Category Archives: Women

Vivian Suter: the rainforest-dwelling artist who paints with fish glue, dogs and mud

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She was ignored for decades, but now Suter has been rediscovered as a pioneering eco-artist. We meet her, and her 97-year-old collagist mum, in the wilds of Guatemala

A large dog romps across a blue and white canvas, leaving a trail of brown paw prints. “Oh well,” shrugs Vivian Suter. “They’re part of the work now. I don’t think anyone will mind.” I realise Bonzo – one of three Alsatian crossbreeds that shadow the artist wherever she goes in her Guatemalan home – has just put the finishing touches to an artwork that will shortly be on public display thousands of miles away.

The painting lies on the floor of her “laager” – a storage barn open to the elements, apart from a metre-high stone wall, which you have to clamber over with the help of a rickety chair. The wall is to guard against mudslides, she explains, gesturing at a ghostly tideline that rings the interior. Most of her works hang from a rack; the piles on the floor are for three upcoming exhibitions in Berlin, London and Madrid. Having just opened a 53-piece installation at Tate Liverpool, Suter is halfway through choosing the 200 works that will feature in her Camden Arts Centre exhibition, which opens next week.

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More than 200 members of Congress urge US supreme court to reconsider Roe v Wade

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Appeal in an amicus brief in a Louisiana case was signed by 205 Republicans and two Democrats

More than two hundred members of Congress have urged the US supreme court to reconsider the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling which legalized abortion nationwide.

The appeal came in an amicus brief in a Louisiana case, and was signed by 205 Republicans and two Democrats, and calls on the high court to revisit the ruling, which affirmed that access to safe abortion is a constitutional right.

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‘Rap does not shut up’: hip-hop women of Senegal

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All-female Genji Hip Hop collective use rhymes and art to fight cultural stereotypes and gender violence

Aminata Gaye picks up a grey scarf and stretches it into a T shape. She ducks under the fabric, wraps it around her neck and crisscrosses it over the crown of her head.

It is almost dusk outside, but in this windowless room there is no indication of time as Gaye gets dressed for a concert starting at 9pm. Her veil in position, the 27-year-old old is transformed into Mina la voilée (Mina the veiled one), her stage name as a rapper in Dakar, Senegal.

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‘Everybody is talking about it’: women’s rights to take centre stage in 2020

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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.

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Single woman sues Chinese hospital for refusal to freeze eggs

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Teresa Xu says doctor told her to hurry up and get married before having children

At the end of last year, Teresa Xu visited a hospital in Beijing to discuss options for freezing her eggs. The doctor said she could not help Xu, a single woman, because it went against regulations. Then she gave the 31-year-old some sisterly advice: hurry up, get married and have children now.

Xu was shocked and disappointed. “I had no way to express my anger,” she said. She felt like she was being treated like a wayward child. “Like I was an intruder, delaying other couples … like my demands were too much. I felt powerless and depressed.”

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Little Miss Period: the manga character challenging Japan’s menstruation taboos

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Film praised by women in Japan where talking about periods in public is considered dirty or embarrassing

A manga character shaped like a pink blob with bright red lips and leggings is challenging taboos surrounding menstruation in Japan, but not everyone is convinced that Seiri-chan – Little Miss Period – is a force for good.

The anthropomorphised period, now the star of an anime movie of the same name, has received a largely positive response from women in Japan where talking in public about menstruation is often seen as dirty or embarrassing.

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Activists protest at ‘sidelining of social justice’ at UN climate talks

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Campaigners frustrated at how women and indigenous people have struggled to have voices heard

Youth climate activists have called for a global strike on Friday to protest that human rights and social justice have been sidelined at the UN climate talks in Madrid, where governments look set to wrap up two weeks of negotiations without a breakthrough on the pressing issue of greenhouse gas reduction.

Campaigners have been frustrated not only at the slow progress of the talks but also that groups representing women, indigenous people and poor people have struggled to have their voices heard within the conference halls where the official negotiations are taking place, even while 500,000 people took part in a mass protest in the streets outside last Friday.

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Phoebe Waller-Bridge: I was not hired for Bond because of my gender

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Fleabag creator says she was never told 007 script role was to help with female characters

Phoebe Waller-Bridge will be only the second woman ever credited on a Bond movie script but she has insisted gender was not the reason she was hired.

The Fleabag creator said it was “mad” and “exciting” to work on No Time to Die, in which Daniel Craig will play 007 for the final time. But there was never a conversation about her being there to help with the film’s female characters.

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Ohio bill orders doctors to ‘reimplant ectopic pregnancy’ or face ‘abortion murder’ charges

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Ohio introduces one of the most extreme bills to date for a procedure that does not exist in medical science

A bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not exist in medical science – or face charges of “abortion murder”.

This is the second time practising obstetricians and gynecologists have tried to tell the Ohio legislators that the idea is currently medically impossible.

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Spain’s far-right Vox blocks violence against women declaration

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Vox refusal to sign joint all-party statement outrages civil rights groups and embarrasses allies

Spain’s far-right Vox party has refused to sign an all-party declaration condemning violence against women, drawing outrage from civil rights groups and embarrassing its allies in the conservative People’s party.

Vox’s refusal to sign the declaration by Madrid city council on Monday meant that for the first time since a landmark 2004 law on gender violence, local authorities in the Spanish capital were unable to issue a joint all-party statement.

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Labour pledges £58bn for women caught in pension trap

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Shadow chancellor John McDonnell says party ‘owes debt of honour’ to 3 million over changes in retirement age

More than 3 million women who believe they have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket after steep increases to the state pension age are being promised compensation by Labour as part of a £58bn scheme designed to end a “historic injustice”.

Related: ‘The Tories stole my state pension when I was 60, now I want it back’

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‘France’s shame’: thousands protest against gender violence

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More than 100 women in France have been killed by a current or former partner this year

Several thousand people marched in France on Saturday to protest against alarming levels of deadly domestic violence against women, which the president, Emmanuel Macron, has called “France’s shame”.

The biggest rallies were in Paris. The streets of the capital became a sea of purple and white as thousands marched carrying banners, placards and flags calling for an end to femicide.

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Concern grows over ‘rough sex gone wrong’ defence in courts

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UK lawyers and activists demand action as researchers find tenfold rise in usage

Senior lawyers and women’s organisations have condemned the increasing use of “rough sex gone wrong” as a courtroom defence to the murder of women and called for a change to the law in the UK.

In the wake of the conviction of British backpacker Grace Millane’s killer in New Zealand, researchers have revealed a tenfold rise over the past two decades in the number of times similar claims have been made in UK courts.

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Australian women win landmark vaginal mesh class action against Johnson & Johnson

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The case was launched on behalf of 700 women who had pelvic mesh and tape products implanted to treat common complications of childbirth

Hundreds of women left in debilitating pain by faulty transvaginal mesh devices have won a landmark case against multinational giant Johnson & Johnson.

The Australian class action against companies owned by Johnson & Johnson – watched closely across the world – was won on behalf of 1,350 women who had mesh and tape products implanted to treat pelvic prolapse or stress urinary incontinence, both common complications of childbirth.

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Who’s the daddy? Paternity mixed up in cities, study finds

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Illegitimacy more likely over past 500 years among urban poor, say geneticists

The Romans had a phrase that summed it up nicely: mater semper certa est, pater semper incertus est. The mother is always certain, the father is always uncertain.

Now, researchers have found that some people have more reason to doubt their fathers than others, or at least have had over the past half millennium.

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Family planning schemes must offer options other than abortion, says US

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Campaigners urge global action on reproductive rights as US comments embolden anti-choice groups at Nairobi summit

The US will only support family planning programmes that offer alternatives to abortions, a senior policy adviser has told a conference in Nairobi.

In a statement that has emboldened anti-choice groups in the city, Valerie Huber, the US special representative for global women’s health, also told a summit on population and development that her country sought to combat gender-based violence by investing in programmes that respected the rights of women and girls, but didn’t compromise “the inherent value of every human life – born and unborn”.

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Joana Choumali wins 2019 Prix Prictet photography prize

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Artist becomes first African to win the prestigious prize, for embroidered pictures created following terrorist attack

• See a photo essay of the Prix Pictet 2019 shortlist

Joana Choumali, a 45-year-old photographer from Ivory Coast, has become the first African artist to win the Prix Pictet. The announcement was made this evening in a ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for the opening of an exhibition of the 12 shortlisted artists.

The theme of the eighth Prix Pictet, a global award for photography and sustainability, was Hope. The jury, which included last year’s winner, Richard Mosse, praised Choumali’s “brilliantly original meditation on the ability of the human spirit to wrest hope and resilience from even the most traumatic events”.

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