men in power think is legitimate behavior. This is not a matter of "i gotcha," but more about the ways entitlement plays out with our beloved "statesmen."

After seeing the video of the Iranian protester Neda being shot through the heart, the world has been forced to think about role of women in the fight for a democratic Iran. Dana writes at Tapped a little bit about why women might be so involved,

Only 13 percent of Iranian women participate in the paid work force, compared to over 25 percent of women in Turkey and over 38 percent in Indonesia. With the permission of a court, fathers can arrange marriages for daughters under age 13. Polygamy is legal, and under Ahmadinejad, Parliament even tried to ease restrictions on the practice. Women cannot run for president, and family law discriminates against them when it comes to divorce, child custody, and inheritance. Dozens of feminist political leaders have been arrested and detained since 2006, when police violently attacked a women's rights demonstration in Tehran, leading to the founding of the One Million Signatures Campaign for women's legal equality.

Women have a lot to lose if Ahmadineajd returns to power. Mousavi clearly has a better stance on gender with more room to change policy concerning the lives of women and specifically because his wife, Zahrad Rahnavard, is a known advocate of women's rights.

It is in historical moments like this that I often reflect on a powerful book I read in my MA program in Women's Studies called the Eloquence of Silence by Marnia Lazreg. I continually go back to the chapter on nationalism and how nationalism produces itself in times of conflict. She calls out feminists that minimized the involvement of women in the Algerian resistance as women somehow being duped into fighting. She was writing about Algeria and the fight against colonization so the context is different, but she discusses specifically this idea of how women in the Middle East are homogenized and not written about in their full complexity.

Similar to previous forms of feminism, the mainstream media sometimes represents women protesting in Iran with shock and awe, even heralding them as fallen angels or martyrs. This is not to downplay the tremendous power being built by women in Iran or to suggest all the coverage has been in this vein, but this shock directly stems from assumptions about a homogenized group of women "Middle Eastern" or "Arabic" that are complacent, oppressed, without agency or will. Ultimately, my hope is that as the conversation expands and more and more talk about the role of women in the historical fight for democracy in Iran, perhaps this trend is changing.

But finally, the video that has been passing around the internet is creating that similar "shock," which is not to say its content isn't jarring. I haven't watched it actually, I can't get myself to. Kate Harding has a good explanation of why she couldn't either and I think the point she makes of exploitation is a solid one. In deciding to finally watch the video, she writes,

President Nicolas Sarkozy says that burqas are "not welcome" in France, and supports a ban on women wearing the burqa in public.

[He] said the Muslim burqa would not be welcome in France, calling the full-body religious gown a sign of the "debasement" of women.

In the first presidential address to parliament in 136 years, Sarkozy faced critics who fear the burqa issue could stigmatize France's Muslims and said he supported banning the garment from being worn in public.

"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.

"The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement -- I want to say it solemnly," he said. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."

Banning the burqa doesn't further women's rights - it limits them. Now, obviously there's a difference in Islamic women's dress from the hijab to the burqa - but legally banning any of them erases all agency from Muslim women. (I'm especially wary of Sarkozy's comments and this potential ban given that France banned headscarves from public schools in 2004.)

If you're interested in hearing Muslim women talking about the hijab, here are a couple of interesting vids.

UPDATE: Jill has more.

Related posts: Only citizenship for some: France denies citizenship to Muslim woman
Malaysian women speak out on hijab

A new study by the Medical Research Council on rape in South Africa reveals that one in four men in South Africa may have raped someone--with most of those attacking more than one victim. Before the critics come out of the woodwork arguing that this is hyperbolic research, be clear, the methodologies were sound; the MRC spoke to 1,738 men in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces.

There are so many disturbing data points as part of this research, but I think rather than talking about how completely horrifying the facts are, it's important to focus on WHY this is happening. It's easy to read these kinds of statistics and throw up our hands as if there is nothing we can do in the face of such atrocity. Instead, we need to support the feminists in South Africa who are obviously well-aware of this issue and doing everything they can to change the culture of violence.

It's clear that many of the men who admitted to raping women had done so multiple times. This makes it even more critical that focus be put, not only on prevention and cultural shifts, but on prosecution. The legal system in South Africa must support women to come forward about their sexual assault experiences so they can help prevent other women from facing the same fate.

Professor Rachel Jewkes of the MRC, who carried out the research, told the BBC's World Today:

The absolute imperative is we have to change the underlying social attitudes that in a way have created a norm that coercing women into sex is on some level acceptable. And it's partly rooted in our incredibly disturbed past and the way that South African men over the centuries have been socialised into forms of masculinity that are predicated on the idea of being strong and tough and the use of force to assert dominance and control over women, as well as other men.

Related Posts:
"Corrective rape" increasing in South Africa.
Child's play includes sexual assault in South Africa
South Africa will only be free when women are...
Women's Day in South Africa

Thanks to all the readers and community poster Lorenc who brought this to our attention.

a) knowledge of sexual health and anatomy are very low among adolescents from Burma's conflict zones;

b) cursory knowledge of condoms and birth control pills is widespread (more than half of teens know of them) but use of family planning and safer sex techniques is incredibly low;

c) the estimated rate of STI's in this population is 7%;

d) both young men and women report high levels of acceptance of gender based violence and male authority over women's reproductive choices: more than half of young men and a third of young surveyed believe that women sometimes deserve to be beaten; more than half of young men think that husbands shoud determine whether or not wives use birth control.

My good friend, colleague, editor of Wiretap Magazine and now Pulitzer Center on Journalism awardee has a series of pieces up about her recent trip to Latvia, one of her most striking being a story on a woman that has been affected by the harsh economic conditions. She has another up about the recent election in Lativa as well. Please check it out along with the rest of the articles at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting that focus on the untold stories in the mainstream media.

Last week was the World Economic Forum on Africa with a critical focus on the role of girls in the economic development of Africa. The World Economic Forums are a series of convenings led by a Swiss non-profit of the same name. Their platform focuses on the role of economic development and its relationship to social development with the simple vision to be, "the foremost organization which builds and energizes leading global communities; the creative force shaping global, regional and industry strategies; the catalyst of choice for its communities when undertaking global initiatives to improve the state the world." I suppose it is always hard to understand the depth of intent of these types of meetings without being present and while I am critical of top-down economic focused development plans for "developing nations," I think they still make profound contributions, if not just in giving us statistical and analytical data.

Maria Eitel, president of Nike Inc., and the person nominated by Obama to be in charge of the Corporation for National and Community Service (they run Americorps and Peacecorps) was at the meeting and took some interesting notes that I found via Huffington Post that included the following themes discussed at the meeting,

1. 1. Investing in girls as smarter economics
2. 2. Economic solutions are often masked by culture
3. 3. It's urgent - we can't wait. We must reach girls before they are 12
4. 4. Girls won't count until we count them...specifically
5. 5. A little bit of support is not enough

I think these are apt conclusions considering the precarious conditions for girls in Africa. But I do wonder is it empowering for these girls to have outside organizations doing development work? Or is that the only way at this point? I struggle with this questions a lot.

Protests have been held in the streets of Iran since the disputed outcome of the presidential election. Community blogger Roja calls it a "nightmare."

People who have been disenfranchised are protesting in Tehran and other cities. You can see some photos on flickr.

Text messaging services were cut off on the day of election and ahmadinejad was declared as the victor only a few hours after the election was over. Election statistics were being announce in a very fishy manner with no detail about which cities and provinces were being counted (completely different from how things were done in all other elections in Iran). Campaign headquarters of other candidates were raided and military was present across Tehran.

...Today Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and most websites of other candidates have been blocked, cellphone connections were shut down in Tehran, political figures have been arrested and people have been beaten and bloodied in the streets. Meanwhile foreign reporters have been asked to leave.

The Guardian has great coverage of what's going on; you should also check out Global Voices Online for blogging coverage.

The post-election protests have also sparked a lot of conversation about the role of new media.

Moderator Isobel Coleman begins by pointing out that there is some controversy over the title of the panel itself. She asks: "Is this a new agenda? Who's agenda is it?"

The first panelist to speak is Lamia Karim (pictured right), from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. She speaks to all of the various human rights discourses, many of which she obviously doesn't think are complex or ethical. "What I am most interested in is grassrooots, indigenous, human rights movements organized, not around an individual human, but much more on a group rights basis.This is taking up these rights discourses but trying to renegotiate with the realities on the ground."

"As feminists we need to really go beyond the rhetoric of the empowerment of women and ask carefully, 'What does it take to empower women? Is money enough? What does it mean to give women access to capital without giving them skills training?' This is the Grameen Bank model--based on neo-liberalism."

Larnia has a book coming out through UC Press in spring 2010 which she describes as "a radical critique of this model, this particular model. I wanted to put it out there because this has become a very innovative way of framing how women, especially in the global south and very poor women, can be economically and socially empowered." Can't wait for that!

Isobel turns to Jill Lester next, who is the ED of The Hunger Project, to ask her what her reaction is to the radical critique of micro lending.

"Unfortunately, I think we're going to be in violent agreement." [audience laughs]

"The Hunger Project believes in an integrated approach to poverty. Part of that is having a micro finance facility. We ask the community to form a micro finance committee of 100% women to set their own agenda."

Next up is Radhika Balakrishnan (pictured left), of the Marymount Manhattan College:
"Rather than talking about the crisis as if it something that fell from the sky, we're calling it the 'manufactured crisis,' caused by deliberate changes that the government made in the regulatory framework."

"We're trying to turn human rights around on them. You want to oppose human rights all over the world? What about the human right violation right here. What about the TARP legislation? There's no transparency. That's public money. This is our institution. Therefore there's a human rights obligation on the state."

Cynthia Enloe (holy amazing) jumps in as the pinch hitter:

"One has to be able to think analytically in order to act. I've hated the theory-practice divide. It's stupid. Anyone who acts, especially if you try to act collectively, if you try to mobilize beyond your best friend, it means you've done some causal thinking. You are an analyst. Out of your action come new analytical understandings. It works and you think why did it work? Or it didn't and you have to go back to the drawing table. We are all analysts. We are all thinkers who think thinking matters. Thinking is in handshake with action."

"If we've learned something from feminist thinking from around the world, it is that you have to think big in order to think small--the guys say that of course--but you also have to think small in order to think big. It works both ways and it's really one of the great strengths of feminist thinking for action."

"We are at a moment now where we've got a pool of schools and an understanding of what needs to be acted upon, some people call it an agenda, and we are at a moment, not just because we have a new president of one country, not just because the institutions of capitalism are wobbly (they're not as wobbly as we'd liked)."

"We really are at a moment amongst all of us, and I mean all of us who aren't in the room, where we have the capacity to think as if it matters and the capaity to know what needs to be acted upon. This is a very, very exciting moment. We shouldn't let cynicsm let that moment pass."

"Think as if it matters and then act as if it affects our thinking."

Washington's former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson called the sentencing part of "a high-stakes poker game" being played by North Korea. He said on NBC's Today show that he thinks negotiations for their "humanitarian release" can begin now that the legal process has been completed. Other South Korean analysts also said they expect the two to be freed following negotiations.

But we should still keep the pressure on. Click here to sign the petition for their release. There are more action suggestions here. Join the Facebook group. And for regular updates, follow LiberateLaura on Twitter. AngryAsianMan also suggests "emailing the State Department at secretary@state.gov demanding they step up negotiations with North Korea."

Using journalists as political pawns and bargaining chips is unfortunately nothing new. Roxana Saberi's case made headlines recently. But this is not only a tactic used by Iran and North Korea. The United States -- yes, the very U.S. that claims to honor freedom of the press and human rights -- is holding an Iraqi journalist named Ibrahim Jassam. He hasn't been charged. An Iraqi court ordered he be released. And yet he remains in U.S. military custody. This is by NO means a suggestion that it's "fair" for North Korea to hold two American journalists. But it's hard for America to have credibility on this issue. Those of us who push for Ling and Lee's release need to expect the same standards of our own government. (See more at the Committee to Protect Journalists.)

Interestingly, Nerdette encountered a lot of push-back when she tried to get folks to sign the petition and take action for Ling and Lee. She writes,

I know that this petition will not directly sway the North Korean government. That doesn't mean its not a meaningful act. That's not why I'm trying to get people to sign it. The point is to keep the energy, the noise and the interest at as heightened a level as we can... so that maybe the media will pay attention to what's going with Laura and Euna... As we come together - online or even off (there was a vigil for Laura and Euna last week) - we are building capacity. Yes, none of us are diplomats, but that doesn't mean we don't have an opinion. Moreover, why would anyone want to silence that? Isn't that the problem with North Korea? That they censure their people? Even if you think the petition is dumb, futile or pointless, luckily the internet is so vast there is space for me and 13,000 other people to publicly declare that we want Euna and Laura to come home. The idea that someone would tell me "don't try, you look ridiculous" just makes me more committed to becoming even noisier.

Those are wise words for any action campaign. Even if it doesn't achieve the desired result, the very act of collectively standing up and saying that we are watching, that we will defend human rights, that we value the right to free speech and fair trials, that, in and of itself, is valuable and important. 

More on Euna Lee and Laura Ling from Matt Yglesias, Jezebel, and Latoya Peterson.

Ipas has partnered with filmmaker Lisa Russell to produce Not Yet Rain, a documentary about women's access to abortion in Ethiopia.

Events like the murder of Dr. Tiller last week highlight the real challenges we face here when it comes to access to abortion, but it's also important to remember what challenges are faced by women abroad. Ethiopia has one of the most liberal abortion laws in all of the African continent but access is still a challenge there.

You can watch the documentary at www.notyetrain.org.

I had an awesome opportunity this week to attend the Association of Women in Radio and Television's (AWRT) annual Gracie Awards. The Gracies are a beloved tradition among broadcast journalists, a time for the women in the industry to bond and celebrate one another for the good work they're doing. I could do a fairly long analysis of the ways in which the award show was totally de-politicized (other than the content of the shows that were awarded), as to make it a little ridiculous, but it's Friday and I'm feeling frivolous. So... the celebs were in full effect. I kid you not, I got butted away from singing Ruby's song with Amy Poehler (swoon!) and Will Arnett by one of the Real Housewives of New York City (don't worry, they weren't getting an award, just presenting one). Suze Orman was there (just as scary in person as I find her on TV), as was Rachel Ray (way more endearing in person than I find her on TV), and Kathy Griffin dropped the f-bomb about 20 times in 3 minutes. Niecy Nash hosted with tons of humor in a fabulous olive green dress.

The next day the regional Gracies were held. Far less fabulous, but very fun. I gave some quick remarks and got to give a scholarship (from AWRT and Dove) to awesome NYU grad Elly Park, who made an amazing film called Sea Woman. It's about a community of women in South Korea who have made their living for generations by diving (no scuba gear!) for precious metals. The fact that they were the breadwinners in their families gave them societal power, but as this area because more touristy, and the men in the families began working in hotels and cafes, the power dynamic shifted. Fascinating stuff. Here's an eight minute excerpt of Elly's movie:

Congrats Elly!

There have been some really good posts from around the blogosphere about Obama, Cairo and women's rights. Here are a few that caught my attention.

Sarah MC takes Obama to task on not being afraid to offend religious fundamentalists and make a statement about state sanctioned religious law.

Peter Daou has a very strong and powerful criticism to Obama's discussion of women's rights.

Dana responds to Peter at the American Prospect and reminds us there are far greater problems facing women in fundamentalist regimes outside of the hijab.

Yolanda at the Kitchen Table on Muslim women and the concept of "choice."

Tami has a few thoughts on nuance and messaging in the Obama speech along with the full video and transcript.

Add more in comments as you read em! And what did you think about Obama's remarks on "women in the Arab world?"

A Powerful Noise is a new documentary about three different women activists around the globe: Hanh, an HIV-positive widow in Vietnam, Nada, a survivor of the Bosnian war and a community organizer, and Jacqueline, who works in the slums of Bamako, Mali to educate young women. Here's the trailer:

It was visually stunning. The shots of all three locations were exquisite, really bringing you into the full sensory experience of these diverse locations. The work these women are doing were also deeply inspiring. These are not superhero stories in the typical conventions of the genre--women who have done more, better, faster than any other activist. Instead, and thankfully, these are stories of fairly ordinary women with tremendous courage. You don't finish watching the film and think, "I could never be like that." You finish and think, "I could do that if I really drew on my inner resources." In other words, the film pushes you to be more courageous without presenting a paralyzing model of activist or feminist perfection.

My only wish was that each story contained more of an arc. As it was, I was always interested in what these women were doing, but I was never pulled in by a really riveting unsolved question or sense of tension. I think it would have gone a long way in getting film seen, not just by people like me who are interested in women's activism around the world, but people who are interested in good stories. They've certainly got the incredible visuals going for them.

You can now order the DVD from their website, and check out all the great resources there as well.

Thanks to Rosario for the heads up.

Check out Jonathan Torgovnik's amazing collection of photographs of the children of rape victims in the Congo. I became aware of his work because of a devastating photo essay in this month's Mother Jones Magazine, which you should all check out if you get a chance (it's not available online).

A bunch o' peace organizations have created a coalition to push a nationwide day of reflection on and renunciation of military escalation in Afghanistan. I'm totally sympathetic to their cause, and always a fan of stepping back and considering non-military solutions, but also feel confused on this issue. As I've written previously in this space, I'm most concerned with what the nonviolent citizens of Afghanistan, especially women, want the U.S. to do.

Contrary to the tired old rhetoric about the U.S. soldiers swooping in and and "saving" poor, repressed Afghan women, there is a vital movement of Afghan women working to change their own communities and cultures. It is these women that I want to hear from, these women whose opinions I trust the most. And yet, it's hard to figure out--all the way over here in my little Brooklyn hovel--who these women are and if there is any sort of consensus on what it is that they want from the U.S. When I was at the Code Pink Mother's Day Vigil, an Afghani woman spoke about the horrific conditions that so many Afghan women are facing. After she left the stage, an interesting discussion took place between her and some of the Code Pink members in which she asserted that, contrary to the peace movement's assumptions, Afghan women want the U.S. military to stay in Afghanistan. "They don't feel safe," she said. "The international presence makes them feel safer."

Of course, she was just one woman. It would be reductive to expect all U.S. women to think unilaterally on such a complex issue (think presidential election 2008 and all the ridiculous "THE women vote" talk), so why would Afghani women be any different? This video, produced by Code Pink, features a dynamic woman who opposes military escalation:

So here I am, paralyzed by all the complexity. Anyone have bright ideas or trusted sources to contribute? If you're convinced that military escalation is wrong, here are some things you can do about it.

*Trigger Warning*

If you know anything about femicide in Mexico, then you already know it is an epidemic of gross proportions. The mutilation, rape and murder of women along the US/Mexico border has become an annual statistic, with little mainstream media coverage and even less national outcry. And the worse part of it is that many of these disappearances are not even investigated, they literally disappear, vanish and are wiped from legibility.

From a piece written in 2004 in Off Our Backs Corie Osborn writes,

For the past decade, a sexual genocide has raged virtually unnoticed in Juarez, the largest city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Approximately 370 women have been found murdered in the State of Chihuahua over the past decade, according to an Amnesty International report published last August. At least 137 women were sexually assaulted prior to their death.

The majority of these murders occurred in and around Ciudad Jurez; however, in the past three years incidences of murder and disappearances have risen in the nearby state capital Ciudad Chihuahua.

Many of the violent murders that have taken place in Juarez follow a similar pattern. Authorities believe that 93 of the victims fit the same rape-murder pattern, which indicates that they are all the work of a serial killer or killers.

Why has a killer who has murdered more than twice the number of people as the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy combined, been able to continue terrorizing Ciudad Juarez for ten years with only vague interest from the international community or even from the Mexican federal government? And who is responsible for the killings of the other hundreds of women found dead in Juarez over the past decade?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are veiled by the power of a dominant machismo culture and what appears to be a police conspiracy preventing a thorough investigation of the murders.

Two years ago the documentary On the Edge: Femicide in Cuidad Juarez took on the horrific examples and sheer numbers of women disappearing in Juarez. The whole thing is up on youtube (in ten parts) and I strongly recommend watching it.

Here is the first part.

I bring this up today is because it was released yesterday that this epidemic hasn't stopped and that the disappearance of women in the Baja peninsula outnumber those disappeared in Chihuahua.

In Mexicali and other parts of Baja California, women's murders tend to get "buried" in the avalanche of news about violent crime, which includes hundreds of slayings, numerous kidnappings and street-side shoot outs since last year alone. While femicides in Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua garnered international headlines in recent years, little international attention was paid to women's murders in Baja California.

A report issued earlier this year by the femicide commission of the lower house of the Mexican Congress, found 105 women were murdered in Baja California during 2006-2007. Using official numbers, more women were murdered in Baja California than in Chihuahua (84 female murder victims) during the same comparable period.

In 2006-07 Baja California ranked eighth place nationally for women's homicides, falling slightly behind Mexican states with much larger populations including Jalisco, Veracruz and Puebla, according to the Mexican Congressional report.

This epidemic shows us that women's bodies are considered expendable and between patterns of globalization and a corrupt government the bodies of young women are not important and not worth investigating.

The National Party Government of New Zealand decided to abolish the Department of Labour's Pay and Employment Equity Unit yesterday, saying that they had to reprioritize funding and this just didn't make the cut. Even worse, our reader Melissa reports, is that none of the national news is covering the critical cut. She sent along this link, which too "a bit of a mission to find." An excerpt:

This shows an absolute disregard for the thousands of women workers in this country whose work is undervalued simply because they are women, said CTU President Helen Kelly. This decision destroys hopes that the unfairness in women's pay will be rectified soon.

"This is the second time that the National Party has rejected pay equity," said Kelly. "They dumped pay equity legislation as soon as they took office in 1990, and now they have done it again. Both the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Women's Affairs claim that National has been committed to gender equality since 1972. Their words of support for equal pay for women are utterly hollow."

Women in New Zealand are paid on average at least 12 per cent less than men doing the same jobs. In the public sector the gap is as much as 35 per cent.

Thanks to Melissa for the heads up.

*Trigger Warning*

Not so much. Last week women's organizers in Kenya decided to go on a sex strike to ply their husbands into ending political divisions.

via the Root.

The Women's Development Organization spearheaded a weeklong strike in which they called on Kenyan women to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers until they put an end to the political divisions that threaten to destroy the Grand Coalition Government of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga. The act of conjugal disobedience was straight from the pages of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. The women involved even paid prostitutes not to ply their trade during the seven-day holdout.

As author Lisa Crooms concludes, if only it were that simple. Rape has consistently been used as a weapon of war in Kenya by British soldiers and gang rape has become commonplace. Despite seeming like a creative organizing effort, the implications are not good.

Kenya has also been a country in which gang rape has been part of the violence the sex strikers are trying to force their men to end. Add to this politically exacerbated sexual violence, claims of widespread rape of primarily Samburu and Maasai women by British soldiers. Add those who have been raped and sexually assaulted Somali refugees in Kenya, as well as women and men in Kenya's western Mt. Elgon district near the Ugandan border who have been violated by members of the Sabaot Land Defense Force. Underscoring the widespread link between sex and conflict are the thriving illegal sex trade and its accompanying trafficking of women and girls, the continued refusal to criminalize marital rape, and the sexual abuse, violence, coercion and discrimination that render Kenyan women and girls particularly vulnerable to being infected with HIV/AIDS, and a sex strike seems like a dangerously futile means of coercion.

The proposed sex strike does little to change the way that Kenyan women are viewed and valued in both the public and the private spheres where women are disempowered and largely absent from public positions of power.

I think what it does show is that Kenyan women are acting on the fact that their sexuality is being controlled by state and parochial power, it is just a matter of having the means to organize effectively. It is a sad state of affairs that they are trying to leverage their own bodies and that it is considered laughable since their person hood is not even recognized, let alone their right to consent to sex. Ugh.

Back in 2004, we were excited to announce the beginning of an international magazine about women and activism called World Pulse. Well, World Pulse had a rocky road in print, migrating online to become PulseWire, another development that we were proud to announce. And now, we're excited to let you know that World Pulse is back in print and the online home is thriving. Check out the latest issue for everything from exploring the benefits and often overlooked dangers of microlending to Best Buy's new women's program called WOLF to self care for activists to new media activism across the globe. There's nothing like World Pulse out there, so we all need to heartily support its continued survival--whatever form it takes. Congrats to editor Jensine Larsen and her team for their determination and vision.

Samantha Orobator, a 20-year-old British woman faces death by firing squad for allegedly carrying 1.1 pounds of heroin into Laos. To make matters worse, she is pregnant. Doctors attest that she must have been impregnated after her capture; Orobator's mother fears that she was raped in prison. CNN has more.

Amnesty International has some crucial background information on Laos and its ongoing human rights violations, mostly involving the persecution of indigenous people and censored media. On prison conditions:

Lack of access by independent human rights monitors prevented an accurate assessment of the number of political prisoners and prison conditions, but reports continued of ill-treatment, lack of food, overcrowding and inadequate medical care.

Contact human rights group Reprieve, who is trying to make sure that Orobator receives a fair trial and that her right to bodily integrity is protected.

Thanks to multiple readers for the heads up.

UPDATE: Orobator will not be executed, but will she receive a fair trial?

Remember the new Shia law passed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that not only potentially allows child marriage and marital rape but also prohibits women from leaving the home? Well, it looks like the law will now be amended, says President Karzai, who is now claiming he "did not know all the contents of the law."

I can't say I completely buy that, although I'll admit I was confused he signed it in the first place considering he's made efforts in the past to combat child marriage. (Some folks predicted it was a political move by Karzai for more votes.) Either way, this is good news.

Via UN Dispatch.

Sorry, not OK to rename the swine flu to the "Mexican" flu. Channing Kennedy writes at the Racewire blog,

Let me be among the first to say that the move by some to rename 'swine flu' to 'Mexican flu' is offensive on its face and in its roots. It does everything to fuel unfounded fears, and it politicizes a serious health crisis in a thinly veiled effort to stoke hatred toward an already-vulnerable group. Worst of all, it doesn't even blame the right people!

And better yet, renames it to Spring Breaker flu. Go read the rest. High-larious.

Check out this video by Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley reporting from Tokyo on the women who are speaking out about the problem of domestic violence in Japan.

Transcript after the jump.

Take that! (I know Ann linked to this in the WFR, but I just had to post the full vid.)

Via Shakesville, who has the transcript.

From RH Reality Check:

Researchers Eran Bendavid, MD, and Jayanta Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, from Stanford University recently released findings from their study on the effectiveness of PEPFAR's programs...The report, released in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that the U.S. effort to curb the global HIV/AIDS epidemic has been a mixed bag. The study found that significant progress has been made in the areas of care and treatment, a laudable accomplishment of the first phase of implementation. But the report also confirmed what too many of us had seen coming - we have not made any significant progress in curbing new infections because our prevention efforts have failed.

Related posts:
Abstinence-only funding at home and abroad
The chastity industrial complex

A group of women from three different continents convened in Seoul, Korea to discuss the international state of oppression via patriarchy and to come up with some new forms of activism to counter-act the harsh realities faced by most women through militarism, economic oppression, sexism, imperialism and fundamentalism. Their solution was to create a School of Feminism and a network for what they call "Glocal" Activism.

The network will start with 5 glocal points (GPs) in China, South Korea, Mexico and South Africa.

"To deal with global economic crisis, we need to explore new attempts and forces. Mutual interaction between local and global will bring about new energy for feminist activism. It should be based on green (ecology)-red (Marxism)-Purple (Feminism)," says Patricia Martha from Mexico.

Glocal is a combination of 'global' and 'local.' The organisers say this is created to refer to mutual responses and relationships between 'local and local', and 'local and global'; different from the existing concept of the South, the third world or transnational, for instance.

This is a much needed initiative as women's rights continue to be ignored or scaled back world-wide. Pass this post on, let's make sure they get tons of international recognition and support.

You can read more about the entire network here and check out the website for the Network for Glocal Activism.

Thanks to Jonathon for the link!

Add this one to the list of firsts under the Obama Administration. From HuffPo:

The White House made history on Monday. And it wasn't just by loosening travel and remittance restrictions for individuals looking to reach out to family members in Cuba.

When Dan Restrepo, President Barack Obama's senior adviser on Latin America, addressed the Spanish-language media in their native tongues, he is believed to have been the first person to speak a language other than English during a White House briefing.

I wrote about the new changes to Cuba policy a few weeks ago, so you can see my thoughts on that post.

I appreciate that the White House's interaction with the press corp is beginning to reflect the bilingualism of our country, but also the world.

h/t to Tanya

From the Guardian:

[T]he UN has expressed fears that there could be a shortfall in money for reproductive health services as donors reduce funding and the costs of healthcare rise.

...Figures released last week showed that despite increases in funding for population assistance over the past few years, which reached $8.1m in 2007, the estimated rise to $11.2m this year is in doubt because of the economic downturn.

Donor funding for family planning - as a percentage of all population assistance - has already fallen from $723m in 1995 to $338m in 2007.

For more information on international family planning and how you can help, check out these great organizations: WEDO, MADRE, and IPAS.

The New York Times and others covered a new study regarding China's longstanding one-child policy that many of us know has resulted in a preference for male children over females; women have not only had to give up their female children to orphanages, but are enduring forced abortions and sterilizations.

According to the new findings, there is now a gap of 32 million more males than females under the age of 20 in China.

The researchers suggested that enforcing a ban on sex-selective abortions would solve this problem, attributing the gap to just that. As some have misinterpreted sex-selective abortions as "family planning got awry" in the past (for example, the Bush administration used it as a reason to defund the United Nations Populations Fund), let's reiterate that this is not family planning by any means. After all, coerced abortion and forced sterilizations doesn't involve much of a "choice," does it?

But would enforcing a ban on sex-selective abortions allow lines to be muddied regarding the right to choose? (Not to mention many girls would still be orphaned.) So is repealing the one-child policy the answer?

Literally.

I know Ann already linked to this story in the WFR, but I thought it deserved a full post.

Two ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspapers have altered a photo of Israel's new cabinet, removing two female ministers.

Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver were grouped with the rest of the 30-member cabinet for their inaugural photo.

But Yated Neeman newspaper digitally changed the picture by replacing them with two men. The Shaa Tova newspaper blacked the women out.

See the pics above: The one on top is the original, the second is the one that was altered. Women in politics are often made invisible, but this shit is ridiculous.

We don't know how we missed this! The first Global Symposium on Engaging Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality took place this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, concluding today. One of the things that came out of the conference was a Declaration and Call to Action. Here's a snippet:

We come from eighty countries. We are men and women, young and old, working side by side with respect and shared goals. We are active in community organizations, religious and educational institutions; we are representatives of governments, NGOs and the United Nations. We speak many languages, we look like the diverse peoples of the world and carry their diverse beliefs and religions, cultures, physical abilities, and sexual and gender identities. We are indigenous peoples, immigrants, and ones whose ancestors moved across the planet. We are fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, partners and lovers, husbands and wives.

What unites us is our strong outrage at the inequality that still plagues the lives of women and girls, and the self-destructive demands we put on boys and men. But even more so, what brings us together here is a powerful sense of hope, expectation, and possibility for we have seen the capacity of men and boys to change, to care, to cherish, to love passionately, and to work for justice for all.

While I've seen so many great local efforts by men working towards gender equality (like on college campuses, in organizational programs, etc.), to see activism on a global level like this is incredible. Check out the rest.

This was an unfortunate move prior to the election in an effort to bow to fundamentalists.

In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.

"It is one of the worst bills passed by the parliament this century," fumed Shinkai Karokhail, a woman MP who campaigned against the legislation. "It is totally against women's rights. This law makes women more vulnerable."

Women's rights advocates are suggesting that this law essentially legalizes rape. Via Independent UK and more at Huffington Post and Think Progress.

Check out community poster ArmyVetJen's take (who beat us to the punch) on the new statistics just released by the Pentagon showing that there has been a 9% increase in the reports of sexual assault in the military over the past year. AP reports:

The Pentagon said it received 2,923 reports of sexual assault across the military in the 12 months ending Sept. 30 2008. That's about a 9 percent increase over the totals reported the year before, but only a fraction of the crimes presumably being committed.

Among the cases reported, only a small number went to military courts, officials acknowledged.

The Pentagon office that collects the data estimates that only 10 percent to 20 percent of sexual assaults among members of the active duty military are reported -- a figure similar to estimates of reported cases in the civilian sphere.

The military statistics, required by Congress, cover rape and other assaults across the approximately 1.4 million people in uniform.

The director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office says that the increase in reports is likely due to more women feeling confident enough to come forward rather than attributing it to an actual increase in sexual violence. While that would be great, as Cara says, there hasn't been any reported increase in awareness around sexual assault by the Pentagon so I'm not inclined to immediately buy that contention. (Also considering prosecutions are still low as ever.)

Reports in Iraq and Afghanistan have rose by about a quarter. You can find the report here. Feministe also has more.

The new blog Akimbo of the International Women's Health Coalition has a great post and video up about how despite female condom's bad rep, they're getting great feedback from the countries that IWHC works in.

(This is not to mention the FDA's recent announcement of the approval of the new female condom, FC2, which is a thinner material and hella cheaper.)

Check it.

The Guardian and others have been reporting on the growing trend in South Africa where lesbians are raped and beaten in efforts to "correct" or "cure" their sexual orientation. And the authorities are not doing much about it.

After Eudy Simelane, the leading player on the Banyana Banyana national female soccer team was brutally raped and murdered last April, more awareness has been raised, but the prevalence of this horrific trend has only grown with it. One lesbian and gay support group in Cape Town says they get 10 new cases of "corrective rape" every week. And that's just in Cape Town.

And many of these cases result in murder, but with a barely existent conviction rate; there has only been one conviction out of 31 reported cases in the last decade. (The number of actual incidences are predicted to be much higher.)

In response, ActionAid and others have released a report, Hate Crimes: the rise of corrective rape in South Africa, bringing to light the prevalence of the "practice" as well as the failure of the South African legal system to take recourse; hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation is not recognized under South African law. On sentencing of Simelan's case, the judge said that her orientation had "no significance" in the murder.

Check out The Guardian's video of interviews with some survivors. (Trigger warning.)

The UN estimates that the expulsions would leave 1.1 million people without food, 1.5 million without health care and at least one million without drinking water.

As Mark Goldberg wrote recently, the NGO crackdown was expected.

This, however, is no reason to shy away from the court's intervention in Darfur. Rather, the arrest warrant provides critical leverage over the government of Sudan, which the Obama administration can use to coerce it into cooperating more fulsomely in a credible peace process. Under the ICC's statute, the Security Council has the authority to suspend proceedings should it decide that doing so is in the interest of peace. This is the carrot to the proverbial stick of an arrest warrant.

Problem is, the Obama administration hasn't yet really stepped up to use that leverage. And even if this plan manages to bring Bashir to the negotiating table, it's clear that holding Sudanese leaders accountable comes at a price for civilians who are already suffering.

Further reading... UN Dispatch has a round-up of reactions to the Bashir warrant. And check out Richard Just's thorough essay on "everything we know about Darfur" in The New Republic, which also has a roundtable on Obama and Darfur.

On a related note, Women's eNews calls for more women UN peacekeepers

via AFP.

US President Barack Obama announced Friday the creation of a new foreign policy position designed to tackle global women's issues.

Obama named Melanne Verveer, an aide in former president Bill Clinton's administration, as ambassador-at-large for international women's issues. She will serve at the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The appointment, which has to be approved by the Senate, "is unprecedented and reflects the elevated importance of global women?s issues to the president and his entire administration," the White House said in a statement.

Clinton has put efforts to improve the lot of women at the heart of boosting international development, which she says must be an "equal partner" with diplomacy and defense in US foreign policy.

I am feeling this, it is working for me. Thoughts?

There really are no words for this kind of case.

A community poster already covered the uproar by the Brazilian Roman Catholic Church of the abortion of a 9-year old girl who was raped by her stepfather. This is despite the fact that abortion is legal in Brazil in cases of rape and when the woman's life is in danger, which both applies to this girl (as she not only weighs just 80 pounds but was pregnant with twins):

The Catholic Church tried to intervene to prevent the abortion going ahead but the procedure was carried out on Wednesday.

Now a Church spokesman says all those involved, including the child's mother and the doctors, are to be excommunicated.

The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, told Brazil's TV Globo that the law of God was above any human law.

He said the excommunication would not apply to the child because of her age, but would affect all those who ensured the abortion was carried out.

How merciful of them.

I have talked a little bit about the process of moving and living at home and some issues it has brought up. I haven't in a while, but this article in the Huffington Post reminded me that my dad recently, concerned with my lack of romantic prospects in my life, offered, in the most friendly and optimistic way, to create a profile for me in indianmarriage.com or some such website like that. It was so amusing that I actually laughed, only to realize he was serious.

Although this article is about parents in India trying to set their children living in the US up with potential mates, it captures some of my same reservations, along with a brief discussion of mating practices in modern transnational South Asian culture.

Historically, evolution of matrimonial matchmaking in India can be traced to the late 19th century, said Rochona Majumdar, assistant professor at the University of Chicago's Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Marriages arranged by family, both extended, or by the parent of the man or woman involved, usually were made on the basis of matching income levels, caste and the like. The process of finding a suitable partner went through many changes, said Majumdar.

"First it was through caste journals and caste magazines, gradually it moved to newspapers, now from newspapers to online sites," she said.

Modern technology, however, highlights the differences in expectations of parents regarding the age at which they think their children should get married and the speed at which they take that step, and, on the other side, the children's desire to take more time in choosing life partners.

"People who are on the matrimonial Web site probably want to get married soon, and I didn't want to get married to someone I just met," said Deokule.

Yeah, I am even more radical than that, I don't want to get married at all. Plus, I don't need one more social networking site to bog me down. Dating sucks we all know it and some feel they have to do it. I don't really do it, that is not because I am against it, but because it is generally a waste of time. But I definitely don't need my parents helping me out with it. Sorry Dad.

Yesterday marked the start of the 53rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations. I have to say, I miss working in the international sphere, and CSW was one of my favorite events. (If you want a history of CSW, click here.)

This year, the priority theme being discussed is "The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS."

From UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro's opening remarks yesterday:

Imbalances and inequalities in the sharing of responsibilities between women and men persist in both the private and public spheres, and in relation to both paid and unpaid work. Most domestic and care work, for example, is done by women and girls in developed and developing countries alike.

As a result, women face restrictions in employment, education and training, and in participation in public life. And men are constrained in playing an active part in the lives of their families. Families, communities and society as a whole suffer the consequences.

The HIV and AIDS pandemic has illustrated clearly that a range of stakeholders -- including the State, private sector and civil society -- must play a role in caring for people. This is an urgent task that requires a comprehensive approach.

If you're in New York and interested in CSW, you need not be working for a NGO or the UN to get involved. All week, parallel events are being held that are open to the public. For example, this Friday at Barnard College, the UNRISD Gender and Development Programme is holding a conference, "The Political & Social Economics of Care." (I'll def be there; it looks really interesting, plus a friend of mine organized it.)

If you're not in New York, you can follow along with CSW on the UN's Women Watch website.

UNICEF released this pretty compelling video, "Missing" to bring attention to the prevalence of maternal mortality in the world. Their statement:

"We call these women 'missing' because their deaths could have been avoided. In fact, 80 per cent of maternal deaths could be averted if women had access to essential maternal health services.

We know where and how these women are dying, and we have the resources to prevent these deaths. Yet, maternal mortality is still one of the most neglected problems internationally."

Via UN Dispatch.

This is good news. Via RH Reality Check, we learn that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intends to name Michael Posner, the current president of Human Right First, as Assistant Secretary of State.

Posner has a 30-year history involved in human rights work, with a focus on refugees' rights, the protection of and justice for torture victims as well as strengthening accountability for war crimes. He also helped found the Fair Labor Association, which promotes corporate accountability for working conditions in the apparel industry.

You can check out his bio here, but all in all, this dude seems too good to be true. And for that, HRC is our homegirl today.

The New Zealand government has stopped investigations into pay inequity issues because they decided it would be too costly. Huh.

The investigations were set up by the previous Government and include research into why social workers at Child, Youth and Family are paid 9.5% less than their male counterparts and into inequities in female school support workers' wages.

Cancelling the investigations, State Services Minister Tony Ryall said addressing pay inequity would "generate an additional form of remuneration pressure that is unaffordable in the current economic and fiscal environment".

Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly says working women deserve better.

"It is one thing to urge pay restraint in the public sector but quite another to endorse the unfair underpayment of these workers. The Government is effectively telling its own female employees that it doesn't care if it is discriminating against them.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I guess costliness doesn't matter so long as it's coming out of women's pockets.

There's a really disturbing campaign of hate being directed at Cerrie Burnell, a host of the children's television show CBeebies, who was born missing the lower section of her right arm.

"Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?" wrote one adult on the CBeebies website. Other adults claimed that their children were asking difficult questions as a result. "I didn't want to let my children watch the filler bits on The Bedtime Hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter's mind and possibly caused sleep problems," said one message. The BBC received nine other complaints by phone.

Charming. In fact, some of the comments were so disturbing, they had to be removed from the site. WTF is wrong with these parents?

Burnell responded recently, saying that the negative comments "are indicative of a wider problem of disabled representation in the media as a whole, which is why it's so important for there to be more disabled role models in every area of the media."

Ampersand nails it:

Even if a child is disturbed by seeing Burnell's arm, so what? It's up to the parents to explain to the child that all people are different -- not up to the BBC to fire their host so that parents are spared having to parent their children.

That said, I think we know the core issue here isn't frightened children -- it's prejudiced adults.

And it took a white director to make sure we got there! OK, OK, I will try to be less cynical. I know, I should be totally psyched that Slumdog Millionare won so many Oscars, including best picture. Any visibility for South Asians is good right?

Right. And wrong. I personally didn't think Slumdog Millionare was an Oscar worthy movie. I thought it was creative, beautiful, interesting and had a great soundtrack, but I didn't understand how it was Oscar worthy. Where was the complexity of the characters? Where was the deep cross-cultural analysis that helps us understand the South Asian condition? Where was there any agency displayed in the character of Latika? How did this story help the plight of the South Asian national citizen outside of reinforcing stereotypes of India?

I guess I have more questions than I have answers. And the questions I ask were certainly not the ones considered by the Academy in choosing this film. To be clear, I loved this movie and I saw it twice. The second time I brought my family, and my father a staunch Indian nationalist, hated it. He didn't like the way it portrayed India. I do not hold the same politics as my father and I felt that it actually held more truth about poverty and corruption in India than we would like to admit. But once you sift through the amazing imagery, adorable kids and soundtrack you are left with a coming of age story, only the story is not really for Indian audiences.

And despite its attempt at a narrative of social progress, Slumdog reinforces that which is hopes to ameliorate. Mitu Sengupta has an excellent piece up at Alternet about the policy implications of films like Slumdog Millionare that lump together the stereotypes of the poor.

It is ironic that "Slumdog", for all its righteousness of tone, shares with many Indian political and social elites a profoundly dehumanizing view of those who live and work within the country's slums. The troubling policy implications of this perspective are unmistakeably mirrored by the film. Since there are no internal resources, and none capable of constructive voice or action, all "solutions" must arrive externally.

After a harrowing life in an anarchic wilderness, salvation finally comes to Jamal, a Christ-like figure, in the form of an imported quiz-show, which he succeeds in thanks to sheer, dumb luck, or rather, because "it is written." Is it also "written," then, that the other children depicted in the film must continue to suffer? Or must they, like the stone-faced Jamal, stoically await their own "destiny" of rescue by a foreign hand?

Go read her whole piece, it gives a vastly different view on the film than what has been discussed in the mainstream media.

Finally, as a feminist, I had a really hard time with the character of Latika. I understand that in Boyle's imagination, Latika was like any third world woman. A helpless victim that can't speak up for herself and stays in an abusive relationship, until she is saved by another man. Outside of oversimplifying the complex ways that women of color experience AND resist violence within their own communities, it reinforces stereotypes of helpless third world women. I must say, I tried to ignore this plotline in the beginning. Perhaps if I thought about it too much, I would come out against a film that is supposed to "help" my people or because I just wanted to enjoy something for once without the nagging reality that this story doesn't make sense without the depiction of a violent patriarchy. But the unfortunate reality is that in order for South Asians to make it into the mainstream, they have to cater to the lowest common denominator of universal experience. And that is of course one where women have no agency, especially in the context of the third world. I mean that is why we are fighting all these wars right? To save women!

So yes, of course I am excited that Slumdog did so well at the Oscars. It makes me happy that all these South Asian actors are in the spotlight along with the genius of AR Rahman and MIA. However, it is only one step and we must resist the desire to homogenize the Indian experience that we know so little of in actuality, based on a fictitious film directed by a white man.

President Obama has announced that he will send an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan over the next few months in an effort to curb the increase in violence. But he's not focusing on military solutions alone. He told journalist Peter Mansbridge, of the CBC:

I am absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region solely through military means. We're going to have to use diplomacy. We're going to have to use development.

And what are the implications of all of this for the women of Afghanistan? A long time ago I saw activist Malai Joya speak. At age 29, she was the youngest person to become a member of the Afghan Parliament, one of 68 women elected to the 249-seat National Assembly, or Wolesi Jirga, in 2005. But after she spoke out against the fundamentalists and former warlords in parliament, her life was threatened and she was suspended.

When I heard her speak shortly after her suspension, I was so moved by her insistence that the best thing for the people of Afghanistan was to have American troops out ASAP. But with the violence escalating, 40% more this year than last, and girls being doused with acid just for trying to go to school, would she still prefer that U.S. troops stay out? RAWA, the organization Joya is connected to, still hasn't put out any sort of formal reaction to Obama's announcement.

Amnesty International is pressuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to work with the UN to put pressure on the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to end sexual violence and the recruitment and use of child soldiers. As an email alert notes, these are deeply entwined issues:

Rape is used in the conflict as a calculated strategy to destabilize opposition groups as well as promote fear and submission. It is not unusual for mothers and daughters to be raped in front of their families and villages. Human rights activists working to end violence against women often face grave threats of violence themselves.

Justine Masika Bihamba is one such activist. Because of her work to end violence against women, she and her family have been targeted.

Justine described the current situation in Congo as a war against women. "When two sides fight, the one punishes the other by raping women," she said.

Putting an end to the rampant sexual violence and the use of child soldiers is essential to ensuring peace in the region.

This video is heartbreaking:

During her confirmation hearings, Clinton herself said of violence against women:

I view these issues as central to our foreign policy, not as adjunct or auxiliary or in any way lesser than all of the other issues that we have to confront.

Click here to sign a letter to Secretary of State Clinton, asking her to work for peace for women and civilians in the DRC.

I am always very critical of videos that try and show "other" ways of being, but I actually found this to be extremely interesting and a solid example of how matriarchal traditions allow for a type of freedom that modernization believes it invented. As feminist thinkers we have parsed this hegemony of dialog that somehow equates women's liberation with colonization and modernization, but it still gets lost when it makes it to the mainstream.

Check it out.

Thanks to Heather for the link and pointing out that the Wikipedia entry for Matriarchy calls them "hypothetical."

I suppose it is asking too much that when we cover the politics of complicated artists such as M.I.A., we not call them terrorist. In last week's NYTimes Thomas Fuller calls her politics "dissonant" and implicates her with supporting a well-known "terrorist" organization. Being a transnational feminist is exhausting since you have to problematize everything with quotations. Ha!

Let me not pretend I know any more about the conflict in Sri Lanka than you do or this reporter. But, in general, when a group is marked as "terrorist" by Europe and the United States, I read that implication with a grain of salt, feeling the need to hear both sides of the story. It has been a long time since we have actually waged a just war and have frequently labeled groups fighting for their own land, rights, freedom and resources as terrorist. This is not to suggest that the Tamil Tigers, who Fuller claims that M.I.A. supports, haven't been ruthless in their tactics, but to ask us to read both sides of every story.

And perhaps all of this would be more serious if M.I.A. were a politician, not a recording artist, but I can't help but see irony in implicating a woman-that performed on stage at the Grammies 9 months pregnant, has made clearly feminist statements about the recording industry and its sexism and has discussed intersectional identities within the context of Eurocentrism-with support of "terrorists." M.I.A. already pushes the average viewer out of their comfort zone, calling her a terrorist empathizer is the next logical step.

Would a white male folk singer be labeled the same if he were to show direct or indirect support for an international cause? Is M.I.A. only legible as an "other" because she is foreign and South Asian? Can she not have complicated political analysis without being implicated in supporting terrorists? I mean, seriously.

Boondoggle has more.

UPDATE: More from Amnesty International on M.I.A. and her criticism of the Sinhalese government and how this criticism does not make her a supporter of the Tamil Tigers. Furthermore, this assertion has led to a decrease in the attention genocide in Sri Lanka is getting from the international community.

I really just love her.

During a humanitarian trip to Sierra Leone supporting a tetanus-vaccination project, Salma Hayek cross-nursed a sick newborn. (ABC made the mistake of saying the child was born on the same day as her daughter - they actually just share the same birthday.) I tend to feel similarly with Hoyden About Town's post on this. (Watch the entire segment here.)

What are folks' thoughts?

A few weeks ago a group of what I would call 'Men's rights activists,' in India walked into a bar and physically assaulted all the women patrons that they believed were drinking freely and exhibiting obscene behavior. Because apparently, public beatings of women by hordes of men is polite and decent behavior. Let us resist the urge to suggest that given the cultural climate of India these women shouldn't have been in a bar. Fuck that. They are revolutionaries.

Those outraged by the bar attacks have started a facebook group called, "Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women." For Valentine's Day, they are sending Pramod Mutalik, the head of conservative anti-woman group responsible for the attack, Ram Senaall, up to 500 pairs of pink panties. They are also urging everyone to go a local pub and have a drink on Valentine's Day.

via BBC.

For more info on the Pink Chaddi campaign check here and Ultra Violet has more.

On "Dress for Success" day at the Bank of England, women were sent the following memo:

"Look professional, not fashionable; be careful with perfume; always wear a heel of some sort -- maximum 2 inches; always wear some sort of makeup -- even if it's just lipstick." Shoes and skirt must be the same color. No-no's include ankle chains -- "professional, but not the one you want to be associated with;" white high heels; overstuffed handbags; an overload of rings, and double-pierced ears."

Wow. These are the supposed progressive, civilized leaders of the free world? I don't know these suggestions sound pretty damn antiquated to me.

Via the Cut.

Algeria's top CIA operative has been accused of drugging and raping two Muslim women in his home, who after nearly two years of investigation, has been returned home to Washington, DC. Since Andrew Warren wasn't just an officer but headed the entire CIA office of security services in Algeria, the case is being perceived as potentially damaging to the U.S. as the new administration makes attempts to wipe clean our Bush-dirtied image in the Muslim world, according to the Washington Post.

While a CIA spokesperson claimed that they "would take seriously, and follow up on, any allegations of impropriety," Warren has yet to be officially charged. I hope this happens soon, considering there's videotaped evidence; apparently Warren has several videotapes of him "having sex" with women, including a tape of him raping one of the accusers, who is shown in a semi-conscious state.

Pretty much everyone else is declining to comment on the case, although WashPo managed to get a jackass to very clearly confuse rape with romance:

Mark Zaid, a private attorney who represents current and former CIA officers, said the case raises questions about the adequacy of the agency's self-policing of its senior officers. All CIA officers are required to report any unofficial contact with foreign nationals, although in practice, the agency sometimes looks the other way when its employees engage in romances overseas, Zaid said.

While cases of rape would be "unbelievably rare," the reality is that some agency employees "are sleeping around while posted overseas -- sometimes brazenly -- and no one does anything about it," he said.

The U.S. government is no stranger to sexual assault accusations, whether as a weapon of war or within the military, and also in cases like this where a top official feels entitled to women's bodies in his stationed country. One of the survivors told investigators that she briefly became conscious during the attack, asking Warren to stop, in which he said to the effect, "Nobody stays in my expensive sheets with clothes on."

However, the Department of Defense has a history of downplaying the existence of sexual assault by their folk. So while we worry about this case and how it's going to effect our relationship with Muslim nations, it also wouldn't be a bad idea to start paying attention to the larger problem surrounding it.

Meet Johanna Sigurdardottir, Iceland's next interim prime minister.

Iceland's next leader will be an openly gay former flight attendant who parlayed her experience as a union organizer into a decades-long political career.

..."Now we need a strong government that works with the people," Sigurdardottir told reporters Wednesday, adding that a new administration will likely be installed Saturday.

This is pretty interesting. A Dubai organization combating intimate partner violence created these make up kits with a message. Specifically, each color in the palette represents a different kind of abuse.

The brush in the kit says: "Don't cover up injustice. Speak." Along with City of Hope's hotline number. The kits were given out at shopping malls in Dubai.

I like it.

Via.

An anti-bulimia ad from Pro Mädchen in Düsseldorf, Germany has been placed in an...interesting location.

...through their WPP ad agency red cell, placed these splatter stickers (headline translates: Bulimia is curable) on the undersides of toilet lids in women's bathrooms at area colleges.

Now, I see what they're going for and part of me thinks its innovative. But another part of me finds it kind of offensive - a splatter ad? And let's not even talk about the fact that it's pink. But perhaps it's an effective way to reach young women.

What do you think?

I suppose in a world where your offline options are limited, as is the case for many, many young people world-wide, spending vast quantities of your time online seems like a pretty smart way to not only kill time, but to have all your desires met. Isn't that in many ways what most internet users do online? At least the ones that spend *most* of their time online-building relationships via social networking sites, blogging, playing games and instant messaging. Hey, I am 30 and have a multitude of options for offline activities, yet I chose the safety, anonymity and self creation allowed via the internet for much of my work and a good portion of my leisure time.

China has the highest number of internet users in the world and many of them are "internet addicts."

via CSM.

China has the world's largest number of Internet users - 290 million and counting, with 70 percent under the age of 30. And a recent survey of Internet use by global market information group TNS found that Chinese spend the highest proportion of their leisure time online - 44 percent - out of users in 16 countries.

Tao estimates that 4 to 6 percent of Chinese netizens, which includes more than 13 percent of Chinese college students, are addicts - a term he defines as anyone who spends more than six hours per day for three months or more on nonwork- or study-related Internet use. That amounts to as many as 17 million net junkies in China. By comparison, about 8 percent of college students in the US are addicted Web users, he estimates.

I see two sides to this, I think that the internet is good in developing certain skills in young people, but I can also see how we don't want all our young people online, all the time. But I don't think medication and rehabilitation are necessarily going to solve the problem. If young people are feeling constrained in their real lives, especially young girls who feel they can't express themselves as they want or live the lives they want, they will continue to find other outlets for it.

According to Boingboing, they are also using sex education to cure internet addiction using the example that one of the young girls aquired 68 husbands in an online Second Life type community. Another 60 percent are being treated with drugs.

I see the problem, I get it, but this doesn't seem like a very ethical or effective solution for the long-term.

Attacks on Gaza are in their fifth day, with nearly 400 dead and many more wounded. There's so much to say, but in situations like this words tend to fail. So please look to the women's voices below, and add yours in comments.

Writes Like She Talks has a round-up of links, as does Kim Pearson at Blogher. Cara weighed in, and La Macha at Bitch magazine's blog wrote a post that led to a comments conversation about why this absolutely is a feminist issue.

PeaceWoman has a comprehensive list of resources - UN and NGO reports and statements, statistics, and papers from women worldwide - on gender and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Barnard's Scholar and Feminist Online has an excerpt from an issue of Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends dedicated to women's voices on peace: Sustaining Hope in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.

Sister organizations Bat Shalom and the Jerusalem Center for Women have yet to issue statements, but they're good places to go to for a feminist perspective.

I'd also recommend following Global Voices Online and their coverage - the site has aggregated posts, pictures and videos from blogs in the region, and also explains how you can follow and talk about the events in Gaza through Twitter.

For a background on the importance of women's role in peacekeeping, check out this primer on UN Resolution 1325.

Feel free to leave links to more feminist coverage in comments. I'm going to go read some Cynthia Enloe...

Check out this video from EngenderHealth asking viewers to sign their petition and tell Obama to overturn the Global Gag Rule.

Sign the petition here.

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a real opportunity for all of us to reflect on Eleanor Roosevelt's legacy and the future of human rights in an international context (Roosevelt took the lead on getting the declaration written and ratified). See Ann's post yesterday for starters.

With Zimbabwe dissolving, Sudan still embroiled in violent chaos, Guantanamo, the trafficking of women and children all over the world, rape still rampantly used as a war crime, and so many other human rights abuses worldwide, we must explore the issues within the declaration more than ever.

Mary Robinson, remarkable leader and humanitarian (formerly Ireland's president), has a piece over at the Women's Media Center on the anniversary. Here's an excerpt where she advocates women-led grassroots initiatives to challenge human rights abuses:

In many conflict areas, gender based violence and the abuse of women's rights are endemic. And the suffering of victims of gender based violence in particular goes well beyond their immediate trauma. Survivors' rights are further abused in the aftermath of rape and other violence due to inadequate medical and psychosocial care; entrenched impunity for perpetrators of gender based violence, incapacitated judicial systems, and often abandonment by husbands, families or communities.

Investing in women and their grassroots initiatives is perhaps the most cost-effective form of conflict prevention.

Anyone have a favorite initiatives they'd like to shout out in comments? Might be instructive for anyone looking to do humanitarian work and/or trying to decide where to give money this year (tithe time and income if you can folks). Let's make Eleanor proud.

And finally, my favorite Eleanor quotation:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

This is just awesome. And although there are multiple cultures throughout the world that have always had a third category for gender, it always makes me happy to see some mainstream coverage of the ongoing negotiation of gender in non-Western communities. This NYTimes article focuses on the "muxe" or a accepted third gender in Oaxaca, Mexico. I went to Oaxaca a few years ago and I loved loved loved it, but now I love it even more.

But nowhere are attitudes toward sex and gender quite as elastic as in the far reaches of the southern state of Oaxaca. There, in the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, the world is not divided simply into gay and straight. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call "muxes" (pronounced MOO-shays) -- men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned netherworld between the two genders.

"Muxe" is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish "mujer," or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community.

Similarly, my mother used to always tell me of the hijra in India, similarly considered a third gender, yet often they don't stay with their families but roam together. I am sure they still face discrimination, fear and hatred but it is good to remind mainstream trans/queer rights movements in the United States that binary gender systems have been shown to not be inherent or natural in many other contexts.

Via NYTimes.

Thanks to Karlos for the link.

UK tabloid The Sun had stays classy by featuring a slide show of "ugly" sex workers' mug shots.

They even quote a cop mocking the women:

One police officer laughed: "It's amazing that some of these women could make a living. There must be a lot of desperate guys out there."

This just makes me sad. Not for the women they're ridiculing, but for humanity. Sigh.

Via the f word.

UPDATE: Seems they may have taken it down. Is it too much to hope it was in a crisis of conscience?

Honey, I only hit you because I love fetuses!

Garth George, columnist for The New Zealand Herald, says that the main cause of violence against women is abortion. That and equality - but I'll get to that in a second.

I have said it before and I say it again: The number one cause of abuse against women and children is abortion.

George's argument is basically that by having abortions, women have opened the door to violence, that we "reap what we have sown." Charming. But it's not long before George's real gripe come to light - it's not just women's reproductive rights that irks him, it's the fact that women have rights at all.

The second major cause of violence against women and children is the belief held by too many women that they should not just be equal to men but, in all but physical appurtenances, are the same.

...The assumption by so many women of the roles traditionally exclusive to men has left many men in confusion, frustration and anxiety, and more are lashing out because they feel their maleness is under threat.

What's funny is that I actually don't doubt that there's some truth to that - it's called backlash, motherfucker. But you have to love that George writes this as if violence is a reasonable response to women's social and political gains.

If you're feeling feisty, you can email George here.

NPR has the story. I think the headline says it all.

Thought this was interesting...I had never thought about the money/business angle concerning FGM.

Please file this under-horrid short term solution plagued with serious ethical questions while not creating long-term change. It is unfortunate that this is considered a viable solution for the increase in rates of HIV infection in the state of Papua.

Indonesia's Papua province is set to pass a bylaw that requires some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips in a bid to prevent them infecting others, a lawmaker said on Saturday.

Under the bylaw, which has caused uproar among human rights activists, patients who had shown "actively sexual behavior" could be implanted with a microchip to monitor their activity, lawmaker John Manangsang said.

"It's a simple technology. A signal from the microchip will track their movements and this will be received by monitoring authorities," Manangsang said.

If a patient with HIV/AIDS was found to have infected a healthy person, there would be a penalty, he said without elaborating.

Talk about big brother. What I don't see is how is this preventative (the only-ONLY-effective solution to stop the spread of HIV), if the purpose is merely to punish people after they have infected someone. Are they planning on monitoring these people at all times? That is enough resources surely to put into safe sex education, creating a healthier culture around sex, while having all types of support programs for "high-risk" populations.

Please, someone, help me here. This seems really fucked up to me.

An article in Newsweek chronicles a new phenomenon: outsourcing US health care to Mexico. People have been going abroad to save money on cosmetic procedures for quite some time (Brazil is an infamous destination for this) but this is something different:

Dorthea, 72, a retired bank teller, lives in Harlingen, Texas, a city of about 67,000 in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley. Like a lot of Texans, she's crossed the border to Mexico a few times to buy cheap medication. But she'd never considered undergoing complicated medical procedures there--at least, not until she was quoted the prohibitive price of $30,000 for a gastric-band procedure, a treatment for obesity in which a band is placed around the stomach to limit food intake. It wasn't covered by her insurance, so Dorthea, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, opted to drive south and pay less than $10,000 for the outpatient operation at an American-owned hospital in Reynosa, Mexico, 10 minutes over the border and about an hour from her home. The outpatient surgery was a success, and she's planning on returning for follow-up care. "It was very good treatment," she says.

We all know there are obvious gaps and fissures in the US health care system, even for those who are insured. Particularly with the economic climate, people are going to come up with inventive solutions to get the care they need. But now as Newsweek reports even US hospitals are getting in on it by building facilities across the border and charging far less for the procedures there. We need some serious solutions for lowering health care costs inside the US. Not everyone has the luxury of going to Mexico.

When you pair these types of cross-border transactions with projects like a new border fence and super-stringent immigration laws, you start to see the contradictions of a global free market that allows goods and services to cross borders, but not people.

Via Nuestra Vida, Nuestra Voz

In Iran a cab company has started that is by and for women only. It has provided employment for widowed women and given them ownership over their own means of transportation.

At the centre, the women drivers are also given lessons in basic car maintenance and such essentials as how to change a burst tire. All the operators at the centre are women too. But the concept was the brainchild of a man, Mohsen Uruji, who says he spotted a gap in Tehran's transport system.

"What was missing was a role for women," he says.

"By setting up this purely private sector company, we've been able to provide jobs for many women, as well as a service for other women who want to travel around in a more relaxed way."

Many of the drivers are war widows or divorcees who really need the work, and are referred to the agency by some of the big welfare foundations.

The project has grown in popularity and is hoping to have 2000 women run cars soon. I think this is interesting and very cool all at once. As the article says, it does both reinforce traditional gender roles feeding into the very idea that women and men can't occupy space together alone, but at the same time solves and relieves many problems women are dealing with on a daily basis.

via BBC.

It looks like 1,200 women deep investigations where women are interrogated for their personal choices dealing with their own bodies. A family planning center is under investigation in Brazil and subsequently so are potentially 1,200 women that have had abortions. Approximately 150 women are being charged along with 30 partners or medical professionals.

The authorities only became aware of the clinic following a television interview, which led to a police investigation that could eventually involve more than 1,200 women and some of their partners, as well as medical staff.

To gather evidence, Judge Aluizio Pereira dos Santos is said to have interviewed husbands, ex-boyfriends and relatives of some of the women accused of having abortions.

Oh, it gets even worse.

Human rights and women's organisations have complained that the process has been humiliating for those involved, and has included demands for intimate medical examinations.

At least 30 women have already been sentenced to community work in creches or schools for disabled children.

Perhaps not shocking as we have known the pope's position on abortion for a long time, but upsetting still. Also check out this interesting take from RH Reality Check comparing the treatment of women that have received abortions in Brazil and in Kansas.

This Italian ad reads:

Who pays for man's sins? Only four per cent of women who suffer sexual violence report their assailants.

The poster is part of the national Telefono Donna rape helpline to help raise awareness for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25th. It seems a bunch of male politicians are up in arms about it - what do you think?

Via.

One in three Australian boys thinks that it's okay to hit girls; one in seven think "it's OK to make a girl have sex with you if she was flirting."

Via Feministe.

I love this picture, she looks so bad-ass here, popped collar and all. "Could I handle being Secretary of State? Pshhhhh..."

The news came out yesterday that Senator Hillary Clinton is being considered as a candidate for U.S. Secretary of State:

There's talk, indeed, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) may now be under consideration for the post. Her office referred any questions to the Obama transition; Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment.

The pick of the former presidential contender and Senate Armed Services Committee member would go a long way toward healing any remaining divisions within the Democratic Party after the divisive primaries. Also, Clinton has long been known for her work on international women's issues and human rights. The former first lady could also enhance Obama's efforts to restore U.S. standing amongst allies worldwide.

I think this would be amazing. What are people's thoughts?

Unfortunately, President Tabare Vasquez said he will veto the measure.

But despite the mostly Catholic population of Uruguay and the fact that only one country in South America (Guyana) permits abortion within the first trimester, the fact that Congress is taking this position is considered a significant step for the nation. The Senate voted to legalize abortion within the first trimester after the lower house of Congress voted in favor of it last week.

Abortion is currently only legal in cases of rape and when the life of the woman is endangered, although an estimated 33,000 abortions are performed each year. Women and doctors arrested for having an abortion or involvement will serve jail time, and have; three doctors were arrested earlier this year.

Jill has more.

(Trigger warning.) Last week, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, a 13-year-old Somali girl was stoned to death by insurgents because she was raped. They called it adultery.

"Reports indicate that she had been raped by three men while traveling on foot to visit her grandmother in the war-torn capital, Mogadishu," Unicef, the United Nations children's agency, said in a statement.

"Following the assault, she sought protection from the authorities, who then accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death," Unicef added. "A child was victimized twice -- first by the perpetrators of the rape and then by those responsible for administering justice."

As if that wasn't terrible enough, she was killed by 50 men who buried her up to her neck and pelted her with rocks until she died. In a stadium in front of 1,000 spectators. The details of this crime are just wrenching. At least some in the crowd tried to stop it:

Inside the stadium, militia members opened fire when some of the witnesses to the killing attempted to save her life, and shot dead a boy who was a bystander.

Cara at the Curvature and Tracy at Broadsheet have more. Cara writes,

But in the end, whether she was killed because of a rape, because of consensual sex, or because of sexual contact neither consensual or non-consensual because it was entirely imagined, it's not the point. To emphasize that Asha was murdered because she was raped, and that's why her death is a tragedy is to suggest that it would be less tragic if she actually had committed consensual adultery.

Asha's life was taken from her, quite simply, because she was a woman.

The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women has a letter-writing action:

You can write a letter to the representatives of Somalia, the African Union, and various UN human rights offices to encourage them to take action by investigating this murder, bringing the perpetrators to justice, and denouncing the actions of these insurgents.

None of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow's killers have been arrested.