tagged w/ Women's Rights
-
The fifth annual Sex and Power report shows a significant drop in the number of women working in top jobs in Britain. They hold just 11% of FTSE 100 directorships and account for only 19.3% of MPs.
Most worrying is that progress seems to have stalled in some areas and gone into reverse in others. In 12 of the 25 job categories monitored in the annual reports, fewer women held top posts in 2007 than in the year before, and in another five categories the percentage of women was unchanged.
The commission says progress to equality at the top is happening at a snail's pace - literally: it comments that in the 55 years it will take women to achieve equality in the senior judiciary, a snail could crawl nine times around the M25. The snail could get from Land's End to John O'Groats and halfway back again in the 73 years it will take for women to equal men as directors of FTSE 100 companies, and could almost manage the entire length of the Great Wall of China in the 200 years it will take for women to get equal representation in parliament.
"Workplaces forged in an era of 'stay at home' mums and 'breadwinner' dads are putting too many barriers in the way, resulting in an avoidable loss of talent at the top," said Nicola Brewer, the commission's chief executive. "We always speak of a glass ceiling. These figures reveal that in some cases it appears to be made of reinforced concrete."
Brewer said: "Britain cannot afford to go on marginalising or rejecting talented people who fail to fit into traditional work patterns." Girls outperform boys at many levels of secondary education and make up nearly three out of five recent first-degree graduates, yet in some workplaces discrimination still exists and they are still pointed towards traditionally female occupations.
The report puts much of the blame on "our rigid, inflexible approach to work". Having children, outdated working practices, a long-hours culture and the absence of good-quality, affordable childcare, together with the expectation that women will look after the family and run the house, leads many women to decide the strain is too much. The same inflexibility also prevents men from spending more time with their children, although many want to.The fifth annual Sex and Power report shows a significant drop in the number of women... more
-
-
Sign the Petition: Sarah Palin Doesn't Speak For Me!
To Whom It May Concern:
During her speech in St. Paul on Wednesday night, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin purported to speak for women, small town residents, and everyone who is a member of the Washington elite.
Sarah Palin is an intelligent, well spoken woman, but it must be made clear:
We don't want a country in which women who are raped are refused the right to choose abortion.
We don't want a country in which religious dogma is taught in public school science class.
We don't want a country where gay and lesbian citizens are discriminated against.
We don't want a country where books are banned from public libraries.
America is strongest when we are united, not divided. When our Constitutional liberties are respected. When our politicians rely on ideas and opinions instead of distortions and attacks. The challenges we face are too big to be reduced to name-calling.
Sarah Palin doesn't speak for us.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
https://secure.pfaw.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=action_palin
Sign the Petition: Sarah Palin Doesn't Speak For Me!
To Whom It May Concern:... more
-
-
Sarah Palin's small-town-girl-takes-on-Washington act is a brilliant success, for today anyway. But anytime political parties bring their aw-shucks, folksy Gomer Pyles out in front of the klieg lights, it's time to suspend disbelief. And that's especially true when the Republicans, party of corporate America and Big Oil, are casting the show.
Yes, Governor Palin was born and raised in a town called Wasilla, hunts caribou, married "her guy" from high school who races, in her words, "snow machines" (when did they graduate from being snow-mobiles?) and apparently knows how to load and shoot a gun. She also really is a mother, a mother of a hockey player too, and a member of the PTA.
However, one need only check out Jim Yardley's enlightening reportage from Wasilla in yesterday's New York Times to smell the rat. Sarah Palin is no average Jane, much as she looks and sounds like one. On the contrary, Sarah Palin's entry into politics and subsequent rise has all the hallmarks of having been engineered, coached and groomed by bigger outside forces with a bigger plan.
Her first election to mayor in 1996 was based on "wedge Issues" - abortion, gun control, and proof of hard-core religiosity - issues that had never been discussed before in the town of 7,000, where politicians had run on where they stood on bingo revenue and fixing muddy roads.
Listen to the shell-shocked fellow she beat in that first election, the three term incumbent Mayor of Wasilla, John C. Stein. "Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, 'Whoa. But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing. I'm not a churchgoing guy, and that was another issue: 'We will have our first Christian mayor.'"
There was a time when America's small town governments were about local civics and its churches really were mainly about spirituality. That quaint era vanished, within living memory, with the rise of the "Christian right" which literally infected mainstream American Christianity with hateful brochures about gays, guns, and abortion.
For the rest of this story & more on Palin, please visit:
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2008/09/will-palins-anti-environment-stance-be.htmlSarah Palin's small-town-girl-takes-on-Washington act is a brilliant success, for... more
-
-
Obama has launched a broadside against John McCain's opposition to abortion rights and moved one of the most divisive issues in modern American politics to the airwaves on a large scale for the first time in this presidential campaign.Obama has launched a broadside against John McCain's opposition to abortion... more
-
-
Iran's parliament has indefinitely delayed a vote on a bill on families, a move women's rights activists said on Tuesday was a victory in their drive to block legislation they fear would encourage polygamy.
The conservative-controlled assembly had been due to vote on the government proposal known as the "Family Support Bill" last Sunday but it was sent back to its legal committee for more work, an Iranian newspaper reported this week.
Sussan Tahmasebi said she and other activists had lobbied against the measure, which they said would allow a man in the Islamic Republic to take a second wife without the agreement of his first wife. The bill also covered other family issues.
But she cautioned that the bill, put forward last year by the government of conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had not been withdrawn and may be sent back to the legislature.
"It is a huge victory ... but the threat still looms and it still exists," Tahmasebi told Reuters.
There was no immediate comment from the government, which rejects allegations Iran is discriminating against women.
Under Iran's Islamic law, men can have up to four wives, but polygamy is not widely practiced and is seen by many Iranians as unacceptable.
Women's rights activists seek an end to polygamy and last month said in a statement the bill would reinforce women's lack of legal rights in Iran.
"It in fact encourages polygamy by placing on men who wish to take on additional wives the sole condition of financial capacity as the deciding factor by the court," they said.
The Farhang-e Ashti daily on Monday said the proposed law had caused controversy and was removed from parliament's agenda.
"In view of the fact that the above-mentioned bill needed more expert work ... it was felt as necessary to send it to the legal and judicial committee," a member of parliament's presidium, Hamid Reza Hajibaba'i, was quoted as saying.
The newspaper said Hajibaba'i expressed hope that the committee would improve the draft law but did not give details.
Campaigners say dozens of them have been detained since the drive began in 2006, in what Western diplomats see as part of a wider clampdown on dissent. Most were freed within days.
The activists say women in Iran face institutionalised discrimination that makes them second-class citizens in divorce, inheritance, child custody and other aspects of life.
Iran's ruling clerics say Iranian women are protected from the sex symbol status they have in the West and that the country is implementing divine law. Iran's parliament has indefinitely delayed a vote on a bill on families, a move... more
-
-
The Victorian Government has been asked to create a 50m protest-free "bubble zone" around the entrance of Australia's largest provider of abortion services, as part of planned changes to abortion law.
The zone, which would come into effect with changes that remove abortion from the Crimes Act, would effectively end a 16-year campaign by anti-abortion groups to dissuade women from entering the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne.
Fertility Control Clinic counsellor Susan Allanson told the commission that patients and staff endured "daily harassment" outside the clinic.
Protester Dave Forster said such a zone would prevent protesters approaching women seeking abortion. "There would be a minimum distance that we would be required to stay outside of, and I guess it would mean that we are not allowed within 50 metres of the clinic," he said.
"At the moment, the door is set back from the gate, and we're entitled to walk up to people and talk to them, right at the gate. We tend to approach when they are 10, 15 metres away. If we couldn't protest except from 50 metres away, I guess we'd have to think about whether we did it."
The Fertility Control Clinic described the harassment of patients as "chronic and serious".
A former patient of the clinic, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Law Reform Commission that she was frightened by the protesters, and was in "no position to defend myself from such a cowardly attack at a vulnerable time in my life".
Bubble zones around abortion clinics originated in Canada after the shooting of an abortion provider. A Fertility Control Clinic security guard, Steve Rogers, was shot dead at the East Melbourne clinic in 2001.The Victorian Government has been asked to create a 50m protest-free "bubble... more
-
-
Tribesmen bury five women alive for wanting to choose their own husbands
updated 10:18 a.m. CT, Sat., Aug. 30, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by southwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands, telling stunned members of Parliament this week to spare him their outrage.
"These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them," Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, said Saturday. "Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid."
The women, three of whom were teenagers, were first shot and then thrown into a ditch.
They were still breathing as their bodies were covered with rocks and mud, according media reports and human rights activists, who said their only "crime" was that they wished to marry men of their own choosing.
Zehri told a packed and flabbergasted Parliament on Friday that Baluch tribal traditions helped stop obscenity and then asked fellow lawmakers not to make a big fuss about it.
Many stood up in protest, saying the executions were "barbaric" and demanding that discussions continue Monday. But a handful said it was an internal matter of the deeply conservative province.
"I was shocked," said lawmaker Nilofar Bakhtiar, who pushed for legislation calling for perpetrators of so-called honor killings to be punished when she served as minister of women's affairs under the last government.
"I feel that we've gone back to the starting point again," she said. "It's really sad for me."
Accounts vary
The incident allegedly occurred one month ago in Baba Kot, a remote village in Jafferabad district, after the women decided to defy tribal elders and arrange marriages in a civil court, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.
They were said to have been abducted at gunpoint by six men, forced into a vehicle and taken to a remote field, where they were beaten, shot and then buried alive, it said, accusing local authorities of trying to hush up the killings.
One of perpetrators was allegedly related to a top provincial official, it said.
Accounts about the killings have varied, largely because police in the tribal region have been uncooperative. Activists and lawmakers said a more thorough investigation needed to be carried out.
The Asian Human Rights Commission, however, said the two older women may have been related to some of the teenage girls and were apparently murdered because they were sympathetic to their wishes.Tribesmen bury five women alive for wanting to choose their own husbands
updated... more
-
-
Bovey
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
Mexico's Supreme Court voted 8-3 Thursday to uphold legal abortion in the capital, opening the possibility that similar measures could be adopted elsewhere in Mexico - and perhaps beyond.
But conservative President Felipe Calderon, whose administration appealed the Mexico City law to the Supreme Court, is unlikely to stop fighting efforts to expand the availability of abortions.
Even with the Supreme Court's approval, pro-abortion groups complain that many doctors refuse to do the procedure in Mexico City. Some are morally opposed, while others fear public scorn or the wrath of the country's powerful Roman Catholic Church.
The church blasted the court on Thursday, declaring itself in mourning and issuing a statement that church leaders would redouble their efforts to campaign on behalf of "the millions of children who are being sacrificed."
About a dozen riot police blocked off the street leading to the court as the decision was announced, guarding against disturbances.Mexico's Supreme Court voted 8-3 Thursday to uphold legal abortion in the... more
-
-
Naked protest in California
"We want to walk around topless!"
"What do we want? To walk around topless! When do we want it? Now!" Over 50 women demonstrated for their right to walk around topless in Venice Beach, California, to the delight of male onlookers.
There certainly weren't many men who were arguing with the foxy feminists as they marched down the street armed with posters and bare chests. "We want to show our breasts" shouted the feminists, who were fighting for equal rights with men.
One of the pretty protesters said: "It's not right that men in the USA are allowed to walk around topless, and not women." Women who bare their breasts in public face, according to the state, a hefty fine or even prison. The demonstrators said they just want to be able to go topless on the beach, and sun their breasts at open air swimming pools.
Naked protests also took place in New York, Miami, Denver, Chicago and Hawaii, as part of national GoTopless protest day in the US.
Women will also go topless and demonstrate in Denver, where the four day democratic party conference is taking place.
**the link has pictures of the protest**Naked protest in California
"We want to walk around topless!"... more
-
-
One woman's struggle in a career dominated by men. Her story touches on issues such as: lower salaries and juggling family and career that women in science have to face. One woman's struggle in a career dominated by men. Her story touches on issues... more
-
-
CALinc
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
"Foreign maids are dying each week in Lebanon often by committing suicide to escape bad treatment by their employers, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
"Domestic workers are dying in Lebanon at a rate of more than one per week," said Nadim Houry, a senior researcher at HRW, in the second damning report since April on the working conditions of foreign workers in Lebanon.
"These suicides are linked to the isolation and the difficult working conditions these workers face in Lebanon," including financial pressure due to earning below minimum wages, Houry said in the report.
According to HRW around 200,000 domestic labourers, mostly from Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Ethiopia, are not protected by Lebanese labour laws.
Most of those who take their own lives or "risk their lives trying to escape" from the high-rise apartment buildings where they are employed, are women.
HRW said that at least 24 housemaids have died since January 2007 after falling from multi-storey buildings. "Many domestic workers are literally being driven to jump from balconies to escape their forced confinement," Houry said.
Interviews conducted by HRW with embassy officials and friends of domestic workers who committed suicide "suggest that forced confinement, excessive work demands, employer abuse and financial pressures are key factors pushing these women to kill themselves or risk their lives."
Human Rights Watch urged the Lebanese authorities to guarantee the workers "the right to move freely, to work in decent conditions, to communicate with their friends and families, and to earn a living wage."
It specifically asked the authorities to track down cases of deaths linked to suicide or other unnatural causes and "properly investigate them".
"The high death toll of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, from unnatural causes, shows the urgent need to improve their working conditions," HRW said. ""Foreign maids are dying each week in Lebanon often by committing suicide to... more
-
-
The Taliban are winning support on Kabul's doorstep by building a parallel administration which is more effective, more popular and yet more brutal than the government's.
Peasants go to the insurgents for rough but effective justice: "A court case in the government system takes five years and many bribes. The Taliban will settle it in an afternoon."
Every villager has stories of how the Taliban settle the many property disputes characteristic of Afghan society. Last year human rights groups in Afghanistan estimated that the Taliban had executed between 70 and 90 people in the villages they control, and punished thousands more for criminal acts.The Taliban are winning support on Kabul's doorstep by building a parallel... more
-
-
According to federal estimates as many as 17,000 people — most of them women and children — are brought into this country and forced to work in brutal and inhumane conditions, often as prostitutes. According to federal estimates as many as 17,000 people — most of them women and... more
-
-
"For Esra Cifci, a 26-year-old Turk, wearing a head scarf isn't only an expression of her Muslim beliefs but also an assertion of her right as a woman to dress as she pleases.
For Canan Arin, a 65-year-old secular feminist and also a Muslim, the scarf is a clear symbol of the oppression of women.
Turkish law bans female citizens from educational and government establishments if they cover their hair for religious reasons. Among Turkish politicians and intellectuals -- mostly men -- the scarf is frequently at the center of the debate about whether Turkey is Eastern or European, Islamic or secular, traditional or modern. Last month, the simple piece of silky fabric embroiled Turkey in a political standoff that almost toppled the government.
But the scarf is also sharply dividing women's-rights advocates, here and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Islamist feminists like Ms. Cifci (pronounced CHIF-chee) passionately argue against the ban, saying a woman should be free to express her religious devotion as she wishes and wear what she likes. Secularists like Ms. Arin back the ban, saying if women in Turkey start wearing the head scarf anywhere they want, it could usher in a more religious society, hinder modernization and reverse gains made by Turkish women over the years. They scoff at Ms. Cifci and others who have framed the head scarf issue in terms of women's rights.
"This is a very ugly trick they are using," Ms. Arin says, adding their real motivation is to create a strict Islamic society.
In a 2007 Gallup survey, 45% of Turkish women polled said they wore a head scarf in public. In the same poll, 66% of Turks (both men and women) said they associated the head scarf with "being religious," but 38% of respondents also associated it with "freedom," while 26% saw it as a sign of "oppression."
What do you see it as?"For Esra Cifci, a 26-year-old Turk, wearing a head scarf isn't only an... more
-
-
A 16-year-old Saudi girl drank a bottle of bleach in an attempt to commit suicide to escape a forced marriage to a 75-year-old man, press reports revealed Sunday.
The girl identified only as, Shaikha, said her father was forcing her to marry the old man so that he could marry his 13-year-old daughter in an exchange deal, Bahrain's Tribune reported.
Shaikha described how her father took her to meet the old man and his 13-year-old in a marriage office where they all had pre-marital tests done, the Tribune quoted the Saudi Gazette as reporting.
Shaikha told the paper how she begged and pleaded not to be forced into marriage but both of the men ignored her pleas.
Cultural differences aside, are forced marriages soon to be a thing of the past? What could be done to halt their spread?A 16-year-old Saudi girl drank a bottle of bleach in an attempt to commit suicide to... more
-
-
A Muslim marriage in northern India officiated by women has sparked an angry debate, with one of the most influential Islamic seminaries in South Asia calling it an affront to the religion.
Naish Hasan, the 28-year-old bride and a women's rights activist, and Imran Ali, the 41-year-old groom, were married last week in a ceremony that is believed to be the first of its kind in India.
Muslim marriages are traditionally officiated by a man, often a local community leader. The signing of the wedding contract is also witnessed by four Muslim males, two each for the bride and groom.
But the marriage last Wednesday in the northern city of Lucknow was presided over by a woman and all the witnesses were female. The only man involved in the wedding was Ali.
Women's rights activists have greeted the marriage as a symbolic step forward for Muslim women, but the ceremony sparked a firestorm of criticism from conservative Islamic institutions, especially the Dar-ul-Uloom seminary in northern India.
The seminary is an intellectual hub for South Asian Muslims. Many of its theologians have publicly denounced terrorism but their work has nonetheless provided the intellectual underpinning for some of the most radical and violent Islamic movements in the region, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan.
An official at Dar-ul-Uloom, Ahmad Khizar Shah Masudi, called the marriage a "cruel joke on (Islamic) laws."
Another Muslim group, the Lucknow Idgah Committee, has said the marriage is invalid under Islamic law.
Hasan, the bride, works for Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Aandolan, or the Indian Muslim Women's Movement, a rights group that seeks a greater role for women in Indian Muslim society.
Hasan brushed off the criticism. "I do not care. Islam says there cannot be anyone between Allah and his disciple. How come these clergymen are interfering in our matter?" she said Thursday.
India, a predominantly Hindu country with a sizable Muslim minority, allows marriage, divorce and inheritance matters to be determined by religious laws, and the couple's unorthodox ceremony was approved by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which sets the rules on Muslim religious matters.
But Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangimahali of the board said, "I won't ask anyone to go for this kind of marriage."
Muslim religious leaders have for decades closely guarded the powers accorded them under the so-called personal laws and have resisted any attempts to dilute their authority.
But a small group of liberal Muslims in India have made several attempts in recent years to challenge traditional male dominance within the religion.
In 2005, a group of Muslim women established the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board, saying that the All India Muslim Personal Law Board wasn't doing enough to protect women's rights.
Earlier this year, the group's leader, Shaista Amber, led a group of women in prayer at a major mosque in Lucknow, breaking with tradition, which does not allow men and women to pray together. A Muslim marriage in northern India officiated by women has sparked an angry debate,... more
-
-
Mahboubeh Karami has been languishing in Evin prison since 13 June. Amnesty's Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui explains how the journalist and activist ended up in Tehran's notorious jail
Mahboubeh Karami, 40, is a freelance journalist. She is also active in the Campaign for Equality, a women's rights movement in Iran which calls for reform of laws that discriminate against women and which launched the "One million signatures" campaign in support of this demand. She has been detained in Tehran's Evin Prison since 13 June.
On that morning, she called her mother briefly from her mobile, after boarding a bus in north Tehran. All was well but about 20 minutes later she called again. The bus had been forced to halt near Mellat Park because of a demonstration by people against the arrest on 11 June of Abbas Palizdar, who had accused several senior Iranian officials of financial corruption.
The protest was peaceful but police and other security forces reportedly used tear gas and batons to disperse the demonstrators. They also set up checkpoints. While drivers were told to keep moving, they stopped a number of buses, including the one on which Mahboubeh was travelling, so that plain-clothed officers could check the passengers.
When Mahboubeh called her mother that second time it was to tell her that her coat had been pulled from her and she was being manhandled from the bus by the security police. She was able to speak only briefly before her phone was disconnected.
On the day she was detained, her family and friends could find out nothing about where she was being held. The next information they had came from one of the other bus passengers who had found Mahboubeh's bag - dropped when she was seized. He took it to her family and told them that Mahboubeh and all other female passengers had been taken off the bus, although they had not taken any part in the demonstration.
On 14 June, the day after the protest, the Head of Tehran's Judiciary told the press that 200 people had been arrested and that those who were innocent or were suspected of committing only minor offences would learn about the status of their cases within a week. In the weeks that followed others who took part in the demonstration, or who were arrested at the same time as Mahboubeh, were released, although in some cases they first had to pay considerable sums of bail.
Mahboubeh Karami’s mother, Sedigheh Mosa’ebi, has said that her daughter called her from Evin Prison on 25 June saying that about 90 women were arrested on 13 June. Most of whom, like her, had nothing to do with the demonstration in Mellat Park. She told her mother that “The police stopped the bus in front of the Park. Then they began hitting the windows with their batons and forced the driver to open the doors. They attacked a man in the bus. I could not keep silent and when I protested, they took me in too.”
Mahboubeh Karami and nine other women, then being detained with her, went on hunger strike on 6 July to protest about their incarceration and conditions – they had been moved to a section of Evin Prison where detainees are not permitted visits. The protest ended after the other nine women were all released by 25 July. Although not freed, Mahboubeh Karami was moved to a ‘general’ section of Evin Prison, and has since been allowed weekly visits from her family.Mahboubeh Karami has been languishing in Evin prison since 13 June. Amnesty's... more
-
-
New documents just obtained by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) prove that Senator Obama has for the past four years blatantly misrepresented his actions on the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill.New documents just obtained by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) prove that... more
-
-
jlaws
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
"If I wore something like this" in the streets of Iraq, Tammy said, gesturing at her T-shirt and jeans, "I'd be killed." Like other Iraqi translators working for American forces, Tammy, 21, uses a nickname to protect herself and her family from anti-American militias.
Before the war, Tammy says, she could walk down the streets of her hometown, the southern and heavily Shia Iraqi port city of Basra, dressed like most teenagers in the United States -- in jeans and no head scarf. Saddam Hussein's regime was one of the world's most despotic, but it was secular and allowed Iraqi women personal rights and freedoms unparalleled in the Persian Gulf. Women, who make up more than half of the country's population, could drive, travel abroad alone, serve in Iraqi security forces and work side-by-side with men. They chose whom to marry and whether to marry at all, and were among the most educated in the region.
"Sometimes in the street I got some comments, but never any threats," Tammy said.
After the U.S. invasion in 2003, conservative Muslim clerics called for Iraq to become an Islamic state. In the name of Islamic values, they eroded the liberties women here enjoyed even under Saddam's oppressive regime. Schools, once coed, became segregated by gender; women were afraid to go outside without a head scarf. As sectarian violence engulfed Baghdad and other parts of the country in 2006, it brought in its wake even more constraints on women's freedoms.
Even in the most prosperous and educated neighborhoods of Baghdad, Iraq's most progressive city, women were threatened and killed for attending college, working, driving cars, or wearing clothes the militias considered immodest -- anything less than abaya and hijab. Some women began to wear black burqas that covered everything but their eyes. Tammy and Lucy's father got a call from men who said they would kill the women -- both of whom attended medical school in Basra -- if they didn't wear the conservative Muslim dress. The women took the threat seriously.
"I know some girls who were killed because they weren't covered up," Tammy said."
Much more at link! Interesting stuff, especially that somehow, the American invasion DIMINISHED women's rights in that area! Sigh!"If I wore something like this" in the streets of Iraq, Tammy said,... more
-
-
"State Women Commission and Islamic Centre of India have hailed the state government's decision to give unmarried girls equal right of inheritance in their parents' agricultural land.
Abha Agnihotri, chairperson of State Women's Commission, while terming the state cabinet's decision as ‘historic', has congratulated chief minister Mayawati on behalf of women of the state. Agnihotri said that this decision of the government besides strengthening women's empowerment would create self reliance among them.
In the same vein, general secretary of Islamic Centre of India and member of All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) Maulana Khalid Rasheed Firangi Mahali has welcomed the decision of the Mayawati government to amend section 171 (2) and section 174 of the UP Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act, 1950. He said that the government has taken a right decision by accepting an old demand of the AIMPLB.
The maulana demanded that it was necessary to include married, widow and divorcee women in this decision because in Muslim Personal Law there was a provision of equal rights of daughters in parents property fathers and there was no discrimination between married and unmarried daughters. He hoped that the government would remove this lacuna while presenting this Bill in the Assembly so that all Muslim women could be benefited from this decision. ""State Women Commission and Islamic Centre of India have hailed the state... more
-
