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Category: Women

  • Book review: Is God Good for Women?

    By Matt Pointon

    We can find inspiration in the strangest of places, but even I never expected a service station on the M6 to be one of them.

    Whilst making a brief toilet stop en route back from the Lake District, I spied this title in a charity book sale and thought it might be worth a pound’s donation. I was not mistaken.

    Michelle Guinness is an interesting character. A well-known broadcaster, she was brought up Jewish and is now married to a Christian minister. Interfaith if ever there was.

    In her book “Is God Good to Women?” (1997), she turns her attentions to a tricky question: in a world where women seem to be side-lined or treated as second-class by religions, is God good for women?

    She attempts to answer it by speaking to twelve inspirational females who have succeeded in a male world. There’s an army officer, an MP, a CEO, a rabbi, a vicar and many more.

    By recounting their stories and exploring their faith, she attempts to answer her question.

    As someone who had just come back from travelling around Pakistan, where I struggled with the strict gender segregation and absence of women in the public sphere, this was definitely a question on my mind.

    I enjoyed the book. As one might expect from an experienced journalist, the stories are well-written and readable. The lives they document are inspiring; women who have overcome great odd and achieved incredible things.

    The most powerful for me was Mandy, the survivor who fought addiction, violence and grinding poverty in the worst areas of Liverpool, using her faith to take herself to a better place.

    The Jesus she knows, she refers to as “the big JC”. I like that. A mate not a master.

    I do have criticisms of course. This book was published in 1997 and it shows.

    It recognises diversity in that there are rich and poor women, black and white, fortunate and less fortunate.

    However, what is conspicuously absent in the book is diversity of faith.

    In this book, to be religious means to be Christian or Jewish. We’re missing Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists. Missing too are the LGBTQ+ community – a crucial intersectionality that’s not explored.

    However, given the time period, it’s clear that such differences were less prominent and less talked about then. Every book is of course a product of its time.

    Does it answer the central question though? Guinness is adamant, after talking with her twelve apostles that yes, God can be good for women, though organised religion often is far less positive.

    But she goes further than that. As a man, I found it both inspiring and informative to learn how the female journey of faith can be distinct from that of my gender.

    She talks of how women are experts at coping, whereas men want only to solve problems.

    The truth is, the world needs both and that women, when they can take inspiration from God, radically transform our world.

    As Guinness herself sums up:

    Many women feel like a mouse inside. They take a peek at their possibilities, see only pitfalls and problems, and cower in a corner.

    But throughout history there have been women willing to respond to go beyond their usual limitations, to rub against hard and difficult man-made structures in an attempt to make the world a better, fairer, godlier place…

    They prove that a God who is good for women intends them to have the heart the mind, and the roar of a lioness.

    Let every woman roar – in the name of God!

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.

  • WOMEN

    Men have controlled the world since time began and in our modern era there are far too many males who want a strong degree of control to continue forever. The cold hard facts of the matter are that they remain in charge of the domination stakes as women are still not paid equal money for …

    Continue reading WOMEN

    The post WOMEN appeared first on Everald Compton.

    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.

  • ‘What a 15-Week Abortion Ban Looks Like in Real Life’: Nearly Death



    The harrowing experiences of two close friends in Florida who experienced serious pregnancy complications days apart are among the latest to show the reality faced by pregnant people in states with forced pregnancy laws—and the future the Republican Party is pushing for across the United States, rights advocates said Monday.

    As The Washington Post reported, two women who had suffered miscarriages and bonded over their mutual experiences with infertility, Anya Cook and Shanae Smith-Cunningham, developed the same complication days apart in December when they were just 16 and 19 weeks pregnant, respectively—weeks before their fetuses were considered viable by doctors.

    The two friends both experienced preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes (PPROM), which affects less than 1% of pregnancies and causes the pregnant person to lose amniotic fluid, making it extremely unlikely that their fetus will survive.

    PPROM can cause hemorrhaging and serious infections, and the standard of care recognized by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is an induction of labor or a surgical abortion—but with Florida’s 15-week abortion ban in effect since the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, doctors did not offer Cook those options when she went to a hospital in Coral Springs, Florida one night after realizing she has losing amniotic fluid.

    Cook only received antibiotics and was told to wait at home for her symptoms to for her condition to progress. The next day, in the bathroom of a nail salon, she delivered her 16-week-old fetus and immediately began hemorrhaging—eventually losing nearly half the blood in her body.

    The treatment she eventually was given after being rushed to the hospital a second time left her with complications that may make it even more difficult for her to carry a pregnancy to term.

    She narrowly avoided a hysterectomy, which would have made a future pregnancy impossible.

    “In what world is that pro-life?” asked Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern.

    Florida’s 15-week abortion ban—which Republicans are pushing to make even more extreme by banning abortion care for people who are more than six weeks pregnant—includes so-called “exceptions” only to “save the pregnant woman’s life,” “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function,” or in the case of “fatal fetal anomaly.”

    A study conducted in Texas last year showed that 57% of patients who experienced pre-viability PPROM in the state, where abortion is also banned, faced a “serious maternal morbidity” such as an infection or hemorrhage, putting them at risk for the same outcome Cook experienced. By comparison, 33% of patients with the complication in states without abortions experienced those medical emergencies as a result of PPROM.

    Despite this, the six-week abortion ban proposal that has already passed in the Florida state Senate and is expected to pass in the Republican-controlled state House, does not include an exception for PPROM.

    The devastation Cook and Smith-Cunningham faced as they lost their pregnancies “will only get worse with a six-week ban,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-42).

    Smith-Cunningham was visiting family in Jamaica when she developed PPROM shortly after her friend did, and quickly traveled back home to Florida to get medical treatment.

    Once she got there, she was sent home from her local hospital twice despite her symptoms, with a doctor “explicitly” mentioning the overturning of Roe v. Wade as the reason “she couldn’t do anything to help.”

    She was told she couldn’t receive the standard of care recognized by doctors across the country unless her cervix dilated further than the four centimeters it already had, or she began having an active miscarriage.

    Instead, she stayed bedridden at home, terrified that she would begin hemorrhaging like her friend just had, until she finally became dilated enough to receive medical care.

    “They are playing with people’s lives with this law,” Smith-Cunningham told the Post.

    The two friends’ experiences, said HuffPost reporter Jonathan Cohn, demonstrate “what a 15-week abortion ban looks like in real life,” with doctors refusing to care for patients out of fear of breaking the law, even if “exceptions” are included.

    “The laws are working as intended,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie added.

    State Sen. Lauren Book (D-32), who represents both Smith-Cunningham and Cook, warned that “women will die” if the six-week ban is passed.

    “Despite denials from across the aisle, the truth is clear,” said Book. “Florida mothers who suffer miscarriages are ALREADY being forced to the brink of death before receiving needed abortion care.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Iranian police plan to use smart cameras to identify ‘violators of hijab law’

    Women who break Islamic dress code will be identified, warned on first instance and then taken to court

    Police in Iran plan to use smart technology in public places to identify and then penalise women who violate the country’s strict Islamic dress code, the force said on Saturday.

    A statement said police would “take action to identify norm-breaking people by using tools and smart cameras in public places and thoroughfares”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UN concern after its female workers are ‘banned’ from working by Taliban

    All staff in Afghanistan ordered to stay home for 48 hours to give officials time to negotiate with Taliban

    United Nations staff in Afghanistan have been ordered to stay at home for 48 hours to give UN officials time to persuade the Taliban not to go ahead with their plan to ban all female Afghan employees of the UN from working.

    The UN said the ban would lead to even less humanitarian aid reaching Afghanistan.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘People Are Going to Die’: Florida Senate Republicans Pass Abortion Ban



    Reproductive rights advocates on Monday angrily vowed to fight back after Florida’s Republican-controlled Senate approved a bill banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy—a point at which many people don’t even know they’re pregnant.

    S.B. 300 would replace a Florida law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with a six-week ban containing exceptions for victims of rape, incest, human trafficking, and “devastating” fatal fetal abnormalities; to save the pregnant person’s life; or when a fetus is diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality.

    “Bodily autonomy should not give a person the permission to kill an innocent human being,” explained state Sen. Erin Grall (R-54), a sponsor of the bill.

    However, Florida state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-42) asserted that “this was never about life, this is about control.”

    As state Sen. Alexis Calatayud (R-38)—one of only two Republicans who voted against the six-week ban (she supports a 15-week limit)—spoke during an emotionally heated floor debate on Monday, someone in the visitors’ gallery shouted, “People are going to die!”

    Kara Gross, the ACLU of Florida’s legislative director and senior policy counsel, said in a statement: “This bill is a near-total ban on abortion in Florida. It directly violates our right to bodily autonomy and will virtually eliminate legal abortion care in Florida.”

    “In a state that prides itself on being free, this is an unprecedented, unconstitutional, and unacceptable level of government overreach and intrusion into our private lives,” she continued. “This bill will force pregnant individuals to remain pregnant against their will and endure labor, delivery, and all of the significant medical and financial risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth.”

    Gross added that the legislation will also “unfairly and disproportionately impact people who live in rural communities, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, and people of color.”

    “Hundreds of thousands of pregnant people will be forced to travel out of state to seek the care they need,” she warned. “Many people will not even know they are pregnant by six weeks, and for those who do, it is unlikely they will be able to schedule the legally required two in-person doctor’s appointments before six weeks of pregnancy.”

    Democratic Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a statement that “women’s rights, freedoms, and access to reproductive care are under continued attack in Florida.”

    “We must reinforce that private healthcare decisions must be protected and allowed to stay private between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her faith,” the mayor continued.

    “Things have gone too far,” she added. “We must do better and stand for true freedoms that have been the foundation of our great nation.”

    S.B. 300 now heads to the GOP-controlled state House of Representatives for consideration. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and possible 2024 presidential candidate, supports the measure.

    As NBC Miami’s Anthony Izaguirre noted:

    A six-week ban would more closely align Florida with the abortion restrictions of other Republican-controlled states and give DeSantis a political win on an issue important with GOP primary voters ahead of his potential White House run.

    The bill would have larger implications for abortion access throughout the South, as the nearby states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi prohibit the procedure at all stages of pregnancy and Georgia bans it after cardiac activity can be detected, which is around six weeks.
    According to the Guttmacher Institute, Florida is one of two dozen states that have banned abortion or are likely to do so after the U.S. Supreme Court voided half a century of reproductive rights in last June’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Women’s Health Market Set to Explode As Millennials Hit Their 40s

    woman with healthy drink
    3 Mins Read

    New data point to an untapped market potential for female nutrition. But more work is needed to address the full range of women’s health requirements.

    The findings about women’s health come from sector specialists at consultancy Sagentia Innovation. “The specific role of nutrition in female health is finally gaining attention,” Ankita Singal-Sareen, senior consultant at Sagentia Innovation told Nutrition Insight.

    ‘Female-specific data’

    “Further fundamental and clinical research will generate female-specific data, especially for younger women and across racial and ethnic backgrounds,” Singal-Sareen said. “Science-led developments in female nutrition will help fill these gaps and we anticipate that they will accelerate over the next twelve months.”

    woman cooking
    Photo by CDC on Unsplash

    The current lack of clinical research and data for women’s health conditions has left a significant gap in understanding of how women respond to different solutions and how different conditions can present in women. 

    Historically, women have not been included in clinical trials, which has perpetuated a “one size fits all” approach to nutrition solutions. To move away from this approach, experts say there’s a need to better understand each life stage for women to develop better-tailored solutions.

    Enabling technologies such as data management tools is critical in developing these better solutions for women’ health. Companies must determine how to leverage available data and identify insights to deliver products to customers. Kerry’s RDA director for women and infant health, Monica Maria Olivares, told Nutrition Insight that there are myriad opportunities for manufacturers to develop products that meet women’s specific needs.

    Unmet needs

    Currently, digestive health, weight and fitness, and energy needs are already well-served by a number of brands offering everything from drinks and supplements to energy bars, but there are still unmet needs such as joint health, hormonal changes, and cognitive function — significant considerations as Gen X and millennials are aging. The oldest millennials have just hit their 40s. Women make up half of the world’s population.

    Courtesy Jason Brisco on Unsplash

    The research shows that there is untapped innovation potential in women’s nutrition, according to Singal-Sareen. She says companies need to conduct more clinical data and research to develop new solutions for women. “Start to think about how to get there. That could be looking at ingredient solutions. It could be leveraging data you’ve already collected through various platforms and looking at ecosystems of enabling partners out there,” she said.

    “What we need is a robust approach focusing more on prevention than treatment,” adds Singal-Sareen.  

    “Targeted nutrition could support women across various life stages and the associated physiologic, neurologic and hormonal variabilities.”

    The post Women’s Health Market Set to Explode As Millennials Hit Their 40s appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • India: Community health workers protest in Bihar

    Thousands of community health workers — known as ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activists) — held a huge protest in Patna, in Bihar state, on March 21 calling for higher pay, recognition as workers and access to employment benefits, reports Kerry Smith.

  • 8 Facts About Sandra Hemme’s Case You Need to Know

    Sandra “Sandy” Hemme has spent more than four decades in prison for a crime that evidence supports she did not commit, making her the longest-known wrongly incarcerated woman in the U.S.

    Although Ms. Hemme, now 63, has spent the majority of her life wrongfully imprisoned, she has never given up hope that her name would one day be cleared.

    Ms. Hemme was wrongly convicted for the 1980 murder of Patricia Jeschke in St. Joseph, Missouri, after police exploited her mental illness and coerced her into making false statements while she was sedated and receiving treatment for hallucinatory episodes.

    In late February 2023, Ms. Hemme’s attorneys filed a petition for habeas relief in the 43rd Circuit Court of Livingston County based on compelling new evidence of her innocence. This new evidence was withheld by the State for decades and pointed to a police officer as the person who committed the crime.

    Here are key facts you should know about her case:

    1. Ms. Hemme, who had no connection to the victim, was a psychiatric patient receiving treatment when she was targeted by police. At the time of Ms. Jeschke’s death, Ms. Hemme, then 20, was a patient at St. Joseph’s State Hospital receiving treatment for auditory hallucinations, derealization, and drug misuse. Ms. Hemme had spent the majority of her life starting at age 12 in inpatient psychiatric treatment.

    2. Ms. Hemme was repeatedly interviewed by police under extremely coercive circumstances. Police conducted hours-long interviews with Ms. Hemme while she was in the hospital.  At some points, she was so heavily medicated that she was unable to even hold her head up and was restrained and strapped to a chair. Over the course of these coercive interrogations, Ms. Hemme’s statements conflicted with the known facts of the crime and were internally inconsistent. More than 10% of exonerated people were wrongly convicted in cases involving false confessions.

    Sandra Hemme (center) with her sister and mother. (Image: Courtesy of the Hemme family)

    3. Ms. Hemme’s lawyer presented no witnesses at her trial, which lasted just one day. The jury never heard about the profoundly coercive circumstances under which police obtained her statements.  Those statements were the only “evidence” against her at trial.

    4. The jury also never heard about the crime scene evidence that supported Ms. Hemme’s innocence. Ms. Hemme was excluded as a source of all the hairs and fingerprints taken from the crime scene. There was no physical, forensic, or eyewitness evidence that linked her to the victim or the crime scene.

    5. Evidence pointed to a St. Joseph police officer as a suspect in Ms. Jeschke’s killing. Michael Holman, a St. Joseph police officer, admitted to being near Ms. Jeschke’s home at the time of the murder, and his white pickup truck was parked near the scene. Officer Holman had also attempted to use Ms. Jeschke’s credit card the day after her murder.

    6. Police hid evidence that implicated Officer Holman as the person who actually killed Ms. Jeschke. Ms. Jeschke’s uniquely designed wishbone earrings — identified by her father, who had gifted them to her — were found in Officer Holman’s possession, along with jewelry stolen during another home burglary. Failing to turn over favorable evidence to the accused person is known as a Brady violation.

    7. Witnesses could not corroborate Officer Holman’s alibi. Officer Holman claimed he was at a motel adjacent to the victim’s home during the time of the murder with a woman named Mary. However, when asked by police he refused to give details about Mary or the motel room they both stayed in. All three witnesses from the motel and attached gas station told police they did not remember seeing Officer Holman or Mary that day.

    8. This isn’t the first time the St. Joseph police wrongfully targeted and convicted a person with a mental health illness or disability that made them uniquely vulnerable to falsely confessing. In 1979, 24-year-old Melvin Lee Reynolds, who also spent time at St. Joseph’s State Hospital, was convicted of the 1978 murder of a 4-year-old boy. Many of the same officers who worked on Ms. Hemme’s case also worked on Mr. Reynolds’ case. And much like in Ms. Hemme’s case, officers obtained an alleged confession — a statement that did not align with the known facts of the crime — from Mr. Reynolds after interrogating him repeatedly. Four years later, Mr. Reynolds was exonerated. 

    Ms. Hemme is represented by Innocence Project Senior Staff Attorney Jane Pucher, Staff Attorney Andrew Lee, and Post-Conviction Litigation Fellow Natalie Baker. She is also represented by Missouri-based attorney Sean O’Brien.

    The post 8 Facts About Sandra Hemme’s Case You Need to Know appeared first on Innocence Project.

    This post was originally published on Innocence Project.

  • Men Dominate the Corporate World, But Replacing Them With Women Isn’t the Answer

    For the first time ever, women CEOs now make up more than 10 percent of Fortune 500 leaders. But that’s hardly a reason to celebrate. On every indicator, white men still dominate the upper rungs of the economy, while women — particularly women of color — continue to be overrepresented in low-paying jobs. And even when women do break through the glass ceiling, they’re still part of a system…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘Historic moment’ as El Salvador abortion case fuels hopes for expanded access across Latin America

    Human rights court hears seriously ill woman denied procedure as advocates call for change in region with world’s most restrictive abortion laws

    Human rights activists in Latin America hope that a historic court hearing over the case of a Salvadoran woman who was denied an abortion despite her high-risk pregnancy could open the way for El Salvador to decriminalize abortions – and set an important precedent across the region.

    The inter-American court of human rights (IACHR) this week considered the historic case of the woman, known as Beatriz, who was prohibited from having an abortion in 2013, even though she was seriously ill and the foetus she was carrying would not have survived outside the uterus.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • How the Cuban government and people collaborated on the Family Code

    Natalia Marques spoke to young activists in Cuba to find out how the new law was won through grassroots dialogue.

  • Tim Gooden: ‘The 8-hour day shows there’s power in a union’

    In his speech to a Labour Day dinner, Geelong Trades and Labour Council President Tim Gooden celebrated workers who won the 8-hour working day and proposed five campaigns the union movement must fight for today.

  • VIDEO: 2023 Sydney International Women’s Day march

    Hundreds of women took part in the 2023 International Women’s Day march in Sydney, reports Peter Boyle.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Unionists rally on International Women’s Day

    Hundreds of unionists and gender and queer activists marched for International Women’s Day in Naarm/Melbourne. Jacob Andrewartha reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Setting Our Sights on the Equality of Women



    A month ago, I heard on the news that Boston public schools would be closed on February 3 because of the severe Arctic cold and wind chill forecast for that day and the next. My first thought was: what if the students’ mothers are working single mothers, what if they cannot take off or cannot afford to lose the pay—given inflation of food, energy and rents and the impoverishing impact of Covid?

    Boston is a severely unequal city with an extremely segregated public school system: 80 percent of children in public school are low-income; 90 percent are students of color, mainly Latino and Black; higher income families with children leave for suburbs when their children become of school age, according to the Dorchester Reporter. Almost all new residential buildings are high-income; and the city is referred to as “two Bostons.”

    In one of these “two Bostons” live low-wage women workers, a wage that consigns them to poverty compounded throughout their lives and in old age. “Nearly two-thirds of all low-wage workers in the United States are women,” an inequality worsened by racial inequality. Consider, too, the persistent “motherhood penalty”—whereby mothers are further set back financially by lack of paid parental leave and government-funded child care.

    But, my worry today for these working mothers and their children that day concerned only one dimension of the arduous reality facing many women—most egregiously women of color—as we mark International Women’s Day, March 8, a day founded on the fact of women’s inequality. Female textile workers launched the first march on March 8, 1857 in protest of unfair working conditions and unequal rights for women—one of the first organized strikes by working women, during which they called for a shorter work day and decent wages.

    Women have gained considerable rights since that and subsequent marches, through our own organizing, protests, and arrests: the right to vote, to own property, to inherit, to education, to have once-legal rape in marriage criminalized. A revolution for human rights without weapons, fists or a drop of blood spilled. Yet, only a handful of countries are nearing full equality for women; and ours is not even close. Indeed, U.S. women’s progress in gaining equality has both stagnated and lost ground.

    Worst of all, violence against women by men in all its forms: pornography, rape, prostitution, physical beating, murder increased during Covid. Women’s reproductive rights have been trampled by the 2022 Supreme Court decision to void the right to abortion; and many states are sponsoring a plethora of regulations to deny women access to abortion and birth control. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that domestic abusers can own guns – a “death sentence for women and their families,” given “abusers are five times more likely to kill their victims if they have access to firearms.”

    From 2001 to 2019, approximately 7,000 U.S. soldiers died in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, a period of time in which more than 18,000 US women were killed—nearly 3 per day—by current or former intimate partners. (For those who assume male violence and war are inevitable, don’t waste your time on a doomed view. Consider this: during thousands of years in Neolithic Europe women and men lived in egalitarian, peaceful societies, according to respected archeologist Dr. Marija Gimbutas.)

    In that same period of U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, an estimated 14,400 US women died before, during and just after childbirth—more than twice the number of US soldiers killed in these wars. Thousands of memorials commemorate those who gave their lives for their country in war; name one for women killed by men or who lost their lives giving birth to the next generation.

    The injustice of women’s inequality ripples out to national governments. Peace and the security of nations are powerfully linked with the equality of women. Comparing the security and level of conflict within 175 countries to the overall security of women in those countries, researchers have found that the degree of equality of women within countries predicts best how peaceful or conflict-ridden their countries are. Further, democracies with higher levels of violence against women are less stable and more likely to choose force rather than diplomacy to resolve conflict.

    So, if you care about turning back from the warpath the U.S. is on and eliminating nuclear weapons, consider the words of the revered Ghanian statesman and former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan:

    “There is no policy more effective in promoting development, health, and education than the empowerment of women and girls … and no policy is more important in preventing conflict or in achieving reconciliation after a conflict has ended.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • To Strengthen Women’s Resilience to Disasters, Make the Wealthiest Pay Their fair share



    She will be called Aya. This is the name that nurses gave to the infant baby pulled from the rubble of a five-story building in Jinderis, northern Syria. A miracle. Beside her, the rescuers found her mother, dead. She had given birth within hours of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on the night of February 6, 2023. Like her, more than 50,000 people died in the earthquake. As tragic as it is hopeful, this story has moved the international media. It also reminds us that over 350,000 pregnant women who survived the earthquake now urgently need access to health care, according to the United Nations. And this is only one aspect of women’s vulnerability to natural disasters.

    Floods, droughts, earthquakes, and other extreme events are not gender-neutral, especially in developing countries. Evidence shows that women and girls die in greater numbers and have different and uneven levels of resilience and capacity to recover. Of the 230,000 people killed in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, for example, 70% were women. Because of gender barriers, they often have fewer survival skills: boys are taught to swim or read first. This makes it difficult for them to access early warnings or identify safe shelters.

    In addition, it is more difficult for women to escape from danger, since they are most often responsible for children, the elderly, and the sick. Heightened tensions and fear, as well as the loss of income provoked by disasters, drive increased domestic violence against women and girls. They are also the first victims of sexual violence and exploitation when entire populations are displaced—this was one of the first concerns in Pakistan when more than 8 million people had to leave their homes because of the terrible floods in June through August of 2022.

    Progressive taxation—making the richest people and multinationals pay their fair share—is one of the most powerful tools for reducing inequality of all kinds.

    Natural catastrophes negatively impact everyone economically, but women and girls are disproportionately affected. World Bank data show that female farmers suffer much more than male ones in rural areas. Assigned to domestic tasks, they are more dependent than men on access to natural resources and are, therefore, the first to suffer when these become scarce. In every region, food insecurity is higher among women than men. In 2020, it was estimated that nearly 60% of the people who go hungry are women and girls, and the gender gap has only increased since then. Their lack of access to bank accounts also means that women’s assets are less protected than men’s.

    And, of course, recovery from any crisis builds on societal expectations related to gender roles. Consequently, women bear the brunt of the increased domestic burden after a disaster at the cost of missing out on other income-generating activities. We know that women spend, on average, 3.2 times more time than men on unpaid care work, and the COVID-19 pandemic—another human-induced natural catastrophe—made evident how unequally unpaid care and domestic work is shared, and how undervalued and underrecognized it is. This is a major constraint on women’s access to education, an obstacle to their entry into and advancement in the paid labor market, and to their political participation, with serious consequences in terms of social protection, income, and pensions.

    Gender inequality exacerbates the impact of natural disasters, and the consequences of natural disasters exacerbate gender inequality. This is an unacceptable vicious cycle. With the world already facing a growing number of climate-related tragedies, governments must take immediate and long-term action to invest in universal access to health care, water and sanitation, education, social protection, and infrastructure for gender equality and the full enjoyment of women’s human rights.

    As the world celebrates International Women’s Day, let’s keep in mind that it is impossible to build more resilient societies without fighting for gender equality.

    Even in times of crisis, when state coffers are nearly empty, there are equitable solutions to raise revenues to fund the investments needed to strengthen women’s resilience: to make those who profit from the crises ravaging the planet, including from those natural disasters, pay, as recommended by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), of which I am a member alongside, among others, Joseph Stiglitz, Jayati Ghosh, and Thomas Piketty. Instead of implementing austerity programs that devastate the most disadvantaged, states can increase their fiscal space by taxing companies and the super-rich more.

    It starts with taxing the super profits made by multinationals, and several countries in Europe and Latin America have already begun to do so. This is particularly true for the pharmaceutical giants that have made a fortune selling vaccines against Covid-19, which they were able to develop due to public subsidies. This is also the case for multinationals in the energy or food sector: Oxfam estimates that their profits increased by more than two and a half times (256%) in 2022 compared with the 2018–2021 average. For the same reasons, it is urgent to tax the richest, who get away with paying hardly any taxes these days. One cannot accept that, as Oxfam reminds us, a man like Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest men in history, is taxed at 3.3%, while Aber Christine, a market trader in Uganda who sells rice, is taxed at 40%.

    Progressive taxation—making the richest people and multinationals pay their fair share—is one of the most powerful tools for reducing inequality of all kinds. As the world celebrates International Women’s Day, let’s keep in mind that it is impossible to build more resilient societies without fighting for gender equality. Continuing to ignore it is a political choice, and an even more perilous threat to development than natural disasters themselves.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Campaign calls for gender apartheid to be crime under international law

    Prominent Afghans and Iranians say current laws do not capture the systematic suppression of women

    A prominent group of Afghan and Iranian women are backing a campaign calling for gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime under international law.

    The campaign, launched on International Women’s Day, reflects a belief that the current laws covering discrimination against women do not capture the systematic nature of the policies imposed in Afghanistan and Iran to downgrade the status of women in society.

    Continue reading…

  • Qld launches strategy for ‘gender-equal manufacturing’

    A Women in Manufacturing strategy that seeks to support greater diversity in the sector has been launched by the Queensland state government, with annual reviews on its progress to be instituted. The evaluation framework for annual reviews of the strategy is under development, with key performance indicators yet to be determined. Development of the strategy…

    The post Qld launches strategy for ‘gender-equal manufacturing’ appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Questions To The Head Of UN Women On International Women’s Day

    Questions To The Head Of UN Women On International Women's Day

    Image: moderndiplomacyeu/@tibettruth

    The theme of this International Women’s Day is ‘Embracing Equality’, which no doubt will be voiced with much enthusiasm by activists on Day 3 of the 67th CSW in New York. We wonder how objectives on advancing rights for women is serviced by their silence on China’s forced sterilizations of Uyghur and Tibetan women?

    We also have a couple of questions (photo above) to the current Executive Director of @UN_Women, Ms Sima Bahous. These were presented to her predecessor; who not only found it difficult to answer, but blocked our Twitter account to avoid them!

    We have not gone away, nor has the justification and importance of these inquiries.

    This post was originally published on TIBET, ACTIVISM AND INFORMATION.

  • France: Macron plays “double or nothing” on pension attacks

    After a three-week period of relative calm, all trade union federations in France called on workers “to bring France to a standstill” on March 7. Key workers’ sectors promised ongoing strikes, reports John Mullen.

  • End violence against women, say unionists on International Women’s Day

    “End violence against women” was the theme of the Geelong Women Unionists Network’s 21st International Women’s Day breakfast, reports Jacqueline Kriz.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Fake Feminists Gather At UN To Ignore China’s Forced Sterilizations

    Fake Feminists Gather At UN To Ignore China's Forced Sterilizations

    Described by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) as “champions of gender equality” female activists will be in attendance today at the opening of the 67th Session of the UNCSW.

    Quite how this gathering of Government and NGO participants can square-the-circle of affirming themselves as defenders of women’s rights, while cynically ignoring the atrocities of forced sterilizations, remains baffling!

    If, like us, you hold the conviction that, any and all human rights violations against women demands to be exposed and challenged, then please consider adding your name to our petition on this issue:

    https://www.change.org/p/calling-upon-uncsw-and-ngo-forum-to-oppose-china-s-forced-sterilizations

    Thanks

  • Smash the patriarchy, marchers sing on International Women’s Day

    The Hunter Workers Women’s Committee continued the tradition of loud and proud street marches with its International Women’s Day. Niko Leka reports.

  • Green Left News podcast launched

    Green Left journalists Ben Radford and Isaac Nellist round up the latest news from Australia and around the world in this new podcast.

  • France: In the movement to defend pensions, will Macron be beaten?

    Demonstrations in more than 260 towns took place across France on February 11, the fourth day of action to defend pensions, as the Pensions Bill began its four-week debate in the National Assembly, reports John Mullen.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Women in STEM groups warn of approaching funding cliff

    Women in STEM groups are warning of an approach cliff for federally funded programs designed to encourage women into science and technology, with the government unlikely to commit to new funding in the upcoming budget due to an ongoing review. The government put its support for Women in STEM programs under review in September to…

    The post Women in STEM groups warn of approaching funding cliff appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Google Targets Low-Income People With Ads for ‘Fake Abortion Clinics’: Study



    Research published Monday shows that Google is targeting lower-income users with advertisements for so-called crisis pregnancy centers, anti-choice organizations known to steer people away from accessing abortion care.

    As the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), which conducted the analysis, explained: “Crisis pregnancy centers—which critics have dubbed ‘fake abortion clinics‘—appear to offer medical services but instead push an anti-abortion message, providing free ultrasounds and baby supplies with the aim of persuading women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Abortion rights advocates accuse them of using deceptive tactics to get women in the door—and targeting their advertising at low-income women and women of color in urban areas.”

    For its investigation, TTP established Google accounts for test users in Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Miami, Florida. The users were characterized as 21-year-old women belonging to three different household income groups as defined by Google: average- or lower-income, moderately high-income, and high-income. While logged into each account, researchers entered 15 abortion-related search terms, including “Abortion clinic near me” and “I want an abortion,” and then recorded ads that appeared on the first five pages of results. Researchers used a Google Chrome browser with no previous history, and they used virtual private networks to make it look like the users were conducting searches from their respective cities.

    TTP found that Google showed ads for crisis pregnancy centers to women on the lower end of the income scale at a higher rate than their wealthier counterparts in two of the three cities. In Phoenix, average- or lower-income women saw 56% of ads come from crisis pregnancy centers, higher than what moderately high-income women (41%) and high-income women (7%) saw. In Atlanta, 42% of the ads targeted at average- or lower-income women came from crisis pregnancy centers, more than Google showed to moderately high-income women (18%) and high-income women (29%).

    “By pointing low-income women to [crisis pregnancy centers] more frequently than higher-income women in states with restrictive laws, Google may delay these women from finding an actual abortion clinic to get a legal and safe abortion,” TTP director Katie Paul told The Guardian on Tuesday.

    “The time window is critical in some of these states,” said Paul.

    Abortion is banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Arizona and Florida. In Georgia, abortion is banned after six weeks, before many people know they are pregnant.

    Because it can cost thousands of dollars in lost wages, child care, transportation, and lodging, lower-income people are less likely to be able to travel for abortion care.

    Women on the lower end of the income scale did not receive ads for crisis pregnancy centers at the highest rate in every city in TTP’s study. In Miami, researchers observed an inverse pattern: high-income women saw a larger share of ads from anti-abortion organizations (39%) than moderately high-income women (10%) and average- or lower-income women (15%).

    “It’s not clear why Miami diverged from the other cities, but one possibility is that crisis pregnancy centers, which often seek to delay women’s abortion decisions until they are past the legal window for the procedure, are more actively targeting lower-income women in states like Arizona and Georgia, which have more restrictive abortion laws than Florida,” TTP hypothesized. Although Republican lawmakers in Arizona and Florida have both prohibited abortion after 15 weeks, Arizona’s ban comes with heightened restrictions.

    Still, even if high-income women in Miami received more crisis pregnancy center ads on the top five pages of search results, that doesn’t mean those are the ones they saw first. Ad rank is significant, and according to TTP, Google showed ads for anti-abortion organizations “higher up in the search results for lower-income women than it did for women of other income levels,” as shown below.

    In Miami, the first ad shown to an average- or lower-income Google user searching for \u2018Abortion clinic near me' is for a crisis pregnancy center. In Miami, the first ad shown to an average- or lower-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me’ is for a crisis pregnancy center.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)

    In Miami, the first three ads shown to a moderately high-income Google user searching for \u2018Abortion clinic near me' are for abortion providers. In Miami, the first three ads shown to a moderately high-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me’ are for abortion providers.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)

    In Miami, the first ad shown to a high-income Google user searching for \u2018Abortion clinic near me' is for an abortion provider. In Miami, the first ad shown to a high-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me’ is for an abortion provider.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)

    The search terms used are also important. Several queries in TTP’s experiment yielded only crisis pregnancy center ads for lower-income women.

    “Although companies buying ads with Google can selectively target the groups they want to reach–including by income–Paul adds that many users won’t be aware they are being targeted by Google in this way,” The Guardian reported.

    “Google has a large share of influence, particularly in the United States when people are trying to search for authoritative information,” Paul explained. “People generally tend to consider Google’s search engine as an equalizer. They think the results they get are the results that everyone’s going to get. But that’s just not the case.”

    “Lower-income women are being targeted,” she said, “and they’re the ones that are going to suffer the most under these policies.”

    As TTP pointed out: “Google is helping these centers reach their intended audience. Abortion rights groups and academic studies have noted that crisis pregnancy centers typically target women of lower socioeconomic classes, in part by advertising free services on public transportation and in bus shelters.”

    Crisis pregnancy centers have sought to expand their reach since the U.S. Supreme Court’s far-right majority overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.

    These facilities have “been known to employ a number of shady tactics to convince women seeking an abortion to keep their pregnancies,” The Guardian noted. “Those include posing as abortion clinics online though they do not offer abortion care, refusing pregnancy tests for women who say they intend to have an abortion, and touting widely disputed research about abortion care to patients. Crisis centers, which go largely unregulated despite offering medical services, have been known to target low-income women precisely because they find it harder to travel out of state for abortion care.”

    Previous reports have shown that Google is increasingly aiding these anti-abortion organizations, particularly in the GOP-led states that eliminated reproductive freedom as soon as the constitutional right to abortion was revoked.

    TTP’s new findings “add to growing questions about Google’s handling of crisis pregnancy centers,” the group wrote. “Bloomberg News has reported that Google Maps routinely misdirected users searching for abortion clinics to crisis pregnancy centers and that Google often failed to affix a warning, as promised, to crisis pregnancy center ads indicating they do not provide abortions. (In response to the first report, Google pledged to clearly label U.S. facilities that provide abortions in Google Maps and search results.)”

    “Last fall, TTP also found that Google frequently served ads for crisis pregnancy centers that falsely suggest they offer abortions, violating the platform’s policy against advertising that misleads users,” the group noted.

    During its new investigation, “TTP found similar omissions in multiple ads.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Kansas GOP Pushes Local Abortion Bans After Voters Rejected State Law



    Kansas voters left little room for interpretation when a sizable majority voted in August to reject a ballot measure that would have paved the way for a statewide abortion ban—but that isn’t stopping Republicans from attempting to force residents to continue unwanted pregnancies by imposing city-by-city bans.

    State Sen. Chase Blasi on Thursday introduced Senate Bill 65, which would authorize cities and counties “to enact local laws more stringent than state law regarding regulation of abortion” and would repeal the state law which prohibits “political subdivisions” from enacting bans.

    The proposal’s language makes clear that cities and counties would not be permitted to protect abortion rights if a state ban were to be imposed in the future—only to pass bans if abortion care remains legal in Kansas.

    “The irony of this bill is too much,” Anamarie Rebori Simmons, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, told The New Republic on Friday. “The party that tried to remove fundamental protections from the state constitution didn’t get the outcome they wanted when Kansans overwhelmingly supported abortion access. This is an attempt to blatantly disregard the will of the people.”

    Blasi proposed the legislation five months after 59% of Kansas voters rejected a ballot measure which would have removed the right to abortion care from the state constitution. In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that under the constitution, pregnant people have a “right to personal autonomy” and that Kansans could legally obtain abortion care even if Roe v. Wade was overturned as it was last year.

    The rejection of the ballot measure in August was seen as a major victory for abortion rights advocates and a clear illustration of the fact that Americans in both red and blue states “want to make their own decisions about abortion,” as Nancy Northrup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said at the time.

    Since then, voters in Michigan, California, Kentucky, Montana, and Vermont have been asked whether they support or oppose restricting reproductive rights, and in all the states they have voted in favor of abortion access.

    Washington Post reporter Caroline Kitchener noted that proposals like Blasi’s “could become part of the playbook for combating the success of ballot initiatives that protect the right to abortion.”

    In Kansas, Rebori Simmons told The New Republic, “Abortion rights won in a landslide, including in the home county of the bill’s sponsor.”

    “Politicians serve as the voice of the people in the legislature,” she said, “and Republican lawmakers should know better than to silence those they represent.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • South Korea: Climate justice march could be a game changer for the environment

    A new climate justice movement is growing in South Korea, with the help of the trade union movement, reports Alice S Kim.