From The New York Times Opinion Page
Menstrual Pads Can't Fix Prejudice
Chris Bobel*
March 31, 2018
The period is finally having its moment.
In the last decade, the difficulties women and girls across the globe face during menstruation have inspired a raft of grass-roots campaigns. “Period poverty” activists seek to make menstrual products more affordable and available. International agencies like Plan International, Water Aid, U.N. Women and Unicef are supporting menstrual hygiene programs in dozens of countries. Access to safe, accessible bathrooms and materials to manage menstruation is now recognized as a human rights issue that involves many other areas of development, like clean water, education and gender equality.
These shifts are certainly heartening. For centuries, around the world, menstruation has been treated as a source of shame, rather than as a normal, healthy part of women’s lives. Initiatives to “make menstruation matter” are both welcome and overdue.
Why, then, after years studying these efforts, do I feel ambivalent? Because too many of them have opted to focus on providing women with new products, failing to substantively fight the core problem surrounding menstruation: cultural stigma.
Consider the humble piece of cloth. Many Westerners are horrified to learn that repurposed cloth is commonly used by women in poor countries to manage their periods. Yet cloth is absorbent, readily available, cheap and sustainable. Folded or cut to size, changed as necessary and properly washed and dried, it can be sanitary and effective.
Still, many programs are hustling to replace this traditional method with commercial products. In addition to the nongovernmental organizations that make products their priority, start-ups are seeding microbusinesses in which, say, Rwandan, Indian and Ugandan women make and sell pads. Such an approach falls under the category of a “technological fix”: a seemingly simple solution to what is, in reality, a complex problem.
Such interventions can be helpful, and in some circumstances even necessary, but they fail to address the root issues. No menstrual product is effective for a schoolgirl who lacks access to a clean, secure toilet, as is the case in many poor countries. Stigma about menstruation often undermines proper use, and a woman’s fear of inadvertently revealing she is menstruating remains a distraction and a burden.
These fears and stigmas are prevalent in the rich world, too. As the historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg has shown, in the United States at the turn of the century, menstruation became increasingly medicalized: Doctors, who were mostly men, and increasingly viewed as experts, coached mothers to socialize their daughters to keep tidy and discreet. Menarche, the first menstrual period, was effectively reduced from a sign of womanhood to a “hygienic crisis."
Even now, American girls are socialized to see menstruation, and more generally, their bodies, as problems to be solved through use of the “right” products. Today, we are exporting this view around the world.
Showing posts with label discrimination against women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discrimination against women. Show all posts
Monday, December 3, 2018
Friday, February 26, 2016
I Am SICK OF SPOILED ROTTEN DUDES Getting Their Way
From The New York Times
She Was Asked to Switch Seats. Now She’s Charging El Al With Sexism.
JERUSALEM — Renee Rabinowitz is a sharp-witted retired lawyer with a Ph.D. in educational psychology, who escaped the Nazis in Europe as a child. Now she is about to become a test case in the battle over religion and gender in’s public spaces — and the skies above — as the plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing El Al, the national airline, of discrimination.
Ms. Rabinowitz was comfortably settled into her aisle seat in the business-class section on El Al Flight 028 from Newark to Tel Aviv in December when, as she put it, “this rather distinguished-looking man in Hasidic or Haredi garb, I’d guess around 50 or so, shows up.”
The man was assigned the window seat in her row. But, like many ultra-Orthodox male passengers, he did not want to sit next to a woman, seeing even inadvertent contact with the opposite sex as verboten under the strictest interpretation of Jewish law. Soon, Ms. Rabinowitz said, a flight attendant offered her a “better” seat, up front, closer to first class.
Reluctantly, Ms. Rabinowitz, an impeccably groomed grandmother of 81 who walks with a cane because of bad knees, agreed. ”Despite all my accomplishments — and my age is also an accomplishment — I felt minimized,” she recalled in a recent interview in her elegantly appointed apartment in a fashionable neighborhood of Jerusalem.
“For me this is not personal,” Ms. Rabinowitz added. “It is intellectual, ideological and legal. I think to myself, here I am, an older woman, educated, I’ve been around the world, and some guy can decide that I shouldn’t sit next to him. Why?”
That is just what many feminists and advocates of religious pluralism in Israel and abroad have been asking in what by all accounts is a growing phenomenon of religious Jewish men refusing to sit next to women on airplanes. Several flights from New York to Israel, on El Al and other airlines, have been delayed or disrupted as women refused to move, and there have been social media campaigns including a protest petition.
She Was Asked to Switch Seats. Now She’s Charging El Al With Sexism.
Ms. Rabinowitz was comfortably settled into her aisle seat in the business-class section on El Al Flight 028 from Newark to Tel Aviv in December when, as she put it, “this rather distinguished-looking man in Hasidic or Haredi garb, I’d guess around 50 or so, shows up.”
The man was assigned the window seat in her row. But, like many ultra-Orthodox male passengers, he did not want to sit next to a woman, seeing even inadvertent contact with the opposite sex as verboten under the strictest interpretation of Jewish law. Soon, Ms. Rabinowitz said, a flight attendant offered her a “better” seat, up front, closer to first class.
Reluctantly, Ms. Rabinowitz, an impeccably groomed grandmother of 81 who walks with a cane because of bad knees, agreed. ”Despite all my accomplishments — and my age is also an accomplishment — I felt minimized,” she recalled in a recent interview in her elegantly appointed apartment in a fashionable neighborhood of Jerusalem.
“For me this is not personal,” Ms. Rabinowitz added. “It is intellectual, ideological and legal. I think to myself, here I am, an older woman, educated, I’ve been around the world, and some guy can decide that I shouldn’t sit next to him. Why?”
That is just what many feminists and advocates of religious pluralism in Israel and abroad have been asking in what by all accounts is a growing phenomenon of religious Jewish men refusing to sit next to women on airplanes. Several flights from New York to Israel, on El Al and other airlines, have been delayed or disrupted as women refused to move, and there have been social media campaigns including a protest petition.
Monday, August 3, 2015
Nepalize Women Fear Loss of Rights Under Proposed Constitution
Fears grow over Nepal's 'anti-women' constitution
By Paavan Mathema 4 hours ago
August 3, 2015
August 3, 2015
Kathmandu (AFP) - Nepal's proposed new constitution has sparked fury from women who say their citizenship, property and other rights are being curtailed by the document designed to draw a line under centuries of inequality.
Lawmakers tabled a draft in parliament in June shortly after bickering political parties struck an historic deal on the long-awaited charter, spurred to negotiation by an earthquake in March that killed more than 8,800 people.
Bista says she is anxious about the future for her sons since citizenship is needed to get anything in Nepal from a driving license to a bank account.
The draft also makes it easier for a Nepalese man to confer citizenship on his foreign spouse, while a Nepalese woman needs to be married 15 years to her foreign husband before even being allowed to apply.
The draft removes the explicit reference in the current constitution to "sons and daughters".
"The draft dismisses the identity of a woman and reflects our country's patriarchal mindset that seeks to maintain discriminatory practices," said Sapana Pradhan Malla who heads pressure group the Forum for Women, Law and Development.
- Right to abortion fears -
Campaigners are also concerned the draft will be misused to restrict a woman's right to abortion which was legalised in 2002 in the socially conservative country.
The charter bans sex-selective abortions, but activists say the provision is unnecessary since the practice is already illegal. They fear the charter will be used as a powerful tool to deny women abortions, by falsely accusing them of trying to abort girls in a country where boys are preferred.
"This issue should not be dealt with in the constitution," said Sonali Regmi, Asia regional manager for the Center for Reproductive Rights. "We fear that the clause can be misused to limit a woman's right to safe abortion, a key reason for the decrease in Nepal's maternal mortality rates."
Lawmakers were tasked with drafting the charter after a decade-long insurgency ignited by deep-rooted social, political and economic inequalities.
A committee is now set to draw up recommendations for changes to the draft, following a series of public consultations around the country. In recent weeks, violence has marred the consultations, especially in the southern plains, home to the historically marginalised Madhesi community, many of whose members marry into families living across the border in India.
Lawmakers have brushed off the protests and campaigners' concerns, saying the draft is not intended to discriminate against anyone. "The constitution is not anti-women," said ruling coalition lawmaker Bhim Rawal, who helped draft the document. "Every country has provisions to protect its nationality and sovereignty," Rawal told AFP.
But Bista and others remain fearful the charter will close the door on rights they had fought years to get. "We call our country our motherland, and yet a mother's identity has no value," she said.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Saudi Female Drivers to be Tried in Terrorism Court
What a shit ass country, sheesh. It makes me sick to my stomach that we do business with these religious nut cases on a daily basis. I hope ALL Saudi men suffer unending nightMARES of the vagina dentata. Check out the posted article. There photographs and related videos.
Saudi women drivers referred to terrorism court
By AYA BATRAWY December 25, 2014 2:50 PM
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two Saudi women detained for nearly a month in defiance of a ban on females driving were referred on Thursday to a court established to try terrorism cases, several people close to the defendants said.
The cases of the two, Loujain al-Hathloul and Maysa al-Amoudi, were sent to the anti-terrorism court in connection to opinions they expressed in tweets and in social media, four people close to the two women told The Associated Press.
They did not elaborate on the specific charges or what the opinions were. Both women have spoken out online against the female driving ban. Activists say they fear the case is intended to send a warning to others pushing for greater rights. The four people spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of government reprisals.
The Specialized Criminal Court, to which their cases were referred, was established in the capital Riyadh to try terrorism cases but has also tried and handed long prison sentences to a number of human rights workers, peaceful dissidents, activists and critics of the government. For example, this year it sentenced a revered Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a vocal critic of the government, to death for sedition and sentenced a prominent human rights lawyer, Waleed Abul-Khair, to 15 years in prison on charges of inciting public opinion.
Human Rights Watch recently warned that "Saudi authorities are ramping up their crackdown on people who peacefully criticize the government on the Internet." It said that judges and prosecutors are using "vague provisions of a 2007 anti-cybercrime law to charge and try Saudi citizens for peaceful tweets and social media comments."
This was the first time women drivers have been referred to the court, activists said.
The detention of al-Hathloul, 25, and Maysa al-Amoudi, 33 — both arrested on Dec. 1 — has been the longest yet for any women who defied the driving ban. They were vocal supporters of a grassroots campaign launched last year to oppose the ban, and have a significant online following with a total 355,000 followers on Twitter for the two of them at the time of their arrest.
Though no formal law bans women from driving in Saudi Arabia, ultraconservative Saudi clerics have issued religious edicts forbidding women from taking the wheel, and authorities do not issue them driver's licenses. No such ban exists anywhere else in the world, even in other conservative Gulf countries.
The four people close to the women said their lawyers appealed the judge's decision to transfer their cases. An appeals court in Dammam, the capital of Eastern Province, is expected to decide on the referral in the coming days, they said.
Authorities have a history of clamping down on Saudi women who attempt to drive. In 1990, 50 women were arrested for driving. They had their passports confiscated and lost their jobs. More than 20 years later, a woman was sentenced in 2011 to 10 lashes for driving, though the king overturned the sentence.
Supporters of the current driving campaign delivered a petition to the royal court this month asking King Abdullah to pardon the two women.
Organizers behind the campaign, which began Oct. 26, 2013, say the ban on women driving underpins wider issues related to guardianship laws in Saudi Arabia that give men powerful sway over women's lives. One activist said the driving ban is also part of "a wider effort to quash any chances of raising the ceiling on civil liberties" in Saudi Arabia.
The two women appeared in court on Thursday for the second time in the eastern al-Ahsa region, where they were detained after driving to Saudi Arabia from the United Arab Emirates.
Al-Hathloul was stopped by border guards and her passport was confiscated for more than 24 hours when she attempted to cross the border Nov. 30 with a UAE driver's license in an act of defiance.
Al-Amoudi, a UAE-based Saudi journalist, was stopped when she went to deliver food and a blanket to al-Hathloul at the border, activists and relatives said. The women were formally arrested on Dec. 1.
There has been no official Saudi comment on the arrests.
Al-Hathloul is in a correctional facility for juveniles and al-Amoudi is in a prison. Relatives say they have been allowed to see them for short supervised visits.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Indian Culture to Convicted Rapist's Wife and Son: Go Die Already, We Don't Want to Feed You Anymore
From The Wall Street Journal Online
In India, Rapist’s Wife Faces Harsh Judge: Tradition
In Conservative Hinterland, Women Without Husbands Face Destitution
By Krishna Pokharel and Aditi Malhotra
Akshay Kumar Singh and three other men were convicted this month of a crime
that focused the world's attention on violence against women in India: the gang
rape and killing of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in
December.
For the parents of the woman who died, the sentencing brought a measure of
closure. For Ms. Devi, who is in her 20s, and her 2-year-old son, her husband's
crime and punishment have opened up a chapter of profound uncertainty.
Ms. Devi expects to be cast out by her in-laws and face ostracism and destitution here in India's conservative hinterland—not because she is married to a convicted murderer, but because she is a woman without a husband. "As a widow, my honor will be lost forever," she says.
Her husband's relatives say they can't afford to feed her. Her parents say they are too poor to take her back. The customs of purdah practiced in the region make it almost impossible for her to work outside the home.
"I am not educated. Our traditions are such that I cannot even step out of the house," Ms. Devi said. "Who will earn money to feed me and my son?"
In the village where Ms. Devi lives in eastern Bihar state with her husband's family, women are kept veiled and largely secluded. They can't leave home without a male relative. Ms. Devi must wait until dark simply to go into the field behind her house to defecate.
"A woman going out for work is not in our tradition," says Vinay Singh, Mr. Singh's older brother. Ms. Devi's mother-in-law, Malati Devi, is blunter. "In our family, women die at home. They never venture outside," she says.
Such attitudes may seem out of character in a country that had its first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in the 1960s, and that today boasts high-profile women politicians and executives. But India's countryside, home to nearly 70% of its 1.2 billion people, can be a stifling place, where women live highly circumscribed lives and lack freedoms their urban, middle-class counterparts are starting to enjoy.
It can also be a hostile place. In villages crimes against women often aren't reported to police, and cases are settled by elders enforcing custom rather than law.
Ms. Devi's misfortune to be married to a notorious convict makes her situation seem extraordinary. But in fact, the basic difficulties she now faces are a reality of life in the Indian countryside. For the poorest, a single setback—loss of a breadwinner, lackluster crop, illness—can propel a family into crisis. For rural women, it can be especially dire.
Ms. Devi grew up in a small village about 80 miles from Karmalahang. Her family farms a one-acre plot in a perennially drought-stricken district of Jharkhand state. Ms. Devi says she is 21 years old, although school records in her home village give her age as 24.
She has three older sisters and a younger brother. She was pulled out of school after the sixth grade by her parents so she could cook and clean after her mother became ill. Her sisters all had either left home or were about to, and her parents decided it was more important for their son to be educated than a daughter.
Across India, literacy among women lags behind that of men. In rural areas, less than 60% of women can read, according to Indian census data, compared with 80% of men.
Ms. Devi says she can write her name and a few Hindi words, and read a bit. She knew from an early age, she says, what was expected of a woman: to raise children and take care of household tasks.
"I learned how I had to behave when I got married and went to my in-laws' house just by watching my mother," says Ms. Devi.
Her mother, Lilavati Devi, says she was a child when she was married to her husband, Raj Mohan Singh, who was a few years older. Now 60, Lilavati Devi has spent most of her adult life within the confines of her small, mud-walled home.
Many women in this part of India use Devi as their last name. The word means "goddess" in Hindi. But it isn't a sign of the relative status of women. "To us, husbands are our gods," says Sudha Devi, a government health worker in Karmalahang and no relation to Punita Devi. "We can't think of being equal."
Ms. Devi's parents arranged her marriage to Mr. Singh in 2010. The connection was made through a woman from a neighboring village who was married to one of Mr. Singh's older brothers.
"I wasn't forced into it, but it was a decision taken by my parents. This is how it works here in the countryside," Ms. Devi says. "In a woman's life, marriage and her husband are everything."
Both families belong to the relatively high-ranking Rajput caste and are farmers. "It was a fine match," says Lilavati Devi. In May 2010 she sent her daughter off with a simple dowry: a wooden bed and some kitchen utensils.
"I told her to live well and peacefully with her family—her new family," Lilavati Devi says.
The first two years of marriage went smoothly. Her husband Mr. Singh, 28, is the youngest of three brothers. So Ms. Devi settled into a household that included not just her parents-in-law, but also Mr. Singh's siblings and their wives and children.
Her new village, Karmalahang, is about 18 miles from the Grand Trunk Road, a commercial route since ancient times that connects Kolkata in eastern India to the Afghan capital of Kabul, and sits at the foot of the Kaimur Hills.
The mountains block water-laden air and create what is known as a rain shadow over Karmalahang, making farming for the 1,500 people here a precarious existence. That, combined with a lack of industry, drives many young men from the area to head to cities for jobs.
Mr. Singh and his brothers, none of whom finished high school, were no exception. From their earnings, each would send about $30 to $45 a month to support the extended family.
"I never asked him where he was or what he was doing," says Ms. Devi. "I knew he went to earn money."
In June 2011, Ms. Devi gave birth to a son. The child was prone to lung infections, but Mr. Singh's earnings were enough to pay for monthly doctor's visits and medicine.
During a visit home in August 2012, Mr. Singh brought his wife a mobile phone so they could speak while he was away. He said he had been working at a liquor store in the Jharkhand city of Dhanbad.
Before he headed out again—this time to Delhi—he gave her $20, which she used to buy a shirt for their son as well as fruit from the local market for the child, among other things.
Ms. Devi didn't see her husband again until December. The date is a matter of dispute. In an interview in early August, Ms. Devi and her father-in-law said Mr. Singh returned home on Dec. 21, a day after police had come looking for him in connection with the Dec. 16 gang rape in Delhi.
The crime was already making headlines across India. But Karmalahang has no electricity to power televisions, and newspapers aren't available here. When Mr. Singh came home, he "didn't look noticeably worried or tense," Ms. Devi says, though he had grown a beard.
Since then Ms. Devi and Mr. Singh's other family members have changed their account of his homecoming. They testified in court later in August that he actually returned to the village on Dec. 15, before the Delhi attack occurred. Mr. Singh's lawyer, A.P. Singh, no relation, made that the cornerstone of his defense.
The trial judge, Yogesh Khanna, rejected the alibi. In his judgment, he cited inconsistencies in the family's testimony, a contradictory version of events from the police and witnesses and physical evidence linking Mr. Singh to the crime scene—a bus on which he served as a helper.
Since Mr. Singh's December arrest, his family has been thrown into upheaval. His brothers, Vinay and Abhay, who had also been working around Delhi, left their jobs for three months to help out at home, straining household finances. The family's reputation has been damaged.
"They treat us as untouchables," says Abhay Singh, who works in a paint factory in a Delhi suburb.
"We have gone back from where we were, and from now on it will be an endless slide backwards," says Vinay Singh, who works in a textile-dying plant.
In April, Ms. Devi took an overnight train trip to New Delhi, her first visit to the capital, to see her husband in jail. When she caught her first glimpse of him through the glass partition in the visitors' area, she says, she started to cry.
"Keep yourself and the child well," Mr. Singh told her, according to Ms. Devi. She says he told her: "I will come home. I am innocent."
But without her husband's wages, Ms. Devi says, she hasn't been able to get medical treatment for her son. The child's diet is also suffering, as mother and child subsist on handouts from Mr. Singh's brothers and their wives.
"I feel weak," says Ms. Devi. "Nobody thinks well of a woman whose husband isn't with her for support."
Some people blame the December gang rape and similar attacks in part on a collision of traditional social expectations—commonplace in rural areas—and the modernity of India's cities, where rural migrant workers encounter the values of urbanites living by a different set of rules. During the brutal Delhi assault, for instance, the attackers accosted the woman and the young man she was with, asking why they were out together in the evening, the young man told the court.
Speaking about the events of that night, Ms. Devi says she doesn't understand how a woman could be out for the evening with a man who wasn't her husband.
That night, the two victims had been to a movie at an upscale shopping mall. They were attacked after they boarded a bus. The woman was raped and sexually assaulted with a metal bar, resulting in numerous injuries to her internal organs. The two were dumped, naked and bleeding, by the roadside. The young woman ultimately died of her injuries.
It is too simple to say, however, that there is an urban-rural values split. Mr. Singh's lawyer in New Delhi, A.P. Singh, said after Friday's sentencing that if his daughter insisted on having premarital sex, he would "burn her to death." When asked about the comments, he said "any Indian household in the right frame of mind" would feel the same about premarital sex.
A.P. Singh said he would appeal the guilty verdict against Ms. Devi's husband. That process could take years.
In a written statement from the convict, Mr. Singh, provided by his lawyer, he said of his wife: "She should be strong and fight. She should seek employment. I want her to live. I want her to educate our son and make him a good man. When he grows up, I want him to know the truth about me, that I am innocent."
But Ms. Devi herself worries that time is running out. Her in-laws, Sarju Singh and Malati Devi, say they don't have enough savings to continue supporting Ms. Devi and her son. Mr. Singh's brothers say their earnings are barely enough to support their own wives and children.
Using the cellphone her husband gave her last year, Ms. Devi calls her mother. "What can I do?" she asks, according to Lilavati Devi. Her mother, in tears, says she has no answer to give her.
"Had she been educated, she would have earned for herself," she says, sitting near a picture of her daughter, dressed in a green sari. In the photo, she is standing before a garden backdrop, wearing a half smile.
Ms. Devi's father, Raj Mohan Singh, says his daughter can't return to the home he and his wife share with their son's family. "We won't be able to look after her," he says. "Her brother can't support her, either. He isn't able to look after himself. How can he look after Punita?"
Ms. Devi doesn't know where to turn. "Is there anyone who is thinking of me?" she asked, crying after learning of the death sentence. "I am alive and I have a small child who is still breathing."
—Preetika Rana and Tripti Lahiri contributed to this article.
INDIA NEWS
September 23, 2013, 10:31 p.m. ET
In India, Rapist’s Wife Faces Harsh Judge: Tradition
In Conservative Hinterland, Women Without Husbands Face Destitution
By Krishna Pokharel and Aditi Malhotra
Ms. Devi expects to be cast out by her in-laws and face ostracism and destitution here in India's conservative hinterland—not because she is married to a convicted murderer, but because she is a woman without a husband. "As a widow, my honor will be lost forever," she says.
Her husband's relatives say they can't afford to feed her. Her parents say they are too poor to take her back. The customs of purdah practiced in the region make it almost impossible for her to work outside the home.
"I am not educated. Our traditions are such that I cannot even step out of the house," Ms. Devi said. "Who will earn money to feed me and my son?"
In the village where Ms. Devi lives in eastern Bihar state with her husband's family, women are kept veiled and largely secluded. They can't leave home without a male relative. Ms. Devi must wait until dark simply to go into the field behind her house to defecate.
"A woman going out for work is not in our tradition," says Vinay Singh, Mr. Singh's older brother. Ms. Devi's mother-in-law, Malati Devi, is blunter. "In our family, women die at home. They never venture outside," she says.
Such attitudes may seem out of character in a country that had its first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in the 1960s, and that today boasts high-profile women politicians and executives. But India's countryside, home to nearly 70% of its 1.2 billion people, can be a stifling place, where women live highly circumscribed lives and lack freedoms their urban, middle-class counterparts are starting to enjoy.
It can also be a hostile place. In villages crimes against women often aren't reported to police, and cases are settled by elders enforcing custom rather than law.
Ms. Devi's misfortune to be married to a notorious convict makes her situation seem extraordinary. But in fact, the basic difficulties she now faces are a reality of life in the Indian countryside. For the poorest, a single setback—loss of a breadwinner, lackluster crop, illness—can propel a family into crisis. For rural women, it can be especially dire.
Ms. Devi grew up in a small village about 80 miles from Karmalahang. Her family farms a one-acre plot in a perennially drought-stricken district of Jharkhand state. Ms. Devi says she is 21 years old, although school records in her home village give her age as 24.
She has three older sisters and a younger brother. She was pulled out of school after the sixth grade by her parents so she could cook and clean after her mother became ill. Her sisters all had either left home or were about to, and her parents decided it was more important for their son to be educated than a daughter.
Across India, literacy among women lags behind that of men. In rural areas, less than 60% of women can read, according to Indian census data, compared with 80% of men.
Ms. Devi says she can write her name and a few Hindi words, and read a bit. She knew from an early age, she says, what was expected of a woman: to raise children and take care of household tasks.
"I learned how I had to behave when I got married and went to my in-laws' house just by watching my mother," says Ms. Devi.
Her mother, Lilavati Devi, says she was a child when she was married to her husband, Raj Mohan Singh, who was a few years older. Now 60, Lilavati Devi has spent most of her adult life within the confines of her small, mud-walled home.
Many women in this part of India use Devi as their last name. The word means "goddess" in Hindi. But it isn't a sign of the relative status of women. "To us, husbands are our gods," says Sudha Devi, a government health worker in Karmalahang and no relation to Punita Devi. "We can't think of being equal."
Ms. Devi's parents arranged her marriage to Mr. Singh in 2010. The connection was made through a woman from a neighboring village who was married to one of Mr. Singh's older brothers.
"I wasn't forced into it, but it was a decision taken by my parents. This is how it works here in the countryside," Ms. Devi says. "In a woman's life, marriage and her husband are everything."
Both families belong to the relatively high-ranking Rajput caste and are farmers. "It was a fine match," says Lilavati Devi. In May 2010 she sent her daughter off with a simple dowry: a wooden bed and some kitchen utensils.
"I told her to live well and peacefully with her family—her new family," Lilavati Devi says.
The first two years of marriage went smoothly. Her husband Mr. Singh, 28, is the youngest of three brothers. So Ms. Devi settled into a household that included not just her parents-in-law, but also Mr. Singh's siblings and their wives and children.
Her new village, Karmalahang, is about 18 miles from the Grand Trunk Road, a commercial route since ancient times that connects Kolkata in eastern India to the Afghan capital of Kabul, and sits at the foot of the Kaimur Hills.
The mountains block water-laden air and create what is known as a rain shadow over Karmalahang, making farming for the 1,500 people here a precarious existence. That, combined with a lack of industry, drives many young men from the area to head to cities for jobs.
Mr. Singh and his brothers, none of whom finished high school, were no exception. From their earnings, each would send about $30 to $45 a month to support the extended family.
"I never asked him where he was or what he was doing," says Ms. Devi. "I knew he went to earn money."
In June 2011, Ms. Devi gave birth to a son. The child was prone to lung infections, but Mr. Singh's earnings were enough to pay for monthly doctor's visits and medicine.
During a visit home in August 2012, Mr. Singh brought his wife a mobile phone so they could speak while he was away. He said he had been working at a liquor store in the Jharkhand city of Dhanbad.
Before he headed out again—this time to Delhi—he gave her $20, which she used to buy a shirt for their son as well as fruit from the local market for the child, among other things.
Ms. Devi didn't see her husband again until December. The date is a matter of dispute. In an interview in early August, Ms. Devi and her father-in-law said Mr. Singh returned home on Dec. 21, a day after police had come looking for him in connection with the Dec. 16 gang rape in Delhi.
The crime was already making headlines across India. But Karmalahang has no electricity to power televisions, and newspapers aren't available here. When Mr. Singh came home, he "didn't look noticeably worried or tense," Ms. Devi says, though he had grown a beard.
Since then Ms. Devi and Mr. Singh's other family members have changed their account of his homecoming. They testified in court later in August that he actually returned to the village on Dec. 15, before the Delhi attack occurred. Mr. Singh's lawyer, A.P. Singh, no relation, made that the cornerstone of his defense.
The trial judge, Yogesh Khanna, rejected the alibi. In his judgment, he cited inconsistencies in the family's testimony, a contradictory version of events from the police and witnesses and physical evidence linking Mr. Singh to the crime scene—a bus on which he served as a helper.
Since Mr. Singh's December arrest, his family has been thrown into upheaval. His brothers, Vinay and Abhay, who had also been working around Delhi, left their jobs for three months to help out at home, straining household finances. The family's reputation has been damaged.
"They treat us as untouchables," says Abhay Singh, who works in a paint factory in a Delhi suburb.
"We have gone back from where we were, and from now on it will be an endless slide backwards," says Vinay Singh, who works in a textile-dying plant.
In April, Ms. Devi took an overnight train trip to New Delhi, her first visit to the capital, to see her husband in jail. When she caught her first glimpse of him through the glass partition in the visitors' area, she says, she started to cry.
"Keep yourself and the child well," Mr. Singh told her, according to Ms. Devi. She says he told her: "I will come home. I am innocent."
But without her husband's wages, Ms. Devi says, she hasn't been able to get medical treatment for her son. The child's diet is also suffering, as mother and child subsist on handouts from Mr. Singh's brothers and their wives.
"I feel weak," says Ms. Devi. "Nobody thinks well of a woman whose husband isn't with her for support."
Some people blame the December gang rape and similar attacks in part on a collision of traditional social expectations—commonplace in rural areas—and the modernity of India's cities, where rural migrant workers encounter the values of urbanites living by a different set of rules. During the brutal Delhi assault, for instance, the attackers accosted the woman and the young man she was with, asking why they were out together in the evening, the young man told the court.
Speaking about the events of that night, Ms. Devi says she doesn't understand how a woman could be out for the evening with a man who wasn't her husband.
That night, the two victims had been to a movie at an upscale shopping mall. They were attacked after they boarded a bus. The woman was raped and sexually assaulted with a metal bar, resulting in numerous injuries to her internal organs. The two were dumped, naked and bleeding, by the roadside. The young woman ultimately died of her injuries.
It is too simple to say, however, that there is an urban-rural values split. Mr. Singh's lawyer in New Delhi, A.P. Singh, said after Friday's sentencing that if his daughter insisted on having premarital sex, he would "burn her to death." When asked about the comments, he said "any Indian household in the right frame of mind" would feel the same about premarital sex.
A.P. Singh said he would appeal the guilty verdict against Ms. Devi's husband. That process could take years.
In a written statement from the convict, Mr. Singh, provided by his lawyer, he said of his wife: "She should be strong and fight. She should seek employment. I want her to live. I want her to educate our son and make him a good man. When he grows up, I want him to know the truth about me, that I am innocent."
But Ms. Devi herself worries that time is running out. Her in-laws, Sarju Singh and Malati Devi, say they don't have enough savings to continue supporting Ms. Devi and her son. Mr. Singh's brothers say their earnings are barely enough to support their own wives and children.
Using the cellphone her husband gave her last year, Ms. Devi calls her mother. "What can I do?" she asks, according to Lilavati Devi. Her mother, in tears, says she has no answer to give her.
"Had she been educated, she would have earned for herself," she says, sitting near a picture of her daughter, dressed in a green sari. In the photo, she is standing before a garden backdrop, wearing a half smile.
Ms. Devi's father, Raj Mohan Singh, says his daughter can't return to the home he and his wife share with their son's family. "We won't be able to look after her," he says. "Her brother can't support her, either. He isn't able to look after himself. How can he look after Punita?"
Ms. Devi doesn't know where to turn. "Is there anyone who is thinking of me?" she asked, crying after learning of the death sentence. "I am alive and I have a small child who is still breathing."
—Preetika Rana and Tripti Lahiri contributed to this article.
********************************************************
There were so many horrific things in this article, I hardly know where to begin. I feel so outraged about the treatment of this woman and her son at the hands of her own family - her own fricking family! And they all are just shrugging and saying "oh well, too bad, so sad, go away somewhere and die quickly, please." And you know what's going to happen to this woman if she doesn't "disappear", and maybe her son, too, she's going to die in an "accidental" kitchen fire, burnt to a crisp. There are thousands of such "accidents" that occur in India every year. None ever result in a conviction for murder. Everyone will just shrug and say "oh well, too bad, so sad."
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Female Fighter Pilots Were Expunged from "Return of the Jedi"
What? What kind of bullshit is this! Un-fricking-believable! 1983 wasn't exactly the dark ages; although sexism in the United States was still rampant, it wasn't as blatant as it used to be back in the days of Ike E. Women had burned their bras years before, and with the advent of birth control pills, it was a sexual free for all. The Equal Rights Amendment had been shot down by certain state legislatures (we all know who THEY are, don't we) but other laws were then passed guaranteeing certain rights for females. Not perfect but we've come a long fricking way, baby, from 1951, the year I was born. And all these years I thought George Lucas was an advanced form of human being. How disappointing to find out he is just another penis looking for a ho to hide in. Too chicken shit to stand up for his editorial independence. Bah! Spit spit.
The Rebel Alliance now seems a little bit less like a galactic Boys Club. [Are you kidding? It was even worse than I thought! And the man who wrote this piece is full of shit.]
The final battle against the Death Star in "Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi" (1983) used to have a bit more of a woman's touch as it's been revealed that there were actually three female Rebel pilots taking on TIE Fighters and Star Destroyers as they waited for Han Solo and the gang to blow up the shield generator bunker on Endor (ah, old war stories!).
There were three unnamed lady pilots in "Jedi," two of which can be seen in the extras for the Blu-ray release of the original "Star Wars" trilogy. Both of them were A-Wing pilots, with one even getting a line ("Got it," which was actually dubbed by a male actor in post-production) before getting shot down by a TIE Fighter seconds later. The second pilot is, surprisingly, considerably older ... and could now indeed be the inspiration for a new wave of fan fiction (she's a retired Rebel vet who's allowed to come back for one last hurrah against the Empire after being deemed too old for duty during the Battle of Yavin in "A New Hope," perhaps?). [Why is it surprising that a woman would be a fighter pilot for the Rebels and what, exactly, does "considerably older" mean? Was that particular female pilot in her 80's?"]
There was a third female pilot in the Battle of Endor as well. French actress Vivienne Chandler didn't make it into the Blu-ray extras, even though she spent three days on the "Jedi" set and had an entire line of dialogue between herself and another pilot. She also got to fly the much more iconic X-Wing, the ship of choice for her Rebel colleague, Luke Skywalker. Even though actual footage of her in full Rebel mode doesn't seem to exist, she's managed to stay a part of the "Star Wars" universe as she's now a staple on the convention circuit.
There's been no official explanation as to why these characters were cut, though fan speculation suggests that the filmmakers may have deemed the sight of ladies getting blown to smithereens to be too intense for moviegoers ... especially when one could pass for your grandmother. [Oh really? But it's been perfectly all right all these years to show women being terrorized, raped, tortured, murdered and cut up with knives and every kind of saw you can imagine in countless movies to hit the big screen as well as many television series episodes, but you know, that's because chicks were just born to be victims, baby, hey hey.]
We have a feeling a lot of the Rebellion's apparent gender discrimination will have dissolved in time for "Episode VII." "Star Wars" needs women, and "Star Wars" will get them if Disney has anything to say about it. [Yeah. Right.]
More coverage:
Luke, I'm your female co-worker: How women pilots helped take down the Death Star (...before getting chopped down in the editing suite)
December 14, 2014 The Mail Online
Hey, here's the "old chick" female fighter pilot, her photo is in the Mail Online article:
But it seems gender - and even age - are not barriers to being a good Jedi, with one of the females appearing to be in her late 40s or early 50s.
They're kidding, right? I don't know any woman in her late 40's or early 50's who looks like this - not even in 1983. I'm 61 and I don't look like this. It is absolutely cool, however, that this actress was cast in this role. I expect the film people piled on extra make-up to give her those deeply grooved frown and jowl lines. Just imagine the experience she would have had as a pilot, to survive all those years and all of the battles, when the male teenage wasteds were being blown out of the skies left and right. Ha! No way was this actress in her late 40's or early 50's. Geez, some people are so clueless.
Here's Vivienne Chandler. She should have been cast in Top Gun, perhaps her character's handle could have been "Melt Ice:"
She looks like Princess Leia in that photo, doesn't she...
Three female Rebel pilots were discharged from ‘Return of the Jedi’
By Bryan Enk | Movie Talk – Wed, Dec 12, 2012 2:36 PM ESTThe Rebel Alliance now seems a little bit less like a galactic Boys Club. [Are you kidding? It was even worse than I thought! And the man who wrote this piece is full of shit.]
The final battle against the Death Star in "Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi" (1983) used to have a bit more of a woman's touch as it's been revealed that there were actually three female Rebel pilots taking on TIE Fighters and Star Destroyers as they waited for Han Solo and the gang to blow up the shield generator bunker on Endor (ah, old war stories!).
There were three unnamed lady pilots in "Jedi," two of which can be seen in the extras for the Blu-ray release of the original "Star Wars" trilogy. Both of them were A-Wing pilots, with one even getting a line ("Got it," which was actually dubbed by a male actor in post-production) before getting shot down by a TIE Fighter seconds later. The second pilot is, surprisingly, considerably older ... and could now indeed be the inspiration for a new wave of fan fiction (she's a retired Rebel vet who's allowed to come back for one last hurrah against the Empire after being deemed too old for duty during the Battle of Yavin in "A New Hope," perhaps?). [Why is it surprising that a woman would be a fighter pilot for the Rebels and what, exactly, does "considerably older" mean? Was that particular female pilot in her 80's?"]
There was a third female pilot in the Battle of Endor as well. French actress Vivienne Chandler didn't make it into the Blu-ray extras, even though she spent three days on the "Jedi" set and had an entire line of dialogue between herself and another pilot. She also got to fly the much more iconic X-Wing, the ship of choice for her Rebel colleague, Luke Skywalker. Even though actual footage of her in full Rebel mode doesn't seem to exist, she's managed to stay a part of the "Star Wars" universe as she's now a staple on the convention circuit.
There's been no official explanation as to why these characters were cut, though fan speculation suggests that the filmmakers may have deemed the sight of ladies getting blown to smithereens to be too intense for moviegoers ... especially when one could pass for your grandmother. [Oh really? But it's been perfectly all right all these years to show women being terrorized, raped, tortured, murdered and cut up with knives and every kind of saw you can imagine in countless movies to hit the big screen as well as many television series episodes, but you know, that's because chicks were just born to be victims, baby, hey hey.]
We have a feeling a lot of the Rebellion's apparent gender discrimination will have dissolved in time for "Episode VII." "Star Wars" needs women, and "Star Wars" will get them if Disney has anything to say about it. [Yeah. Right.]
More coverage:
Luke, I'm your female co-worker: How women pilots helped take down the Death Star (...before getting chopped down in the editing suite)
December 14, 2014 The Mail Online
Hey, here's the "old chick" female fighter pilot, her photo is in the Mail Online article:
But it seems gender - and even age - are not barriers to being a good Jedi, with one of the females appearing to be in her late 40s or early 50s.
They're kidding, right? I don't know any woman in her late 40's or early 50's who looks like this - not even in 1983. I'm 61 and I don't look like this. It is absolutely cool, however, that this actress was cast in this role. I expect the film people piled on extra make-up to give her those deeply grooved frown and jowl lines. Just imagine the experience she would have had as a pilot, to survive all those years and all of the battles, when the male teenage wasteds were being blown out of the skies left and right. Ha! No way was this actress in her late 40's or early 50's. Geez, some people are so clueless.
Here's Vivienne Chandler. She should have been cast in Top Gun, perhaps her character's handle could have been "Melt Ice:"
She looks like Princess Leia in that photo, doesn't she...
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Iran Bans Women from Certain Universities and Degrees
Story from The Telegraph (co.uk) -- originally reported on August 20:
Anger as Iran bans women from universities
Female students in Iran have been barred from more than 70 university degree courses in an officially-approved act of sex-discrimination which critics say is aimed at defeating the fight for equal women's rights.
By Robert Tait
3:17PM BST 20 Aug 2012
In a move that has prompted a demand for a UN investigation byIran's most celebrated human rights campaigner, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, 36 universities have announced that 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year will be "single gender" and effectively exclusive to men.
It follows years in which Iranian women students have outperformed men, a trend at odds with the traditional male-dominated outlook of the country's religious leaders. Women outnumbered men by three to two in passing this year's university entrance exam.
Senior clerics in Iran's theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women, including declining birth and marriage rates.
Under the new policy, women undergraduates will be excluded from a broad range of studies in some of the country's leading institutions, including English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management.
The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.
Writing to Ban Ki Moon, the UN secretary general, and Navi Pillay, the high commissioner for human rights, Mrs Ebadi, a human rights lawyer exiled in the UK, said the real agenda was to reduce the proportion of female students to below 50% – from around 65% at present – thereby weakening the Iranian feminist movement in its campaign against discriminatory Islamic laws.
"[It] is part of the recent policy of the Islamic Republic, which tries to return women to the private domain inside the home as it cannot tolerate their passionate presence in the public arena," says the letter, which was also sent to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in Iran. "The aim is that women will give up their opposition and demands for their own rights."
The new policy has also been criticised by Iranian parliamentarians, who summoned the deputy science and higher education minister to explain.
However, the science and higher education minister, Kamran Daneshjoo, dismissed the controversy, saying that 90% of degrees remain open to both sexes and that single-gender courses were needed to create "balance".
Iran has highest ratio of female to male undergraduates in the world, according to UNESCO. Female students have become prominent in traditionally male-dominated courses like applied physics and some engineering disciplines.
Sociologists have credited women's growing academic success to the increased willingness of religiously-conservative families to send their daughters to university after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The relative decline in the male student population has been attributed to the desire of young Iranian men to "get rich quick" without going to university.
Under the new policy, women undergraduates will be excluded from a broad range of studies in some of the country's leading institutions, including English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management.
The Oil Industry University, which has several campuses across the country, says it will no longer accept female students at all, citing a lack of employer demand. Isfahan University provided a similar rationale for excluding women from its mining engineering degree, claiming 98% of female graduates ended up jobless.
Writing to Ban Ki Moon, the UN secretary general, and Navi Pillay, the high commissioner for human rights, Mrs Ebadi, a human rights lawyer exiled in the UK, said the real agenda was to reduce the proportion of female students to below 50% – from around 65% at present – thereby weakening the Iranian feminist movement in its campaign against discriminatory Islamic laws.
"[It] is part of the recent policy of the Islamic Republic, which tries to return women to the private domain inside the home as it cannot tolerate their passionate presence in the public arena," says the letter, which was also sent to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in Iran. "The aim is that women will give up their opposition and demands for their own rights."
The new policy has also been criticised by Iranian parliamentarians, who summoned the deputy science and higher education minister to explain.
However, the science and higher education minister, Kamran Daneshjoo, dismissed the controversy, saying that 90% of degrees remain open to both sexes and that single-gender courses were needed to create "balance".
Iran has highest ratio of female to male undergraduates in the world, according to UNESCO. Female students have become prominent in traditionally male-dominated courses like applied physics and some engineering disciplines.
Sociologists have credited women's growing academic success to the increased willingness of religiously-conservative families to send their daughters to university after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The relative decline in the male student population has been attributed to the desire of young Iranian men to "get rich quick" without going to university.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
I Want My Own Name Back --
'Sis sent this article to me. I think it ties in quite eloquently, despite being from half a world away (Japan), to the interesting fact my friend Ann passed along to me a few days ago that I mentioned in an earlier blog that, in the United States of America, between the years 1907 and 1920, a female citizen of this country LOST HER CITIZENSHIP if she married a man who was not also a citizen of the USA. Under the eyes of this law, a woman ceased to exist as an independent person (or legal entity) when she married. Absolutely, incredibly disgusting!
I wonder if the citizenship statutes that govern our laws today in the USA contain some equally horrible aspects denigrating a woman's being as well. For sure in Japan they still do!
Government to face first suit on surnames
Tue, Jan 11 11:05 AM EST
By Yoko Kubota
TOKYO (Reuters) - After nearly fifty years of persevering with a life under her husband's surname, 75-year-old Kyoko Tsukamoto is taking the Japanese government to court so that she can at least bear her own name when she dies.
"My husband and I still love each other, but this and the issue of Tsukamoto are different," she said.
The former teacher uses her maiden name, but due to Japanese civil law requirements she had to take her husband's name when she married to make the union legal.
But debate over the surname issue, long a sore point with some women, has heated up as more women stay in jobs after marriage and juggle two names -- their maiden name at work and their registered name on legal documents.
"I thought that I would get used to my husband's name, but I could not, and a sense of loss grew inside me," Tsukamoto said.
"Now I am 75 and I was shocked to realize that I can't do things anymore that I used to be able to do last year. That's when I thought that I am Kyoko Tsukamoto and I want to die as Kyoko Tsukamoto."
Tsukamoto is one of five people planning to file a lawsuit against the government and local authorities as early as February, saying the civil code that requires married couples to register under the same surname violates equal rights among married couples, as well as personal rights.
Men are allowed to take their spouses' name, but it is rare.
The group will seek compensation for what it says is the legislature's failure to enact change, the first such case to be debated in open court in Japan, the only country in the Group of Eight major industrialized nations with such a surname rule.
Hopes grew that the government would submit a bill to amend the civil code after the Democratic Party of Japan, which has advocated letting married couples keep separate names if they wish, took power in 2009. But opposition from a coalition ally caused the plan to stall.
"There were expectations that it could be enacted but unfortunately this did not take place. They do not want to wait any longer," said Fujiko Sakakibara, lead lawyer for the group.
TRADITIONAL FAMILY
The rule is tied to Japan's traditional concept of the family, which in the past ensured that property, businesses, and surnames were passed on to men within the family unit.
Some say it is outdated. In certain cases, couples repeat marriages and divorces between each other to avoid having to register their children as out of wedlock births, partly because the civil code limits inheritance rights for such children.
Tsukamoto, with her husband since 1960, is going through her second marriage with him after divorcing once in 1965 to get her maiden name back. They re-married when they had their third child but her husband has rejected requests for a second divorce.
Those against change say it's a matter of family unity and are wary of the impact on children's identities. They also warn of a possible increase in divorce.
Tsukamoto began studying women's issues at the age of 63, after she was freed of duties to nurse her parents. She has since taken up an activist's role.
"Others were getting by well in society and I have thought that perhaps I was stupid to insist on this ... Now things are changing in a good direction, unimaginable in 1960," she said.
(Editing by Elaine Lies)
I wonder if the citizenship statutes that govern our laws today in the USA contain some equally horrible aspects denigrating a woman's being as well. For sure in Japan they still do!
Government to face first suit on surnames
Tue, Jan 11 11:05 AM EST
By Yoko Kubota
TOKYO (Reuters) - After nearly fifty years of persevering with a life under her husband's surname, 75-year-old Kyoko Tsukamoto is taking the Japanese government to court so that she can at least bear her own name when she dies.
"My husband and I still love each other, but this and the issue of Tsukamoto are different," she said.
The former teacher uses her maiden name, but due to Japanese civil law requirements she had to take her husband's name when she married to make the union legal.
But debate over the surname issue, long a sore point with some women, has heated up as more women stay in jobs after marriage and juggle two names -- their maiden name at work and their registered name on legal documents.
"I thought that I would get used to my husband's name, but I could not, and a sense of loss grew inside me," Tsukamoto said.
"Now I am 75 and I was shocked to realize that I can't do things anymore that I used to be able to do last year. That's when I thought that I am Kyoko Tsukamoto and I want to die as Kyoko Tsukamoto."
Tsukamoto is one of five people planning to file a lawsuit against the government and local authorities as early as February, saying the civil code that requires married couples to register under the same surname violates equal rights among married couples, as well as personal rights.
Men are allowed to take their spouses' name, but it is rare.
The group will seek compensation for what it says is the legislature's failure to enact change, the first such case to be debated in open court in Japan, the only country in the Group of Eight major industrialized nations with such a surname rule.
Hopes grew that the government would submit a bill to amend the civil code after the Democratic Party of Japan, which has advocated letting married couples keep separate names if they wish, took power in 2009. But opposition from a coalition ally caused the plan to stall.
"There were expectations that it could be enacted but unfortunately this did not take place. They do not want to wait any longer," said Fujiko Sakakibara, lead lawyer for the group.
TRADITIONAL FAMILY
The rule is tied to Japan's traditional concept of the family, which in the past ensured that property, businesses, and surnames were passed on to men within the family unit.
Some say it is outdated. In certain cases, couples repeat marriages and divorces between each other to avoid having to register their children as out of wedlock births, partly because the civil code limits inheritance rights for such children.
Tsukamoto, with her husband since 1960, is going through her second marriage with him after divorcing once in 1965 to get her maiden name back. They re-married when they had their third child but her husband has rejected requests for a second divorce.
Those against change say it's a matter of family unity and are wary of the impact on children's identities. They also warn of a possible increase in divorce.
Tsukamoto began studying women's issues at the age of 63, after she was freed of duties to nurse her parents. She has since taken up an activist's role.
"Others were getting by well in society and I have thought that perhaps I was stupid to insist on this ... Now things are changing in a good direction, unimaginable in 1960," she said.
(Editing by Elaine Lies)
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Afghan Women Fear Loss of Modest Gains
From The New York Times
A reminder that we really haven't come a long way, baby...
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan
Published: July 30, 2010
MAHMUD-E RAQI, Afghanistan — Women’s precarious rights in Afghanistan have begun seeping away. Girls’ schools are closing; working women are threatened; advocates are attacked; and terrified families are increasingly confining their daughters to home.For women, instability, as much as the Taliban themselves, is the enemy. Women are casualties of the fighting, not only in the already conservative and embattled Pashtun south and east, but also in districts in the north and center of the country where other armed groups have sprung up.
As Afghan and Western governments explore reconciliation with the Taliban, women fear that the peace they long for may come at the price of rights that have improved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001.
“Women do not want war, but none of them want the Taliban of 1996 again; no one wants to be imprisoned in the yards of their houses,” said Rahima Zarifi, the Women’s Ministry representative from the northern Baghlan Province.
Interviews around the country with at least two dozen female members of Parliament, government officials, activists, teachers and young girls suggest a nuanced reality — fighting constricts women’s freedoms nearly as much as a Taliban government, and conservative traditions already limit women’s rights in many places.
Women, however, express a range of fears about a Taliban return, from political to domestic — that they will be shut out of negotiations about any deals with the insurgents and that the Taliban’s return would drive up bride prices, making it more profitable for a family to force girls into marriage earlier.
For many women, the prospect of a resurgence of the Taliban or other conservative groups is stark. “It will ruin our life,” said Shougoufa, 40, as she sorted through sequins and gold sparkles at the bazaar in the city of Pul-i-Khumri in Afghanistan’s north. “I am a tailor and I need to come to the bazaar to buy these things,” she said. “But if the Taliban come, I will not be able to come. Already we are hearing some girls cannot go to their work anymore.”
In teachers’ tea-break rooms, beauty shop training sessions, bazaars and the privacy of their homes, young women worry that their parents will marry them off early, so they will not be forced to marry Taliban.
In the Pashtun-dominated district of Taghob, east of Kabul, girls’ schools have been closed and any teaching is done at home, the provincial education director said.
That does not trouble some local officials.
“Look, our main priority is to feed our people, to provide rest and to protect their lives,” said Haji Farid, a local member of Parliament. “Why are people focusing on education and sending girls to school? Boys walk three, four, five kilometers to their school. How can a girl walk two, three, four kilometers? During a war you cannot send a girl beyond her door. No one can guarantee her honor. So it is hard to send your daughter to school.”
In Kandahar, Helmand and Zabul, all unstable southern provinces, there are girls’ schools open in the provincial capitals, but in outlying districts there are few, if any. In Zabul Province, there are just six schools for girls, four in the capital and two outside, but few families send their girls to school because of the fighting, said Muhammad Alam, the acting head of the provincial education department. (Photo: A student speaks during a class at the Jamal Agha Girls School in Kapisa Province. By Adam Ferguson for The New York Times.)
In Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, the situation for women has steadily worsened over the past year. Ms. Zarifi, the Women’s Ministry representative, has endured assassination attempts and demonstrations against her work. Three months ago, a female member of the provincial council was paralyzed in an attack, and a woman was stabbed to death in the daytime in the middle of the provincial capital earlier in July.
By contrast, most of Kapisa Province, which lies northeast of Kabul, is peaceful. There is a mediation program in the capital to help women and girls when they face domestic violence. In the predominantly ethnically Tajik north there are large, lively schools for girls, where families even allow those who are married to complete high school.
Women’s advocates are concerned that they are increasingly being shut out of political decisions. At an international conference in Kabul on July 20, which was meant to showcase the country’s plans for the future, President Hamid Karzai said nothing about how women’s rights might be protected in negotiations. The very first meeting on negotiations, held by Mr. Karzai on July 22 with former leaders who had fought the Taliban, did not include a single woman, despite government pledges.
Part 2
A reminder that we really haven't come a long way, baby...
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan
Published: July 30, 2010
MAHMUD-E RAQI, Afghanistan — Women’s precarious rights in Afghanistan have begun seeping away. Girls’ schools are closing; working women are threatened; advocates are attacked; and terrified families are increasingly confining their daughters to home.For women, instability, as much as the Taliban themselves, is the enemy. Women are casualties of the fighting, not only in the already conservative and embattled Pashtun south and east, but also in districts in the north and center of the country where other armed groups have sprung up.
As Afghan and Western governments explore reconciliation with the Taliban, women fear that the peace they long for may come at the price of rights that have improved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001.
“Women do not want war, but none of them want the Taliban of 1996 again; no one wants to be imprisoned in the yards of their houses,” said Rahima Zarifi, the Women’s Ministry representative from the northern Baghlan Province.
Interviews around the country with at least two dozen female members of Parliament, government officials, activists, teachers and young girls suggest a nuanced reality — fighting constricts women’s freedoms nearly as much as a Taliban government, and conservative traditions already limit women’s rights in many places.
Women, however, express a range of fears about a Taliban return, from political to domestic — that they will be shut out of negotiations about any deals with the insurgents and that the Taliban’s return would drive up bride prices, making it more profitable for a family to force girls into marriage earlier.
For many women, the prospect of a resurgence of the Taliban or other conservative groups is stark. “It will ruin our life,” said Shougoufa, 40, as she sorted through sequins and gold sparkles at the bazaar in the city of Pul-i-Khumri in Afghanistan’s north. “I am a tailor and I need to come to the bazaar to buy these things,” she said. “But if the Taliban come, I will not be able to come. Already we are hearing some girls cannot go to their work anymore.”
In teachers’ tea-break rooms, beauty shop training sessions, bazaars and the privacy of their homes, young women worry that their parents will marry them off early, so they will not be forced to marry Taliban.
In the Pashtun-dominated district of Taghob, east of Kabul, girls’ schools have been closed and any teaching is done at home, the provincial education director said.
That does not trouble some local officials.
“Look, our main priority is to feed our people, to provide rest and to protect their lives,” said Haji Farid, a local member of Parliament. “Why are people focusing on education and sending girls to school? Boys walk three, four, five kilometers to their school. How can a girl walk two, three, four kilometers? During a war you cannot send a girl beyond her door. No one can guarantee her honor. So it is hard to send your daughter to school.”
In Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, the situation for women has steadily worsened over the past year. Ms. Zarifi, the Women’s Ministry representative, has endured assassination attempts and demonstrations against her work. Three months ago, a female member of the provincial council was paralyzed in an attack, and a woman was stabbed to death in the daytime in the middle of the provincial capital earlier in July.
By contrast, most of Kapisa Province, which lies northeast of Kabul, is peaceful. There is a mediation program in the capital to help women and girls when they face domestic violence. In the predominantly ethnically Tajik north there are large, lively schools for girls, where families even allow those who are married to complete high school.
Women’s advocates are concerned that they are increasingly being shut out of political decisions. At an international conference in Kabul on July 20, which was meant to showcase the country’s plans for the future, President Hamid Karzai said nothing about how women’s rights might be protected in negotiations. The very first meeting on negotiations, held by Mr. Karzai on July 22 with former leaders who had fought the Taliban, did not include a single woman, despite government pledges.
Part 2
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Taliban Terrorize and Murder Women with Impunity
From The Wall Street Journal
July 14, 2010
The Taliban War on Women Continues
When 22-year-old Hossai was told to quit her job by the Taliban, she refused to be bullied. She was shot and killed.
By RACHEL REID
Kabul
Beware Taliban revisionism. You're going to hear much more of it in the coming months as policy makers from Kabul to Washington seeking to reintegrate Taliban fighters try to explain why the enemy isn't so bad after all. Bombs that slaughter civilians, acid attacks that disfigure school girls, assassinations of women in public life—all of this will be swept under the carpet.
In its place, a new narrative will be trotted out, one in which most of the fighters are "ten-dollar Talibs"—just in it for the money—or modern-day Robin Hoods fighting the injustices of their local government. While money or politics may indeed be the motivation for many low-level fighters, that doesn't change the fact that too many Afghan women are experiencing the same kind of oppression today they faced under Taliban rule.
"We as Taliban warn you to stop working . . . otherwise we will take your life away. We will kill you in such a harsh way that no woman has so far been killed in that manner. This would become a good lesson for women like you who are working." When Fatima K. received this letter she was terrified and left her job. Such messages—called night letters, since they are delivered after dark—are a common means of intimidation used by the Taliban.
When 22-year-old Hossai received similar threats by phone from a man saying he was with the Taliban in Kandahar, she refused to be bullied. She loved her job at the American development company DAI, and her salary supported her family. But one day in April Hossai was shot by an unknown gunman as she left her office. She died from her wounds.
A few days later another woman in Kandahar received a night letter. It demanded that she give up her job, or else she "will be considered an enemy of Islam and will be killed. In the same way that yesterday we have killed Hossai, whose name was on our list." This woman has since stayed home.
These stories are seldom heard, but it's not because they are rare. The victims are often too terrified to report such attacks to the authorities, or have little hope that anything will be done if they do. They can expect little or no protection from their government, which seems more willing to provide patronage to senior insurgents who switch sides than assist women at grave risk. When high-profile women are assassinated, their cases are not given the priority they deserve and their killers are rarely brought to justice. While men who run afoul of the Taliban are also attacked—particularly in Kandahar, where the murder rate in recent months has reached unprecedented heights—the situation for women is worse.
The reassurance offered by the Afghan and U.S. governments is that those Taliban who lay down arms through reintegration or reconciliation programs must accept the constitution, which enshrines equal rights for men and women. But given how often President Hamid Karzai has himself ignored the constitutional protections afforded to Afghan women—as when he approved the highly restrictive Shia family law in 2009—it is not clear why Taliban who return to the political mainstream would have any motivation to respect the rights of women.
Many women activists would prefer to see explicit guarantees put at the heart of negotiations with the Taliban. There are some rights that should be nonnegotiable: the right to work, to participate in political life, and to send their daughters to school. But when I spoke to Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a founding member of the Taliban and its former ambassador to Pakistan, he did not inspire confidence that this would be possible.
Zaeef, who now resides in Kabul after a stint in Guantanamo, explained in our May meeting why he believes the freedoms won by Afghan women in recent years are "corrupting" them. "If you put a young adult man and woman in one room for some time, of course there will be some interactions, which is against Islam. This is like a virus here and it will spread," he said to me.
I emerged from my conversation with Zaeef uncorrupted. As for my questions about what gender segregation might mean for mixed work environments, like the Afghan parliament where women make up 25% of the members, I got no straight answer.
The Afghan government should have women's rights at the center of the reintegration programs. But the experience of the past nine years has been one of hasty deals and impunity for serious crimes. And with the need for an exit strategy weighing heavily on the minds of U.S. policy makers, there's a strong chance that justice and principle will once again be sacrificed.
American officials are often tempted to deny their own influence by claiming that this will be an Afghan process. But since the U.S. will pay for most of it, this is not a credible position. Worse still, it flies in the face of repeated U.S. commitments to help protect and promote the rights of Afghan women. The U.S. should make clear that if reintegration and reconciliation results in less freedom for Afghan women and girls, American taxpayers will not foot the bill.
Ms. Reid is the Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch.
July 14, 2010
The Taliban War on Women Continues
When 22-year-old Hossai was told to quit her job by the Taliban, she refused to be bullied. She was shot and killed.
By RACHEL REID
Kabul
Beware Taliban revisionism. You're going to hear much more of it in the coming months as policy makers from Kabul to Washington seeking to reintegrate Taliban fighters try to explain why the enemy isn't so bad after all. Bombs that slaughter civilians, acid attacks that disfigure school girls, assassinations of women in public life—all of this will be swept under the carpet.
In its place, a new narrative will be trotted out, one in which most of the fighters are "ten-dollar Talibs"—just in it for the money—or modern-day Robin Hoods fighting the injustices of their local government. While money or politics may indeed be the motivation for many low-level fighters, that doesn't change the fact that too many Afghan women are experiencing the same kind of oppression today they faced under Taliban rule.
"We as Taliban warn you to stop working . . . otherwise we will take your life away. We will kill you in such a harsh way that no woman has so far been killed in that manner. This would become a good lesson for women like you who are working." When Fatima K. received this letter she was terrified and left her job. Such messages—called night letters, since they are delivered after dark—are a common means of intimidation used by the Taliban.
When 22-year-old Hossai received similar threats by phone from a man saying he was with the Taliban in Kandahar, she refused to be bullied. She loved her job at the American development company DAI, and her salary supported her family. But one day in April Hossai was shot by an unknown gunman as she left her office. She died from her wounds.
A few days later another woman in Kandahar received a night letter. It demanded that she give up her job, or else she "will be considered an enemy of Islam and will be killed. In the same way that yesterday we have killed Hossai, whose name was on our list." This woman has since stayed home.
These stories are seldom heard, but it's not because they are rare. The victims are often too terrified to report such attacks to the authorities, or have little hope that anything will be done if they do. They can expect little or no protection from their government, which seems more willing to provide patronage to senior insurgents who switch sides than assist women at grave risk. When high-profile women are assassinated, their cases are not given the priority they deserve and their killers are rarely brought to justice. While men who run afoul of the Taliban are also attacked—particularly in Kandahar, where the murder rate in recent months has reached unprecedented heights—the situation for women is worse.
The reassurance offered by the Afghan and U.S. governments is that those Taliban who lay down arms through reintegration or reconciliation programs must accept the constitution, which enshrines equal rights for men and women. But given how often President Hamid Karzai has himself ignored the constitutional protections afforded to Afghan women—as when he approved the highly restrictive Shia family law in 2009—it is not clear why Taliban who return to the political mainstream would have any motivation to respect the rights of women.
Many women activists would prefer to see explicit guarantees put at the heart of negotiations with the Taliban. There are some rights that should be nonnegotiable: the right to work, to participate in political life, and to send their daughters to school. But when I spoke to Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a founding member of the Taliban and its former ambassador to Pakistan, he did not inspire confidence that this would be possible.
Zaeef, who now resides in Kabul after a stint in Guantanamo, explained in our May meeting why he believes the freedoms won by Afghan women in recent years are "corrupting" them. "If you put a young adult man and woman in one room for some time, of course there will be some interactions, which is against Islam. This is like a virus here and it will spread," he said to me.
I emerged from my conversation with Zaeef uncorrupted. As for my questions about what gender segregation might mean for mixed work environments, like the Afghan parliament where women make up 25% of the members, I got no straight answer.
The Afghan government should have women's rights at the center of the reintegration programs. But the experience of the past nine years has been one of hasty deals and impunity for serious crimes. And with the need for an exit strategy weighing heavily on the minds of U.S. policy makers, there's a strong chance that justice and principle will once again be sacrificed.
American officials are often tempted to deny their own influence by claiming that this will be an Afghan process. But since the U.S. will pay for most of it, this is not a credible position. Worse still, it flies in the face of repeated U.S. commitments to help protect and promote the rights of Afghan women. The U.S. should make clear that if reintegration and reconciliation results in less freedom for Afghan women and girls, American taxpayers will not foot the bill.
Ms. Reid is the Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Egyptian Women Work - But No Rights
From The New York Times
The Female Factor
In Egypt, Women Have Burdens but No Privileges
By MONA EL-NAGGAR
Published: July 13, 2010
CAIRO — Hoda Gameel is 22 and one of the millions of women in Egypt thrust by need and circumstance into the world of work. While the act of leaving home to work may have liberated some women in the past, Egyptian women have found no recognition and are fleeing instead back toward tradition.
“I used to be ambitious, and I had dreams. Now I just want to get married and stay at home,” Ms. Gameel said. “My only hope is to be able to rest when I get married.”
She wakes at 7 a.m., makes breakfast for two younger brothers, walks them to school, returns home to iron clothes and goes to work, selling headscarfs at a booth in a glitzy mall. At night, after battling Cairo traffic on a 90-minute ride in a dilapidated bus, she has a late dinner, studies and — finally — sleeps.
It is a grind that yields barely $100 a month even with extra shifts, and a story drearily familiar in countries where tradition still deprives most women of opportunity, and poorly paid drudgery is the only choice.
Ms. Gameel has the burdens, but not the privileges, of her male counterparts. “I feel like a man,” she said. “Men are the ones who are supposed to struggle and carry the burden of their family. A woman is meant to provide love, affection and be sheltered. She shouldn’t be out and about all the time.”
The oldest of four children, Ms. Gameel, in her fourth year of accounting studies, had to provide when her father, an illiterate construction worker, retired with severe asthma at 51 and her mother grew too overweight to sew clothes in a factory for less than $50 a month.
At first, when she was 19, she worked as a secretary in a small company that sells air-conditioners. She liked the office job, and her salary was twice what she makes selling headscarfs. But her boss was a little too attentive — “he would keep dropping things on purpose so that I would have to bend down and get them.” When Ms. Gameel complained to colleagues, word got to her boss, and he fired her.
Women’s greater presence in the work force has not translated into any fundamental shift in prevailing attitudes toward women in public life.
Indeed, in a recent survey in association with the International Herald Tribune by the Pew Research Center in Washington, Egypt emerged as one country where women in the workplace clearly take a back seat to men and equal rights are a goal rather than reality. Sixty-one percent of respondents in Egypt said women should be allowed to work outside the home. But 75 percent said that when jobs are scarce, men should have more right to work.
“Yes, more women are working, but not every work is liberating,” said Iman Bibars, chairwoman of the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women, based in Cairo. “So in the end, a lot of the younger generation do not want to work. It is regressive and reactionary.”
“At the same time that women are out to work, and this is a modern indicator, traditions continue to have the upper hand,” noted Madiha el-Safty, professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo.
Egypt is ranked 120 out of 128 countries in gender equality by the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, with emphasis on its low performance in the subcategories of political empowerment and genuine female opportunity in the economy.
Things may in fact be getting worse for women. In Egypt, the government sector has traditionally proved more hospitable to women. As the economy has shifted toward the private sector, women are losing out. According to a 2010 Population Council report, the unemployment rate for women ages 15 to 29 is about 32 percent, compared with 12 percent for men the same ages.
Women in Egypt occupy only eight out of the 454 seats in Parliament — and five of those female deputies were appointed by the president. There are just three female ministers and no women among Egypt’s 29 governors.
When women applied to be judges in the State Council, Egypt’s highest administrative court, the council’s general assembly voted against, arguing that women’s emotional disposition and maternal duties rendered them unfit. The decision was overruled in March after Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif appealed to the constitutional court, but no women have been appointed.
Similarly, Parliament passed a law last year, initiated by the ruling National Democratic Party, giving women a 64-seat quota in an expanded lower house over the next two five-year terms, starting with elections this autumn.
Spheres like law and politics are scarcely open to women of Ms. Gameel’s modest background, noted Fayzah el-Tahnawy, a member of the ruling party and a former member of Parliament from the conservative region of Menya.
Only affluent women “can afford to have ambition,” while most women belong to the middle or lower classes, she noted. In addition, female illiteracy remains high: the most recent Egyptian Labor Market Survey found that 47 percent of rural women and 23 percent of urban women could not read or write.
“This is why we had to implement the quota system in order to make room for women in politics,” said Ms. Tahnawy. “It didn’t just happen on its own.”
How any of these measures would help Ms. Gameel is unclear. She doggedly pursues her degree, and English language courses in summer. She wants a job in a bank for favorable hours (work ending at 2 p.m.) that she sees as her only shot at a dignified career and happy marriage.
“I work like a machine,” said Ms. Gameel. “There are no promotions, my salary doesn’t increase, and there is no mercy. Where is the sense of fulfillment in that?”
It is 11 p.m. Ms. Gameel totals sales for the day, calls in to the owner and shutters the booth. She is carrying frozen okra, which her mother will cook for dinner. She shuffles to the bus. She gazes out the window. Halfway home, she finally speaks. “This bumpy ride alone is bound to kill me.”
The Female Factor
In Egypt, Women Have Burdens but No Privileges
By MONA EL-NAGGAR
Published: July 13, 2010
CAIRO — Hoda Gameel is 22 and one of the millions of women in Egypt thrust by need and circumstance into the world of work. While the act of leaving home to work may have liberated some women in the past, Egyptian women have found no recognition and are fleeing instead back toward tradition.
“I used to be ambitious, and I had dreams. Now I just want to get married and stay at home,” Ms. Gameel said. “My only hope is to be able to rest when I get married.”
She wakes at 7 a.m., makes breakfast for two younger brothers, walks them to school, returns home to iron clothes and goes to work, selling headscarfs at a booth in a glitzy mall. At night, after battling Cairo traffic on a 90-minute ride in a dilapidated bus, she has a late dinner, studies and — finally — sleeps.
It is a grind that yields barely $100 a month even with extra shifts, and a story drearily familiar in countries where tradition still deprives most women of opportunity, and poorly paid drudgery is the only choice.
Ms. Gameel has the burdens, but not the privileges, of her male counterparts. “I feel like a man,” she said. “Men are the ones who are supposed to struggle and carry the burden of their family. A woman is meant to provide love, affection and be sheltered. She shouldn’t be out and about all the time.”
The oldest of four children, Ms. Gameel, in her fourth year of accounting studies, had to provide when her father, an illiterate construction worker, retired with severe asthma at 51 and her mother grew too overweight to sew clothes in a factory for less than $50 a month.
At first, when she was 19, she worked as a secretary in a small company that sells air-conditioners. She liked the office job, and her salary was twice what she makes selling headscarfs. But her boss was a little too attentive — “he would keep dropping things on purpose so that I would have to bend down and get them.” When Ms. Gameel complained to colleagues, word got to her boss, and he fired her.
Women’s greater presence in the work force has not translated into any fundamental shift in prevailing attitudes toward women in public life.
Indeed, in a recent survey in association with the International Herald Tribune by the Pew Research Center in Washington, Egypt emerged as one country where women in the workplace clearly take a back seat to men and equal rights are a goal rather than reality. Sixty-one percent of respondents in Egypt said women should be allowed to work outside the home. But 75 percent said that when jobs are scarce, men should have more right to work.
“Yes, more women are working, but not every work is liberating,” said Iman Bibars, chairwoman of the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women, based in Cairo. “So in the end, a lot of the younger generation do not want to work. It is regressive and reactionary.”
“At the same time that women are out to work, and this is a modern indicator, traditions continue to have the upper hand,” noted Madiha el-Safty, professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo.
Egypt is ranked 120 out of 128 countries in gender equality by the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, with emphasis on its low performance in the subcategories of political empowerment and genuine female opportunity in the economy.
Things may in fact be getting worse for women. In Egypt, the government sector has traditionally proved more hospitable to women. As the economy has shifted toward the private sector, women are losing out. According to a 2010 Population Council report, the unemployment rate for women ages 15 to 29 is about 32 percent, compared with 12 percent for men the same ages.
Women in Egypt occupy only eight out of the 454 seats in Parliament — and five of those female deputies were appointed by the president. There are just three female ministers and no women among Egypt’s 29 governors.
When women applied to be judges in the State Council, Egypt’s highest administrative court, the council’s general assembly voted against, arguing that women’s emotional disposition and maternal duties rendered them unfit. The decision was overruled in March after Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif appealed to the constitutional court, but no women have been appointed.
Similarly, Parliament passed a law last year, initiated by the ruling National Democratic Party, giving women a 64-seat quota in an expanded lower house over the next two five-year terms, starting with elections this autumn.
Spheres like law and politics are scarcely open to women of Ms. Gameel’s modest background, noted Fayzah el-Tahnawy, a member of the ruling party and a former member of Parliament from the conservative region of Menya.
Only affluent women “can afford to have ambition,” while most women belong to the middle or lower classes, she noted. In addition, female illiteracy remains high: the most recent Egyptian Labor Market Survey found that 47 percent of rural women and 23 percent of urban women could not read or write.
“This is why we had to implement the quota system in order to make room for women in politics,” said Ms. Tahnawy. “It didn’t just happen on its own.”
How any of these measures would help Ms. Gameel is unclear. She doggedly pursues her degree, and English language courses in summer. She wants a job in a bank for favorable hours (work ending at 2 p.m.) that she sees as her only shot at a dignified career and happy marriage.
“I work like a machine,” said Ms. Gameel. “There are no promotions, my salary doesn’t increase, and there is no mercy. Where is the sense of fulfillment in that?”
It is 11 p.m. Ms. Gameel totals sales for the day, calls in to the owner and shutters the booth. She is carrying frozen okra, which her mother will cook for dinner. She shuffles to the bus. She gazes out the window. Halfway home, she finally speaks. “This bumpy ride alone is bound to kill me.”
Saturday, June 5, 2010
This is a Joke - Right? Political Hijinks in South Carolina
I don't often post about politics here and the following story is a good reason why I don't! Turned my stomach, it did. I am still shaking my head in disbelief that people really say, do and believe incredibly stupid things. The target in this case is a woman running for the GOP's nomination to run for governor of South Carolina.
From Yahoo
'Raghead' slur is new ugly twist in S.C. race
Fri Jun 4, 4:40 pm ET
Lee Atwater would be proud. Or ashamed. Or both.
Atwater, the famed GOP operative who ran George H.W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, was the universally acknowledged master of the political dirty trick — his was the diabolical mind behind the "Willie Horton" ad that did Michael Dukakis in — until a deathbed conversion in which he regretted the "naked brutality" of his career. Atwater was also a native of South Carolina, and in recent months his home state has been living up to his political legacy in ways he never could have imagined — most recently with a Republican state senator using the slur "raghead" for GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, a Christian of Indian Sikh descent, and for President Obama.
South Carolina has always had a singularly mean-spirited and crafty political culture, especially on the GOP side, where dog whistles about race and religion come across loud and clear to its good ol' boy base. There were the rumors floated during the 2000 Republican presidential primary about a supposed illegitimate black child of Sen. John McCain, and there was the time in 1990 when political consultant Rod Shealy conspired to increase the turnout among anti-black white voters in the GOP primary by recruiting a black candidate (which he correctly reckoned would benefit his candidate) to run for Congress.
South Carolina has also of late become known for the sexual peccadilloes of Gov. Mark Sanford and the anti-Obama rage of one of its congressmen, Joe Wilson (he of the "You lie!" outburst during the president's address to Congress on health care).
And now the state's Republican primary for governor has tied those threads of political deviousness, sexual innuendo and white rage into an Atwaterian nightmare.
Front-runner Haley, an attractive "pro-family" candidate who has the backing of the tea party movement and Sarah Palin, has been the target of not one but two claims of infidelity to her husband — both lodged by conservative political operatives who claim to have slept with her. And on Thursday a state senator who is supporting one of Haley's opponents casually referred to her as a "raghead" and claimed that she is a Manchurian candidate launched by a "network of Sikhs" to take over the governorship.
During a visit Thursday to "Pub Politics," an online political chat show hosted from a bar in Columbia, S.C., state senator Jake Knotts said: "We already got one raghead in the White House; we don't need a raghead in the governor's mansion." Haley's parents are Sikhs of Indian descent; she has converted to Christianity but still attends Sikh religious ceremonies on occasion out of deference to her parents.
According to the Columbia Free Times, Knotts also claimed that Haley was a plant being controlled by nefarious handlers:
Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. He claims she is hiding her religion and he wants the voters to know about it.
The "raghead" remark seemed like an inevitable grace note in the gubernatorial primary. Knotts is supporting South Carolina Lieutenant Gov. Andre Bauer's candidacy, and this week a campaign consultant for Bauer named Larry Marchant came forward to claim he had a "one-night stand" with Haley — a married mother of two — at a school-choice conference in 2008. That allegation came just a week after Will Folks, a right-wing blogger and former campaign worker for Haley, claimed to have engaged in an "inappropriate physical relationship" with her.
Haley has categorically denied the charges and says she has been "100 percent faithful" to her husband. Bauer, who fired Marchant and says he has had nothing to do with the charges of infidelity, has chosen a curious approach to staying out of the fray: He's demanding that Haley take a lie-detector test to prove that she never cheated on her husband. Haley, meanwhile, has pledged that if she's elected, she will resign if proof ever comes out that she did sleep with Folks or Marchant.
Neither Marchant nor Folks has come forward with proof of their claims, though Folks has released phone records showing that he frequently spoke to Haley on the phone late at night and claims to have seen a photo, allegedly taken by a private investigator, of himself and Haley in a "compromising position."
As for Knotts, he has issued an apology for the "raghead" comment, claiming that it was "intended in jest" and that the "humorous content was lost in translation." Though the "Pub Politics" show was webcast, host Wesley Donehue, a South Carolina political consultant, Tweeted that "technical issues" prevented Knotts' remark from being archived on the show's site, so no video of it was immediately available. But he later Tweeted that he had his own version, as yet unreleased. (To add to the insular, high-school nature of the campaign's glorious disarray, Donehue was the person Folks accused of first peddling Folks-Haley rumors to the press, allegedly prompting Folks' confession.)
Even in his apology, Knotts managed to get another underhanded dig in at Haley, whom he says "is pretending to be someone she is not." Bauer used identical language in his statement challenging her to a lie-detector test. The implication that she is, as Knotts put it, "hiding her true religion." Meanwhile, the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody published a story Thursday saying her emphasis on her Christian faith has evolved over the years.
Haley has thus far used the bizarre attacks to her advantage, painting herself as a victim of a corrupt political culture, and has maintained a healthy lead in the polls. The primary is Tuesday, which leaves only three more days for Haley's opponents to systematically eviscerate the myth of the Southern gentleman.
— John Cook is a senior national reporter/blogger for Yahoo! News.
From Yahoo
'Raghead' slur is new ugly twist in S.C. race
Fri Jun 4, 4:40 pm ET
Lee Atwater would be proud. Or ashamed. Or both.
Atwater, the famed GOP operative who ran George H.W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, was the universally acknowledged master of the political dirty trick — his was the diabolical mind behind the "Willie Horton" ad that did Michael Dukakis in — until a deathbed conversion in which he regretted the "naked brutality" of his career. Atwater was also a native of South Carolina, and in recent months his home state has been living up to his political legacy in ways he never could have imagined — most recently with a Republican state senator using the slur "raghead" for GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, a Christian of Indian Sikh descent, and for President Obama.
South Carolina has always had a singularly mean-spirited and crafty political culture, especially on the GOP side, where dog whistles about race and religion come across loud and clear to its good ol' boy base. There were the rumors floated during the 2000 Republican presidential primary about a supposed illegitimate black child of Sen. John McCain, and there was the time in 1990 when political consultant Rod Shealy conspired to increase the turnout among anti-black white voters in the GOP primary by recruiting a black candidate (which he correctly reckoned would benefit his candidate) to run for Congress.
South Carolina has also of late become known for the sexual peccadilloes of Gov. Mark Sanford and the anti-Obama rage of one of its congressmen, Joe Wilson (he of the "You lie!" outburst during the president's address to Congress on health care).
And now the state's Republican primary for governor has tied those threads of political deviousness, sexual innuendo and white rage into an Atwaterian nightmare.
Front-runner Haley, an attractive "pro-family" candidate who has the backing of the tea party movement and Sarah Palin, has been the target of not one but two claims of infidelity to her husband — both lodged by conservative political operatives who claim to have slept with her. And on Thursday a state senator who is supporting one of Haley's opponents casually referred to her as a "raghead" and claimed that she is a Manchurian candidate launched by a "network of Sikhs" to take over the governorship.
During a visit Thursday to "Pub Politics," an online political chat show hosted from a bar in Columbia, S.C., state senator Jake Knotts said: "We already got one raghead in the White House; we don't need a raghead in the governor's mansion." Haley's parents are Sikhs of Indian descent; she has converted to Christianity but still attends Sikh religious ceremonies on occasion out of deference to her parents.
According to the Columbia Free Times, Knotts also claimed that Haley was a plant being controlled by nefarious handlers:
Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. He claims she is hiding her religion and he wants the voters to know about it.
The "raghead" remark seemed like an inevitable grace note in the gubernatorial primary. Knotts is supporting South Carolina Lieutenant Gov. Andre Bauer's candidacy, and this week a campaign consultant for Bauer named Larry Marchant came forward to claim he had a "one-night stand" with Haley — a married mother of two — at a school-choice conference in 2008. That allegation came just a week after Will Folks, a right-wing blogger and former campaign worker for Haley, claimed to have engaged in an "inappropriate physical relationship" with her.
Haley has categorically denied the charges and says she has been "100 percent faithful" to her husband. Bauer, who fired Marchant and says he has had nothing to do with the charges of infidelity, has chosen a curious approach to staying out of the fray: He's demanding that Haley take a lie-detector test to prove that she never cheated on her husband. Haley, meanwhile, has pledged that if she's elected, she will resign if proof ever comes out that she did sleep with Folks or Marchant.
Neither Marchant nor Folks has come forward with proof of their claims, though Folks has released phone records showing that he frequently spoke to Haley on the phone late at night and claims to have seen a photo, allegedly taken by a private investigator, of himself and Haley in a "compromising position."
As for Knotts, he has issued an apology for the "raghead" comment, claiming that it was "intended in jest" and that the "humorous content was lost in translation." Though the "Pub Politics" show was webcast, host Wesley Donehue, a South Carolina political consultant, Tweeted that "technical issues" prevented Knotts' remark from being archived on the show's site, so no video of it was immediately available. But he later Tweeted that he had his own version, as yet unreleased. (To add to the insular, high-school nature of the campaign's glorious disarray, Donehue was the person Folks accused of first peddling Folks-Haley rumors to the press, allegedly prompting Folks' confession.)
Even in his apology, Knotts managed to get another underhanded dig in at Haley, whom he says "is pretending to be someone she is not." Bauer used identical language in his statement challenging her to a lie-detector test. The implication that she is, as Knotts put it, "hiding her true religion." Meanwhile, the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody published a story Thursday saying her emphasis on her Christian faith has evolved over the years.
Haley has thus far used the bizarre attacks to her advantage, painting herself as a victim of a corrupt political culture, and has maintained a healthy lead in the polls. The primary is Tuesday, which leaves only three more days for Haley's opponents to systematically eviscerate the myth of the Southern gentleman.
— John Cook is a senior national reporter/blogger for Yahoo! News.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Religious Terrorists Target School Girls
This is what happens when religious fundamentalists think they're right and everyone else is wrong. It is happening in this country - the people of the religious right are just as warped in their beliefs as the Taliban are in theirs. And, as we know, these people can even justify committing murder in the name of their 'God' while claiming to be devout Christians. When you think that 'God' is on YOUR side, you can justify anything, any atrocity, in the name of your 'God.' That is really, really sick.
Article at Yahoo News
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 44 mins ago
KABUL – Dozens of Afghan schoolgirls have fallen ill in recent days after reporting a strange odor in their classrooms in northern Afghanistan, prompting an investigation into whether they were targeted by militants who oppose education for girls or victims of mass hysteria.
Either way, the reports from three schools within 2 miles (3 kilometers) of one another in Kunduz province have raised alarm in a city threatened by the Taliban and their militant allies.
The latest cases occurred Sunday, when 13 girls became sick, Kunduz provincial spokesman Mahbobullah Sayedi said. Another 47 complained of dizziness and nausea the day before, and 23 fell ill last Wednesday.
All complained of a strange smell in class before they fell ill.
"I came out from the main hall, and I saw lots of other girls scattered everywhere," Anesa, a 9-year-old who was hospitalized briefly Sunday, told The Associated Press. "Then suddenly, I felt that I was losing my balance and falling."
None of the illnesses was serious and the girls were only hospitalized for a short time. The Health Ministry said blood samples were inconclusive and were being sent to Kabul for further testing to determine the cause of the illnesses.
"This is a matter of concern not only for us but for the families," Sayedi said, blaming the sicknesses on "enemies" who oppose education for girls.
In the capital of Kabul, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omar, said any attempt to keep girls out of school is a "terrorist act."
Kunduz had been relatively quiet until a few years ago when Taliban activity began to increase, threatening NATO supply routes south from Central Asia. Late Saturday, NATO and Afghan troops killed one militant and detained several others in Kunduz province.
Girls were not allowed to attend school when the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan. The group was ousted from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. The Taliban and other conservative extremist groups have been known to target schoolgirls.
In one of the most chilling attacks, men on motorbikes sprayed acid from squirt guns and water bottles onto 15 schoolgirls and teachers in 2008 as they walked to a girls school in Kandahar, the southern city that is the spiritual birthplace of the militant movement.
Previous cases of sudden illness in schools have left families too frightened to send their daughters to school.
Last year, dozens of girls were hospitalized in Kapisa province, just northeast of Kabul, after many collapsed with headaches and nausea following reports of a strange odor in their schoolyard. The Taliban was blamed, but research into similar mass sickenings elsewhere has suggested that some might be the result of group hysteria. [But the goal is achieved - that's the point - by using chemicals to sicken some of the girls the rest are terrorized into hysteria. The parents then keep the girls out of school due to fear. And the barbarians win.]
Article at Yahoo News
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 44 mins ago
KABUL – Dozens of Afghan schoolgirls have fallen ill in recent days after reporting a strange odor in their classrooms in northern Afghanistan, prompting an investigation into whether they were targeted by militants who oppose education for girls or victims of mass hysteria.
Either way, the reports from three schools within 2 miles (3 kilometers) of one another in Kunduz province have raised alarm in a city threatened by the Taliban and their militant allies.
The latest cases occurred Sunday, when 13 girls became sick, Kunduz provincial spokesman Mahbobullah Sayedi said. Another 47 complained of dizziness and nausea the day before, and 23 fell ill last Wednesday.
All complained of a strange smell in class before they fell ill.
"I came out from the main hall, and I saw lots of other girls scattered everywhere," Anesa, a 9-year-old who was hospitalized briefly Sunday, told The Associated Press. "Then suddenly, I felt that I was losing my balance and falling."
None of the illnesses was serious and the girls were only hospitalized for a short time. The Health Ministry said blood samples were inconclusive and were being sent to Kabul for further testing to determine the cause of the illnesses.
"This is a matter of concern not only for us but for the families," Sayedi said, blaming the sicknesses on "enemies" who oppose education for girls.
In the capital of Kabul, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omar, said any attempt to keep girls out of school is a "terrorist act."
Kunduz had been relatively quiet until a few years ago when Taliban activity began to increase, threatening NATO supply routes south from Central Asia. Late Saturday, NATO and Afghan troops killed one militant and detained several others in Kunduz province.
Girls were not allowed to attend school when the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan. The group was ousted from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. The Taliban and other conservative extremist groups have been known to target schoolgirls.
In one of the most chilling attacks, men on motorbikes sprayed acid from squirt guns and water bottles onto 15 schoolgirls and teachers in 2008 as they walked to a girls school in Kandahar, the southern city that is the spiritual birthplace of the militant movement.
Previous cases of sudden illness in schools have left families too frightened to send their daughters to school.
Last year, dozens of girls were hospitalized in Kapisa province, just northeast of Kabul, after many collapsed with headaches and nausea following reports of a strange odor in their schoolyard. The Taliban was blamed, but research into similar mass sickenings elsewhere has suggested that some might be the result of group hysteria. [But the goal is achieved - that's the point - by using chemicals to sicken some of the girls the rest are terrorized into hysteria. The parents then keep the girls out of school due to fear. And the barbarians win.]
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The More Things Seem to Change, the More They Stay the Same...
Redux.
I know there are millions of people, in the USA and in Europe (which presents itself as more sophisticated and urbane than us "cowboys" in the wild wild West), who think that women have achieved absolute equality with men. Unfortunately, the title of the following article gives a bad name to the absolutely blameless Neanderthal humans.
Ukrainian women berate 'Neanderthal' PM for sexist remarks
Mykola Azarov enrages feminist groups by suggesting women are unsuitable for high political office
Luke Harding in Moscow
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 March 2010 19.50 GMT
Ukraine's new pro-Russia prime minister, Mykola Azarov, has enraged feminist groups by suggesting that women are unsuitable for high political office and incapable of carrying out reforms.
Women's groups in Ukraine have angrily reported Azarov – who presides over an all-male cabinet – to the country's ombudsman following his remarks last week. They accuse him of gender discrimination and holding Neanderthal views.
Speaking on Friday, Azarov said Ukraine's economic problems were too difficult for any woman to handle.
"Some say our government is too large; others that there are no women," he said. "There's no one to look at during cabinet sessions: they're all boring faces. With all respect to women, conducting reforms is not women's business."
Ukraine's new woman-free government was capable of working 16 hours a day with "no breaks and weekends", Azarov boasted.
The prime minister's gaffe echoes comments made recently by the man who appointed him – Ukraine's new president, Viktor Yanukovych. During February's election campaign, Yanukovych declared that his female opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, should "go to the kitchen".
Today, Azarov's political enemies denounced him as an unreconstructed dinosaur. They said his derisory remark, snubbing half of the country's 46 million population, underlined just how out of touch he is with ordinary Ukrainians.
March 22, 2010, 6:09 pm
Using Quotas to Raise the Glass Ceiling
By THE EDITORS (The New York Times)
In 2002, Norway enacted a law requiring that 40 percent of all board members at state-owned and publicly listed companies be women by 2008.
Since then, Spain and the Netherlands have passed similar laws. Now Belgium, Britain, Germany, France and Sweden are considering legislative measures involving female quotas. And although Germany is also debating such a law, Deutsche Telekom, which is based in Bonn, announced last week that it would voluntarily introduce a quota aiming to fill 30 percent of upper and middle management jobs with women by the end of 2015.
Do quotas work? Would they work in the U.S.? Does the U.S. need them? Viewpoints by:
Marit Hoel, Center for Corporate Diversity, Oslo
Amy Dittmar, University of Michigan
Peter Baldwin, author, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences”
Sharon Meers, former managing director at Goldman Sachs
Linda Hirshman, author, “Get to Work”
I know there are millions of people, in the USA and in Europe (which presents itself as more sophisticated and urbane than us "cowboys" in the wild wild West), who think that women have achieved absolute equality with men. Unfortunately, the title of the following article gives a bad name to the absolutely blameless Neanderthal humans.
Ukrainian women berate 'Neanderthal' PM for sexist remarks
Mykola Azarov enrages feminist groups by suggesting women are unsuitable for high political office
Luke Harding in Moscow
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 March 2010 19.50 GMT
Ukraine's new pro-Russia prime minister, Mykola Azarov, has enraged feminist groups by suggesting that women are unsuitable for high political office and incapable of carrying out reforms.
Women's groups in Ukraine have angrily reported Azarov – who presides over an all-male cabinet – to the country's ombudsman following his remarks last week. They accuse him of gender discrimination and holding Neanderthal views.
Speaking on Friday, Azarov said Ukraine's economic problems were too difficult for any woman to handle.
"Some say our government is too large; others that there are no women," he said. "There's no one to look at during cabinet sessions: they're all boring faces. With all respect to women, conducting reforms is not women's business."
Ukraine's new woman-free government was capable of working 16 hours a day with "no breaks and weekends", Azarov boasted.
The prime minister's gaffe echoes comments made recently by the man who appointed him – Ukraine's new president, Viktor Yanukovych. During February's election campaign, Yanukovych declared that his female opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, should "go to the kitchen".
Today, Azarov's political enemies denounced him as an unreconstructed dinosaur. They said his derisory remark, snubbing half of the country's 46 million population, underlined just how out of touch he is with ordinary Ukrainians.
**********************************************************************
Against this current backdrop, I put forth for your consideration:March 22, 2010, 6:09 pm
Using Quotas to Raise the Glass Ceiling
By THE EDITORS (The New York Times)
In 2002, Norway enacted a law requiring that 40 percent of all board members at state-owned and publicly listed companies be women by 2008.
Since then, Spain and the Netherlands have passed similar laws. Now Belgium, Britain, Germany, France and Sweden are considering legislative measures involving female quotas. And although Germany is also debating such a law, Deutsche Telekom, which is based in Bonn, announced last week that it would voluntarily introduce a quota aiming to fill 30 percent of upper and middle management jobs with women by the end of 2015.
Do quotas work? Would they work in the U.S.? Does the U.S. need them? Viewpoints by:
Marit Hoel, Center for Corporate Diversity, Oslo
Amy Dittmar, University of Michigan
Peter Baldwin, author, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences”
Sharon Meers, former managing director at Goldman Sachs
Linda Hirshman, author, “Get to Work”
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The More Things Seem to Change, the More They Stay the Same...
...don't you think it's strange. Girl, put your records on, play me your favorite song, your gonna find yourself someday... Corinne Bailey Rae
I assume in honor of International Women's Day a week or two ago, there have been several articles cropping up recently about women - both ancient and modern. I know I run the risk of each of these articles not getting the attention each deserves by grouping them together this evening - but these two seem to fit together, so here goes:
On the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, a mob led by Peter the Lector brutally murdered Hypatia, one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria.
Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy
History & Archaeology
Hypatia, Ancient Alexandria’s Great Female Scholar
An avowed paganist in a time of religious strife, Hypatia was also one of the first women to study math, astronomy and philosophy
By Sarah Zielinski
Smithsonian.com, March 15, 2010
I will not go into detail about the horrific way that Hypatia was killed by a mob of men incited by a so-called Christian. Suffice to say that in our collective memories of her great accomplishments, she has achieved eternal life and glory.
From The New York Times
Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: March 21, 2010
A report on the underrepresentation of women in science and math by the American Association of University Women, to be released Monday, found that although women have made gains, stereotypes and cultural biases still impede their success. . . .
Five years ago, Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard, sparked a firestorm when he suggested that “there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude” reinforced by “lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.” . . .
The association’s report acknowledges differences in male and female brains. But Ms. Hill said, “None of the research convincingly links those differences to specific skills, so we don’t know what they mean in terms of mathematical abilities.”
At the top level of math abilities, where boys are overrepresented, the report found that the gender gap is rapidly shrinking. Among mathematically precocious youth — sixth and seventh graders who score more than 700 on the math SAT — 30 years ago boys outnumbered girls 13 to 1, but only about 3 to 1 now.
“That’s not biology at play, it doesn’t change so fast,” Ms. Hill said. “Even if there are biological factors in boys outnumbering girls, they’re clearly not the whole story. There’s a real danger in assuming that innate differences are important in determining who will succeed, so we looked at the cultural factors, to see what evidence there is on the nurture side of nature or nurture.”
The report found ample evidence of continuing cultural bias. . . .
More tomorrow night. Right now, I've got to put my records on and do some serious boogeying for aerobic fitness, muscle toning and (hopefully) weight loss. Found two new favorites to add to my mix: Praful ("Sigh") and Spencer Day ("You'll Come Back to Me").
I assume in honor of International Women's Day a week or two ago, there have been several articles cropping up recently about women - both ancient and modern. I know I run the risk of each of these articles not getting the attention each deserves by grouping them together this evening - but these two seem to fit together, so here goes:
On the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, a mob led by Peter the Lector brutally murdered Hypatia, one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria.
Mary Evans Picture Library / Alamy
History & Archaeology
Hypatia, Ancient Alexandria’s Great Female Scholar
An avowed paganist in a time of religious strife, Hypatia was also one of the first women to study math, astronomy and philosophy
By Sarah Zielinski
Smithsonian.com, March 15, 2010
I will not go into detail about the horrific way that Hypatia was killed by a mob of men incited by a so-called Christian. Suffice to say that in our collective memories of her great accomplishments, she has achieved eternal life and glory.
From The New York Times
Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: March 21, 2010
A report on the underrepresentation of women in science and math by the American Association of University Women, to be released Monday, found that although women have made gains, stereotypes and cultural biases still impede their success. . . .
Five years ago, Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard, sparked a firestorm when he suggested that “there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude” reinforced by “lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.” . . .
The association’s report acknowledges differences in male and female brains. But Ms. Hill said, “None of the research convincingly links those differences to specific skills, so we don’t know what they mean in terms of mathematical abilities.”
At the top level of math abilities, where boys are overrepresented, the report found that the gender gap is rapidly shrinking. Among mathematically precocious youth — sixth and seventh graders who score more than 700 on the math SAT — 30 years ago boys outnumbered girls 13 to 1, but only about 3 to 1 now.
“That’s not biology at play, it doesn’t change so fast,” Ms. Hill said. “Even if there are biological factors in boys outnumbering girls, they’re clearly not the whole story. There’s a real danger in assuming that innate differences are important in determining who will succeed, so we looked at the cultural factors, to see what evidence there is on the nurture side of nature or nurture.”
The report found ample evidence of continuing cultural bias. . . .
More tomorrow night. Right now, I've got to put my records on and do some serious boogeying for aerobic fitness, muscle toning and (hopefully) weight loss. Found two new favorites to add to my mix: Praful ("Sigh") and Spencer Day ("You'll Come Back to Me").
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Ladies, Ladies!
The ladies are in the news. Thanks, Isis, for the heads-up on the Joan of Arc and English 'queen' articles.
Germany is finally moving into the 20th century (oops! It's already the 21st century - oh well, Germany will catch up, eventually...) From The New York Times (January 19, 2010):
In Germany, a Tradition Falls, and Women Rise
Joan of Arc Relics Proved Fake (well -duh!) From Discovery News (January 20, 2010):
Joan of Arc 'Relics' Confirmed to Be Fake
How did the bones of two ancient Egyptian mummies -- one human, the other feline -- end up in a bottle that supposedly contained the remains of Joan of Arc?
The remains of one of the early ladies of the 'English' royal family (Queen Eadgyth, pronounced Edith) may have been discovered in a cathedral in Germany- she was shipped out and married off at an early age, probably to some fat old dude with really bad halitosis who farted, had rotting stubs of teeth and had warts. Eeeeuuuuuwwwww... She died at 36, probably thanking Goddess for 'taking' her so early. From BBC News (January 20, 2010):
Early queen's skeleton 'found in German cathedral'
Remains of one of the earliest members of the English royal family may have been unearthed in a German cathedral, a Bristol University research team says.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Boo Hoo for the Lost Boys - NOT!
Blatant sexual discrimination in favor of male admissions to college because - get this - it's patriotic!
From the online edition of The Wall Street Journal/Opinion
NOVEMBER 5, 2009, 10:47 P.M. ET
The Lost Boys
By RICHARD WHITMIRE
This week, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced that it will investigate whether colleges discriminate against women by admitting less qualified men. It will strike many as odd to think that American men would need such a leg up. From the men-only basketball games at the White House to the testosterone club on Wall Street, we seem surrounded by male dominance.
And yet, when looking to America's future—trying to spot the future entrepreneurs and inventors—there's reason to be troubled by the flagging academic performance among men. Nearly 58% of all those earning bachelor's degrees are women. Graduate programs are headed in the same direction, and the gender gaps at community colleges—where 62% of those earning two-year degrees are female—are even wider.
Economists at both the Department of Education and the College Board agree that, to ensure high future earnings, men and women have an equal need for college degrees, and yet only women are getting that message. The numbers are startling. This summer the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University published the results of a study tracking the students who graduated from Boston Public Schools in 2007. Their conclusion: For every 167 females in four-year colleges, there were 100 males.
In theory, the surge in the number of educated women should make up for male shortcomings when we're looking at the overall prospects for the economy. But men and women are not the same. At the same levels of education, women remain less inclined to roll the dice on risky business start-ups or to grind out careers in isolated tech labs. Revenue generated by women-owned businesses remains less than 5% of all revenue. And while the number of women taking on economically important majors is rising, women still earn only a fifth of the bachelor's degrees granted in physics, computer science and engineering.
Why males don't seem to "get" the importance of a college education is a mystery, especially considering the current collapse of jobs that traditionally don't require post-high-school study. (Even "cash for clunkers" isn't going to mark the return of car companies as a major employer of uneducated men.) And who could miss the message of the recession, where as many as 80% of the workers laid off have been male?
Too many boys arrive at their senior year of high school lacking both the skills and aspirations that would get them into, and through, college. At a typical state university, a gender gap of 10 percentage points in the freshman class grows by five points by graduation day, as more men than women drop out.
All this explains why colleges have been putting a thumb on the scale to favor men in admissions. There just aren't enough highly qualified men to go around. Determining that colleges practice discrimination doesn't take much detective work. Higher acceptance rates for men show that colleges dig deeper into their applicant pool to find them. The final proof: Freshman class profiles reveal that the women, with their far higher high-school grade point averages, are more academically qualified than the men. Interviews with admissions officers reveal that the girls' essays sparkle compared to the boys', and girls far outshine boys in extracurricular activities as well.
The Commission on Civil Rights cited an example written about in U.S. News & World Report in 2007: Virginia's University of Richmond was maintaining its rough gender parity in men and women only by accepting women at a rate 13 percentage points lower than the men.
It would be patriotic to report that this discrimination against women is carried out in the national economic interest of boosting graduates in key math and science fields. But, in truth, it's really a social consideration. Colleges simply want to avoid approaching the dreaded 60-40 female-male ratio. At that point, men start to take advantage of their scarcity and make social life miserable for the women by becoming "players" on the dating scene.
The case to abolish male gender preferences is problematic. Most of those male preferences are granted by private colleges, which consider themselves on solid legal ground. (Some public colleges and universities also grant those preferences at considerable legal risk, an indication of the depth of the fear about broaching that 60-40 threshold.)
In truth, these gender preferences are a sideshow. The real issue is the flagging academic interest among boys, a phenomenon that dates back only about two decades. It's a new issue to most Americans but hotly debated in countries such as England. So far, nobody has solved the boy mystery, but some countries are years ahead of the U.S. Australia has had some success with literacy-boosting programs for young boys. Until the code gets cracked, there's a national economic interest in keeping those preferences in place—just for a few more years.—
Mr. Whitmire is the author of the forthcoming book "Why Boys Fail."
Hey Mr. Whitmire - here's a hint - if you want to change the boys, change the culture that allows them to be lazy self-absorbed wimps or gansta wannabes. If they don't want to be tomorrow's engineers and physicists and chemists, train up the females to do the work. It CAN be done by - you guess it - changing the underlying cultural mores and expectations for females. Mr. Whitmire's thinking is soooooo 19th century, just as is the American male expectation that they should earn a living wage without having to actually acquire any skills and knowledge to get ahead in this 21st century world we are now, actually, living in. Ha!
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