by Shazia Mirza, The Dawn, Pakistan - I will be thinking of all the women who have been denied the basic right to express any kind of silent opinion. Who have been denied the right to put any mark on any ballot paper that may make a change to their already powerless and dictated existence.
by Dahlia Scheindlin, +972, Israel - It’s simple sexual harassment – not a uniquely Israeli problem. One of the top television news personalities in the country, Emmanuel Rosen, has been accused by a large number of women of harassment over the years and there are rumors of rape. After a lengthy expose in Haaretz on April 26 (Hebrew) aired the claims of about 10 female colleagues, he went on leave of absence from Channel 10. The police began an “examination” which as of Monday turned into a formal “investigation.” Here in Israel it is a major news story making the headlines almost every day since it broke at the end of April.
by Ilene Prusher, Jerusalem Vivendi, Israel - “The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams,” poet Yehuda Amichai wrote, “like the air over industrial cities. It’s hard to breathe.”
But somehow, when a young American named Joseph Shamash went around the city asking Jerusalemites to speak those prayers and dreams aloud, inviting them to express one wish, the artistic micro-documentary that emerged is more like a breath of fresh air.
by Lee Yoo Eun, Global Voices, Netherlands - South Korean conservative groups are mounting a fierce resistance to a proposed anti-discrimination law in South Korea that would prohibit discrimination based on based on religion, political ideology, or sexual orientation.
by Amira Al Hussaini, Global Voices, The Netherlands - Journalist Jenan Moussa is back in Aleppo, Syria, tweeting her experiences as the war between pro- and anti-government forces intensifies. Moussa's tweets are raw and personal, giving readers a snippet of what life is like for those caught in the crossfire.
by Zubeida Mustafa, zubeidamustafa.com, Pakistan - The BBC has reported that a group of British MPs have asked the British “government to withhold extra aid to Pakistan unless the country does more to gather taxes from its wealthier citizens”. This will evoke a strong reaction in many circles in Pakistan. It is shocking that we have shameless people here — many having been associated with policymaking — who treat foreign aid as a yardstick to measure the success or otherwise of Islamabad’s foreign policy.
They have no qualms about going with the begging bowl in hand to foreign capitals. They will be irked by the British MPs’ statement no doubt. Some will see it as an anti-poor stance.
by Jillian C. York, Global Voices, Netherlands - Last month, I received an interesting e-mail from my editor, Nasir Khan, at the Opinion page of Al Jazeera English. In the e-mail, Khan explained that while his goal has been to keep a gender ratio of 50/50 on the page, he has often come up short.
by Suzee, Suzee in the City, Egypt - There are many powerful, brilliant Arab women, including several in the graffiti scene. Graffiti is a dangerous cause as it is, and with perpetual violence against women in Egypt, you’d think female graffiti artists would be too intimidated to work on the city streets. But they’re not; they’re young, tough, talented and just as worthy of recognition as their male counterparts.
by Danielle Nierenberg and Eve Andrews, Landscapes for People, Food, and Nature, USA - According to the FAO, women make up more than 40 percent of agricultural labor in developing countries, and in some countries, they are as much 80 percent of the agricultural work force. However, women farmers’ yields are roughly 20-30 percent less than male farmers. If gender barriers were eliminated and women farmers were able to match the yields of male farmers, global malnourishment could be reduced by 12 to 17 percent. But improved conditions for women don’t only lead to higher yields – they benefit the wider community as well.
by Noon Arabia, Global Voices, Egypt - Police arrests of southern separatist leaders in Yemen came a day ahead of planned rival rallies to mark the first anniversary of the uncontested election of President Abdrabuh Rabbo Mansour Hadi, which ended Saleh’s 33-year autocratic rule following a year-long deadly uprising.
by Celeste Liddle, Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist, Australia - Tanning is bizarre. Fake tanning is bizarre. Forking over your hard-earned to be hit with a spray gun is bizarre. And it all makes zero sense to me at all as a non-white feminist.
by Isobel Coleman, Council on Foreign Relations, USA - Shocked by a brutal rape case that has gripped the country, India is going through some soul-searching about its shameful mistreatment of women. Riot police lined the streets of Delhi the past few days to calm protesters who gathered in outrage as the body of the 23 year-old rape victim returned from Singapore where she had been transferred for emergency treatment. She suffered severe internal injuries after being gang-raped, beaten, and thrown naked from the bus she and her boyfriend tragically got on after seeing a movie on December 16. She died on Saturday and protesters have demanded the death penalty for the rapists.
by Falguni A. Sheth, Translation Exercises, USA - The shooting in Newtown, CT is but part and parcel of a culture of shooting children, shooting civilians, shooting innocent adults, that has been waged by the U.S. government since September 12, 2001.
by Golnaz Esfandiari, Persian Letters, Czech Republic - A controversial election-reform bill working its way through parliament contains measures that could prevent undesirables from running while granting the clerical establishment greater control over the election's outcome in June 2013.
by Hatoon Al Fassi, The Observers, France - The sacred mosque is a holy site that does not belong to the Saudi state. This cultural heritage belongs to all Muslims, who have the right to request the conservation of such a precious piece of their history.
by Rihannon A., The Vagenda, UK - I reckon there’s a bit of clearing up to do where the actual Bible’s position on women is concerned. Because there are a huge amount of passages in this context which are misread, mostly due to translation or (perhaps more likely) wilful misunderstanding.
by Alice Keys, M.D., Mad in America, USA - I was taught in medical school that poverty is the cause of our difficulties in providing medical care. I was taught to blame the patient for being poor and unemployed.
by Michelle Milici, Maple Leaf Mama, Italy - According to Nicoletta Livi Bacci of the Artemisia women’s shelter in Florence, every two days a woman is killed as a result of domestic violence in Italy.
by Sophie Pilgrim, The French Observatory, France - Socialist Minister for Women and Government Spokesperson Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said that the homosexuality of gay authors and icons should no longer go ignored, especially when their sexuality played an important part in their work.
by Melissa,Redefining Female, USA - In the hearts of women and men everywhere, there lies the myth of the perfect woman.
by Dr. Mary Ellen Copeland, Mad in America, USA - People don’t understand that when they reach out for help for themselves or someone they care about, it can have threatening and lifelong consequences.
by Mary-Rose MacColl, Mary-Rose MacColl, Australia - I’ve been thinking about maternity care and why there's not the same outcry in response to what happens to women when they make choices about birth. When homebirth is reported in the media, it’s mostly because a baby has died and someone must be blamed.
by Camille Crittenden, Huffington Post, USA - In more developed countries with the capacity (or mandate) to provide basic educational equality, girls still lag behind boys, especially in their achievement in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
by Alison Bass, Alison Bass, USA - West Virginia now has the second highest rate of prescription drug overdoses in the country, and a large part of that problem can be traced back to the state’s culture of disability, according to one health researcher at West Virginia University.
by Patricia Valoy, Womanisms, USA - The United States Department of Labor Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health reported in 1999 that 88% of women construction workers surveyed had experienced sexual harassment at work.
by Sophie Pilgrim, The French Observatory, France - Today, an initial 2.5-km stretch of the Left Bank will see tarmac and traffic lights replaced by restaurants, bars and potted plants. By the looks of the computer-generated plans, it’s going to be a very clean place filled with smiling rollerblade enthusiasts, well-behaved children and non-sweaty joggers.
by Sherrilyn Ifill, Beacon Broadside, USA - Slaughter’s piece fails to recognize that women in the 1% have real power to transform the work/family reality for women at the economic bottom, who are seeking the luxury of the kind of choices about which Slaughter and I wring our hands.
by Julie Tomlin, Huffington Post, USA - People who want democracy in these countries need the British Government to abide by the committees' recommendations that it "apply significantly more cautious judgements" when considering arms export licence applications for goods to authoritarian regimes intent on using them for internal repression.
by Caroline Heldman, Sociological Images, USA - Make no bones about it, this movie is all about reinforcing the notion that men are in control and men’s sexuality matters more... Have we learned to devalue our own sexual pleasure so thoroughly that the scraps of hot female sexual pleasure provided by Magic Mike feel like a full meal?
by Rita Banerji, Gender Bytes, India - While the issue of violence is personal to me, I also know it’s a common experience for so many others, especially women in the Indian community. Every single friend I have in the Indo-Canadian communities either came from an abusive family or was in an abusive marriage, or both.
by Mary Theroux, The Beacon, USA - Emails released last week between representatives of major pharmaceutical companies (“big Pharma”) and top Obama administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, reveal insider-dealing sufficient to kill any remaining Hope that Obamacare was designed to deliver on the promises of its official name: there is no Patient Protection or Affordable Care discussed therein.
by Nancy Bloom, CoLab Radio, USA - We are driven like cattle to collect mounds of data, to divvy the data up into tidy and irrelevant skill categories, and finally to create individual action plans to remediate each student’s poor data points. We are required to write lesson plans that note exactly which discreet skills we will be working on during every minute of every school day while delivering scripted programs.
by Karen Gardiner Dion, Women Under Siege, USA - “We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place,” Etman said. “The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square.”
by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, Huffington Post, USA - Our money-obsessed society tends to celebrate great wealth as evidence of exceptional talent, innovation or accomplishment. In reality, spectacular fortunes are more likely the result of luck, ruthlessness, cheating, or being in the right place at the right time to exploit an opportunity made possible by the insights and efforts of others who paved the way.
by Caroline Gluck, Oxfam Conflict & Emergencies, UK - According to a UN report last year, an estimated 51 million people, or three quarters of the population in Congo, have no access to safe drinking water.
by Liz Fuller, Caucasus Report, Czech Republic - Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov and Chechen mufti Sultan-hadji Mirzayev have both harshly criticized the proposal by Chechen legal scholar Dagir Khasavov to establish Shari'a courts in Russia for the benefit of those Russian Muslims who do not want to “get bogged down in the Russian legal system,” which they do not trust.
by Afua Hirsch, The Guardian, UK - These days no self-respecting western reporter dares to describe anything potentially "primitive" in Africa without a sophisticated disclaimer.
by Laurel Zuckerman, Sorbonne Confidential, France - In Fall 2005, French youths rioted, destroying 200 million euros of schools, gymnasiums, cars and other property. Two people were killed; 2900 rioters were arrested; and martial law was imposed. When the smoke cleared, a French myth had died. France, land of égalité, had ghettos.
by Katie Matlack, Women's Media Center, USA - Women are the power users of social media and are the directors of healthcare for most families. And women–and especially mothers–frequently are the ones who have the insight, the blogs and the networks to bring stories about sensitive health issues to the world.
by Golnaz Esfandiari, Persian Letters, Czech Republic - Afghans were banned from a park in the Iranian city of Isfahan in order "to ensure citizens' welfare." But it was Iranians who quickly condemned the decision on Facebook and other social media.
by Claire Provost, Guardian, UK - Technology can increase access to water and sanitation; other solutions seem to hinge on policy. But are the two areas distinct?
by Cara Hoffman, Women Under Siege, USA - Rape and sexual assault are still treated as though they are individual, unrelated acts of violence against specific victims—unless they’re in places like Congo or Sudan, in which case the individuals are disappeared into a faceless number called “mass rape.” Either way, somehow, the perpetrators of the crimes and the culture they inhabit are left out of the discussion.
by Golnaz Esfandiari, Persian Letters, Czech Republic - In a test of where loyalties within Iran's conservative establishment lie, it appears tradition has won the day.
by Martha Rosenberg, Huffington Post, USA - It was not a great surprise that the FDA's new cephalosporin livestock rules have the Agribusiness Seal of Approval. It was Big Pharma and Agribusiness lobbying that killed its stronger cephalosporin rules issued four years after.
by Ingrid Cruz, United We Dream, USA - The wave of anti-immigrant laws is sweeping through the South, and Mississippi is now next on the list of states that are attempting to pass draconian bills
by Verena Vradulovic, In Image and In Word, USA - Decades of applied pesticides and fertilizers have delivered high yield, immaculate- looking fruit to many of the supermarkets in the U.S. and to the far corners of the globe, but not without a local cost. Heavy pesticide and fertilizer use in cultivating household staples such as oranges, peaches, nectarines, grapes, olives and walnuts has contaminated local community drinking water.
by Marjorie Cohn, Marjorie Cohn, USA - The Bush administration set rules of engagement that resulted in the willful killing and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians. In particular, U.S. troops in Iraq operated in "free-fire zones," with orders to shoot everything that moves. Attacks in civilian areas resulted in massive civilian casualties, which the Bush administration casually called "collateral damage."
by Claire Provost, The Guardian, UK - Four years ago, soaring food prices and reports of food riots from West Bengal to Mexico made headlines worldwide and fuelled a new demand for global hunger figures. How have people been affected by rising food prices? Has hunger increased? What is the "human cost" of global economic crisis?
by Marjorie Cohn, Marjorie Cohn, USA - The same voices who brought us the illegal, tragic, and ill-advised war with Iraq will continue to try to dominate the national conversation with battle cries against Iran.
by Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution, Venezuela - Washington has made no secret of its disdain for Venezuela’s President Chavez and mass media have turned a democratic leader into a dictatorship. Does Venezuela really represent a threat to the United States or is the hype just an excuse for regime change?
