Women's Rights // Current

Iraqi Women Crowd Ballot amidst violence ahead of election

On the eve of Iraq's second nationwide election, a car bomb killed at least three... more

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SKorean women caught in abortion limbo

"SEOUL, South Korea — Having a third child wasn't in Mrs. Kim's... more

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The Next Anti-Choice Target: Miscarriage

A bill recently was passed in the Utah state legislature that may charge women with... more

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Women, take back the night

Tomorrow, in Rome, there will be the demonstration "Take back the night". A... more

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Muslim model spared from punishment

KARAI, Malaysia (AP) — Islamic officials have unexpectedly freed a Muslim model... more

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Part of this week's New York Times Magazine's special issue, Saving the World's Women. Discuss all of this week's articles at current.com/feminism.

Remember the concept of “sisterhood”? That quaint relic of an idea that women owed it to other women to crash through ceilings and navigate a male world? It just might be taking new root in a most unexpected place — among women with money. There are more women controlling more wealth in the U.S. than ever before. (Of those in the wealthiest tier of the country — defined by the I.R.S. as individuals with assets of at least $1.5 million — 43 percent are women.) And unlike the women who preceded them — old-school patrons who gave to the museum and the symphony and their dead husbands’ alma maters — these givers are more likely to use their wealth deliberately and systematically to aid women in need.

To appreciate the magnitude of this change, go back 150 years or so to the women’s suffrage movement. Back to when one of its leaders, Matilda Joslyn Gage, lamented: “We have yet to hear of a woman of wealth who has left anything for the enfranchisement of her sex. Almost every daily paper heralds the fact of some large bequest to colleges, churches and charities by rich women, but it is proverbial that they never remember the woman suffrage movement that underlies in importance all others.”

Then jump forward to the present: globally, more than 145 funds, with assets of nearly half a billion dollars, exist to improve the lives of women and girls. Many focus their efforts domestically; about a third work internationally. Not one existed in 1972 when the Ms. Foundation, the first national fund for and by women, was established. Collectively they now form the Women’s Funding Network and have plans to increase their joint coffers by another billion dollars by 2018, in concert with a drive called Women Moving Millions, which aims to encourage individuals, mostly women, to donate $1 million or more. The goal was to raise $150 million in three years, a target exceeded this spring by $30 million.

Women Moving Millions began with the literal sisterhood of Helen LaKelly Hunt and Swanee Hunt. Daughters of the legendary oilman H. L. Hunt, they were raised “like Southern belles,” Helen says — taught that money was something a woman “shouldn’t worry her pretty little head about.” As adults they discovered the power of philanthropy, and about three years ago Swanee (whose own nonbelle career includes years as ambassador to Austria and a lectureship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she teaches that gender parity is the way to ensure peace and rebuild societies) called Helen with an offer. “She said she was going to leave me a lot of money in her will,” Helen says, “but I might die first and ruin the surprise, so why doesn’t she give it to me now.” Swanee’s $6 million, and $4 million more from Helen, became the initial pledges to the campaign.

Helen was motivated in part by her own historical research. While writing her doctoral thesis on the origins of feminism, she pieced together the evidence that wealthy women sat on the sidelines during the fight for the right to vote. “Women gave heart, mind, body, intellect, will, blood, sweat and tears, but not their dollars,” she says. “Women didn’t fund suffrage; now women are funding women. That’s historic.”Part of this week's New York Times Magazine's special issue, Saving the... more

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Iraq elections: the people is asking for normality

Five years ago many people didn't go to vote, in Iraq. But on Sunday the Sunnis,... more

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Banning Repression

“The burka is a prison, it’s a straitjacket”
French Urban Affairs minister, Fadela Amara

The burqa, always a sensitive religious symbol, is making headlines once again as governments around the world begin taking carefully constructed steps towards a full or partial ban on the controversial clothing.
As with everything, there are two sides to every story, while the burqa is seen by some as a sign of subservience, a piece of religious repression that is not mandatory in the Koran, instead serving to deface women from the role of human being to shrouded servant. Others argue that religious freedom, whatever that entails is one pivotal law that must remain in place for concern of offending not just Muslims, but people of all religions who consider religious expression through certain clothing a vital part of their religious freedom.

How can a woman be truly free if there is a barrier placed before her that prevents her from interacting with fellow humans, how can you truly relate to a person if you cant see her smile or frown? Our faces are possibly the most important parts of our bodies, excluding the mind, the face allows us to see who we are talking to, the starting point for our connections as humanity, not forgetting the health risks that a person’s skin needs to be exposed to sunlight.
Quotes by Muslim women who are pro burqa simultaneously have the same correlation, that by wearing the burqa they will not get harassed by men in the street, instead of creating a law that mandates women should be fully covered, is it not more logical to create some sort of law that enforces restraint on behalf of the males?

One thing Britain prides itself on is the acceptance of other cultures and religions, which has allowed this country to become a very ethnically diverse and equal place, British people, past and present have fought for too long to guarantee rights such as equal pay in the workplace and votes for women, and it would be an insult to the memories of these people, most notably the suffragettes if we allowed other persons to enter our country and abuse our rights under the guise of religious expression, when in reality, the burqa holds no place in the Koran and therefore in Islamic law.“The burka is a prison, it’s a straitjacket” French Urban Affairs... more

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Pakistani Women Work for Peace Amid Violence

About Photo: Pakistani acid attack victim Naziran Abid, 23, puts her daughters Haseena Abid, 5, and Alishba 3, to sleep at the Acid Survivors Foundation in Islamabad. Acid was thrown on Naziran’s face and torso by an unknown attacker while sleeping. (Getty Images)

LAST MONTH in Lahore, Pakistan, a court ordered the noses and ears of two brothers cut off after they were convicted of doing the same thing to Fazeelat Bibi, a 21 year-old woman who had declined a marriage proposal from one of them. Although few believe that part of the sentence will ever be carried out, it is considered a victory for women’s rights that the case against the brothers was even brought. The men were charged with kidnapping Bibi and trying to slit her throat with a wire for the “dishonor’’ she had brought upon the suitor. Instead, they merely mutilated her and left her for dead.

Every day in Pakistan - and in volatile trouble spots all over the world - women’s lives are routinely endangered, to say nothing of their “rights.’’ Even where such practices are strictly against the law, they are woven into a social system where young girls are bartered away to pay off family debts, brides are killed in suspicious “kitchen fires’’ for having an insufficient dowry, and women marry their rapists because they cannot live with the social stigma of a crime not their own.

Cultural violence targeting women is a bedeviling problem everywhere, but Pakistan is ranked third lowest on the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index. And, of course, Pakistan is a key strategic ally for the United States in the battle against terror. In the past two years Taliban extremists in control of the Swat Valley have stepped up their intimidation of women, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, bombing more than 400 schools for girls and condoning honor killings and rapes.

Against such a backdrop it is difficult to imagine women in Pakistan even leaving their homes, much less receiving an education and becoming agitators for change. And yet the horrors only animate the courageous women who are fighting for peace and dignity in their war-torn countries. Gathered at Harvard this week for a colloquium sponsored by the Institute for Inclusive Security, many of these women - from Pakistan, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Lebanon - made a strong case for being brought into peace negotiations or other efforts to engage extremists.

Humaira Shahid, an editor at the Pakistani daily Khabrain, became a member of the provincial assembly in her native Punjab. She describes “walking into a traditionalist parliament full of patriarchs’’ and successfully pushing a resolution recognizing acid attacks as attempted murder. Though she concedes that protective laws may not be well enforced at first, even a drop in the ocean sends out ripples of change. “You bring charges against two and 200 are scared’’ to commit the crimes, she said.

Mossarat Qadeem is executive director of the Pakistan Initiative for Mothers and Newborns, which works in the treacherous tribal areas training women in peace-building and registering them to vote. When three of her staffers were detained by agents of a tribal chief, she said, she walked into his headquarters wearing a white chador, the color of reverence and respect. She quoted verses from the Koran about the protection of women at him until he released the workers. The idea is not to overturn centuries of religious tradition, she said, but to expand it. “We empower women by strengthening the role they play within cultural and religious norms.’’

I was in Pakistan in 2006, just after the cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad were published in a Danish newspaper. There were violent protests every day. Mobs attacked Western embassies, torched McDonald’s outlets, threw handmade bombs, and chanted “Death to Denmark.” Even with our heavy security it was frightening, not least because the protesters seemed so utterly beyond the reach of reason.

But perhaps dry logic is not the force to bring against extremism, just as military might cannot salve the grievances of young men who are indoctrinated or drawn to violence. Instead, the quiet moral authority carried by these “daughters of the soil” could be part of the solution, even in traditional societies. Perhaps more than anyone, women have a stake in restoring peace and stability, so that girls may again go to school, and they can start the work of rebuilding their communities. Women clearly have the strength; they just need the power.

Renée Loth can be reached at loth@globe.com.About Photo: Pakistani acid attack victim Naziran Abid, 23, puts her daughters... more

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The Dangers of Prison Pregnancy

Stories of neglect, miscarriage, and solitary cell birth.... more

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Quotes by Mary Harris (Mother) Jones (1830-1930) American labor agitator

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a... more

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11 months ago
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Domestic violence PSAs only give half the story...

39% of victims of domestic violence are men, but you'd never know it from these... more

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4 months ago
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Afghan women fight on for rights

It is sad that so many women are being mistreated and are not given equal rights, but... more

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End Women's Suffrage

This is a bunch of videos where young people sign a petition to end women's suffrage.

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A school bus for Shamsia - female education in Afghanistan

Part of this week's New York Times Magazine special issue, Saving the World's Women. Discuss all of the articles at current.com/feminism.

EVEN BEFORE THE men with acid came, the Mirwais Mena School for Girls was surrounded by enemies. It stood on the outskirts of Kandahar, barely 20 miles from the hometown of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder. Just down the road from the school, in an area known as Old Town, residents had built a shrine to Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban commander with the fiercest reputation, who made his name by massacring members of the Hazara minority. He was killed in an American-led operation in 2007. Also nearby sat the Sarposa Prison, where, in June 2008, Taliban fighters and suicide bombers attacked, freeing more than a thousand criminals and comrades. The area around the Mirwais Mena School is the Taliban heartland. Teaching girls to read was not something that would escape their notice. Across the country, the Taliban have made the destruction of schools, particularly schools for girls, a hallmark of their war.

The Mirwais Mena School — L-shaped, cement, two stories, with canvas tents donated by the United Nations — was built in 2004 with a grant from the Japanese government. A plaque out front gives the date; it hangs on the 10-foot-high cement wall built to shield the students. Kandahar’s Mirwais Mena neighborhood sits just off the national highway. A rutted mud path called Panjwai Road cuts through the center of the neighborhood and up an outcropping of bare rock that rises 500 feet. A single electrical wire runs into Mirwais Mena from a pole along the highway; no one can remember the last time it carried any current.

The attackers appeared in the morning on Nov. 12 of last year, as the girls were walking to school. The men came on three motorcycles, each one carrying a driver and a man on back. They wore masks. Each of the men riding on back carried a small container filled with battery acid. The masked men circled for several minutes as the girls streamed to school. Then they moved in.

Shamsia Husseini and her sister, Atifa, were walking along the highway when they spotted the men on the motorbikes. Shamsia, then 17, was old enough to be married; she was wearing a black scarf that covered most of her face. Shamsia had seen Taliban gunmen before and figured the men on the motorcycles would pass. Then one of the bikes pulled alongside her, and the man on back jumped off. Through the mask, he asked Shamsia what seemed like a strange question.

“Are you going to school?”

The masked man pulled the scarf away from Shamsia’s face and, with his other hand, pumped the trigger on his spray gun. Shamsia felt as if her face and eyes were on fire. As she screamed, the masked man reached for Atifa, who was already running. He pulled at her and tore her scarf away and pumped the spray into her back. The men sped off toward another group of girls. Shamsia lay in the street holding her burning face.Part of this week's New York Times Magazine special issue, Saving the... more

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A powerful truth - how educating girls and empowering women can help fight poverty and extremism

Check out this slide show, part of this week's New York Times Magazine special... more

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" Saudi Sadism " 60 lashes for a female journalist – her crime?

A Saudi court on Saturday convicted a female journalist for her involvement in a TV... more

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Fair Trade 2009: Northern Michigan University students back Nicaragua coffee farmers

Northern Michigan University students Lisa McCarthy and Sarah Swanson are giving... more

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Al Jazeera English - Witness: Divorce in Yemen | Link TV

Divorce in any society is never easy. But in Yemen as in the rest of the Arab world,... more

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New Oklahoma law will publicy post details of women’s abortions online.

On Nov. 1, a law in Oklahoma will go into effect that will collect personal details... more

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TAGS

tagged w/ Women's Rights

Iraqi Women Crowd Ballot amidst violence ahead of election

SKorean women caught in abortion limbo

The Next Anti-Choice Target: Miscarriage

Women, take back the night

Muslim model spared from punishment

The power of the purse

Iraq elections: the people is asking for normality

Banning Repression

Pakistani Women Work for Peace Amid Violence

The Dangers of Prison Pregnancy

Quotes by Mary Harris (Mother) Jones (1830-1930) American labor agitator

Domestic violence PSAs only give half the story...

Afghan women fight on for rights

End Women's Suffrage

A school bus for Shamsia - female education in Afghanistan

A powerful truth - how educating girls and empowering women can help fight poverty and extremism

" Saudi Sadism " 60 lashes for a female journalist – her crime?

Fair Trade 2009: Northern Michigan University students back Nicaragua coffee farmers

Al Jazeera English - Witness: Divorce in Yemen | Link TV

New Oklahoma law will publicy post details of women’s abortions online.

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