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Lakshmi spends her entire salary on the cats, then says she can’t afford to go on holiday with me
Continue reading...Research adds to growing evidence of the health benefits associated with natural environments
Living near green space could reduce the physical and psychological symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), researchers have found.
A first-of-its-kind study of more than 1,000 women aged 18 to 49 living in cities in Norway and Sweden found that women who across their lifetime live in neighbourhoods with more green space are less likely to experience PMS symptoms than those living in less green neighbourhoods.
Continue reading...Inter-American court of human rights orders Central American country to reform harsh policies on reproductive health
The Inter-American court of human rights has ruled that El Salvador was responsible for the death of Manuela, a woman who was jailed in 2008 for killing her baby when she suffered a miscarriage.
The court has ordered the Central American country to reform its draconian policies on reproductive health.
Continue reading...Case poses a direct threat to the legal underpinnings of the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion
Conservative justices in the US supreme court have signaled their support for curbing abortion access during oral arguments in the most important reproductive rights case in decades, threatening the future of abortion access across the country.
Campaigners have warned the case poses a direct threat to the legal underpinnings of Roe v Wade, a landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion. In their lines of questioning on Wednesday, liberal justices warned against abandoning important legal precedent, while conservatives argued for reviewing it.
Continue reading...Lawyers and campaigners fear decision not to grant appeal against conviction risks silencing other victims of domestic abuse
A mother jailed for harming her baby has accused the courts of “injustice” after judges accepted she was a victim of abuse but ruled against an application for an appeal against her conviction made on the grounds that her violent ex-partner coerced her to lie at her trial.
The woman, known as “Jenny”, was convicted in 2017 of causing or allowing serious harm after her child sustained skull fractures and bleeding on the brain. The baby’s father was her co-defendant but was acquitted on a lesser charge.
Continue reading...Season three of the daddy issues drama speaks volumes about the monstrous Man Club that rules society – and even billionaire’s daughter Shiv Roy can’t escape its sadistic clutches
Everyone eats their share of dung beetle surprise on Succession – HBO’s unrepentant daddy issues drama – but the women’s portions come heavily seasoned with the patriarchy’s favourite ingredients: sexism and misogyny. Even billionaire’s daughter Shiv Roy (played by Sarah Snook) can’t escape it. “It’s only your teats that give you any value,” her brother Kendall (Jeremy Strong) shouts after she rejects his offer to join him in another one of his patricidal business plans. Even before then, he couldn’t help but put a pin in her dreams of taking over the company: “You are too divisive … you’re still seen as a token woman, wonk, woke snowflake.”
“I don’t think that, but the market does,” he explains.
Continue reading...From Greece the women are advocating for fellow refugees – and those left behind under Taliban rule
It is a Saturday morning in November, and Afghan MP Nazifa Yousufi Bek gathers up her notes and prepares to head for the office. But instead of jumping in an armoured car bound for the mahogany-lined parliament in Kabul, her journey is by bus from a Greek hotel to a migrants’ organisation in the centre of Athens. There, taking her place on a folding chair, she inaugurates the Afghan women’s parliament in – exile.
“Our people have nothing. Mothers are selling their children,” she tells a room packed with her peers. “We must raise our voices, we must put a stop to this,” says Yousufi Bek, 35, who fled Afghanistan with her husband and three young children after the Taliban swept to power in August. Some around her nod in agreement; others quietly weep.
Continue reading...The farmers, mostly women, once grew enough but must now buy imported rice as the climate crisis edges them into poverty
In the sweltering heat of the late-morning west African sun, Aminata Jamba slashes at golden rice stalks with a sickle. “The rice is lovely,” she says, music playing in the background as her son, Sampa, silently harvests the grain. But even if the quality is high, the quantity is not.
While once Jamba could have expected to harvest enough rice to last the whole year, this year she reckons it will last three to four months. After that, she will have to look elsewhere for a way to feed her family and make enough money to live.
Continue reading...A cultural ‘cancer’, soft porn … or the height of empowerment? A revealing documentary examines the debates around one of the raunchiest – and most talked about – rap records around
As winter forces many of us to ditch nights out with friends in favour of nights in on the sofa, Belcalis Alamanzar’s iconic words ring out across the digital ether: “A ho never gets cold!”. In a clip that went viral in 2014, the rapper better known as Cardi B parades up and down a hotel corridor, clad in a plunging, barely-there bralette and tight-fitting skirt. For women who wear little and care about it even less, Megan Thee Stallion has made a name for herself in the same vein. Together, Meg and Cardi would go on to birth a movement with their hit 2020 single, WAP, an ode to female sexuality and “wet ass pussy” which brought a slice of the club to the worlds’ living rooms at the peak of lockdown.
In three minutes and seven seconds of poetic dirty talk, the pair walk us through the spiciest of bedroom sessions, except – contrary to patriarchal norms – they are firmly in the driver’s seat. From fellatio to make-up sex, Cardi and Megan leave their targets weak. With the video quickly becoming a talking point around the world, their sexual desire (and that of women in general) became the subject of fierce debate. While many praised their cheeky candour, others were unimpressed, with Fox News’s Candace Owens going as far as to call Cardi a “cancer cell” who was destroying culture.
Continue reading...They are almost twice as likely to be sexually assaulted as non-disabled women. Why is so little being done to address this harrowing, pervasive problem?
Amy Kavanagh is as happy as anyone else that the world is opening up – but there is one thing she is not thrilled to be experiencing again. “As much as I’m excited to be getting out and socialising again, it comes at a cost,” she says. Kavanagh is blind and sexual harassment is as frequent in her everyday life as it is disturbing. “I get harassed in public, on the street, in shops, on public transport, in cabs and even in professional environments. Pre-pandemic, I experienced inappropriate sexual touching at least once a month,” she says.
While there has been a renewed focus on women’s safety since the deaths of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, little attention has been paid to the harassment and violence faced by disabled women. Yet women with a disability are almost twice as likely to have experienced sexual assault (5%) as women without a disability (2.8%), according to ONS data for the two years to March 2020. This is not an anomaly; in the previous three years, the figure was 5.7%. In 2021, a survey of more than 1,000 disabled women carried out by the Trades Union Congress found that 68% had experienced sexual harassment at work. The figures constitute a hidden blight on disabled women’s lives.
Continue reading...After the attack, I became preoccupied with the idea that my case would be questioned because of my disability. But what happened continues to haunt me
I have been a wheelchair user for a number of years, due to a progressive condition. I have been a rape survivor for four. These things are more connected than you might think.
I first met Alex (not his real name) four years ago. We were at a house party. He was drunk and I was sober; this would become a running theme.
Continue reading...When the UK’s jab programme began, expectant mothers were told to steer clear – so Samantha decided to wait until she had had her baby. Two weeks after giving birth, she died in hospital
It was typical of Samantha Willis that she bought the food for her baby shower herself. No fuss; she didn’t want other people to be put out. She even bought a cheese board, despite the fact that, because she was pregnant, she couldn’t eat half of it.
On 1 August, the care worker and mother of three from Derry was eight months pregnant with her third daughter. The weather was beautiful, so Samantha stood out in the sun, ironing clothes and getting everything organised for the baby.
Continue reading...When the roads are not up to it, a mobile clinic on hooves brings family planning and other medical supplies to remote communities. Photographer Ami Vitale visits Lekiji to see how the villagers have reaped the benefits
Thirteen camels amble their way across the dusty, drought-stricken landscape, accompanied by seven men in bright yellow T-shirts and three nurses. The camels are loaded with trunks full of medicines, bandages and family planning products. It’s a mobile health clinic on hooves. When the camels arrive at their destination, men, women and children form a line as they wait for the handlers to unload the boxes and set up tables and tents.
Among those waiting is Jacinta Peresia, who first encountered the health visitors six years ago after she nearly died giving birth to her 11th child, a daughter called Emali.
No roads, no problem. Communities Health Africa Trust (Chat) delivers health care to hard-to-reach areas of Kenya
Continue reading...With up to one in five new mothers suffering depression or psychosis, experts say the need for help is ‘overwhelming’ India
A month after giving birth, Divya tried to suffocate her new daughter with a pillow. “There were moments when I loved my baby; at other times I would try and suffocate her to death,” says the 26-year-old from the southern Indian state of Kerala.
She sought help from women’s organisations and the women’s police station, staffed by female officers, in her town. But Divya was told that the safest place for a child was with her mother.
Continue reading...Patients travelling long distances to find surgery cancelled as lack of anaesthetics shuts operating theatres in half of hospitals
Almost half of Malawi’s district hospitals have closed their operating theatres due to a dire shortage of anaesthetics.
Maternity care has been affected by a lack of drugs, said doctors. Surgery, including caesareans, has been cancelled and patients needing emergency care have been moved hundreds of miles around the country.
Continue reading...Memorial to novelist would be by Thames, which would evoke her suicide by drowning
Concerns have been raised about a planned statue of Virginia Woolf overlooking the Thames, which has been called insensitive because of the way she killed herself.
The memorial the author, designed by Laury Dizengremel, would be positioned on a park bench overlooking the river on Richmond riverside in south-west London, where she lived for about a decade from 1914.
Continue reading...With queues for petrol, inflation and Abba on the radio, it’s easy to compare the two decades. But you wouldn’t if you were there, says Polly Toynbee, as she revisits the styles of her youth
Queueing for petrol, I turn on the radio and there are Abba, singing their latest hit. Shortages on shop shelves are headline news, with warnings of a panic-buying Christmas. And national debt is sky high. But this isn’t the 1970s; it’s 2021. People who weren’t born then have been calling this a return to that decade. There are similarities, of course: this retro-thought was sparked by the recent petrol queues, people as frantic to fill up to get to work as I remember back then. Elsewhere, flowing floral midi dresses are back, just like the ones I wore; Aldi is selling rattan hanging egg chairs; and, as well as Abba, the charts have been topped by Elton John. But is this really a 1970s reprise?
No, nothing like it; not history repeated, not even as farce – just a stylist’s pastiche, as bold as the wallpaper I’m posing in front of here. Folk memory preserves only the 1974 three-day week; the miners’ strike blackouts, with no street lights and candle shortages; the embargo that quadrupled the price of oil. True, I did queue at the coal merchant’s to fire up an ancient stove for lack of any other heat or light. But the decade shouldn’t be defined by this, or by 1978-79’s “winter of discontent” strikes, a brief but pungent time of rubbish uncollected and (a very few) bodies unburied by council gravediggers.
Continue reading...Women from around the world describe the life-changing impact of finally receiving a diagnosis
Less than 20 hours after asking women who had received a late diagnosis of autism, we received 139 replies from around the world.
There were women whose lives had been scarred by victimisation, from bullying to rape, because without a diagnosis they did not know they were highly vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.
Continue reading...Rosamund Pike, who stars in Amazon Prime’s forthcoming take on Robert Jordan’s fantasy series, says his female characters are role models. Really?
What is going on with Amazon Prime’s characterisation of The Wheel of Time? I ask this as a fantasy fan, someone who not only adores the classy stuff (NK Jemisin, Guy Gavriel Kay etc) but has also devotedly ploughed her way through The Belgariad, most of Terry Goodkind (until it got too crazy even for me) and Simon R Green. And how many people involved with the forthcoming adaptation have actually marathoned their way through all of the books?
My eyebrows were first raised back when the deal to adapt Robert Jordan’s extremely long series was announced in 2018, when head of Amazon Studios Jennifer Salke praised its “timely narrative featuring powerful women at the core”. Now, I read these books in my late teens, but my resounding memory of them was not of “powerful women”. In fact, I remember thinking Jordan’s depiction of women was pretty dismal – he might have packed in far more female characters than Tolkien ever did, but they’re constantly objectified, forever hoisting their bosoms around, adjusting their skirts – even getting spanked as punishment.
Continue reading...Marriage of under-18s associated with risk of domestic, sexual and ‘honour’-based violence, say MPs, who will vote on Friday
A bill that would ban child marriage in England and Wales will be presented to parliament for its second reading this week and has been welcomed by campaigners as a “huge stride” forward.
Currently, marriage and civil partnerships are legal at 16 and 17 with parental consent. This is not just out of step with international legislation but also a loophole that is “more often used as a mechanism for abuse”, according to Pauline Latham, MP, who will present her bill on Friday.
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