Today, out of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, there are only seventy-one women. And only sixteen out of one hundred members of the Senate are women. When will women's voices be heard? Click here for more info.
It has been brought to my attention that Ashley Montagu whose book THE NATURAL SUPERIORITY OF WOMEN is reviewed in "Voices from the Underground", is a male writer not female. Corrections have been made.
A link to free spirit e-cards has been added to the Links page.
Giclee prints of paintings seen here are now available for purchase on-line at Caladan Gallery
The November-January (2006-7)issue of GALLERY & STUDIOArt Magazine contains a review of this website.
INDEX
WOMAN RISE IN RWANDA'S ECONOMIC REVIVALExhibitions 2007
Abused Muslim Women in U.S. Gain Advocates
Saudi Women Petition for Right to Drive
Islamic Revival in Syria Led by Women "Elegant Embodiments" North Country Cultural Center for the Arts, Plattsburgh, New York. January 12-31, 2008 "Blue Lumina V" was on exhibit at Limner Gallery in Hudson,NY. It was accepted in a juried competition called "The Sensual Nude". "The Flute Player"was on display in the show "words within" at the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, Columbia/Barnard University, 606 West 115th St.,New York, NY. The show later traveled to the Rubin Gallery at the BU Hillel at Boston University. By Anthony Faiola MARABA, Rwanda,Africa -- Sun-kissed plantations ring this village, renowned in recent years for growing the rich arabica beans brewed and served in some of the world's finest coffee houses. But the secret to success here has had far less to do with the idyllic climate and volcanic soil than with a group of people who have emerged as Maraba's -- and Rwanda's -- most potent economic force: women.
In the 14 years since the genocide, when 800,000 people died during three months of violence, this country has become perhaps the world's leading example of how empowering women can fundamentally transform post-conflict economies and fight the cycle of poverty. That is particularly clear here in Maraba, a southern village where a host of women -- largely relegated to backbreaking field work in the days before the genocide -- found unwanted opportunity in the fertile lands they would inherit from slaughtered husbands, fathers and brothers. Click here By NEIL MacFARQUHAR Published: January 6, 2008, New York Times By Faiza Saleh Ambah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 24, 2007; Page A09
DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 23 -- For the first time since a demonstration in 1990, a group of Saudi women is campaigning for the right to drive in this conservative kingdom, the only country in the world that prohibits female drivers.
After spreading the idea through text messages and e-mails, the group's leaders said they collected more than 1,100 signatures online and at shopping malls for a petition sent to King Abdullah on Sunday.
"We don't expect an answer right away," said Wajeha al-Huwaider, 45, an education analyst who co-founded the group. "But we will not stop campaigning until we get the right to drive."
The kingdom follows one of the world's strictest interpretations of Islam. Women in Saudi Arabia, a deeply patriarchal society, cannot travel, marry or rent lodging without permission from a male guardian.
Powerful clerics in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's holiest shrines, say that allowing women to drive would lead to Western-style freedoms and an erosion of traditional values.
The driving ban applies to all women, Saudi and foreign.
Public transportation is limited, and though taxis are common in major cities, women tend not to use them because riding with male strangers is deemed unsafe.
Some women can afford to hire live-in drivers; others rely on male relatives to drive them.
Though live-in chauffeurs are all male, they are not viewed as a threat because they are foreigners, often from the Philippines or the Indian subcontinent, and are considered unlikely to develop relationships with the women.
Many women reject this argument. "Women and their children are at the mercy of sexual harassment by these foreign drivers, and we know many incidents of this happening," said Fouzia al-Ayouni, a retired school administrator. "It is much safer, and more appropriate, for women to chauffeur themselves and their children around."
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When she was first married, Ayouni recalled, her baby became ill one night. Her husband, a democracy advocate, was in jail, so she went out into the street at 2 a.m., holding the sick child and trying to find a ride to the hospital. She finally reached a brother-in-law, who drove her to the emergency room.
The last time Saudi women lobbied for the right to drive was in 1990 during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Forty-seven women were briefly detained for driving in a convoy of 15 cars in the capital, Riyadh. The women were banned from traveling, lost their jobs and were ostracized by their families and acquaintances.
Though no laws explicitly ban people from gathering signatures or circulating petitions, independent political or social activity is frowned upon in Saudi Arabia, and rights activists are routinely imprisoned.
The petition has received more attention overseas than in Saudi Arabia, where the news media are government-controlled and the issue was taboo until several years ago.
But Saudi Arabia has slowly become more open since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ayouni said. The shock of Saudis being largely involved in the attacks forced the country to reevaluate its ultraconservative lifestyle, and many subjects that had been off-limits are now discussed more openly in the media.
"The Internet and satellite television have also brought new ideas," said Ayouni, whose 16-year-old daughter also signed the petition.
Letters to al-Watan newspaper on Saturday responding to an article about the petition were almost equally divided for and against.
"Allowing women to drive will only bring sin. The evils it would bring, mixing between the genders, temptations, and tarnishing the reputation of devout Muslim women, outweigh the benefits," wrote one man.
Others expressed admiration for what one called the group's "daring and courage" in tackling the issue.
Huwaider, the group's co-founder, is no stranger to controversy. During last year's war in Lebanon, she stood on the bridge between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, holding a placard addressed to King Abdullah. "Give Saudi Women Their Rights," it said.
She was detained and interrogated, and had to sign a petition pledging not to demonstrate again. But the most humiliating part, she said, was waiting at the police station until her male guardian, her brother, could arrive to pick her up.
"The whole Arab world was inflamed at what was happening in Lebanon," she said. "And I wanted to say: Yes, that's bad, but why don't you look closer to home and see how bad our lives are here?"
At a meeting at Huwaider's house last week, the women in the group, the Association for the Protection and Defense of Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia, went over their campaign. Ayouni, in black pants and a long black-and-gold top, paced back and forth in platform sandals as she spoke on her cellphone with a BBC reporter calling from the United Arab Emirates.
"It's not a luxury, it's a necessity," she said. "Many women support their entire families and can't afford paying half their salary to a driver."
Ayouni said her group had at least "broken a barrier of fear that Saudi women had of asking for their rights."
"That has been our major achievement. And we want the authorities to know that we're here, that we want to drive, and that many people feel the way we do," she said. DAMASCUS, Syria — Enas al-Kaldi stops in the hallway of her Islamic school for girls and coaxes her 6-year-old schoolmate through a short recitation from the Koran.understanding comes when the Koran becomes part of you,” Ms. Kaldi, 16, said proudly.>/b>
The Islamic school where Ms. Kaldi, the 16-year-old tutor, studies has no overt political agenda. But it is a place where devotion to Islam, and an exploration of women’s place in it, flourishes.
The school, at the Zahra mosque in a western suburb of Damascus, is a cheerful, cozy place, with soft Oriental carpets layered underfoot and scores of little girls running around in their socks. Ms. Kaldi spends summers, vacations and some afternoons there, studying and helping younger children to memorize the Koran. Her work tutoring has made her an important figure in this world; many of the younger girls greet her shyly as they pass.
The school accepts girls as young as 5, who begin memorizing the Koran from the back, where the shortest verses are found. The youngest girls are being taught with the aid of hand gestures, games and treats.
The atmosphere is relaxed. The children share candy and snacks as they study, and the room hums with the sound of high-pitched voices reciting in unison. Several girls, preparing for the tests that will allow them to progress to higher-level classes, swing one-handed around the smooth columns that support the roof of the mosque, dreamily murmuring verses aloud to themselves.
After girls in the Zahra school have committed the Koran to memory, they are taught to recite the holy book with the prescribed rhythm and cadences, a process called tajweed, which usually takes at least several years of devoted study. Along the way they are taught the principles of Koranic reasoning. It is this art of Koranic reasoning, Ms. Kaldi and her friends say, that most sets them apart from previous generations of Syrian Muslim women.
Fatima Ghayeh, 16, an aspiring graphic designer and Ms. Kaldi’s best friend, said she believed that “the older generation,” by which she meant women now in their late 20’s and their 30’s, too often allowed their fathers and husbands to dictate their faith to them.
They came of age before the Islamic revivalist movement that has swept Syria, she explained, and as a result many of them do not feel an intellectual ownership of Islamic teaching in the way that their younger sisters do.
“The older girls were told, ‘This is Islam, and so you should do this,’ ” Ms. Ghayeh said. “They feel that they can’t really ask questions.
The girls at the madrasa say that by plunging more deeply into their faith, they learn to understand their rights within Islam.
In upper-level courses at the Zahra school, the girls debate questions like whether a woman has the right to vote differently from her husband. The question is moot in Syria, one classmate joked, because President Assad inevitably wins elections by a miraculous 99 percent, just as his father did before him.
When the occasion arises, they say, they are able to reason from the Koran on an equal footing with men.
“People mistake tradition for religion,” Ms. Kaldi said. “Men are always saying, ‘Women can’t do that because of religion,’ when in fact it is only tradition. It’s important for us to study so that we will know the difference.” (For further reading on this subject, see
THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM TODAY If you are looking for a way to begin your spiritual path toward the goddess, the Fellowship of Isis offers a helpful guide.Click here to read excerpts taken from the Introduction to "Dea, Rites and Mysteries of the Goddess" by Olivia Robertson. Also seeLinks Page
Fellowship of Isis
Peruvian Woman AD450
Divine and Human: Women in Ancient Mexico
Stone Age Basque Women
Women Surpassing Men in College
Mandala
Goddess Gallery: Awaken my Beloved
EXHIBITIONS 2007-8
The painting "Wall St. Wall" was on display at the New Mexico Printmakers gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
WOMAN RISE IN RWANDA'S ECONOMIC REVIVAL
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 16, 2008;
ABUSED MUSLIM WOMEN IN USA GAIN ADVOCATES
Domestic violence among Muslims has long straddled a blurry line between culture and religion, but now scattered organizations founded by Muslim American women are creating a movement to define it as an unacceptable cultural practice. The problem occurs among American Muslims at the same rate as other groups, activists say, but is even more sensitive because raising the issue is considered an attack on the faith. Click here for more.
SAUDI WOMEN PETITION FOR RIGHT TO DRIVE: CHALLENGE POSES RISKS IN SOLE COUNTRY WHERE ONLY MEN MAY TAKE THE WHEEL
In a madrasa at the Zahra mosque in suburban Damascus, Enas al-Kaldi, 16, teaches 7- and 8-year-old girls to memorize the chapters of the Koran. 
ISLAMIC REVIVAL IN SYRIA LED BY WOMEN
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
(Excerpts taken from article published in New York Times, August 29, 2006)
Art Of Koranic Reasoning
FELLOWSHIP OF ISIS
Two reports have been published recently that show evidence of active leadership roles that women once exercised in Pre-Columbian Mexician and Peruvian cultures.
PERUVIAN WOMAN OF AD 450 SEEMS TO HAVE HAD TWO CAREERS
by John Noble Wilford
A woman buried with a golden bowl on her face was wrapped in mummy cloths and buried with military items, hinting at a role as a ruler.
She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche lculture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos of patterns and mythological figures.
But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said yesterday, is not the offerings of gold and semiprecious stones, or the elaborate wrapping of her body in fine textiles, but the other grave goods.
She was surrounded by weaving materials and needles, befitting a woman, and 2 ceremonial war clubs and 28 spear throwers — sticks that propel spears with far greater force — items never found before in the burial of a woman of the Moche (pronounced MOH-chay).
Was she a warrior princess, or perhaps a ruler? Possibly.
"She is elite, but somewhat of an enigma," said John Verano, a physical anthropologist at Tulane University, who worked with the Peruvian archaeologists who made the discovery last year.
Christopher B. Donnan of the University of California, Los Angeles, was not a member of the research team but inspected the mummy and the tomb soon after the find.
"It's among the richest female Moche burials ever found," said Dr. Donnan, an archaeologist of Peruvian culture. "The tomb combines things usually found either exclusively in male or female burials — a real mystery."
The National Geographic Society announced the discovery and is publishing details in its magazine's June issue. The excavations, more than 400 miles northwest of Lima, were supported by the Augusto N. Wiese Foundation of Peru.
The Moche culture flourished in the coastal valleys of northern Peru in the first 700 years A.D. The people were master artisans and built huge adobe pyramids. The woman's tomb was near the summit of a pyramid called Huaca Cao Viejo, a cathedral of the Moche religion.
Dr. Verano's X-ray examination revealed that the mummy was a young adult. Lying near her was the skeleton of another young woman who was apparently sacrificed by strangulation with a hemp rope, which was still around her neck. Such sacrifices were common in Andean cultures.
Radiocarbon analysis of the rope indicated that the burial occurred around A.D. 450.
"Perhaps she was a female warrior, or maybe the war clubs and spear throwers were symbols of power that were funeral gifts from men," Dr. Verano said.
(New York Times, May 17, 2006)
DIVINE AND HUMAN: Women in Ancient Mexico and Peru
This is the title of an exhibit currently on display at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC from March 3 to May 28, 2006.
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STONE-AGE BASQUE WOMEN
Stone-age Basque Language Remains a Mystery,
Sinikka Tarvainen, San Sebastian, Spain
(MAIL&GUARDIAN, online, 03 June 2006 07:53)
Scientists remain puzzled by the Basque people of northern Spain and southern France, believed to be the oldest Europeans, whose language appears to date from the palaeolithic age and whose origin is a mystery.
Researchers are also looking into traditional Basque culture to find clues into what Europe was like before the arrival of the war-like, patriarchal Indo-Europeans.
Certain traditions, such as the strong position of women and the worship of the goddess Mari, have led some scholars to conclude that old European societies were at least partly matriarchal and that life was remarkably peaceful.
WOMEN SURPASSING MEN IN COLLEGE
A recent New York Times article (July 9, 2006) reports in a series of articles on education that women are not only enrolling in college in larger numbers than men but also are surpassing men academically with higher grade- point averages.
"A quarter-century after women became the majority on college campuses, men are trailing them in more than just enrollment.
Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor's degrees — and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.
And in two national studies, college men reported that they studied less and socialized more than their female classmates.
Small wonder, then, that at elite institutions like Harvard, small liberal arts colleges like Dickinson, huge public universities like the University of Wisconsin and U.C.L.A. and smaller ones like Florida Atlantic University, women are walking off with a disproportionate share of the honors degrees.
It is not that men are in a downward spiral: they are going to college in greater numbers and are more likely to graduate than two decades ago.
Still, men now make up only 42 percent of the nation's college students. And with sex discrimination fading and their job opportunities widening, women are coming on much stronger, often leapfrogging the men to the academic finish.
"The boys are about where they were 30 years ago, but the girls are just on a tear, doing much, much better," said Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington."
For the complete New York Times article see,Women are Leaving Men in the Dust
MANDALA
The mandala is an ancient religious symbol used in India to aid in meditation practices. It was designed to center the mind and to provide a graphic map of one's spiritual journey toward God, the Buddha, the Ultimate Reality.
Traditionally, the mandala consists of circles which symbolize various stages in ones spiritual journey. The outer most circle depicts the gates by which the seeker enters a sacred enclosed space which will eventually bring him/her to the center (God, Buddha, the Ultimate Reality). The first barrier that is encountered is the circle of fire. Each successive concentric circle symbolizes another stage on the path to enlightenment, heaven, nirvana.
The mandala design is not entirely a product of man's imagination. It can often be found hidden in nature, from the radiating spokes of galaxies or the radiating petals of a flower to the inner design found at the core of sliced fruit, such as an apple, orange, onion, pepper, or kiwi. It is like the hidden mathematical equations that serve as a skeleton for the universe.
In the paintings shown here the mandala is used to create a sense of the Spiritual Cosmic Energies that permeate the Universe. I believe these Cosmic Forces can be known and experienced by every individual. I use the nude figure in these paintings to emphasize the fact that we can not approach these Divine Fields of Energy so long as we cling to masks, disguises, or subterfuges. The nude figure is a metaphor for a certain mental nakedness that is required of us before we can enter through the first gateway into the Mandala.
GODDESS GALLERY: AWAKEN MY BELOVED
The image at the top of AWAKEN MY BELOVED is an ancient representation of a Paleolithic goddess that has been called the Venus of Laussel. It was carved in rock guarding the opening to a cave in France ca 25,000 BC. You can also find a reference to it in Layne Redmond's book, WHEN THE DRUMMERS WERE WOMEN, p. 32. Redmond states that "This is the oldest image so far discovered associating a Paleolithic goddess with a moon symbol." The bison horn that she is holding symbolizes the crescent moon. It has 13 vertical marks inscribed on it which may represent the 13 months comprising a lunar year.
The triptych of three paintings called AWAKEN MY BELOVED is an attempt to provide a way for women of the 3rd Millennium to make a connection between who they are today and that part of their spiritual self that is 25,000+ years old.I believe such a connection is important because the patriarchal system we live under has tried to completely demolish the origins of women's past identity. Redmond describes the herstorical roots of this lost very well and I was first made aware of it after reading her book. I believe that unless you know who you were herstorically when you first became a conscious being, you can't fully know who you are in the present or who you can be in the future. AWAKEN MY BELOVED is the call of the ancient goddess speaking to the heart of the spiritual seeker.
