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FIRST LADY CELEBRATES WOMEN IN USA AND AROUND THE WORLD

HEROIC,FEMALE AND MUSLIM

ARAB IDOL: Veiled Woman Rises In TV Poetry Contest

I AM NUJOOD, AGE 10 AND DIVORCED

A SCHOOL BUS FOR SHAMSIA

WOMEN'S RIGHTS AS FOREIGN POLICY

RATIFICATION OF CEDAW

IRAN'S SECOND SEX

AFTER WAR MASS RAPE PERSIST

DESPITE ODDS WOMEN'S MOVEMENT PERSISTS IN IRAN

WOUNDS THAT WILL NOT HEAL

RAPE VICTIMS' WORDS HELP JOLT CONGO INTO CHANGE

PAKISTANI WOMEN ASSERT RIGHTS

Abused Muslim Women in U.S. Gain Advocates

Saudi Women Petition for Right to Drive

Islamic Revival in Syria Led by Women

WHY DO THEY HATE US?

Mona Eltahawy

Foreign Policy

May/June 2012

In "Distant View of a Minaret," the late and much-neglected Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved by sex with her husband that as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a spider web she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her husband's repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she too climaxes, "as though purposely to deprive her." Just as her husband denies her an orgasm, the call to prayer interrupts his, and the man leaves. After washing up, she loses herself in prayer -- so much more satisfying that she can't wait until the next prayer -- and looks out onto the street from her balcony. She interrupts her reverie to make coffee dutifully for her husband to drink after his nap. Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him as he prefers, she notices he is dead. She instructs their son to go and get a doctor. "She returned to the living room and poured out the coffee for herself. She was surprised at how calm she was," Rifaat writes.

In a crisp three-and-a-half pages, Rifaat lays out a trifecta of sex, death, and religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. There is no sugarcoating it. They don't hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliche had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us, as this Arab woman so powerfully says.

Yes: They hate us. It must be said.

For the complete Foreign Policy article click here.

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LET'S END CHILD MARRIAGE IN A GENERATION

Jennifer Buffett

Huffington Post

September 22, 2011

Speaking with a group of Ethiopian girls, I got a lifetime's education in a single afternoon. I sat and listened as girl after girl described to me how they had become the wives of much older men. One woman told me she fled after being told she was going to be married at the age of four! She ran away crying in terror and heartbreak, only to return to her village after realizing she had no options whatsoever.

All of these girls had been forced to leave school in favor of working in their in-laws' homes and bearing children while still children themselves. And none of these girls had wanted this fate. They all had hoped to go to school and grow up with their friends and families.

To read more Click Here. Also see Girls Not Brides.

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SOME FIND HOPE IN AFGHAN BRIDE'S ABUSE

AP—January 04, 2012—KABUL, Afghanistan—Just 15 years old, Sahar according to officials in northeastern Baghlan province, Gul’s in–laws kept her in a basement for six months, ripped her fingernails out, tortured her with hot irons and broke her fingers — all in an attempt to force her into prostitution. Police freed her after her uncle called authorities.

The horrific images, captured by television news cameras last week, transfixed Afghanistan and set off a storm of condemnation. President Hamid Karzai set up a commission to investigate, and his health minister visited her bedside. Police arrested her in–laws, who denied abusing her. A warrant was issued for her husband, who serves in the Afghan army.

The case highlights both the problems and the progress of women 10 years after the Taliban’s fall. Gul’s egregious wounds and underage wedlock are a reminder that girls and women still suffer shocking abuse. But the public outrage and the government’s response to it also show that the country is slowly changing.

Let’s break the dead silence on women's plight, read the title of an editorial Wednesday in the Afghanistan Times. Despite guaranteed rights and progressive new laws, Afghanistan still ranks as the world’s sixth–worst country for women’s equality in the U.N. Development Program’s annual Gender Inequality Index. Nevertheless, Afghan advocates say attitudes have subtly shifted over the years, in part thanks to the dozens of women’s groups that have sprung up.

Fawzia Kofi, a lawmaker and head of the women’s affairs commission in the Afghan parliament, says the outcry over a case like Gul’s probably would not have happened just a few years ago because of deep cultural taboos against airing private family conflicts and acknowledging sexual abuse —such as forcing a woman into prostitution.

I think there is now a sense of awareness about women’s rights. People seem to be changing and seem to be talking about it, Kofi said. Ending abuse of women is a huge challenge in a patriarchal society where traditional practices include child marriage, giving girls away to settle debts or pay for their relatives’ crimes and so-called honor killings in which girls seen as disgracing their families are murdered by their relatives.

And some women activists worry that their hard–won political rights may erode as foreign troops withdraw and Karzai’s government seeks to negotiate with the Taliban to end their insurgency. Women’s rights, they fear, may be the first to go in any deal with the hardline Islamic militants.

I’afraid we won’t have all this anymore if the Taliban are allowed back into society, said Sima Natiq, a longtime activist. Freedoms for women are one of the most visible — and symbolic —changes in Afghanistan since 2001 U.S.–led campaign that toppled the Taliban regime. Aside from their support for al–Qaida leaders, the Taliban are probably most notorious for their harsh treatment of women under their severe interpretation of Islamic law.

For five years, the regime banned women from working and going to school, or even leaving home without a male relative. In public, all women were forced wear a head–to–toe burqa veil, which covers even the face with a mesh panel. Violators were publicly flogged or executed. Freeing women from such draconian laws lent a moral air to the Afghan war.

As U.S. troops begin to draw down, activists say Afghanistan is unmistakably a better place to be born female than a decade ago. In parliament, 27 percent of lawmakers are female, mostly because the constitution reserves 68 seats for women. More than 3 million girls are in schools, making up 40 percent of the elementary school population, according to the education ministry. A survey last year indicated that women dying in childbirth had dropped by nearly two–thirds to below 500 per 100,000 live births since 2005, although that is still one of the world’s highest rates.

Still, for every improvement, there are other signs of women’s continued misery. The U.N. says more than half of Afghanistan's female prison population is made up of women sentenced by local courts for fleeing their marriages—a charge is often phrased as intent to commit adultery, even though that’s not a crime under Afghan law. And the U.N. women’s agency UNIFEM estimates that half of all girls are forced to marry under age 15, even though the legal marriage age is 16.

There’s very good standards on paper. There’s very active women’s networks, said Georgette Gagnon, the U.N.’s human rights director in Afghanistan. A lot has been done, but there is still a long way to go.

A U.N. report in November also found that a 2009 law passed to protect Afghan women from violence was rarely enforced. For the 12–month period ending in March 2011, prosecutors filed indictments in 155 cases, only 7 percent of all 2,299 crimes reported. And activists say those complaints are a small fraction of the true level of abuse.

Part of the problem is the ingrained attitudes of police and courts that cause them to turn a blind eye or even send women back to their abusers, said Latifa Sultani, coordinator for women's protection with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Some local officials still believe women shouldn’t have rights,Sultani said. Last month, Karzai pardoned a 19–year–old woman who was imprisoned after she was raped and impregnated by a cousin. A local court sentenced her to 12 years in prison for having sex out of wedlock, a crime in Afghanistan. The judge told her she could get out of prison if she agreed to marry her alleged rapist, but she refused and gave birth to her daughter in prison.

Passing laws that protect women is one thing, enforcing them is another. Women’s groups are pressing Karzai to do more, but most acknowledge that with the central government so weak, the real battle will be fought in individual police stations, courtrooms and prosecutors' offices. Not least will be persuading Afghans to change their views.

That’s why the gruesome story of Sahar Gul’s imprisonment and torture is seen by some activists as an opportunity for the government to recommit publicly to women's rights. They say are encouraged that Karzai felt compelled by the outcry to become involved.

This is a sign of progress in a way, Kofi said. This is just a small example. We have hundreds of thousands of women like Sahar Gul who are victims of violence, but their voices are not heard. For now, Gul remains in a Kabul hospital, where she transferred from a local hospital in Baghlan province. An Afghan official said this week that she will be sent to India for further medical treatment. It’s unclear where she will go when she returns to Afghanistan.

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I'M AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

Eva Ensler

NPR ONPOINT
December 29, 2011

Eva Ensler author of the VIRGINA MONOLOGUES is interviewed by Tom Ashbrook on her new book I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE. You can listen to the interview by clicking here.

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MASS MARCH BY CAIRO WOMEN IN PROTEST OVER SOLDIERS’ ABUSE

David Kirkpatrick

New York Times
December 20, 2011

Drag me, strip me, my brothers’ blood will cover me! they chanted. Where is the field marshal? they demanded, referring to Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council holding onto power here. The girls of Egypt are here.

The event may have been the biggest women’s demonstration in Egypt’s history, and the most significant since a 1919 march led by pioneering Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi to protest British rule. The scale was stunning, and utterly unexpected in this strictly patriarchal society. Previous attempts to organize women’s events in Tahrir Square this year have either fizzled or, in at least one case, ended in the physical harassment of the handful of women who did turn out. Click here to read more.

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3 WOMAN’S RIGHTS LEADERS ACCEPT NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Scott Sayare

New York Times December 10, 20011

Tawakkol Karman of Yemen delivering her address at the Noble Peace Award’s ceremony

PARIS—In a ceremony in Oslo that repeatedly invoked gender equality and the democratic strivings of the Arab Spring, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was presented to three female activists and political leaders on Saturday for their struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights as peacemakers.

To spirited applause and at least one ululating cry, diplomas and gold medals were presented to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, 73; her compatriot Leymah Gbowee, 39, a social worker and a peace activist; and Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist and a political activist who, at 32, is the youngest Peace Prize laureate and the first Arab woman to receive the award. The promising Arab Spring will become a new winter if women are again left out, said Thorbjorn Jagland. To read more click here.

Also read first announcements of awards in October 2011.

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THE WOMEN'S CRUSADE

Nicholas Kristof

New York Times
August 17, 2009

There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.To read more click here

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THE DEATH OF MACHO

Reiham Salam

Foreign Policy June 22,2009

For years, the world has been witnessing a quiet but monumental shift of power from men to women. Today, the Great Recession has turned what was an evolutionary shift into a revolutionary one. The consequence will be not only a mortal blow to the macho men's club called finance capitalism that got the world into the current economic catastrophe; it will be a collective crisis for millions and millions of working men around the globe.To read more click here

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FIXING THE ECONOMY IS WOMEN'S WORK

By Katty Kay and Claire Shipman

Atlantic Monthly July 12, 2009

While the pinstripe crowd fixates on troubled assets, a stalled stimulus and mortgage remedies, it turns out that a more sure-fire financial fix is within our grasp -- and has been for years. New research says a healthy dose of estrogen may be the key not only to our fiscal recovery, but also to economic strength worldwide. The sexy new discussion in policy circles around the world, thanks to the recession, is whether a significant shift of power from men to women is underway -- or whether it should be. Accounting giant Ernst & Young pulled out charts and graphs at a recent power lunch in Washington with female lawmakers to argue a provocative bottom line: Companies with more women in senior management roles make more money. The latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine sweepingly predicts the "death of macho." Economists at Davos this year speculated that the presence of more women on Wall Street might have averted the downturn. Adding to this debate is the fact that the laid-off victims of this recession are overwhelmingly men.To learn more click here

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WOMEN RISE IN RWANDA'S ECONOMIC REVIVAL

By Anthony Faiola, Washington Post Staff Writer

Washington Post
May 16,2008

The march of female entrepreneurialism, playing out here and across Rwanda in industries from agribusiness to tourism, has proved to be a windfall for efforts to rebuild the nation and fight poverty. Women more than men invest profits in the family, renovate homes, improve nutrition, increase savings rates and spend on children's education, officials here said.

It speaks to a seismic shift in gender economics in Rwanda's post-genocide society, one that is altering the way younger generations of males view their mothers and sisters while offering a powerful lesson for other developing nations struggling to rebuild from the ashes of conflict.

"Rwanda's economy has risen up from the genocide and prospered greatly on the backs of our women," said Agnes Matilda Kalibata, minister of state in charge of agriculture. "Bringing women out of the home and fields has been essential to our rebuilding. In that process, Rwanda has changed forever. . . . We are becoming a nation that understands that there are huge financial benefits to equality." To learn more click here

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RAPE AS A WEAPON IN WAR

Susannah Sirkin

Physicians for Human Rights

According to international law, using rape as a weapon of war is a war crime. Despite this legal protection, in dozens of recent conflicts, armies have used rape as a tactic of war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide with impunity. Through our medical and forensic documentation of rape in conflict areas, we work with local partners and the growing international campaign to end rape in war by

* Assuring greater accountability for mass rape by training doctors, nurses, lawyers, police, and judges to thoroughly and accurately document evidence of rape for use in courts.

* Raising awareness regarding local cultures of impunity that allow women to be raped.

* Enabling survivors to obtain justice, including reparations for their suffering.

TALKING THEIR WAY OUT OF A POPULATION CRISIS

Helen Epstein

NY Times October 22, 2011

When it comes to initiating social change for women it may be that the most potent tool women have is a free voice. When women are empowered to speak without the fear of reprisal, they can achieve startling social changes that have proven intractable by any other means. A study in Ghana offers an insight on how researchers discovered a community who had achieved family planning without any intervention by outsiders.

"With mortality rates from disease falling, the population of some countries could increase eightfold in the next century...Africa’s future matters to all of us... So it is important to think carefully about the response to Africa’s exploding population.

Early next year, researchers will publish findings that provide good, if surprising, news: relaxed, trusting and frank conversations between men and women may be the most effective contraceptive of all.Click here to read how women, no matter how poor, can change their world when given the chance to speak.

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AFTER THE REVOLUTION, ARAB WOMEN SEEK MORE RIGHTS

by Sheera Frenkel

National Public Radio, Morning Edition
August 6, 2011

Images of women marching alongside men in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Jordan led to predictions that women's rights would also make huge strides forward.

She[Kamel, journalist] had been optimistic initially, when she celebrated President Hosni Mubarak's resignation in February. She had spent days sitting in Cairo's Tahrir Square alongside thousands of others. She said she found the sight of men and women protesting together an inspiration.

"I think the youth that were in Tahrir ... people my age or people that were demonstrators or whatever, were OK with the concept of men and women having equal rights," said Kamel.

"In the months that followed, the feminist honeymoon was lost," she said. Click here. to read more.

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THINK! ENCOURAGING GIRLS TO STAY SMART IN A DUMB-DOWN WORLD

Therese Borchard

HUffington Post June 16,2011;

In her gutsy book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, attorney and national television legal analyst Lisa Bloom paints a dire picture:

The problem is not just about that 25 percent of young women who would rather be hot than smart; rather, it's about a culture that actually makes that a rational choice: rewarding girls for looks over brains. And it's about ALL of us, intelligent American females, ranging from girlhood to old age, who are dazzling ignorant about some critically important things.

An aggravating thing happened in the last generation. As girls started seriously kicking ass at every level of education (girls now out-perform boys in elementary, middle, and high schools; we graduate from college, professional, and graduate schools in greater number than males -- go team!), our brains became devalued.

I had to take a break after reading those paragraphs and ask myself four questions:

Did Lisa Bloom drink an extra shot of espresso before she penned those paragraphs? Does she have a hidden agenda that is fueling her passion? Is she exaggerating a personal opinion just to be heard? OR are we, in fact, raising stupid girls?

A few hours later, I sat down with my daughter as she watched the Disney Channel and, in between segments of Witches of Waverly Place, where Selena Gomez plays Alex, the naughty girl who has never opened a book in her adolescence (unlike her intellectual brother Justin, who loves the life of the mind), I saw the music video of the pop star Selena as she danced around a set in a skimpy dress, singing about lightning and thunder -- which apparently meant more than lightening and thunder by the way she was groping the microphone, practically licking it.

Alright, maybe Bloom does have a point, I said to myself, after less than 10 minutes in front of the tube. Young female celebrities aren't exactly rewarded and celebrated for their cognitive abilities and IQs. Imitating bold hip thrusts seem to matter more than SAT scores. And the more I see my seven-year-old stand in front of the mirror and mimic their moves, the more tempted I am to send her to a convent. One with lots of bookshelves holding scholarly works of all kind!

When I asked a friend of mine if she were saving for her daughter's college education, she sarcastically remarked, "No. I'm spending all the money on her wardrobe now, hoping that she'll be discovered." I laughed and cringed at the same time, because even as she intended sarcasm, there is too much truth to that philosophy in our culture. Look at the payoff, says. Bloom. "Many of us spend more time looking in the mirror than looking out at our planet, and the thing is that doing so is rational because there can be a bigger payoff for being sexy than brainy."

Now you're really lucky if you're cute and smart!

But seriously, I didn't realize how repressed I was intellectually and academically during my junior high and high school years until I attended an all-women's college. Even as I promised myself I'd never become one of those girls who paid more attention to tossing her hair back and forth than taking down algebra notes, I certainly held back in those co-ed classrooms. I didn't ask questions. I didn't engage with texts. I let the peer pressure of looking good win over stretching my mind, and so by trying to be ladylike, I compromised my education.

After the first semester at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, I could clearly distinguish between a classroom that sets women up for success, and those that indirectly tell girls to shut up. It can be so subtle that you don't pick up on it until you are out of that environment, and in one that nurtures and encourages a woman to use her mind to make the world a better place. Writes Bloom:

We've got to use our brains for more than filler in the space beneath our smooth, Botoxed foreheads. The generation before us fought like hell and won for us equality in education and employment. Let's use that for a higher purpose than sending pictures of kittens on Facebook ... Bottom line: your critical thinking skills are desperately needed right now for your own good as well as for the sake of your community, your country, and your planet. That nagging little voice? It's your brain, and it's telling you that it wants back in the game.

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THE END OF MEN

Hanna Rosin

Atlantic Monthly June 16, 2010;

Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences. To read more click here.

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