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Category: Women

  • $16m in grants for Women in STEM programs

    Nearly $16 million in grants funding has been awarded to 17 programs supporting women in STEM through initiatives like industry internships, teacher training, and lessons for school students. The projects will receive funding under round four of the Women in STEM and Entrepreneurship (WiSE) program, announced by Industry minister Ed Husic on Tuesday. The grant…

    The post $16m in grants for Women in STEM programs appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Iran’s Cinema of Resistance

    Independent filmmakers offer a vital portal into the struggle against the theocratic regime.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Billions in Global South Face Looming Wave of Austerity in 2023



    The world is confronting multiple, compounding crises, from COVID-19, energy, inflation, debt, and climate shocks to unaffordable living costs and political instability. The need for ambitious action cannot be greater. However, the return of failed policies such as austerity, now called “fiscal restraint” or “fiscal consolidation,” and a lack of effective taxation and debt-reduction initiatives threaten to exacerbate the macroeconomic instability and daily hardships that billions of people are facing. Unless policymakers change course, an “austerity pandemic” will make global economic recovery even more difficult.

    As we show in a recent report, the looming wave of austerity will be even more premature and severe than the one that followed the 2008 global financial crisis. An analysis of IMF expenditure projections indicates that 143 governments will cut spending (as a share of GDP) in 2023, affecting more than 6.7 billion people – or 85% of the world population. In fact, most governments started scaling back public spending in 2021, and the number of countries slashing budgets is expected to rise through 2025. With average spending cuts of 3.5% of GDP in 2021, this contraction has already been much bigger than in earlier shocks.

    Even more worryingly, upwards of 50 countries are adopting excessive cuts, meaning their spending has fallen below their (already low) pre-pandemic levels. This cohort contains many countries – including Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Guyana, Liberia, Libya, Sudan, Suriname, and Yemen – with large unmet development needs.

    The austerity measures that governments are considering or already implementing will be deeply harmful to their populations, and especially to women. Governments are planning to limit social protections for vulnerable populations; cut programs for families, the elderly, and people with disabilities; slash or cap the public-sector wage bill (implying a reduction of frontline workers like teachers and health personnel); eliminate subsidies; privatize transportation, energy, and water services; cut pension benefits; reduce labor protections and employers’ social-security contributions; and decrease health expenditures.

    In parallel, many governments are adopting short-term revenue-generation strategies that will also have detrimental social effects. These include increasing consumption taxes – such as regressive sales and value-added taxes (VAT) – strengthening public-private partnerships, and increasing fees for public services.

    Just in eastern and southern Africa, UNICEF finds that Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, and South Africa are considering or implementing three categories of austerity measures, while Lesotho is pursuing four categories, and Botswana five. Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia are each applying four or more categories of measures to boost revenue. Including spending cuts and tax increases, Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, and Zambia are each considering at least seven categories of austerity measures that are known to have adverse social impacts.

    Not only are these governments pursuing painful austerity at a time when the region is dealing with unprecedented droughts and a cost-of-living crisis. They also are showing little willingness to adopt policies – such as higher tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals – that are critical to reducing their already-high levels of inequality.

    Unless austerity is reversed, people in developing countries will lose social protections and public services just when they are most needed. According to Oxfam, almost half of the global population is already living on less than $5.50 per day. And, lest we forget, trillions of dollars have been mobilized since the start of the pandemic to support corporations, while ordinary people have borne many of the costs of adjustment.

    The dangers of an aggressive austerity approach were made clear over the past decade. From 2010 to 2019, billions of lives were upended by cuts to pensions and social benefits; lower investments in programs for women, children, and the elderly; fewer and lower-paid teachers, health, and local civil servants; and higher prices from basic consumption taxes.

    It doesn’t have to be this way. There are alternatives to austerity. Even in the poorest countries, there are at least nine other financing options that some governments have been using for years, and that are fully endorsed by the United Nations and international financial institutions. These include progressive taxation; debt elimination or restructuring; clamping down on illicit financial flows; increasing employers’ social-security contributions and coverage by formalizing workers in the informal economy; using fiscal and foreign-exchange reserves; re-allocating public expenditures; adopting a more accommodating macroeconomic framework; securing official development assistance; and new allocations of the IMF’s reserve asset, special drawing rights.

    Since fiscal decisions affect everyone, they should be made not behind closed doors, but through inclusive and transparent national dialogues that include trade unions, employer federations, and civil-society organizations. Governments must abandon austerity measures that benefit the few at the expense of the many. Only by exploring alternative approaches can we support people and get back on track to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The world is still suffering one kind of pandemic. There is no need for another.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Omali Yeshitela: ‘I was attacked by the FBI for fighting for black power’

    African People’s Socialist Party chairperson Omali Yeshitela discusses the FBI raid on his home and the continuing US government war on the movement for Black liberation and reparations.

  • United States: Two barrels aim at African People’s Socialist Party

    Members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) in the United States are expecting to be indicted this month over spurious allegations, reports Don Fitz, prompting a grassroots solidarity defence campaign.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Iranian actor Taraneh Alidoosti released from jail after family post bail

    Alidoosti was arrested for support of women’s movement in Iran, including posing on Instagram without hijab

    The celebrated Iranian actor Taraneh Alidoosti has been released from prison by the authorities after her friends and family provided bail. Pictures of her outside jail with campaigners holding flowers and without a hijab were shown on Iranian social media.

    She had been arrested for issuing statements of support for the women’s movement in Iran, including by posing on Instagram without a hijab, the compulsory hair covering in the country.

    Continue reading…

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

  • First-of-Its-Kind Study Links US Gun Violence Epidemic to Climate Emergency



    Researchers in the U.S. have linked the climate crisis and the extreme weather patterns it causes to the country’s epidemic of gun violence in a first-of-its-kind analysis, showing that thousands of shootings in the U.S. in recent years were attributable to higher-than-average temperatures.

    As Environment Journal reported Tuesday, experts at Boston University School of Public Health and University of Washington School of Social Work analyzed 116,000 shootings in 100 of the country’s most populous cities between 2015 and 2020 and found that 7,973 took place during periods of unseasonable heat, concluding that about 7% of shootings could be attributed to extreme heat.

    The research, which was originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open in December, found that the Northeast and Midwest saw the greatest increases in gun violence on days that were unseasonably hot, but the trend was observed across the country.

    “We know that segregation and disinvestment lead communities of color, especially Black communities, to have greater exposure to adverse environmental conditions that contribute to gun violence risk.”

    When the temperature rose within the 96th percentile of average daily temperatures, the cities of Seattle and Las Vegas saw the highest elevated risk of gun violence, according to the analysis. In Seattle, the temperature rose to 84°F, while people in Las Vegas faced 104°F temperatures.

    “It could be that heat causes stress, which makes people more likely to use aggression,” said Dr. Jonathan Jay, a co-author of the study and faculty member of Boston University’s Center for Climate and Health. “Or it could be that people are more likely to get out on warmer days and have more interactions, which creates more opportunities for conflict and violence. Most likely, it’s a combination of both.”

    While it is the first analysis of the correlation between the climate crisis and gun violence in the U.S., the study offers the latest evidence of a dynamic that has been previously reported: violent incidents, including domestic and gender-based violence, increase during and after extreme weather events driven by the climate emergency.

    As The Washington Post reported Tuesday, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2022 identified a link between extreme weather and domestic violence, while The Lancet published an analysis of more than 40 studies showing “an increase in one or several [gender-based violence] forms during or after extreme events, often related to economic instability, food insecurity, mental stress, disrupted infrastructure, increased exposure to men, tradition, and exacerbated gender inequality.”

    The Lancet report included research completed in 2021 at St. Catherine University in Minnesota, which found that economic stresses caused by flooding, drought, and extreme heat in Kenya were linked to a 60% rise in domestic violence in certain parts of the country.

    Evidence for the connection between violence and the effects of the climate emergency is “overwhelming,” Terry McGovern of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health told the Post on Tuesday.

    “Heat waves, floods, climate-induced disasters increase sexual harassment, mental and physical abuse, femicide, [and reduced] economic and educational opportunity and increase the risk of trafficking due to forced migration,” McGovern told the newspaper.

    Researchers at Boston University and Washington University said their new study makes the case both for lawmakers to pass gun control and climate action measures and for local investment in heat mitigation strategies, such as increasing tree cover in “urban heat islands.”

    When introducing the Saving Hazardous and Declining Environments (SHADE) Act in 2021, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) noted that many formerly redlined urban neighborhoods are on average 4.68°F hotter than non-redlined areas, “due to reduced tree cover and increased asphalt or concrete surfaces.”

    “We know that segregation and disinvestment lead communities of color, especially Black communities, to have greater exposure to adverse environmental conditions that contribute to gun violence risk, such as abandoned buildings, liquor stores, lack of green space, and more intense urban heat islands,” Jay said in a statement in December.

    Heat mitigation strategies could be a crucial part of an effort that is “part racial justice, part climate change mitigation, and part gun violence prevention,” he added.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Ukrainian Women Prove Resilient in the Face of War



    The war in Ukraine is having growing negative effects on women and girls’ health and well-being. They encompass not only gender-based violence but include all aspects of women’s and girls’ lives. Access to basic services and life-saving sexual and reproductive healthcare has been drastically disrupted.

    Since the 2013 Maidan revolution, also known as the “dignity revolution,” Ukrainian women have been increasingly engaged in the political, social, and economic affairs of the country. This engagement has led to an increase in women’s political participation, manifested by gains in parliamentary seats and in village and regional councils. As a result, Ukraine has ratified or joined most international agreements on gender equality.

    The years of conflict… increased and deepened pre-existing gender inequalities and created new ones such as arbitrary killings, rape, and trafficking.

    In spite of these advances, however, gender inequalities persist, bolstered by traditional norms that promote systemic discrimination and biases against women and girls. These inequities have been aggravated by the war conducted by Russia in eastern Ukraine since 2014. The years of conflict since then have increased and deepened pre-existing gender inequalities and created new ones such as arbitrary killings, rape, and trafficking.

    The war has particularly affected marginalized and disadvantaged groups such as female-headed households, internally displaced persons, Roma people, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. As a result, women facing multiple forms of discrimination are in need of special assistance.

    Today, millions of people have fled Ukraine and millions more—nearly two-thirds of them women and children—have been internally displaced and, as a consequence, do not have access to essential services such as healthcare, employment, and housing. Poverty and dependency on social assistance have increased and have pushed many women into the unprotected informal sectors of the economy.

    The Covid-19 pandemic, which began in Ukraine on March 3, 2020, threatened the gains that had been made on women’s rights, economic empowerment, and access to healthcare. Prolonged restrictions on mobility, particularly for women and young people, have increased despair and isolation, and have increased its negative effect on people with mental health challenges. Young people and children are forced to sacrifice their future so they can survive in the present.

    Even in times of peace, women tend to be more food insecure than men, but the war in Ukraine has exacerbated the number of women experiencing hunger, energy insecurity, and economic instability. The Russian aggression on Ukraine has provoked a redistribution of family roles, adding to the already heavy burden of women who, in addition to traditional home responsibilities are now obliged to look for additional sources of income.

    Women who are caring for children face extreme shortages of essential medicines, healthcare, and funds to obtain basic items, including baby food and formula. Many women face the challenge to accommodate and feed internally displaced people. This increases their unpaid care and domestic work responsibilities, often at the expense of their physical and mental health and well-being.

    The martial order issued by the Ukraine State Border Guard Service at the beginning of the Russian invasion that led to tens of thousands of civilians fleeing to other countries decreed that those between 18 and 40 years old should stay in the country. It is estimated that 95% of single-parent households are headed by single mothers, who now face increased pressure to provide for their families while male family members are more directly involved in defense activities.

    Despite the heavy burdens imposed by the war, Ukrainian women have shown considerable resilience and have contributed greatly to defense efforts. It is estimated that women make up 25% of the Ukrainian armed forces. This is an almost 10% increase from the beginning of the Russian invasion. Women have integrated fully into the armed forces, performing duties as soldiers and holding positions of command.

    The Russian military leaders didn’t expect such a strong resistance from the Ukrainian soldiers, and even less from a Ukrainian army strengthened by the participation of women, something that needs to be acknowledged and honored as a critical factor in the defense of their country.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • African Feminist Movements Face More​ Obstacles After Roe v Wade Decision

    This year’s most notable decision affecting gender justice—the overturning of federal protection of the right to abortion in the US—happened more than 6,000 miles from Africa, but its impact was felt here too.

    The US Supreme Court’s decision will affect legal, policy and public service spheres on the African continent. It will also intensify the ideological war to control women’s bodies and push LGBTIQ citizens further to the margins.

    The loudest and most active conservative voices and efforts in Africa are often closely linked to the far right in the US and Europe.

    African states have diverse abortion policies. For example, in Cape Verde and South Africa, abortion is available on demand—in theory if not in practice, especially for poorer women. In Congo-Brazzaville, Egypt and Gabon, however, it is prohibited without any exceptions. Between those two poles are dozens of countries that allow terminations in some circumstances.

    Following the US reversal of Roe v Wade, I was among the African gender justice advocates who feared a domino effect on the continent. That hasn’t happened. However, even though we haven’t seen any changes to the law to further restrict abortion access, the US decision has definitely re-energised anti-abortion narratives.

    After all, the loudest and most active conservative voices and efforts in Africa are often closely linked to the far right in the US and Europe.

    Big wins for US conservatives on the home front will no doubt free up funds to invest in frustrating progress elsewhere, including Africa. In the past, US conservatives have funded efforts in Malawi to dissuade the national parliament from expanding the circumstances in which abortion is permitted.

    Looking forward to 2023 and beyond, Africa’s feminist movements will have to reinvest in their own defence of bodily autonomy, in accordance with the Maputo Protocol. Adopted by the African Union in 2003, this treaty obliges countries to legalise medical abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the pregnancy endangers the health or life of the mother or the foetus isn’t viable. But the ideological war extends beyond the control of pregnant bodies.

    The newly elected president of Kenya, William Ruto, is a controversial figure who has branded himself a Christian nationalist and spoken out against homosexuality. His first executive order restricted state recognition of a family to heterosexual couples. This policy has been a priority for conservative Western movements active in Kenya, such as Spain’s CitizenGo.

    These movements and their powerful allies seek to protect a very colonial understanding of family in Africa over more expansive indigenous definitions of family. But Western conservatives’ ideas are at odds with modern African realities. Increasingly, other forms of family are emerging across the continent in households headed by single women or children, or communal homes shared by queer people ostracised by their birth families.

    The emerging forms of families will need feminist movements to continue fighting for their equal recognition and protection under the law. This is especially so because conservative movements will work to tip the balance against them.

    These fights are important because so often, they are a matter of life and death for Africa’s gender-oppressed peoples. In the last two years, at least two men are reported to have bludgeoned their wives to death after learning they were using contraception. Meanwhile, a man in Kenya has sued his former partner for denying him the “right” to be on “her pregnancy journey“, claiming that his desire to have children should take precedence over her feelings. LGBTIQ Africans can often be a target, too, as is suspected to have been the case for Kenya’s Sheila Lumumba and Uganda’s Matthew Kinono.

    In isolation, these events may seem random but they are directly linked to the extremist conservative Western activism that the US reversal of Roe v Wade emboldened. This activism promotes false claims such as fetal personhood, spreads misinformation about contraceptives, pushes for women to be forced back into gendered family roles and stokes moral panic about LGBTIQ people. Consequently, African feminism is faced with a considerable challenge—pushing African governments to protect their citizens from these dangerous influences.

    Meanwhile, the disinformation and misinformation that propels these exclusivist movements is likely to get worse, especially as libertarian billionaires such as Elon Musk take over social media platforms like Twitter. A Mozilla report published ahead of Kenya’s general election in August showed how foreign groups can manipulate a country’s public discourse through Twitter. The report’s case study was CitizenGo’s disinformation campaign against Kenya’s 2020 Reproductive Health Bill, which was eventually defeated in parliament.

    The failure and/or disinterest of Big Tech owners to regulate the abuse of their platforms will only embolden such bad faith campaigns, putting women, LGBTIQ and other marginalised communities at risk, just as in the offline world.

    A recent report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate noted the increasing number of posts containing slurs since Musk took over at Twitter.

    Meanwhile, national governments on the continent are increasingly intolerant of the speech of groups that hold them to account. They are passing laws such as Uganda’s Computer Misuse Amendment Act and arresting critics, as happened repeatedly in Nigeria this year.

    Compounding these challenges for Africa’s feminists is the fact that local elites and leaders lean towards conservative policies. In the two years since the Trump administration joined Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda to co-sponsor the notorious Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), it has gained further signatories: 36 countries, 17 of them in Africa, now support the aims of the GCD, which declares that “there is no international right to abortion“. We are ending 2022 with the Ghanian government seemingly inclined towards a revised version of “the harshest anti-gay law in the world“, which has been linked to US ultra-conservatives.

    If the current trends do not decisively spell disaster, they are certainly a clear indication that African feminists and their allies have a steep uphill battle to fight in the culture war waged by Western conservatives.

  • Study Ties Abortion Restrictions to ‘Significant’ Jump in Suicide Rates for Young Women



    With abortion currently inaccessible in over a quarter of U.S. states, peer-reviewed research published Wednesday highlights the impact of cutting off care, revealing that restricted access is linked to increased suicide risk in young women.

    Published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, the analysis of targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) laws was conducted by four experts at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).

    “Stress is a key contributor to mental health burden and a major driver of increased suicide risk,” said study co-author Ran Barzilay, a child-adolescent psychiatrist and neuroscientist at CHOP and Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, in a statement.

    “We found that this particular stressor—restriction to abortion—affects women of a specific age in a specific cause of death, which is suicide,” added Barzilay. “That’s the 10,000-foot view.”

    “Women who experienced the shock of this type of restrictive legislation had a significant increase in suicide rate.”

    While the study is based on state-level data from 1974 to 2016, it was unveiled at a time of heightened fear about abortion access—just six months after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

    Since that June 24 ruling, “trigger” bans have taken effect and anti-choice state legislators have escalated efforts to restrict abortion, blocking millions of people capable of becoming pregnant from seeking care close to home.

    “Abortion is currently unavailable in 14 states, and courts have temporarily blocked enforcement of bans in eight others as of December 12, 2022,” according to a Guttmacher Institute review from last week.

    During the years examined by the Penn-CHOP researchers, 21 states enforced at least one TRAP law.

    “We constructed three indices that measure access to reproductive care by looking at the enforcement of state-level legislation,” explained lead author Jonathan Zandberg of Penn’s Wharton School. “Every time a state enforced a law that was related to reproductive care, we incorporated it into the index.”

    After examining suicide rates before and after the laws took effect, and comparing them to rates elsewhere and broad trends, the researchers found that “comparatively, women who experienced the shock of this type of restrictive legislation had a significant increase in suicide rate,” Zandberg said.

    The publication notes that during the period studied, annual rates of death by suicide were 1.4-25.6 per 100,000 women of reproductive age—the researchers focused on those 20-34—and 2.7-33.2 per 100,000 women of postreproductive age, or 45-64.

    For reproductive-aged women, the average suicide death rate when no TRAP laws were enforced was 5.5 per 100,000, and enforcement of such a law was associated with a 5.81% higher annual rate—a trend that was not detected among older women.

    A statement from the university points out that the researchers “examined another common cause of death, motor vehicle death rates, and saw no effect. Controlling for potential confounders like the economy and political climate did not change the results.”

    While acknowledging the limitations of their findings, the researchers also stressed how rigorious their methods were.

    “This association is robust—and it has nothing to do with politics,” said Barzilay. “It’s all backed by the data.”

    Co-author Rebecca Waller of Penn’s Department of Psychology stressed that “we’re looking at the connection between summary data about causes of death at the state level and policy and politics over many decades.”

    “Yet, every death represents an individual moment of tragedy,” she said. “So, there’s clearly an awful lot more that we need to understand about what these findings mean for individual suicide risk.”

    “Whatever your view is on all of this, it’s all over the news. It’s everywhere,” Waller added. “The women internalizing the stories they hear are the ones who these restrictions will affect the most.”

    The new findings illustrate just one way abortion restrictions endanger the lives of people capable of pregnancy.

    Research released earlier this month by the Commonwealth Fund shows that “compared to states where abortion is accessible, states that have banned, are planning to ban, or have otherwise restricted abortion have fewer maternity care providers; more maternity care ‘deserts’; higher rates of maternal mortality and infant death, especially among women of color; higher overall death rates for women of reproductive age; and greater racial inequities across their healthcare systems.”

    That report argues that in partnership with residents and insurance and medical providers, state leaders can enhance the lives of patients by fighting for more and higher quality maternity care personnel and facilities as well as “by adopting the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid eligibility expansion for low-income adults and extending Medicaid postpartum coverage to one year.”

    “Increased federal funding for reproductive healthcare, family planning, maternity care, and care delivery system transformations also could mitigate the impact of the Dobbs decision and state abortion bans on people’s lives,” the publication adds. “State, congressional, and executive branch actions are all needed to protect the health of women and birthing people and ensure optimal and equitable outcomes for mothers and infants.”

    The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • How Iranian Women and Girls Use Powerful Images to Protest Oppression



    Images of unveiled Iranian women and adolescent girls standing atop police cars or flipping off the ayatollah’s picture have become signature demonstrations of dissent in the past few months of protest in Iran.

    In fact, among the Iranian protest photos selected for inclusion in Time magazine’s list of the “Top 100 Photos of 2022” are one of women running from military police brigades and another of an unveiled woman standing on a car with hands raised.

    As a scholar studying the use of images in political movements, I find Iranian protest photos powerful and engaging because they play on several elements of defiance. They draw on a longer history of Iranian women taking and sharing photos and videos of actions considered illegal, such as singing and dancing to protest gender oppression.

    Pictures in past Iranian movements

    Iranian women did not stage mass public demonstrations against restrictions on their freedoms for nearly three decades following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when protests against compulsory hijab laws were brutally crushed by the Islamic regime.

    In the 2009 Iranian Green Movement against election fraud, however, women played a major role. Images of one young female protester, Neda Agha-Soltan, who was fatally shot by security forces during the protest, went viral, catalyzing millions of Iranians to join the protests.

    In subsequent protests, visuals have been at the heart of women’s efforts to mobilize against the Islamic Republic. In 2014, women began recording themselves walking, cycling, dancing and singing in public unveiled, under the banner of the “My Stealthy Freedom” movement. Started by Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-born journalist based in New York, the movement protested the forced wearing of the hijab and other restrictive laws by showing women breaking them.

    Walking in busy city streets unveiled, riding a bike in parks where such activities are banned for women and joining dance circles in town squares were among the ways in which Iranian women protested oppressive laws and practices.


    Four years later, what came to be known as the “Girls of Revolution Street,” protests started with one woman, Vida Movahed, standing atop a utility box on Tehran’s Revolution Street to wave her headscarf on a stick like a flag. Soon, others joined Movahed by repeating her action in other public spaces in Iran.

    Images showing dozens of people protesting mandatory veiling in this way were widely shared on social media and later picked up by global news networks, bringing international attention to women’s resistance efforts in Iran.

    The use of images by protesters has been a central practice of resistance in other protests around the world as well. During the Arab Spring, a series of protests against the ruling regimes that spread across the Middle East and North Africa in the early 2010s, images played an important role in mobilizing people into joining the movement.

    A photo of a woman dragged by government forces in the streets of Egypt with her body exposed persuaded many to protest against what was a clear example of state violence in the Egyptian uprising. These images challenged the regime interpretations of protesters as “troublemakers” and helped bypass the state-controlled news networks to show the world what was happening on the ground.

    What such resistance means

    Iranian women have been protesting the Islamic Republic’s sexist policies and showing the world what freedom and gender identity mean to them through their bodily expressions.

    Images of women freely riding a bike or sitting with a member of the opposite sex while unveiled are ways of protesting through the everyday acts that women are barred from under the Islamic Republic. Through their widespread participation in these actions, women have shown a solidarity.

    As it is difficult for the Islamic Republic to suppress this kind of protest, it often responds by arresting key activists who can be identified and imprisoning them for several years. In 2019, one activist associated with this form of protest, Yasaman Aryani, was sentenced to a 16-year jail term after a video surfaced of her handing out flowers in the Tehran metro unveiled.

    Images of Iranian women engaged in defiant acts make their daily oppression visible. Scholar Mona Lilja describes these protests in terms of “resisting bodies” that speak in ways that are not always apparent at the outset of a demonstration or public act of defiance. Emotions, symbolic actions and women’s engagements with the spaces in which they protest combine to form the meaning of resistance we associate with these pictures.

    Today’s protest pictures build on past resistance efforts and build on a tradition of resisting the Iranian government.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • The Taliban is taking away women’s right to learn. The world can’t afford to stay silent | Gordon Brown

    In Afghanistan, girls are being banned from primary school. Other Muslim nations hold the key to restoring their rights

    • Gordon Brown is the United Nations special envoy for global education and the former UK prime minister

    This week, the Taliban made a bombshell announcement that it will ban women from attending university or teaching in Afghanistan. It is a decision that has done more in a single day to entrench discrimination against women and girls and set back their empowerment than any other single policy decision I can remember.

    Since the Taliban returned to power, girls have been banned from attending secondary school. Now they are being banned from primary school. Thousands of female government workers have been told to stay at home. Other recent rulings prevent women from travelling without a male relative or attending mosques or religious seminaries. Last month, girls and women were banned from entering public places, including parks.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Iran: ‘The current revolutionary movement is the most serious challenge to the regime’

    Dr Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad, a Research Associate with SOAS University of London and associate editor of The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies spoke with Farooq Sulehria about the significance of the revolutionary movement in Iran.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Thousands march in Sydney for democracy in Iran

    Thousands marched through Sydney streets on December 10 (International Human Rights Day) demanding democracy in Iran and justice for Jina Mahsa Amini and the growing number of democracy protesters who have been killed, arrested and tortured by the dictatorial regime in Iran.

    On December 8, Mohsen Shekari became the first democracy protester to be executed. At least 475 protesters have been killed by security forces and 18,240 others have been detained, according to the Human Rights Activists’ News Agency (HRANA).

  • Sally-Ann Williams to lead govt’s STEM diversity review

    Cicada Innovation chief executive Sally-Ann Williams will lead the government’s review of its women in STEM programs and deliver broader recommendations on improving diversity. Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic announced the Pathway to Diversity in STEM review panel on Thursday, while also reappointing Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith as the government’s Women in STEM Ambassador…

    The post Sally-Ann Williams to lead govt’s STEM diversity review appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Freedom Movement of Iran: ‘Australian gov’t does not seem to have heard our voices’

    The Freedom Movement of Iran – Queensland has been organising weekly protests in Brisbane calling on the federal government to do to help the democracy movement win in Iran. Kerry Smith reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Video: Inaugural Kobane Day lecture by Professor John Tully

    Historian and Kurdish solidarity activist John Tully gave the inaugural Sydney Kobane Day Lecture at New South Wales Parliament House.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Nilüfer Koç: ‘Iran uprising gives new hope for oppressed people’

    Nilüfer Koç from the Kurdish National Congress spoke at the Ecosocialism 2022 conference about the popular uprising in Iran, war in Ukraine and Rojava Revolution. Alex Bainbridge and Susan Price report.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Ukrainian feminists: ‘We stand in solidarity with the Iranian uprising’

    Various Ukrainian feminist activist groups and NGOs have signed a statement expressing their solidarity with the Iranian uprising.

  • I saw the magnificent Pussy Riot last night. If only the world had listened to what they were saying a decade ago | Zoe Williams

    For years the world saw Putin as almost a figure of fun – while in Russia he was already meting out brutality to dissidents and LGBTQ+ activists

    Last night I saw Pussy Riot, on the Hackney leg of their Riot Days European tour to raise money for a children’s hospital in Ukraine. Their sound guy, Alexander Cheparkhun, came on stage to introduce them. I guess he was about my age, I couldn’t be precise because I didn’t have my glasses. He vibed the sort of age, where you can’t see things without glasses. He described how he met Maria Alyokhina (who also goes by Masha Alekhina), one of the founding members of the band who was first imprisoned in 2012 and then under constant surveillance, harassment, house arrest, arrest-arrest and persecution, until she escaped from Russia to Iceland earlier this year. When her sentence was handed down 10 years ago, he said, it was the first time in his life he had witnessed the political imprisonment of artists.

    This was a useful bit of context, or rather, a glass of cold water to the face, after years of somnambulance: no one is laughing at Vladimir Putin now, of course, but for years, he was almost a figure of fun, with his bare-chested, horse-riding photoshoots and florid turn of phrase. On the world stage, he was the uncle who might say dodgy things, but got invited anyway: what was the worst that could happen? This indulgent, pretty feckless view of Putin was overlaid by the sense that Russia merely did things differently; perhaps the state was a bit thin-skinned and hotheaded, maybe it didn’t prioritise human rights as much as one would like, but this was a cultural thing, probably related to the weather. If we had maybe expressed that view out loud more often, Russian citizens could have said: “No, actually, punk bands sentenced to hard labour for protest actions is very much a now thing, rather than an always thing.”

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

  • ‘Love defeats hatred’ — Victory for Lula and the Brazilian people

    Following Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s victory, the key to defending his government and ensuring progress will be the revitalisation of the popular organisations, indigenous movements and labour movement, argues Dave Kellaway.

  • Protests, strikes continue in Iran despite killings, repression

    Iranian teachers staged a two-day strike on October 24, as anti-government sentiment continues to grow, reports Susan Price.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Legislation takes aim at gender-based violence and inequality

    The Labor government has introduced new bills aiming to eliminate gender-based violence and sexual harassment in the workplace. Andrea Bortoli reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Iran: Many believe this is the beginning of a revolution

    For the first time since the Islamic revolution, Iranians are united and are targeting the central pillars of the Islamic republic, including the concentration of power and authority in the hands of the ruling clergy, reports *Suzan Azadi.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • How three Iranian women spurred mass protests against hardline regime

    Huge bravery of Sepideh Rashno, Mahsa Amini and Nika Shakarami against state restrictions on women’s freedoms may be catalyst for change

    In July, a video began circulating online of an altercation between two women on a Tehran bus. One, in full hijab, attacks the other, a 28-year-old called Sepideh Rashno, for not wearing a hijab, mandated under Iranian law and punishable with a fine or even prison.

    In the weeks leading up to the incident, footage of similar episodes had been spreading with increased frequency online, evidence of the growing pressure being exerted on women by the regime. But this particular video went viral, and led to Rashno being arrested, abused and forced into making an apology on state television.

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

  • ‘It’s a revolution’: Iranian women in UK believe protests will bring freedom

    Women who fled regime are working hard to expose abuses in Iran and say this time real change is possible

    Iranian and Kurdish women living in the UK believe the prospect of freedom for millions of women in their home country has never been greater following protests after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested in Tehran for not wearing her headscarf correctly.

    Many of those who fled the Iranian regime because of its attacks on human and women’s rights are working hard behind the scenes to support women in their home country to expose the abuses in the hope of encouraging the international community to act to bring about regime change.

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

  • NHMRC awards $375m in grants, adds gender balance criteria

    More than $375 million in research grants have been awarded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, as it introduces a new gender equity quota for the next round of grant applications in 2023. The grants were awarded through the Investigator Grant scheme which provides a five-year fellowship and research support package to researchers…

    The post NHMRC awards $375m in grants, adds gender balance criteria appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • Afghanistan: Hazaras in Kabul appeal for protection, visas

    Susan Price spoke to a Hazara woman living in Kabul about the attack on Hazara school children, the protests and response by the Taliban.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Cracks appear among Iran elite as senior figure calls for hijab policing rethink

    Prominent conservative politician Ali Larijani warns against ‘rigid response’ after month of unrest

    The first cracks have started to appear among Iran’s political elite over the country’s month-long women-led protests, with a senior figure calling for a re-examination of the enforcement of compulsory hijab law and an acknowledgment that the protests have deep political roots, and are not simply the product of US or Israeli agitation.

    The call for restraint came from Ali Larijani, a former speaker of the Iranian parliament and an impeccable establishment figure. His tone contrasted with a continued uncompromising line on Wednesday from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, parliament and security forces, as well as concerted efforts to undermine the credibility of the family of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish woman who died after being arrested by morality police last month, sparking a wave of protests across the country.

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

  • Video: Thousands march in Sydney for ‘Women, life, freedom!’ movement in Iran

    Thousands marched through the streets of Sydney on October 8 chanting “Women, life, freedom” in solidarity with the ongoing uprising in Iran sparked by the killing of Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini, reports Peter Boyle.