Charities press World Health Organization to ensure women can get contraception and safe abortions during crisis
The World Health Organization is being urged to declare abortion an essential health service during the coronavirus pandemic.
In guidance notes issued last week, the WHO advised all governments to identify and prioritise the health services each believed essential, listing reproductive health services as an example.
Continue reading...Company becomes first major employer in the country to stop forcing dress code on women
Female flight attendants working for Japan Airlines will no longer be required to wear high heels or skirts, the airline has said, in a rare victory for Japan’s #KuToo campaign against workplace dress codes for women.
The airline is the first major Japanese company to relax its regulations in response to complaints from women that having to wear high heels was uncomfortable and often left them in considerable pain.
Continue reading...The Saudi Arabian director directed her first film, Wadjda, hiding in the back of a van on the streets of Riyadh. Now her latest, The Perfect Candidate, is opening doors in Hollywood
Haifaa Al-Mansour’s latest film, The Perfect Candidate, opens with a doctor in her 20s driving to work. In any other film you wouldn’t register the fact that she’s behind the wheel. But this woman, dressed in a black abaya and niqab, is in Saudi Arabia, which until 2018 banned women from driving. Al-Mansour added the scene as a punch-the-air moment for female audiences in Saudi Arabia, an invite to a collective whoop of victory. “I know that in the west this seems like common-sense stuff,” she says. “But I think they’ve really helped women to see themselves as an independent people.” She fixes me with an earnest look, to see if I get it. “For younger professional women, it’s huge, because it gives them control over their destiny.”
Al-Mansour is Saudi Arabia’s first female director. In 2011, she shot her debut, Wadjda, hiding in the back of a van. It would have been impossible for a woman to be seen openly on the street giving orders to men. So, she kept out of sight and used a walkie-talkie (“But I’m sure you could hear my voice all over Riyadh. ‘Do that!’ ‘Pull the camera back!’”) The film was gorgeous, a funny, big-hearted story about a gobby 10-year-old girl who would stop at nothing to get her hands on a bike. Al-Mansour shrugged off the death threats (“One of them told me they had a coffin ready for me”). Spend five minutes in her company and you are struck by her optimistic energy.
Continue reading...The shoot, featuring musician Dani Miller in mascara, has reignited debate about realistic standards of beauty
One is famed for warts-and-all realism, the other for high-end gloss, so there was always going to be something spectacular in the offing when British photographer Martin Parr was asked to shoot a make-up advertising campaign for the Italian fashion house Gucci.
The imagery – for the brand’s new L’Obscur mascara – features New York punk musician Dani Miller and her now-famous gap-toothed smile. With lashings of heavy black mascara, natural eyebrows (complete with, shock horror, regrowth), and minimal foundation, it has divided customers and started yet another debate about diversity, even in these times of increased body positivity.
Continue reading...Four found guilty of attack that shocked the world were hanged in capital on Friday morning
India has executed the four men who were convicted of the brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman on bus in Delhi in 2012, a case which shocked the world and brought India’s problem with sexual violence against women into the spotlight.
Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh had been found guilty in a 2013 trial and sentenced to death by hanging, but their execution had been postponed multiple times due to Supreme Court appeals.
Continue reading...Seeking an abortion was a crime until now, but new legislation has removed the stigma and given women a choice
New Zealand’s current abortion laws are more than 40 years old and were enacted when there were more MPs in Parliament named Bill than MPs who were female. This week we brought the laws into the 21st century.
Up to now, women seeking an abortion in New Zealand were committing a crime under our main criminal statute but had a defence if they followed the requirements of the abortion legislation. These requirements included the woman being referred by their doctor to two specialists who each had to certify she faces a serious danger to her life or physical or mental health. Other conditions also applied, such as whether the pregnancy was a result of incest or the woman lacked capacity to consent. For abortions after 20 weeks, conditions were more stringent.
Continue reading...Mariam and Edna were just two of millions of children trapped in domestic slavery. Their tragic stories inspired me to write a novel targeting a practice that is rife in the country
One day, when my daughter was eight, I asked her to help me unload the dishwasher. She moaned, dragged her feet and pleaded for Haribo in exchange for this simple task. I asked her if she knew how lucky she was and told her that, in many homes in Nigeria, girls as young as her were forced to do chores all day, every day. They were not allowed to go to school, or eat at the table, or watch TV. She was amazed. Looking into her face, the horror of what was considered so normal during my childhood really hit me. It was child slavery – and it continues today. It was for these forgotten girls, trapped in domestic slavery, that I wrote my debut novel, The Girl With the Louding Voice.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria is estimated to be as high as 15 million, but due to the nature of the problem it is almost impossible to land on an accurate number. A large proportion of these children are young girls, who work as “house girls”: domestic servants who are often underage and forced against their will into this kind of work. Many of them never see their “wages”, as they are paid directly to agents or family members.
Continue reading...Of course I want him to choose a woman as his running mate. But his grand gesture feels more like pandering than policy
Stacey Abrams? Kamala Harris? Elizabeth Warren? Nobody knows for sure whom Joe Biden will choose as a running mate if – as is almost certain – he wins the Democratic nomination, but we do know it will be a woman.
“I’ll pick a woman to be vice-president,” Biden promised during Sunday’s presidential debate with Bernie Sanders. “There are a number of women qualified to be president tomorrow.” While none of those eminently qualified women will be president any time soon, one lucky lady may have the privilege of playing second fiddle to a gaffe-prone white guy. To cement his position as intersectional male feminist of the year, Biden also promised to appoint an African American woman to the supreme court.
Continue reading...MP Esther Passaris says lives are being put at risk in a country where 40% of pregnancies are unplanned
The pills arrived with no instructions. Delivered on a Sunday to Joy’s home in Kayole, an informal settlement in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, by someone she didn’t know.
She had ordered them because she was pregnant, and didn’t want to be. At 19, she said, she couldn’t support a baby, and the father had stopped answering his phone after she told him. Desperate, she had asked an older friend, who said she knew someone who could help.
Continue reading...New report calls for national surveys by governments to underline scale of worldwide abuse
The number of women and girls who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) could be much higher than previously estimated, as a new report shows the practice is carried out in more than 90 countries around the world.
The UN estimates that 200 million women and girls have undergone FGM. But this figure is drawn from only 31 countries – 27 in Africa – where national data has been collected.
Continue reading...Kate Beckinsale claims disgraced movie mogul was enraged when she wore white suit rather than ‘tight dress’ to New York premiere shortly after 9/11
Kate Beckinsale has described an obscenity-filled rant by Harvey Weinstein in which he allegedly called her “stupid fucking cunt” after he objected to her choice of outfit for a film premiere in 2001.
In a post on social media, Beckinsale outlined events after a screening for the romcom Serendipity, in which she starred opposite John Cusack. She said Weinstein insisted on holding the premiere only a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, calling it “the most insensitive, tone deaf, disrespectful idea possible”. Beckinsale said Weinstein had arranged for her to visit his home with her two-year-old daughter, and then launched a tirade at her when they were alone.
Continue reading...The notorious case of three teenage sisters inspired a campaign for change – and a backlash from the patriarchy. By Matthew Luxmoore
At about 3pm on 27 July 2018, the day of his death, Mikhail Khachaturyan scolded his three teenage daughters, Krestina, Angelina and Maria. The apartment they shared – in a Soviet-era housing block near the huge ring road that encircles Moscow – was a mess, he told them, and they would pay for having left it that way. A large, irascible man in his late 50s with a firm Orthodox faith, Khachaturyan had run his household despotically since he allegedly forced his wife to leave in 2015.
That afternoon, his daughters would later tell investigators, he punished them in his customary sadistic way. Calling them one by one into his bedroom, he cursed and yelled at them, then pepper sprayed each one in the face. The oldest sister, Krestina, 19, began to choke from the effects of the spray. Retreating to the bedroom she shared with her sisters, Krestina collapsed on the bed and lost consciousness. Her sister Maria, then 17, the youngest of the three, would later describe this moment as “the final straw”.
Continue reading...‘Stagnant’ global health system is dominated by rich states, rooted in colonialism and undervalues women, says study
A small group of privileged men based in Europe and the US preside over a global health system which is 70% male, according to new research.
The Global Health 50/50 report, published on Monday by University College London’s Institute of Global Health, warns it could take 54 years until the world’s major health organisations have equality in their leadership.
Continue reading...Women and children part of thousands who took to streets around world, but some protests turned violent
Female asylum seekers have staged a demonstration at the Turkish border demanding to be let into the EU as part of protests around the world on International Women’s Day.
All over the globe, thousands of women took to the streets, including South Americans campaigning for access to abortions and topless demonstrations in London and Paris.
Continue reading...A selection of images from events and protests across the globe to mark International Women’s Day, which has been held every year on 8 March since 1977, when the UN invited member states to declare a day for women’s rights and world peace
Continue reading...On International Women’s Day, let’s commit to properly compensating women for the unpaid and underpaid work they have always done
The world would stop running were it not for the unpaid and underpaid work undertaken by women. It is past time for our contribution to be recognised, and remunerated fairly. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we are creating a new process to appropriately value the caring work traditionally undertaken by women.
It started in 2013, when a care and support worker named Kristine Bartlett, supported by her union (E Tū), filed a pay equity claim under the Equal Pay Act 1972. She made the case that the caring work she did was undervalued because it was mainly performed by women. This was compared to work that was male-dominated but required a similar level of skill, effort and responsibilities.
Continue reading...Men don’t abuse women because society tells them it’s OK. They do it because society tells them they are entitled to be in control
Investigative journalist Jess Hill interviewed dozens of abused women, domestic abuse sector workers, male perpetrators, children’s advocates and system experts over five years in order to write her award-winning book, See What You Made Me Do. Here she answers some questions about issues arising from the murders in Brisbane of Hannah Clarke and her three children Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4 and Trey, 3.
Hannah Clarke’s family described her husband Rowan Baxter as controlling, coercive and obsessive. His abuse appears to have followed a familiar script known as coercive control. Can you explain this?
Continue reading...Household brands’ mascots have undergone a makeover ahead of International Women’s Day
He’s the jolly bearded Father Christmas lookalike who for decades has dominated the seas – and our TV screens – as the familiar face of Birds Eye frozen fish fingers.
But with a handful of fellow male advertising mascots Captain Birds Eye has been temporarily elbowed aside – and replaced with a more youthful female equivalent – in a new drive to highlight the lack of women fronting some of the UK’s top household brands.
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 new report concludes that women are not being given epidurals and not being fully informed about pain relief by NHS trusts. Does a belief in natural births lie behind this?
Giving birth was, for Kate, like going “through a war”. She had repeatedly asked for an epidural; instead, she was allowed only gas and air and two paracetamol. She was “exhausted, dazed, torn, bloody and frightened” by the time her healthy son was placed in her arms.
“I asked three times for an epidural,” Kate says of her 26-hour labour to deliver her baby, who was back to back and breech. “The first time the midwives said I wasn’t far enough along. The second time, they said I didn’t need it. Finally, they said I was too far along.
Continue reading...