Emboldened by the body-positive movement and a sense of rage, a growing chorus is pushing back against a common custom
The media officer of one of the UK’s top medical schools doesn’t realise she hasn’t muted herself as she puts me on hold.
She sniggers with her colleague as she passes on my request – to speak to an expert on male circumcision – before informing me they don’t have one.
Continue reading...The kingdom has long been a man’s world, where women have the legal status of children. Do the latest reforms represent progress – or a PR exercise?
At the Luna food factory on the south-east outskirts of Jeddah, Mashael Elghamdi sits at her computer in an artfully ripped AC/DC T-shirt and jeans. The faint whirr of machines processing cans of beans, cream and evaporated milk can be heard over the sound of eight women typing and sometimes laughing. A screensaver of a smiling Cameron Diaz gazes out from one corner of the room. This is an all-female office. And because there is no need for the full-length abayas women are legally required to wear when interacting with men at work or in public, it is a riot of colour.
On the factory floor below, women in custom-made overalls on an all-female production line apply labels to cans. “All the women you see here do everything themselves,” says supervisor Fatima Albasisi, who oversees 90 workers. A staircase and a corridor separate the female factory workers from their male counterparts, while the men-only offices are in a different building. “If there’s a problem with the machines, they can fix it,” Albasisi adds. “If I could, I’d have a factory entirely run by women, no men at all. In my experience, women show up to work on time and make fewer mistakes.”
Continue reading...There is a ‘much more forgiving attitude’ towards Muslim male offenders, say former convicts
The Muslim community in Britain shuns women who have been to prison while forgiving convicted men, “no matter what they’ve done”, according to a report.
Female former prisoners told researchers, Muslim experts in the criminal justice system, that they suffered a “conspiracy of silence” after being released from jail, having to hide or move away in order to not bring shame on their families.
Continue reading...When someone is confronted by illness, we can’t resist being intrusive and speculative
This month my dear friend died from cancer, leaving behind a young family. A continent apart, we talked about her illness and what it meant. She told me that she wasn’t afraid of dying and I believed her because she knew the rich legacy she had created. But in the aftermath of her death a post her daughter released tore me asunder. In it, my friend recalls the reaction of strangers to her illness.
“How could you contract this disgusting illness?” one wailed. “You could easily have another five years,” shrugged another. (She just made it past one.) An acquaintance was angry at not having been told sooner. Another was perplexed by her equanimity, leading to an ambush at the elevator: “You know this is terminal, right?” Someone wanted to know the exact site of cancer. Another recalled the relative of a relative who died of exactly that kind of cancer not so long ago.
Continue reading...There’s been a $1bn boost in support in the last two years, but only tiny pots of money are trickling down to feminist groups
In the past two years alone, governments and international institutions have announced more than $1bn (£0.8bn) in new commitments to support gender equality globally.
These include: €500m (£440m) for the European Union and UN’s joint Spotlight Initiative, €120m by France for its feminist foreign policy and $114m by Norway to end sexual and gender-based violence in conflicts. Canada has announced CAD$490m (£290m) towards three programmes: women’s leadership ($150m), the LGBTQ2 Fund ($40m), and the Equality Fund ($300m). This fund was among the nearly $600m committed to women and girls in June at the Women Deliver conference.
Continue reading...Emily Eavis says there are male execs in music industry who insist on speaking to her father
The Glastonbury festival organiser, Emily Eavis, has said some men in the music industry still refuse to deal with her despite her taking over responsibility from her father for overseeing the lineup.
Speaking days before the start of this year’s event, Eavis, 40, who has been booking acts at Glastonbury for half her life, said she was often the only woman in meetings with music moguls.
Continue reading...Analysts to compile database to track spike in cases, with female politicians and campaigners increasingly targeted
Violence targeted against female politicians and activists will be tracked for the first time by a global database, amid indications of a recent rise in attacks.
Researchers reviewed thousands of events dating back to 1997, where political violence was targeted at women – ranging from wartime sexual violence to attacks on female civilians and crackdowns on female-led protests.
Continue reading...Central African Republic has the highest rate of boy grooms, followed by Nicaragua, Madagascar, Nauru and Honduras
One in 30 young men were married as children, according to the first UN analysis of child marriage rates among boys.
Around 115 million boys and men around the world were married before they turned 18, according to Unicef, which warned the issue is often overlooked.
Continue reading...The first global index measuring efforts to end gender inequality finds countries are not doing enough to improve women’s lives
No country in the world is on track to achieve gender equality by 2030, according to the first index to measure progress against a set of internationally agreed targets.
Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said the index, launched on Monday, “should serve as a wake-up call to the world”.
Continue reading...Ratio of females in European parliament up to 39% from 36%, analysis of results shows
More women have been elected to the European parliament than ever before but men still account for 60% of MEPs, according to an early analysis of the European election results.
The proportion of female MEPs has increased slightly from 36% five years ago to about 39%, or 286 out of 751 seats, with nearly all of the official results confirmed.
Continue reading...Denounced on TV, they train at secret locations watched by armed guards. We meet the woman from Hastings who made a fascinating film about Libya’s guttsiest football squad
‘Just what our country needs!” rails the imam sarcastically on Libyan TV. “A women’s football team! And what’s more, they chose tall, young beautiful girls for the team – and for months their legs will be exposed.”
Women’s football may be getting its moment in the spotlight with the World Cup about to kick off. But, as the absorbing new documentary Freedom Fields reveals, the Libyan women’s national team has some way to go. As well as that imam, the film also features this statement from extremist group Ansar al-Sharia: “We strongly refute what the supporters of immoral westernisation are doing under the pretext of women’s freedom. This might lead to other sports with even more nudity, such as swimming and running.”
Continue reading...Female-voiced tech often gives submissive responses to queries, Unesco report finds
Assigning female genders to digital assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa is helping entrench harmful gender biases, according to a UN agency.
Research released by Unesco claims that the often submissive and flirty responses offered by the systems to many queries – including outright abusive ones – reinforce ideas of women as subservient.
Continue reading...The lower house of the Missouri general assembly passed a bill on Friday to prohibit women from seeking an abortion after the eighth week of pregnancy, days after Alabama enacted the most restrictive abortion law in the US.
The House of Representatives gave its final legislative approval in a 110-44 vote after protesters were removed from the public gallery. Missouri senators overwhelmingly approved the legislation on Thursday.
Obria Group’s ads suggest it provides abortion services, when in fact it tries to persuade women not to terminate pregnancies
Google has given tens of thousands of dollars in free advertising to an anti-abortion group that runs ads suggesting it provides abortion services at its medical clinics, but actually seeks to deter “abortion-minded women” from terminating their pregnancies.
Related: Abortion: judge strikes down Kentucky restriction but governor to appeal
Continue reading...The actor Alyssa Milano ignited a social media storm with a call for women to join her in a sex strike, to protest against strict abortion laws passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures.
Related: Abortion: judge strikes down Kentucky restriction but governor to appeal
Continue reading...Federal judge says 2018 law would create ‘substantial obstacle’ to abortion rights
After a federal judge struck down a Kentucky abortion law that would halt a common second-trimester procedure to end pregnancies, the state’s anti-abortion Republican governor immediately vowed to appeal.
Related: All the president’s judges: how Trump can flip courts at a record-setting pace
Continue reading...Judicial harassment and rise in arrests under anti-sodomy law add to climate of tension and fear
One of the Arab world’s most visible advocacy groups defending the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people is facing closure following legal threats by the government.
Association Shams has been officially operating in Tunisia since 2015, helping the country’s LGBT community repeal article 230 of its penal code, a French colonial law, which criminalises homosexuality with up to three years in jail.
Continue reading...Armenia’s first passport-registered transgender woman has received death threats following an impassioned parliamentary speech. Lilit Martirosyan became the first member of the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community to take to the parliamentary podium, speaking out against discrimination at a session before the committee on human rights. The speech, delivered a fortnight ago, has sparked a vicious backlash in Armenia, where homosexuality has been decriminalised but discrimination against LGBTI people remains rife
Armenian MPs call for trans activist to be burned alive after historic speech
Continue reading...Landmark parliamentary address on LGBTI discrimination challenges reformist agenda of post-revolution government
Armenia’s first registered transgender woman has received death threats after making a historic speech in her country’s national assembly.
Lilit Martirosyan became the first member of her country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community to take to the parliamentary podium, speaking out against discrimination at a session of its committee on human rights. A video of the speech has been shared around the world.
Continue reading...Defoe’s book has inspired novels, Hollywood movies and games – but the shipwrecked slave-trader should never have become a role model
In February 1719, two months before the publication of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe proposed in the Weekly Journal that the South Sea Company – founded just eight years earlier to manage the national debt and awarded a contract to supply the Spanish colonies in Latin America with several thousand African slaves per year – should oversee the founding of a British colony at the mouth of the River Orinoco on the coast of present day Venezuela. The government would be required “to furnish six Men of War, and 4000 regular Troops, with some Engineers and 100 pieces of Cannon, and military Stores in Proportion for the maintaining and supporting the Design”, but “the Revenue it shall bring to the Kingdom will be a full amends”. Defoe chose to locate the fictional island on which Crusoe is stranded around 40 miles from the mouth of the Orinoco, and furnish it with a kindlier climate than that of the actual island on which Alexander Selkirk, the presumed model for Crusoe, was marooned. His book (no one was calling it a “novel” at the time) was a prospectus for potential investors, lacking only glossy photos of beaches and palm trees.
Bribery and insider dealing combined with public credulity to drive the share price of the South Sea Company unsustainably high, and in 1720 the bubble burst, causing widespread financial ruin. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – which recounts, in addition to Crusoe’s diligent labours on the island, his skirmishes with cannibals and a crew of English mutineers, his rescue and a perilous overland journey from Lisbon to bring home the fortune that has been accumulating during his absence – would have been a better investment. By late summer 1719 the book had been reprinted three times and Defoe had published a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. A third volume, Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, followed in 1720. By the end of the 19th century, the original Crusoe had been reissued in several hundred editions and the book had come to resemble, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “one of the anonymous productions of the race rather than the effort of a single mind”. During the 20th century, Defoe’s original template was turned upside down and inside out – by, among many others, HG Wells, Jean Giraudoux, William Golding, JG Ballard and Julio Cortázar – in ways that reflected changing attitudes to race, gender, imperialism, rationality and the environment.
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