As the country grapples with a worsening crisis, the revolt among a new generation of feminists is picking up steam: ‘It’s our last resort’
Dalilah Loza is 15 and dreams of being an orthodontist, or an economist - perhaps even a photographer.
But most of all she wants to be the voice of her mother.
Continue reading...The 5% rate on sanitary products will end. Rishi Sunak also plans to ensure banks keep circulating cash
The chancellor will announce the abolition of the “tampon tax” in next week’s budget, marking the successful conclusion to a 20-year campaign by women’s rights activists.
Tampons and other women’s sanitary products currently have 5% VAT added to their price, but this will be scrapped, saving the average woman £40 over her lifetime. The tax will end when Britain leaves the EU at the end of December.
Continue reading...Saitama assembly hopes move will reflect changing attitudes towards women in workplaces
A local government assembly is attempting to shake up Japan’s conservative workplace culture by ending the custom of employing women to serve tea at meetings.
Few official gatherings in Japan have properly begun until female employees – known collectively as the ochakumi (“tea squad”) – have placed cups of green tea in front of their invariably male senior colleagues, occasionally accompanied by something sweet.
Continue reading...Elizabeth Warren’s departure shines light on a system that is rife with sexism but rejects candidates who address it
“Gender in this race?” Senator Elizabeth Warren said outside her home on Thursday. “You know that is the trap question for every woman. If you say, ‘Yeah! There was sexism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner!’ And if you say, ‘No, there was no sexism, about a bazillion women think, ‘What planet do you live on?’”
She added: “I promise you this. I will have a lot more to say on that subject later on.”
Continue reading...European-listed firms could face fines if fewer than 40% of their non-executive board seats are taken by women
The European Union executive is reviving plans for mandatory quotas of women on company boards, amid slowing progress towards gender equality among top management.
The EU commissioner for equality, Helena Dalli, told journalists that quotas “can be a very ugly word” but were also “a necessary evil, in the sense we have to use quotas because otherwise we will wait another 100 years for things to change by themselves”.
Continue reading...Analysis of 75 countries reveals ‘shocking’ scale of global women’s rights backlash
Almost 90% of people are biased against women, according to a new index that highlights the “shocking” extent of the global backlash towards gender equality.
Despite progress in closing the equality gap, 91% of men and 86% of women hold at least one bias against women in relation to politics, economics, education, violence or reproductive rights.
Continue reading...A quarter of a century after world conference pledged to advance gender equality, reports finds opportunities and rights still lacking
Girls are far less likely to get married or drop out of school than ever before, but worryingly high rates of obesity, suicide and sexually transmitted infections underline how uneven global progress has been for them over the past 25 years, according to a report published on Wednesday.
Despite major gains in some aspects of girls’ lives since governments pledged at the fourth world conference on women in 1995 to advance the rights of women and girls, violence against them is still not only common but accepted, claim the UN children’s agency, Plan International, and UN Women. They warn that if discrimination continues, the 2030 gender equality targets are unlikely to be achieved.
Continue reading...Police comments last week that they were keeping an ‘open mind’ on the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three young children by her former partner were widely condemned. In this episode of Full Story, reporter Ben Smee looks at the track record of Queensland police on domestic violence, and we hear from one woman about her own shocking story
You can read Ben Smee’s reporting on Dani’s case here, and his piece about how Hannah Clarke’s murder exposes a ‘failure in our system’.
You can also read his reporting on Queensland woman Julie, who was forced to go into hiding after a senior constable, Neil Punchard, accessed her address from a police database and sent it to her violent former husband.
Continue reading...Smaller steak advertised as ‘one for the ladies!’ at Manhattan Bar and Grill
A restaurant in Liverpool has attracted online ridicule for selling an 8oz “ladies fillet” steak, which is smaller than the other cuts on its menu.
The entry for the £18.95 dish on the Manhattan Bar and Grill menu reads: “One for the ladies! A beautiful 8oz cut, because we can!”
Continue reading...Koch lands in Kazakhstan after 328 days in space, the longest continuous spaceflight by a female astronaut
She would miss the friendship of her crewmates, she said, and of course the spectacular views.
But after 328 days on the International Space Station – the longest continuous spaceflight ever undertaken by a female astronaut – Christina Koch could not deny last week that she was looking forward to experiencing some very simple pleasures back on Earth, including “the feeling of wind on my face”.
Continue reading...This year’s all-male nominations for best director are just the latest episode in a long history of women being under-represented at the Academy Awards. We look at the data
The 92nd Academy Awards take place this Sunday. But as a new decade begins, it appears little has improved in the fight for gender equality in Hollywood. Ungendered awards categories are once again dominated by men. Ahead of this year’s ceremony, we examine how the imbalance breaks down. Carry on scrolling to explore.
Continue reading...Sophie Grau and Iris Klopfer say they are continuing rather than destroying event’s 200-year-old traditions
The first same-sex couple to dance at Vienna’s Opera Ball say they are continuing rather than destroying the event’s 200-year-old traditions, since they are “good dancers and stick to the dress code”.
Sophie Grau and Iris Klopfer, both students from Germany, have been accepted to join the procession of 288 young “debutantes” who will dance their first waltz at the Viennese society event on 20 February.
Continue reading...Exclusive: attempts to tackle crisis fail because gender issues are not addressed, report finds
Climate breakdown and the global crisis of environmental degradation are increasing violence against women and girls, while gender-based exploitation is in turn hampering our ability to tackle the crises, a major report has concluded.
Attempts to repair environmental degradation and adapt to climate breakdown, particularly in poorer countries, are failing, and resources are being wasted because they do not take gender inequality and the effects on women and girls into account.
Continue reading...Children’s charity Plan International UK and photographer Joyce Nicholls travelled across the UK talking to young women about the issues important to them in 2020: public safety, body image, social media and feminism. Their research found that girls are fed up and frustrated with the lack of real progress on gender equality.
Continue reading...The presenter said she was glad the case had been won and thanked the NUJ, her lawyers and barrister outside the BBC in London. Judges condemned the BBC’s defence that Ahmed’s job as presenter of the audience feedback show Newswatch was significantly different to Jeremy Vine’s on Points of View and criticised the difference of pay between her £440-an-episode rate and the £3,000 Vine received per episode
Continue reading...American Dialect Society’s choice recognises word’s rising use to refer to person whose gender identity is non-binary
US linguists have chosen “they” as their word of the decade, recognising the growing use of third-person plural pronouns as a singular form to refer to people who identify their gender as neither entirely male nor entirely female.
The American Dialect Society also bestowed its word of the year honours on the increasingly common practice of introducing oneself in correspondence or socially by the set of pronouns one prefers to be called by – declaring in an email, for example, “pronouns: she/her”.
Continue reading...Deb Frecklington said she had ‘no choice but to remain grounded’ because she had children, and said the premier’s fashion choices were ‘too much’
Federal and state Labor MPs have rounded on the Queensland LNP leader, Deb Frecklington, after she criticised Annastacia Palaszczuk for her fashion choices and said she had “no choice but to remain grounded” because she had children.
In an interview with the Sunday Mail, Frecklington said Palaszczuk had “deliberately changed her image – the whole ‘Princess Palaszczuk’ is pretty obvious – but I haven’t changed mine”.
Continue reading...Campaigners hail year of key global gatherings and events as vital opportunity to secure ‘bold, accountable commitments and action’
World leaders, civil society and the private sector are preparing to make 2020 the biggest year yet for the advancement of women’s rights.
Over the course of the year, thousands of people are expected to attend high-level UN events and forums in Mexico City and Paris to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing platform for action, a landmark agreement to end gender inequality.
Continue reading...Authorities sanction strict Islamic fatwa that forbids boys and girls playing together on stage – but face strong criticism from teachers
Two orchestral concerts by students and graduates of Gaza’s decade-old music conservatory have been cancelled after the Hamas authorities insisted for the first time that they could not go ahead with girls and boys playing together on stage.
The Gaza music school, part of the Palestinian-wide Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, rejected a new single-sex condition which the conductor told the Observer would be a disaster for the 45-member orchestra if sustained by the de facto government.
Continue reading...Activists welcome passing of key demands of protest movement that toppled Bashir
Activists in Sudan have welcomed a decision by the transitional government to dissolve the former ruling party and repeal a public order law used to regulate women’s behaviour under the former president Omar al-Bashir.
Bashir has been in detention since being forced from power in April, when security forces withdrew their support for his regime after months of protests in which more than 100 people were killed.
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