"Over the past twenty-five years, progress has been made through, for example, legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sex with respect to inheritance and citizenship, laws that guarantee equality within the family and laws that address domestic violence." "However, while progress has been significant, discriminatory constitutional and legislative provisions remain in place in many countries, leaving women without protection or legal basis to claim their rights." "Where adequate sanitation facilities are lacking, for example, concerns over safety and menstrual hygiene management may keep girls away from school or compromise their learning experience." United Nations report
Women Poorer And Hungrier Than Men Across The World, UN Report
The latest United Nations report on Turning Promises Into Action: Gender Equality in the 2040 Agenda for Sustainable Development recites a universal litany of hindrances and lack of opportunities and the will to empower women to access equality matching men's progress has been produced, its details more than adequately outlining areas where women are disadvantaged in life, failing to advance their aspirations into the future.
Global benchmarks for progress as for example eliminating extreme poverty and hunger and having all children attend school were laid out in several global benchmarks included in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Some targets have seen significant progress but this study focused on women specifically and how well they are progressing, finding in its final analysis an abysmal result. In virtually every category appraised women fare worse than men.
According to the conclusions of the newly-released report, 122 women aged 25 to 34 live in extreme poverty for every 100 men within that age group also living in poverty. Women living in poor households hovers at about 12.8 percent while for men the figure is 12.3 percent, a disparity which results in roughly five million more women than men who are struggling to exist. It is more difficult for women than for men to escape poverty since women have less opportunities to access employment and economic opportunities.
Laws in some countries make it less than possible for women to inherit wealth, own land and have access to credit. When women do find employment they are frequently paid less than men performing work of equal value. Women face shorter working hours for payment since they also must look after child-rearing, housework and the preparation of family meals. Where food insecurity prevails in two-thirds of all countries women are most vulnerable.
The greatest challenges facing women is in sub-Saharan Africa where low-income women are especially vulnerable. Surprisingly enough, a like situation prevails in the United States as well, representing the sole developed country where the rate of maternal death is on the increase. One in five women and girls aged 15 to 49 report experiencing physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in the past year.
On the positive side, more women attend school than previously and many remain in school longer. Across the globe, 90.8 percent of primary school-age girls were enrolled in school in 2015 in comparison with 82.2 percent in 2000, and for boys those figures were 91.9 percent of primary school-age boys were enrolled in 2015. Despite which, 15 million girls will never see the opportunity to learn to read or to write.
In Africa in particular, all these drawbacks represent an acute challenge, where 48.1 percent of adolescent girls are not able to attend school, along with 25.7 percent of girls of primary-school age. The numbers are 43.6 percent and 21.7 percent respectively, for boys.
Education
Women make up more than two-thirds of the world's 796 million illiterate people.
According to global statistics, just 39 percent of rural girls
attend secondary school. This is far fewer than rural boys (45 percent),
urban girls (59 percent) and urban boys (60 percent).
Every additional year of primary school increases girls'
eventual wages by 10-20 percent. It also encourages them to marry later
and have fewer children, and leaves them less vulnerable to violence.
While progress has been made in reducing the gender gap in urban
primary school enrolment, data from 42 countries shows that rural girls
are twice as likely as urban girls to be out of school.
In Pakistan a half-kilometre increase in the distance to school
will decrease girls' enrolment by 20 percent. In Egypt, Indonesia and
several African countries, building local schools in rural communities
increased girls' enrolment.
In Cambodia, 48 percent of rural women are illiterate compared to 14 percent of rural men.
Rural women's deficits in education have long-term implications
for family well-being and poverty reduction. Vast improvements have been
seen in the mortality rates of children less than 5 years old since
1990, but rural rates are usually much higher than urban ones.
Data from 68 countries indicates that a woman's education is a key factor in determining a child's survival.
Children of mothers with no education in the Latin American and
Caribbean region are 3.1 times more likely to die than those with
mothers who have secondary or tertiary education, and 1.6 more likely to
die that those whose mothers have primary-level education.
"In Nepal too she kept falling in and out of depression. Last year, we finally decided to get her regular treatment." "A friend suggested a doctor in Nainital and since then she was on medication. I had purchased all her medicines when she told me she wanted to live with our sister for a while." Brother of Nepalese rape and murder victim, Haryana State, India
"Notions of revenge and honor have always been intertwined. This can
cause women to end up as collateral, even when they themselves have
committed no wrong. This was the case last year when unelected heads of a
village council in the state of Uttar Pradesh ruled that a 24-year-old woman should be gang-raped to punish her brother, who
had eloped with someone’s wife. In addition to the green light for the
rape, the village council also ordered the woman to marry one of her
attackers." "Just why is rape such a powerful way of seeking
revenge? The reason, again, lies in notions of honor and shame. If you
are raped, the pressures of honor compel you and your family not to
speak about the crime. Unlike murder, which does not carry this stigma,
rape and its perceived shamefulness make it hard for women and their
families to seek justice. Many might not see the point. According to one
common saying, “A girl’s honor is like glass, once it is broken it
cannot be fixed." Amana Fontanella-Khan, feature writer, Mumbai, India
Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
She was 28 years old, severely clinically depressed. And living with her sister for emotional support in the northwest Indian state of Haryana. Clearly her family was concerned about their sibling. And then, her illness became the last thing on anyone's mind. The woman had been receiving treatment for depression and suddenly on February 1st, she disappeared. Three days later her body, horribly mutilated, was discovered.
An autopsy found that she was missing several of her internal organs. Objects, including stones, blades and a stick had been inserted into her body. No mention made whether that mutilation took place while she was still living, or when she was already dead. Why do these dreadful atrocities, these gruesomely horrible sexual attacks happen in India to vulnerable women?
What is it in the collective cultural code of the country that persuades men that women's lives are casually expendable?
Indian laws forbid naming and identifying victims of rape, living or dead. Indian laws were fairly recently re-written to address the pathology of sexual violence in Indian society. Where news surfaces of atrocities committed against women in urban settings, but the far more prevalent and vicious attacks against girls and women in rural India are so commonplace they are hardly worth a mention, and police fail to respond.
Newspapers do carry those stories when, as happens all too frequently, foreign visitors happen to be the victims. As happened with a Japense student sightseer in northern India who trusted a man who persuaded her he would be happy to guide her around and show her his country. What he did was take the woman by motorcycle to a farming village outside Jaipor in Rajasthan state to rape her and leave her on a highway.
Two months earlier a 22-year-old Japanese researcher had been held captive and repeatedly gang raped over a three-week period in a village close by a Buddhist pilgrimage centre in Bihar state. Several suspects have been arrested by police. A "tourist guide"offering to help the woman was involved in this case, as well. The woman managed to escape and fled to the eastern city of Kolkata.
Visit India? Why would any woman want to?
Leave India? Why wouldn't any woman be eager to?
"We are in the 21st Century and yet there is still no dignity for women as they have to go out in the open to defecate and they have to wait for darkness to fall. Can you imagine the number of problems they have to face because of this?" Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
"If CPI [Indian Communist Party] tries to kill and intimidate our workers here, I will not spare them. I will ask our boys to go and rape CPI-M women if necessary." Tapas Pal, Trinamool Congress party
Tapas Pal is a two-term MP and an award-winning Bengali actor
India's new prime minister has a lot to contend with as the national leader of a country with 1.2-billion people represented by various ethnic, religious and political groups and a multitude of languages, further complicated by cultural diversities and the resistance of the orthodox against loosening up of social-cultural mores that traditionally oppressed women. Add to that India's caste system of the privileged versus the disentitled.
As India modernizes and moves steadily into a newer social-cultural-political era, women assert themselves, demanding equality with their male counterparts. In a country like India, ossified with male domination and female submission, such cultural changes are hard to come by. But a number of horrifyingly brutal rapes and murders have come to the public eye in the country and Indians are increasingly outraged at the gruesome violations of vulnerable girls and women.
Yet even while public protests have become increasingly visible and voluble, and with new, tough legislation, the media daily carries reports of women and young girls being raped and often killed to restrain them from identifying their rapists. In the past two decades either reportage has increased in volume or the numbers of rapes have doubled. It is estimated that a rape is committed every 20 minutes according to India's National Crime Records Bureau.
But that's a low-ball figure because of fear of public shame and under-reportage associated with rape and violence against women. In New Delhi alone, the capital, the number of reported sexual attacks rose in 2013 to 37,707, 35.2% higher than the year before. Now the prime minister has addressed the situation by calling on local governments to make certain that separate toilets are available for girls and women.
Girls drop out of schools simply because of a lack of private toilets in their schools leading to harassment and sexual violence. And in rural India there are few toilets, either public or private, leaving women and girls no choice but to go out at night to relieve themselves in fields, hoping they will not be seen, not attract male attention. It was just such a scenario that brought rape and torture to two young girls from a lower caste, kidnapped from a field at night, their bodies left dangling from a tree.
RYOT
Attitudes among the Brahmin class that girls and women from the Dalit community are there for the taking, and any sexual violence committed against them is irrelevant must change. Attitudes by police that are disinterestedly lax in responding to reports of sexual attacks must also be addressed. The entire society must undergo a profound reversal of popular cultural mores to respect women rather than prey on them.
Starting with politicians such as Tapas Pal, threatening to instruct his Trinamool Congress party males to attack and rape women associated with an opposition political party.
"I
have not heard of any such case in which a woman was stoned to death,
and the most shameful and worrying thing is that this woman was killed
in front of a court." "Either
the family does not pursue such cases or police don't properly
investigate. As a result, the courts either award light sentences to the
attackers or they are acquitted." Zia Awan, Pakistani lawyer, human rights activist
"We were in love. I simply took her to court and registered a marriage." Mohammad Iqbal, Lahore, Pakistan
"I
killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a
man without our consent, and I have no regret over it." Mohammad Azeem
Farzana Parveen was was stoned to death by her family outside a court in Pakistan. (Mohammad
Tahir/Reuters)
Mohammad Azeem filed an abduction case against Mohammad Iqbal, contending the man whom his daughter, Farzana Parveen 25, had married had taken her against her will and forced her into marriage. Mr. Azeem
had his own settled idea about whom his daughter should marry and it
was not Mr. Iqbal to whom she had been engaged for years, and finally
married against her family's wishes.
The couple had
gone to court to challenge the charge that her father had lodged against
her husband. They had walked up to the main gate of the court located
on a main downtown thoroughfare. As they reached the entrance, family
members who had waited outside the court fired shots at random in the
air, and attempted to snatch Farzana Parveen from her husband.
She
resisted, leading her father, brothers and other relatives, some twenty
family members in all, to beat her and begin pelting her with bricks
they picked up from a nearby construction site. All this took place in
broad daylight before a crowd of onlookers in front of the high court of
Lahore. Farzana Parveen died of her wounds, three months pregnant.
The
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private group, reported last
month that 869 women had been murdered in their country in 2013,
resulting from honour killings. Among conservative Muslim Pakistanis,
marriage for love is considered a cultural transgression, where arranged
marriages are the accepted norm.
Mr. Iqbal, whose
previous wife had died after delivering five children, had fallen in
love, at age 43 with the woman 20 years his junior. He contended that
his wife's family attempted to extort money from him, before they would
agree to her marriage. The dismally unfortunate end to this cultural
travesty is that Farzana Parveen is returning to her husband for burial.
Mohammad Iqbal, right, husband of Farzana Parveen, 25, sits in
an ambulance next to the body of his pregnant wife who was stoned to
death by her own family, in Lahore, Pakistan, Tuesday, May 27, 2014. AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary
"I am really lucky and I can thank God for that. But God must help all of them ... Their parents are worrying. Every day, everyone is crying." 16-year-old Nigerian escapee schoolgirl
"Every information relayed to security agencies has so far been investigated, including the search of all places suspected as a possible hideaway of the kidnapped girls." Nigerian Information Minister Labaran Maku
"I am so very sad because the government of Nigeria did not take care of our children and does not now care about our children. All we have left is to pray to God to help them and help us." Mother of abducted schoolgirl
Four
female students of government secondary school Chibok, who were
abducted by gunmen and reunited with their families, walk together in
Chibok, Nigeria. They are among the 53 girls who escaped abduction by
Islamic extremist kidnappers. The girls did not want to be identified by
name and refused to speak to reporters when they were photographed in
Chibok, the town from which the mass kidnapping of more than 300 girls
took place on April 15. (AP Photo/Haruna Umar, File)
"Don't worry, we're soldiers. Nothing is going to happen to you." That reassurance lasted for the first little while as uniformed gunmen posing as Nigerian soldiers come to rescue hundreds of schoolgirls from potential abduction raced through their school. Then, as the men went into a storeroom at the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School to remove all the food, commanding the girls to gather outside, they set fire to the room.
"They ... started shouting, 'Allahu Akhbar', (God is great)", recounted the 16-year-old girl who had escaped their custody. "And we knew." They had been aware of gunshots coming from a nearby town as they gathered in the school dormitory. When the gunmen burst in, wearing uniforms, promising their rescue from their feared assailants, their first reaction was belief, and relief. Until they understood these were Islamic extremist Boko Haram members.
The girls were kidnapped, driven away in pickup trucks heading into the nearby dense forest. That was three weeks ago. At the time of transit during a stop, about fifty girls managed to save themselves by sprinting past their distracted captors and heading for safety. Since then it has become known that two of the girls who were spirited away died of snake bite venom, and about twenty of the students have become ill.
Others have been "married" to some of their captors who exchanged them for the equivalent of $12. Others still were reputed to have been taken across the border, for sale. The Chibok girls' school is located in northeastern Nigeria, an elite academy in Borno state where both Muslim and Christian girls have been educated. The school, like others in the area, had been closed for fear of just such attacks, but temporarily opened to permit the girls to write final exams.
A local government official received a warning on April 14 of an impending invasion by about 200 heavily armed militants travelling in 20 pickup trucks and about 30 motorcycles toward Chibok. He in turn alerted the 15 soldiers tasked with guarding the town, and after that he roused the sleeping residents with the alarm, urging them to run into the bush and the hills nearby. Those 15 soldiers forwarded an SOS to the closest barracks, an hour's drive away on a dirt road. There was no response.
When the Boko Haram terrorists arrived two hours later the soldiers fought them, outnumbered and outgunned for an hour and a half, hoping reinforcements would arrive, but they never did. When they ran out of ammunition and one of their number was killed they fled the scene allowing the jihadis to approach the school. The young girl recounting the events spoke of too many uniformed men flooding the school to even count. Why school authorities were not also alerted and urged to move the girls is safety is a mystery.
Once they set the school on fire, the girls were herded by the terrorists onto three pickup trucks which then drove through three villages before the vehicle behind carrying fighters broke down, and offered the opportunity to those who were alert to the possibility, to escape. One student said, "We should go! Me, I am coming down. They can shoot me if they want but I don't know what they are going to do with me otherwise." "We ran and ran, so fast. That is how I saved myself. I had no time to be scared, I was just running. I'm the only girl in my family, so I hold a special place and everyone was so happy. But that didn't last long." The Defence Ministry stated the next day that soldiers had rescued all the girls but eight, citing a statement from the school principal. The principal denied saying any such thing and the statement was retracted.
Villagers joined a search party to find the abducted girls, receiving directions from villagers along the way who claimed to have seen the abductors and the girls on a forest path. An old man at a fork in the road warned them that they were close to the camp, but should they challenge the terrorists it was entirely possible they and their daughters might be killed, persuading the searchers to turn back to Chibok.
Those same searchers, among them the parents of the girls, question how it could be that they came within a few kilometres of where their daughters were being held, but the military was unsuccessful in discovering their whereabouts. Soldiers have claimed to have been demoralized with Boko Haram better armed than they; instead of equipment, they receive little more than a meal a day.
"I will sell them in the market, by Allah. I will marry off a woman at the age of 12. I will marry off a girl at the age of nine." "I said Western education should end. Girls, you should go and get married." Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram chief, Nigeria
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and wife Patience
"She told so many lies, that we just wanted the government of Nigeria to have a bad name, that we did not want to support her husband's rule." "They said we are Boko Haram, and that Mrs. Nyadar is a member of Boko Haram." Saratu Angus Ndirpaya, demonstrator
Demonstrators opposite the Nigerian high
commission in London call for the government to step up efforts to
rescue the missing schoolgirls. Photograph: Ruth
Whitworth/Demotix/Corbis
The abduction of almost 300 schoolgirls from a small town where their school was located, has created a panic of anxiety in the country over the missing girls, two of whom were said to have died in captivity from snakebites, twenty of whom are ill, and the rest suffering various categories of fearful conditions, including forced 'marriage' to some of the Boko Haram Islamists who took them captive. Some have been spirited away, ostensibly for sale.
In a major security operation undertaken by the Nigerian government, a hunt for the abducted students has yielded no results whatever. The government's reaction to the mass abduction has left much to be desired. Anxious parents, griefstricken at the loss of their children, accuse the government of disinterest and inaction, and they don't seem to be far off the mark considering the relaxed government attitude over the atrocity.
Those schoolgirls, some thirty in number who managed to save themselves while they were being loaded for transport by escaping their captors can consider themselves fortunate indeed. Another eight schoolgirls have since been abducted. They are considered fair game as prey by the fanatical Islamists. The failure of the military to immediately launch a rescue mission from the depraved clutches of the jihadists is inexplicable.
Protesters have accused their president of insensitivity to the plight of the schoolgirls with good reason. The president's wife had ordered the arrests of two demonstration leaders, accusing them of being members of Boko Haram, and amazingly, expressing her personal doubt that any such abduction had ever occurred. If it never took place, it makes sense that her husband had no reason to trouble himself about a rescue.
As far as the president's wife was concerned those who were critical of her husband themselves fabricated the abduction story. Mrs. Jonathan was said to have been outraged that though she had invited the mothers of the missing girls to attend a meeting, none arrived. A protest organizer explained the women were unable to make the journey from the remote northeastern town, on time for the meeting.
The "timeline was too short", said Hadiza Bala Usman. No flights exist, and the town, Chibok, is several days' distant in a road trip. For his part, the president has stated he has sought assistance from Britain, France and the United States. "Both the Americans and the French have satellite systems that could be used to provide photography, although it would be something of a needle in a haystack job", said a satellite technology expert. "The other option is using unmanned aerial vehicles, which can circle areas repeatedly and build up patterns of activity." Both the United States and France operate drones out of a new base at an airfield in neighbouring Niger. Meanwhile, Boko Haram skulks about, psychopathic predators punishing young girls for their arrogance in seeking a Western-type education when they have been warned against such a crime against fanatical Islam.
"Everyone knows French presidents have affairs, Chirac did little else. Mitterand famously responded to questions about his illegitimate daughter with the classically French phrase 'Et alors?' -- 'So what?' What exactly has Ms. Trierweiler achieved with this dramatic flouncing off to hospital? Instead of acting like generations of French women before her, she has drawn attention to herself and her role as the victim." "It's just not chic. As Coco Chanel said: 'A girl should be two things; classy and fabulous'. Ms. Trierweiler has shown us she is neither and most of the French public won't blame the president if he opts for the younger, less melodramatic option now that he has clearly been forced into a decision." Helena Frith Powell, author of Love in a Warm Climate: A Novel about the French Art of Having Affairs
"If he switched 'first girlfriends' and moved Julie Gayet into the Elysee today, I'm sure he'd go up in the popularity polls. "The majority of us don't give a damn about Hollande having an affair -- it's not really an issue. And the consensus is that since they are not married and don't have children, he is not committed to her. In any case, Gayet is much more presentable and this hospital thing is pure emotional blackmail -- forcing him to choose between the two before the presidential trip to America in two weeks' time." Charlotte Andreu, French publishing executive
Valerie Trierweiler, pictured (left) in Tulle, south-west France, with Mr Hollande
Well, there it is, the French female verdict on the histrionics of a French First Lady, that she is behaving in a counter-French manner, and she is no lady for her inability to react with a stiff upper backbone. French women, it would appear, are meant to be supine, accepting their debasement/abandonment at the hands of a bored lover or husband, choosing to leave her for someone younger, more vivacious, more attractive; she has lived out her usefulness.
French woman, considering themselves worldly, contemporary, stylishly glamorous and practical see themselves acceptably as an accessory to a man. And if the man chooses to change his accessories to match whatever he feels his appearance should reflect at any given time, it is his prerogative, and a woman must go gently into that lonely dark night to reflect on what it might possibly have been that she did wrong. So Ms. Powell declares it is her opinion that "Madame Trierweiler has reacted in an extremely un-French manner to the whole thing", and no sympathy need be shed on her behalf. Because men, Frenchmen that is, do that kind of thing, it is expected, and evidently utterly charming, proving the man's virility, that a pompous little skirt-chaser is entitled to shabby treatment of a woman he courted while in a two-decades relationship with an earlier girlfriend who shared four children with him.
On the other hand, perhaps it is Ms. Trierweiler who is deserving of abandonment for her part in persuading her inconstant lover to leave his previous common-law wife, paving the way for her own denouement. Proving that tedious old sentiment: what goes around comes around. Still, there is something about this distasteful episode in the lives of people of celebrity status that sounds familiar; it is the woman and always the woman who suffers. He is celebrated for his presumed virility; she is criticized for her injured female vanity.
As for Ms. Gayet, the latest in French President Francois Hollande's charming little sex-nests, while his plummeted popularity may have enjoyed a slight perk, her perquisite to become a member of a prestigious cultural jury tasked to select artists to receive government grants to stay at France's Medici Institute in Rome was jeopardized. She had been nominated to the post, to be ratified by arts minister Aurelie Filipetti to 'please Holland'. But government officials rushed to deny her the post and her nomination was withdrawn.
Her reward no longer enticingly on the horizon, she is now set to sue French Closer for divulging her affair and in so doing breaching her right to privacy. The matter that remains unsettled of course, is the French taxpayer agreeing to support whoever turns out to be the First Lady once Mr. Hollande makes his final decision -- for the time being -- at an estimated $30,000 monthly. The two women involved each penalized, the man briefly admired and the matter dismissed as French business-as-usual.
Prestigious role: Francois Hollande's mistress has been denied a role as member of the Villa Medici jury for 2014
"I'm
sure you'll understand my answer. Every one of us can go through
difficult periods in our personal life and that is our case. They are
painful moments, but I have one principle, which is that private matters
are dealt with privately, within a respectful intimacy. Therefore it is
neither the time nor the place to do so." "My
indignation is total. [The story was] a violation that touches personal
liberty. [France must] maintain the principle of respect." French President Francois Hollande
French
President Francois Hollande delivers his speech at his annual news
conference Tuesday, Jan.14, 2014 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. (AP
Photo/Christophe Ena)
Monsieur le
President misunderstands, obviously. A public figure such as one with
the status that he represents really has no private life when he chooses
to live a life that is clearly in defiance of public morality. Yes, in
France things are far different. Women have been acculturated to accept
the tidy little conceit that men insist is their right. Indeed, women
too may play that game, and they do, most certainly.
But
there is something in human nature that yearns for emotional fidelity.
And certainly, most certainly, louche behaviour is not anticipated in a
man who leads the French Republic. How, one might venture to enquire,
can one trust a man to effectively lead a nation who will not make a
commitment and respect the deep emotional needs of someone he has
presumably committed himself to?
Men of power enjoy the
aphrodisiac effect that it appears to have on many women. A woman with
some measure of self-respect might tell herself that this is a man who
has somehow managed to attract the attention of young, beautiful,
talented and intelligent women, but he has an inability to reciprocate.
What is his value as a human being other than one who has enjoyed the
status of a predator upon whom no criticism redounds.
His
current inamorata strangely enough felt placidly entitled to his sole
attention as a sexual partner, perhaps forgetting that she hasn't been
the first, or the one of longest-standing, or one who might have morally
had first call on his responsibility as a common-law husband and father
of four children. How she could be shocked into a nervous breakdown
necessitating emergency medical attention in a hospital is beyond
imagination.
What, aside from the power of his
political position, enhances the perception of this mousy little man as a
sex partner to begin with? The mysteries of male-female bonding will
forever escape our full understanding. It is also very difficult to
understand how or why French women are so quick to accept a male hunting
ground that has its scopes on young females of attractive persuasion.
That a prominent French commentator, Christine Clerc, could write chastisingly her formula for social good manners that accepts the status quo and chides any woman who hasn't the intelligence to move on after having been used and abused is mind-boggling:
"There are quite a lot of betrayed women who think that a First Lady
should face this situation with more dignity. It's not the first time
that we have a president who has affairs with women. It is even part of a
certain tradition."
The question
should be why is it so universally accepted in France that such a
tradition is admirable in any way? Why, above all, would women
collectively accept this, placid in their place as objects to be used
and discarded? As for Mr. Hollande, he will think about it, whether or not he deigns to feel compelled to allow Valerie Trierweiler to continue in her guise as First Lady.
With
dignity, as demanded by his position as President of France, the
far-from-debonair skirt-chaser responded to a question whether he would
be accompanied by Ms. Trierweiler
on an upcoming Washington visit, with the response that he was
unprepared to comment at the present time, but he would clarify the
situation in due course; leaving the impression that he is undecided as
yet which of the two will languish while the other moves into place as
his current consort.
Afghanistan pushes to stone adulterers? You shouldn't be surprised.
Triumphant coalition statements about how much Afghanistan has changed should be treated with skepticism.
By
Dan Murphy, Staff writer -- Christian Science Monitor -- /
November 27, 2013
The women's section of a Kabul voter registration drive earlier this month.
Anja Niedringhaus
Human Rights Watch reports that a draft of the new penal code being produced President Hamid Karzai's
justice ministry contains provisions for stoning people to death for
the crime of adultery. Unmarried people found to have engaged in sexual
relations will have it a little easier – 100 lashes.
The rights group's Asia director, Brad Adams, called the proposal
"absolutely shocking" and added, "President Karzai needs to demonstrate
at least a basic commitment to human rights and reject this proposal out
of hand."
Perhaps Mr. Karzai will. But these kinds of practices are very popular in Afghanistan, and have remained so during the 11-year NATO
war there. While press releases often toot triumphantly about gains in
basic rights for women that have been accompanied by foreign aid and
influence, claims of great progress often aren't seen much beyond the
outskirts of Kabul.
Karzai is seeking to incorporate the Taliban,
a movement that elevated stoning from an informal cultural practice to
the law of the land when they began to rule Afghanistan in the late
1990s.
Karzai apparently doesn't see much of a problem for women in that incorporation. In October, he said that Afghan women have nothing to fear
from the return of the Taliban. The country's legal system under Karzai
has routinely violated the rights of women – for instance, the practice
of jailing women for "adultery" (many of whom in fact are simply young
women or girls trying to run away from arranged marriages) has been
prevalent.
At least 172 women were in jail across Afghanistan in 2012. Of those, 101 were in jail in Herat Province. The significance of that? Herat's chief prosecutor is Maria Bashir, the only woman in that role in the country. She explained away her comparatively higher rate of prosecutions for adultery on the proximity of Herat to "permissive" Iran, the influence of which leads to more adultery in her province.
Ms.
Bashir's standing is often cited as evidence for how much better
Afghanistan has become for women since the Taliban were toppled in 2002.
The Obama administration gave her an "International Women of Courage
Award" and Time Magazine wrote in 2011 that Bashir is "establishing
precedents that will become the foundations of a just and equal
society."
Well, maybe.
But after a decade of war the
argument that "not Taliban" equals "good for women" has been accepted
far too readily. The Taliban were a catastrophe for women, of course,
but the Taliban were also an organic, Afghan movement that ironically,
perhaps, began in part to rise in the mid-1990s after lawless Afghan
gangs began raping women across the country, willy-nilly, after the
Soviets pulled out.
The Taliban attitudes toward women stem from widespread cultural beliefs, as Tom Peter pointed out last year after a mother-in-law strangled her daughter-in-law to death for giving birth to a daughter, rather than a son.
Many
in the international community are quick to blame such behavior on the
Taliban or its influence, but the group appears uninvolved. Mistreatment
of women is common across Afghanistan's political and ethnic spectrum
and incidents like the latest murder stem from traditional practices in
Afghanistan that predate the creation of the Taliban. The recent
conviction in Canada of wealthy Afghan immigrant Mohammed Shafia, who
murdered three of his daughters for not following his strict rules, was
another reminder of such traditions.
... While murders like the
one in Kunduz are at the extreme end of the spectrum, violence against
women is widespread. According to a recent report by Oxfam 87 percent of
Afghan women reported experiencing physical, psychological, or sexual
abuse or forced marriages.
Gains for women have not
been the only "successes" that aren't all they are cracked up to be
after further examination. Improvements in health care, for instance, have frequently been overstated.
But
as the US and its NATO partners continue to lean on Karzai to approve a
bilateral security agreement that would keep foreign troops in the
country beyond 2014, they should remember that the government they
support will frequently condone practices that their constituents at
home find abhorrent.
One cannot have "licentiousness" breaking out in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Wahhabi-brand Islamism deplores the very thought that women might feel entitled to behave in their country just as women normally do anywhere else in the world. Saudi women have accepted many insults to their human rights under the imprint of a Islamist-purist paternalism, demonstrating misogyny writ large.
They dress in dark, body-and-head-concealing garments, take care not to venture in public without male family members in attendance and seek written permission from their husbands or fathers to travel, have a bank account, marry or divorce. The 2009 Global Gender Gap Report produced by the World Economic Forum gave Saudi Arabia a 130 ranking out of 134 countries for gender parity.
In preparation for another one of those unsettling incidents by some young Saudi women bold enough to challenge the prevailing phallocentric society to their right as independent spirits to drive a vehicle rather than be seated quietly in the back seat while a male driver takes them about, Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Turki al-Faisal warned that cyber-dissident laws would be brought to anyone supporting the women-driving campaign.
A five year prison sentence could result from a conviction on such a charge, along with the imposition of stiff fines, according to a Saudi consultant on cyber laws. The authority of the kingdom is not to be flouted. In a clear demonstration of just how serious a violation of Saudi tribal norms was being proposed by those arrogant Saudi women insisting they have the right to drive themselves to appointments, 150 clerics and religious scholars waged a protest outside a royal palace.
They vehemently stated, with appropriate religious fervor, that women had no right to oppose laws they did not agree with. They complained that Saudi authorities were not adequately reacting to ban women from challenging the driving ban. After all, as one prominent cleric warned, driving threatened the propensity to corrupt female ovaries.
These challenges to male clerical authority are not new; back in 1995 during the first of such protests 50 women were jailed, had their passports confiscated, and lost their jobs.
A Saudi woman drives a vehicle in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2013.Photo by AP
The situation is definitely improving, despite the clerical protests. This time around, a mere 14 women were arrested in the capital Riyadh, and the the western cities of Jeddah and Mecca. Saudi women may yet consider the Women2Drive campaign in 2013 a success this time around.
Activists published over a dozen videos on YouTube with women defiantly driving in the only country of the world where women are not permitted to drive. "As we expected, women drove peacefully. ... The campaign will continue to normalize driving in our country, whose laws permit the exercise of this right", announced the determined and empowered campaigners on their web site.
Although there is no law that prevents Saudi women from driving, driver's licenses are not issued to women. The campaign's Twitter account announced the organizers' vows to continue their battle in their patriarchal society.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
