Vital Voices Global Partnership honors female leaders. Along with six other female leaders, Bugaighis and Yahyaoui are on a Sunday evening bus tour of Washington attractions. The sightseeing is meant to get the honorees — who have heard about one another on blogs or through Facebook but have not met — out of hotel conference halls and give them a little bonding time. And it seems to be working. Fast friends, the visitors talk about how — despite the fact that women and men stood hand in hand during the Arab Spring protests — men sidelined the women almost immediately afterward. “The question is how do we, as women, stand again?” Said Shatha al-Harazi, a 26-year-old reporter for the Yemen Times who overheard the women from Libya and Tunisia. “Since I was in the fifth grade, I have always been questioning things,” Harazi said as the tour van rumbled along Embassy Row. This year’s ceremony brings together many of the female leaders who emerged during the Arab Spring.
“We revolt twice as women in our societies,” Harazi observed. Researchers leave a good tip for waitresses -- wear red lipstick. RENNES, France — Waitresses may strive to get orders correct and provide excellent service — but pocketing good tips is all about the lips, French research has revealed. Waitresses who wear red lipstick on average received tips 50 percent of the time from male customers, The (London) Times reported, citing a study by sociologists at the Universite de Bretagne-Sud. The tips were larger in amount than those given to waitresses who wore brown, pink or no lipstick — and those groups on average were only tipped 30 percent of the time. The presence of red lipstick made no impact on the tipping habits of female customers. The researchers noted that the rise in tips by male customers could be due to red lips being “associated with an indication of estrogen levels, sexual arousal and health.”
The sociologists compiled their research after recording the tips received by seven waitresses — wearing various colors of lipstick or none at all — who served close to 450 customers over a two-month period. AFGHANISTAN: Human rights concerns grow for women and girls advocates. WNN Breaking An Afghan schoolgirl learns to read and write as she writes on a blackboard during school 2009.
Image: Wikimedia (WNN) Kabul, AFGHANISTAN: As the governing lower Parliament of Afghanistan approves an extended presence of the United States government in the region on Saturday, advocates for human rights and women’s rights sit in the wings. Recent attacks by suspected insurgents on schools for girls in the Takhar province have brought 122 girl students and 3 teachers to the hospital from exposures to dangerous levels of poisoned air inside their school building.
This has come following other events of intimidation and danger for girls trying to receive education throughout the Afghan region. Reversals for women and girls in the region has come at a crisis pace as Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education has recently conveyed that 550 schools in 11 provinces have been closed down recently where the Taliban currently has its strongest foothold in Afghan communities. Sen. Murray, @SenateDems, @aauw, @nwlc, @npwf, & @aclu stand up & speak out for #women & #equalpay. Saving Face: The struggle and survival of Afghan women. 18-year-old Mumtaz bears the scars of an acid attack after she refused marriageTwo armed men pulled her head back and poured acid all over her faceMumtaz now lives in a shelter for abused women in Kabul, AfghanistanA 2008 Global Rights study said 87% of Afghan women reported suffering from domestic abuse Kabul (CNN) -- When 18-year-old Mumtaz walks into a room, the first thing you notice about her is the patchwork of painful puffy red scars that stretch across her face.
"I feel so bad, I do not look at myself in the mirror anymore," Mumtaz said. She is the victim of a scorned man who decided that if he couldn't marry her, he'd make sure no one else would want to. The man had asked for her hand in marriage, but Mumtaz's family declined the offer. One night, she says, several men showed up at their home. They beat up her family, and finally two armed men held her, pulled her head back and let the man who had wanted to marry her pour acid all over her face. Tortured Afghan girl tells her story. Sociologist Sarah Sobieraj on the Occupy Movement.
By Lisa Wade, PhD, Nov 16, 2011, at 12:24 pm The author of Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism, Tufts University sociology professor Sarah Sobieraj is a reigning expert on media and social movements in the U.S. In the four minute clip below, she discusses what it is about the Occupy Movement that has led to such favorable coverage. This includes an answer to the now ubiquitous question: “Is their message too broad?” Clip at MyFoxBoston, via Citings and Sightings. UN needs millions to help end attacks on women. The U.N. secretary-general appealed Wednesday for a massive increase in funds for programs to stop the global pandemic of violence against women, saying the U.N. received more 2,500 applications this year requesting nearly $1.2 billion.
Ban Ki-moon said that over 15 years, the U.N. Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women has delivered grants worth $77 million to 339 initiatives in 126 countries, "but demand continues to outstrip resources. " At the U.N. commemoration of The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the secretary-general appealed to governments and other donors to help the U.N. meet "this vast unmet need. " UN Women, the new U.N. agency promoting gender equality, said the Trust Fund received $22.7 million in 2009 but just $13.5 million in 2010. Michelle Bachelet, the former Chilean president who heads UN Women, called violence against women "probably the most pervasive human rights violation in the world.
" A group of awesome young women led a round of... Violence Against Women Has Broad Social Consequences, Experts Say. Washington — Long a subject locked in the home behind a curtain of silence, violence against women will be pushed into an international spotlight in the days and weeks ahead in recognition of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The occasion is marked on November 25, but Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer said advocates of the cause will be recognizing this international problem with events scheduled through the end of the month and up to December 10, Human Rights Day. Verveer said advocates are linking the cause to human rights day as a demonstration of the fact that the rights of women and girls are also human rights. Striking a blow against a woman is a blow against human rights, she said. “Not something marginal to human rights, not a subset of human rights, but violations of human rights,” said Verveer at a State Department discussion forum held November 21.
“It is truly and sadly a global scourge.” The U.N. Men in the “creative class” make nearly twice as much as women.
Welfare. Rape and Violence. The Hyde Amendment at 35: How One Law Continues to Divide a Movement. This article is cross-posted from the National Network of Abortion Funds. Find all of our coverage on the Hyde Amendment at 35 here. The Hyde Amendment turns 35 this month. This provision, prohibiting federal Medicaid coverage of abortion in almost all circumstances, was the beginning of the anti-abortion movement’s post-Roe, all-out effort to ban abortion.
It was a gateway bill, opening the door to the flood of restrictions that today constrict a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion, forcing women to “choose” between paying for other basic necessities and having an abortion, and, in too many cases, making abortion impossible. It became the precedent for all other denials of abortion funding, and reinforces our discriminatory, two-tier health care system in which people without financial resources cannot get the care they need. The persistence of the Hyde Amendment also created a series of disastrous roadblocks to inclusive reproductive health coverage in other legislation.
Underreported and Unchecked: Sexual Violence Against Somali Refugee Women. Amal* left her village in Somalia when she realized that there was nothing left there for her. There was no food and no water. So she gathered her emaciated children and began the long trek to the refugee camps in northeastern Kenya. She thought that being forced to leave her home would be the worst thing to ever happen to her. That was until she was attacked and raped by bandits on the way. I recently returned from Kenya, where Somali women and families are seeking refuge by the thousands.
I met with Hubbie Hussein Al-Haji of MADRE’s sister organization, Womankind Kenya, a grassroots women’s organization of Somali pastoralists. We talked about the most urgent needs for famine refugees—for food and water—and about how MADRE and Womankind Kenya can work together to provide for them. And Hubbie told me about Amal and other women like her, who are arriving in northeastern Kenya traumatized not only from famine and displacement—but also from being raped along the trek.
Looking Forward. Dems Fuming Over GOP Threats To Planned Parenthood, Health Care Law. House Republicans are attaching controversial cuts and policy measures to legislation required to run the biggest domestic department in the federal government, and if they don't back off there will likely be, you guessed it, another government shutdown fight.
Already, Democrats in both chambers are saying a draft of the House's Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill is dead on arrival, because it contains deep cuts to heating assistance for the poor, requires the repeal of a major provision of the health care law that will help provide assistance for disabled people, halts implementation of the entire law until the Supreme Court determines the constitutionality of its individual insurance mandate, and slashes Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting. Just for starters. A Senate Dem aide familiar with appropriations issues weighs in with the following statement. "Members of the House have introduced more than 3,000 bills so far this Congress," the aide said. Acting out the Afghan outrage | World news | Guardian Weekly.
The bridegroom is 40, the bride is 11 ... Unicef's Photo of the Year 2007. Photograph: STEPHANIE SINCLAIR/UNICEF/HO/EPA On stage, a father is pressuring his young daughter to marry an older man, a commander, to solve the family's financial problems. The daughter resists and the father beats her; the girl's mother intervenes and the girl threatens suicide. This scene is not unfamiliar to an audience of Afghan women. This stage, where elements of Afghanistan's wars over the last 30 years are re-enacted, is a rare forum for women to come to terms with their traumas and express their feelings. Despite billions of dollars of aid, Afghan institutions remain weak and corrupt. Addressing a room of women - young and old, educated and illiterate, middle-class and poor - Zahra Yagana invites the audience to intervene.
Yagana works for Qanoon Guzari, a theatre project run by the Afghan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation (Ahrdo). "After we returned to Kabul I stayed at home. Austerity measures risk irreversible impact on children, warns Unicef | World news. Pledges by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to safeguard poor people from the worst of the global downturn are being challenged by the United Nations, which is warning of the "extraordinary price" being paid by children and other vulnerable groups as mass austerity programmes sweep across the developing world.
A study by the UN children's fund, Unicef, said there would be "irreversible impacts" of wage cuts, tax increases, benefit reductions and reductions in subsidies that bore most heavily on the most vulnerable in low-income nations. It found that between 2010 and 2012 a quarter of developing nations were engaged in what it called excessive belt-tightening, reducing spending to below the levels before the financial crisis began in 2007. Both Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, and Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said at the weekend that their organisations were seeking to build social safety nets to protect the weakest.
Oklahomans Express Frustration With Child Welfare Commissioners “asleep at the wheel” — Children’s Rights. Home CR Blog, News-Events Blog article: Oklahomans Express Frustration With Child Welfare Commissioners “asleep at the wheel” 12 Sep 2011 / Posted by cr Spurred by Children’s Rights reform campaign, pressure is mounting on Oklahoma child welfare commissioners, too many of whom seem less than engaged in foster care problems. It’s getting hot in Oklahoma … especially for the majority of commissioners charged with overseeing the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS). Just a few weeks ago, we reported that our continuing investigation into Oklahoma’s dysfunctional and dangerous foster care system continues to yield disturbing facts about the rate of abuse and neglect children are suffering while in state custody — and that about half of those incidents don’t get reported to the federal government. Equally disturbing is the lack of accountability and oversight we found at the highest levels of management.
Related Media Learn More: Dear Facebook: Rape Is No Joke. According to Facebook’s terms of service, users are not permitted to post content that is hateful, threatening or incites violence. But it appears that, in the minds of the Facebook powers-that-be, pages that encourage rape don’t violate that rule. For two months now, Facebook users have been campaigning for the site to take down several “rape joke” pages. The titles of these pages include such gems as “Riding your girlfriend softly, cause you don’t want to wake her up” and “You know she’s playing hard to get when you’re chasing her down an alleyway.”
Hundreds of Facebook users have reported the pages as Terms of Service violations, and a petition at Change.org (see below) demanding their removal has received over 130,000 signatures. But Facebook has yet to take action. Dozens of pages advocating rape or violence against women remain on the site, many with tens of thousands of fans. The defenders of these pages say that we need to lighten up. Sex as a battering ram? Oh my! Oh, if only people had stopped having sex! The American Taliban, in action: Jeffrey Kuhner, president of the conservative Edmund Burke Institute, say(s) birth control is no less than an affront to God. "In short, liberals want to create a world without God and sexual permissiveness is their battering ram.
Promoting widespread contraception is essential to forging a pagan society based on consequence-free sex," he wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Times. I had to go check out the source column, and it's really fun: Contraception violates the natural moral order. It decouples sexual intercourse from its main purpose: procreation.
Every time you hear conservatives talk about the "rights of the unborn," remember this—their opposition to abortion has nothing to do with babies. No, this has nothing to do with babies, and all about controlling human sexuality. To conservatives, sex is simply bad. I would say any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military. Too bad. Conservative Columnist: Liberals Are Using Sex as a Battering Ram for a Godless World. America's Fertility Class Divide: What new numbers from the Center for Work-Life Policy and the Guttmacher Institute reveal. - By Sharon Lerner. World Bank: Women Are 40 Percent Of World’s Workforce But Have Just One Percent Of Its Wealth. Learn how one ex-NY State Education official covered up child abuse at a boarding school for more than 20 years.
Disappearing Rape Kits and the Betrayal of American Women by Brooke Elise Axtell. Saudi Prince, Alwaleed, Fights Rape Accusation in Spain. Women's Rights Petition: Stand with President Obama: Help protect preventative care for women. Criminal Charges Threatened For Letting A Kid Ride Bike Her To School.