North East Digital Village

:: WOMEN :: WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH :: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY :: HERSTORY :: WOMEN MAKING HISTORY :: BLACK AUTHORS & ACTIVISTS :: WOMEN PRESERVING FREEDOM :: TOWARD EQUALITY :: TITLE IX :: WOMEN IN EDUCATION :: WOMEN IN THE ARTS :: WOMEN & JAZZ! :: WOMEN IN SPORTS :: WOMEN ATHLETES :: WOMEN'S HEALTH ::

International Women's Day 2006

ABOUT IWD :: WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LOAN FUND :: 2006

STATEMENT OF NOW PRESIDENT :: IPSNA NEWS

2006 Statement of NOW President

March 8, 2006 Statement of NOW President Kim Gandy
Women Celebrate International Women's Day by Rallying for Peace
Today, on International Women's Day, women and men across the globe are celebrating women's social, political and economic achievements and honoring the gains women have fought for as activists, advocates, mothers, workers and citizens of their countries. Michelle Bachelet, a feminist, will be sworn in as the president of Chile this week, but unfortunately women in the United States and around the world have more to lament than to celebrate this year.

Here in the U.S., George W. Bush's war on women have brought us a budget that takes money away from family planning and public assistance programs that help women and single mothers escape the plague of poverty. The radical right has pushed through a heartless law in South Dakota that would ban nearly all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, and similar bills are being spearheaded by conservatives in several other states. And as the Bush administration presses war in Iraq and rewards the richest in this country with more tax cuts, it ignores women and children, whose education and healthcare needs are suffering because of these reckless priorities.

In the border town of Juarez, Mexico, hundreds of young women have been raped and murdered on their way to or from their jobs at sweatshops. The Mexican authorities say it is random violence, and the U.S. corporations whose clothes are made in these maquiladora factories have done nothing. The National Organization for Women's march from El Paso, Texas to Juarez in December brought more attention to their plight, but it will take government action to end this plague of violence. NOW Executive Vice President Olga Vives is in Venezuela today with an International Women's Delegation to learn about the struggles women face in that country, and build our international dialogue.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, where the Bush administration has turned an ill-begotten war into a disaster with global costs, women are suffering. The fight against terrorism has only ensured that more women abroad will be drawn into a cycle of violence, war and destruction. Afghani women have been forced back into the burqa, and girls' schools are burned down almost as quickly as they can be built. Countless Iraqi women have died as a result of the war and the insurgency, and the number grows. Women in U.S. military are dying as well, fighting in a war designed not to make us safer but to settle a score.

On this day of honoring women and calling for them to be equal participants across the world, NOW is marching in Washington, D.C., shoulder-to-shoulder with Iraqi women, calling for peace, an end to violence, reproductive choice for every woman and equal rights for all. We ask women and men who support equality, peace, justice and democracy to mobilize with us and March in New York City on Saturday, April 29, when we will send a message to the world that millions of us do not support this war and are demanding a change in the direction of our country. Women have spoken: Enough is enough.

_/\_TO THE TOP

News from the Inter Press Service News Agency

Aspiring Decision-Makers Do Battle With Tradition

NAIROBI, Mar 8 (IPS): by Joyce Mulama
Monica Amolo's tale is one of endurance and determination: she is intent on being elected to Kenya's parliament, regardless of the intimidation experienced en route.

Since trying to contest a legislative seat in western Kenya four years ago, Amolo told IPS, she has met with various forms of harassment. These range from being told that a woman's place is in the kitchen and accusations that she is a prostitute - to physical violence, and even death threats.

Authorities, she added, are not doing enough to ensure that women can compete equally with men in being appointed to local or national government positions.

"Political processes do not care about including women in decision-making posts at any level, be it national or grass roots. The government, which is a signatory to initiatives seeking to improve the status of women, has no goodwill to do so," Amolo said.

Accounts such as this have particular significance Wednesday, when events are being held globally around the theme of "Women in decision-making", to mark International Women's Day.

Faith Musoga, project officer at Gender Sensitive Initiatives, an organisation that promotes equality between men and women, says culture plays a central role in preventing women from taking up positions of authority.

"Cultural stereotypes such as 'a woman belongs in the kitchen' are still being regarded highly," she says. "Even though the situation appears to be changing, we still have a long way to go. Getting communities to accept that some cultures are retrogressive is very difficult."

In certain instances, traditional customs and beliefs not only present challenges to gender equality - they also threaten women's lives.

Take wife inheritance.

This practice requires a newly-widowed woman to be cleansed of her husband's spirit through sexual intercourse with one of his male relatives - who then provides her with support - despite the risk of HIV transmission.

The custom developed as a way of ensuring that widows and their children were cared for after the death of a husband, and of keeping family wealth within a particular clan. It is widely observed in western Kenya.

According to the Programme for Rehabilitation of Women and Children in Socio-Economic Difficulty, providing women with financial independence helps tackle wife inheritance - as this frees women of the need to seek assistance from the relatives of deceased husbands.

With this in mind, the organisation has set up various income-generating activities in the Ndhiwa region of western Kenya, where it focuses on improving the economic situation of rural women.

By addressing the barriers that women face in being appointed to decision-making posts, Kenya would also be taking steps to meet the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG): to promote gender quality and empower women.

A total of eight MDGs were agreed on by global leaders during the Millennium Summit held in New York six years ago. The goals also aim to end extreme hunger and poverty, achieve universal primary education, reduce child mortality and improve maternal health.

In addition, they focus on combating diseases that are taking a particular toll on poor nations, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing international partnerships to address key obstacles to development, such as unfair global trade rules. The deadline for the MDGs is 2015.

Women's rights activists in Kenya say affirmative action initiatives could go some way towards ending gender inequality, and giving women a say in the affairs of the country - especially in the political sphere.

But, little progress has been made on this front in recent years: an affirmative action bill tabled in parliament in 2000 is still pending.

Ahead of last year's U.N. summit to assess whether countries were making sufficient progress towards the MDGs, Anyang Nyong'o, then minister of planning and national development, admitted his government faced considerable challenges in attaining goal three.

In the face of this depressing news, Amolo remains undaunted.

Although she was not able to get her name on a ballot sheet during the 2002 legislative election, she plans to contest the next poll in 2007. Those who insisted that Amolo remain in the kitchen may finally be forced to deal with her in a different setting: parliament.
cite: http://www.ipsnews.net/

_/\_TO THE TOP

Hope for Maids in Japan

TOKYO, Mar 8 (IPS): by Suvendrini Kakuchi
Lenny Tolentino, a Filipina activist who provides pastoral care for migrant women and children in Japan, says she wept tears of joy and relief when she read a new United Nations report on racism that calls for sweeping changes in the country.

"I have been struggling to be heard in Japan for more than 16 years and the U.N. report has made me jubiliant," says Tolentino who provides counselling, visits homes and offers other forms of support including shelter to hundreds of women migrant workers, mostly Asian, living in Japan.

Tolentino was referring to a new document compiled by Doudou Diene, who is the special rapporteur appointed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, to examine contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in Japan.

Diene, who is from Senegal, officially visited Japan in July to gather information on the issue.

His report, considered the first comprehensive report on racism in Japan, was released at the end of January. While it noted some landmark steps towards human rights, the report bitterly criticised the daily discrimination in the country against foreigners and other minority groups and called for swift action to rectify the situation.
[DETAILS]

Time to Rise Up, Activists Declare

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 (IPS): by Lisa Soderlindh
International Women's Day is being celebrated around the world Wednesday against a backdrop of grim statistics clearly demonstrating that gender equality is a long way off.

Women still account for 70 percent of people living in poverty, are paid 20-30 percent less than men, and are increasingly victims of HIV/AIDS.

"We are going to have to rise up as a mass and demand our rights, because they are clearly not being given to us," Ingrid Charles Gumbs, director of gender affairs for St. Kitts and Nevis, told IPS.

"There must be a greater awakening among women to the fact that we have issues that must be addressed," she continued.

The need for gender equality and women's empowerment has been recognised at both the national and international levels. Governments worldwide have committed to documents such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.

Gender equality also features prominently in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an ambitious set of poverty-alleviation targets to which 189 U.N. member states have committed.
[DETAILS]

_/\_TO THE TOP

Rural Women Protest Against Pulpwood Plantations

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Mar 8 (IPS): by Mario Osava
International Women's Day began early for the activists of Via Campesina, a global movement of peasants and small farmers, in Brazil.

At 2:30 AM local time, 2,000 campesinas (women peasant farmers) occupied a eucalyptus plantation belonging to the Aracruz Celulosa plant, a large Brazilian paper and pulp mill in Barra do Ribeiro, 56 km from Porto Alegre in southern Brazil.

Seven hours later, the Via Campesina activists marched down Ipiranga Avenue in Porto Alegre, to the Catholic University, where the second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) is taking place Tuesday through Friday, organised by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Also taking part in the march were women from organisations like Brazil's movement of urban female workers.

The roughly 3,500 demonstrators found the gate to the university closed and guarded by some 20 police officers. But they made it past this first obstacle, with shouts of triumph and the Cuban song "Guajira Guantanamera" blasting out of loudspeakers mounted on a truck accompanying them.
[DETAILS]

Gender Plan Stymied Over Abortion, Gay Rights

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Mar 8 (IPS): by Peter Richards
Ever since Prime Minister Patrick Manning all but scuttled a draft national gender policy nearly six months ago, a debate has been raging here as to whether such a plan is necessary for the future socio-economic development of Trinidad and Tobago.

"We want a gender policy now," thundered Hazel Brown, president of the Network of Non-Governmental Organisations, during a rally on Wednesday marking International Women's Day.

She has called on "all people of conscience" to join in getting the Manning administration to implement that gender policy, "which endorses our right to gender equity and social justice".

"The gender issue relates directly to the concerns of women and men which we experience every day - employment, education, health, law reform and so on. We must not let ourselves be trapped in the small and narrow agendas," she added.
[DETAILS]

Parliamentarians Show Prostitution the Red Card

BRUSSELS,, Mar 8 (IPS): by Stefania Bianchi
The European Union marked International Women's Day Wednesday by launching a campaign against sexual exploitation of women during big sporting events.

European parliamentarians are calling on the European Commission, the European Union (EU) executive, to exert pressure on European governments to tighten border controls and step up efforts to identify women and children being moved illegally through EU countries to Germany during this summer's football World Cup.

Launching the "Red card to forced prostitution" campaign Wednesday, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) signed a petition calling on European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to enforce tighter measures to halt sexual exploitation during the month-long contest Jun. 9 to Jul. 9.
[DETAILS]

More Female Voices on Screens, Airwaves and Pages

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Mar 7 (IPS): by Moyiga Nduru
South Africa has made substantial progress in having women's voices heard in the media, says a study released to coincide with International Women's Day on Wednesday.

Titled 'Who Makes the News?', the report was issued by the Global Media Monitoring Project, a non-governmental group based in London. It is the latest edition of a study conducted every five years; the first such report was launched in 1995.

According to the study, 26 percent of the sources currently quoted in the South African media are women, up from 17 percent a decade ago. Of the African countries surveyed, Rwanda was found to have the greatest percentage of female voices in the media (31 percent) -- and Angola the least (13 percent). Internationally, Rwanda tied with Belgium for having the most female sources. Sweden and Colombia were next on the list, with 30 percent each.

In a speech given at the South African launch of the document in Johannesburg, Tuesday, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka praised her country's performance in the study -- but added that more could be done: "South Africa is five percent above the global average of women sources in the media. We have to build on this success."
[DETAILS]

Mexican Rape Victims Denied Right to Abortion

MEXICO CITY, Mar 8 (IPS): by Diego Cevallos
A woman or girl is raped every four minutes on average in Mexico. But if they get pregnant, there is no guarantee that their right to an abortion as rape victims will be recognised, due to administrative hurdles and outright obstruction by authorities, says a new report released Tuesday.

Many end up seeking clandestine abortions, often in conditions that put their lives at risk. Although there are no figures on how many women in Mexico undergo abortions in clandestine clinics, a study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico reported in 2005 that up to one million abortions a year are practiced in this country, equivalent to 30 percent of the total annual number of pregnancies.

"Women who become pregnant as a result of rape find themselves trapped between the apathy and unwillingness of the authorities, who see the right to abortion as merely theoretical," Marianne Mollmann, the author of the Human Rights Watch report "The Second Assault: Obstructing Access to Legal Abortion after Rape in Mexico", told IPS.

Abortion is illegal in Mexico, as in the rest of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba. But the penalty - between one and six years in prison - is waived when the expectant mother's life is in danger or the pregnancy is a result of rape.
[DETAILS]

_/\_TO THE TOP

Sexual and Reproductive Rights, Now!

SANTIAGO, Chile, Mar 7 (IPS): by Maria Cecilia Espinosa
The first annual report by the Chilean Observatory of Gender Equity in Health calls for legislation on sexual and reproductive rights for women, making therapeutic abortion legal once again, and making emergency contraception available to all women.

The lengthy report, which is "prefaced by a health profile of Chile from a gender viewpoint," reflects progress "on previously existing inequality and invisibility of health differences between men and women," researcher Margarita Iglesias, of the Centre for Studies on Gender and Culture in Latin America, told IPS.

"Conservative pressures affect the poorest women, who are excluded from what is available to rich women," she added, alluding to the ban on therapeutic abortion in Chile since the last year of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), and the restrictions imposed by the Ministry of Health on the distribution of emergency contraceptives.

The report also approaches sexual and reproductive health from a human rights perspective, focusing on "men and women of all ages, recognising joint responsibility for reproduction, respecting the right to autonomy and physical integrity, and including sexuality as an issue that can be discussed independently from reproduction."
[DETAILS]

Death Penalty Rare for Women, But On the Rise in Iran and China

FRANKFURT, Mar 7 (IPS): by Alison Langley with reporting contributed by other IPS correspondents
A 17-year-old Iranian girl known only as Nazanin fought off two men trying to rape her, and is said to have fatally stabbed one of them. In January, almost two years after the incident, a Tehran court sentenced her to death.

Nazanin is one of at least 19 women believed to be on the death row in Iran, says Elisabetta Zamparutti, head of Hands Off Cain, a Rome-based organisation working to abolish the death penalty around the world.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed before the age of 18. These treaties also prohibit the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments. Iran is a party to both treaties, Zamparutti said, but appears to ignore them.
[DETAILS]

Solidarity Empowers

MADURAI, India, Mar 8 (IPS): by Soma Basu
A few months ago, Kathammala, 23, barged on to the stage set up for a function attended by the chief minister of southern Tamil Nadu state, Jayaraman Jayalalithaa.

Policemen and commandos failed to stop the young woman from breaking through a tight security cordon to reach the dais, waving a petiton and shouting, ''Amma (mother) please help me.''

Brushing aside security, Jayalalithaa reached out to the young woman, who turned out to be a member of the a women's Self Help Groups (SHGs)-- a pet project of the chief minister. Indeed, the function was intended to be a stock-taking exercise for SHGs.

Kathammala's petition said she needed a job because helping her handicapped husband sell vegetables in the street did not bring in enough money to repay loan instalments for an SHG loan she had taken.

In a country with myriad divisions in society and known for its 'vote bank' politics, Jayalalithaa is one politician who has grasped the idea that the biggest single constituency of the underprivileged is that of women. Apart from her personal example as an eminently successful woman in the male-dominated world of Indian politics, Jayalalithaa's regional AIADMK party enjoys a formidable reputation as a pro-women party.
[DETAILS]

Shame and Pain Torment Fistula Sufferers

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 (IPS): by Mithre J. Sandrasagra
Obstetric fistula is a preventable and treatable injury caused by several days of obstructed labour, without timely medical intervention. But the consequences of the pervasive disability are life shattering -- the baby usually dies, and the woman is left with chronic incontinence.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that more than two million women are living with fistula in developing countries and an additional 50,000 to 100,000 new cases occur each year.

These WHO estimates are based on the number of women seeking treatment, and are likely to be gross underestimates. The estimates were also made in 1989.
[DETAILS]

_/\_TO THE TOP