Author: storiesinamerica

“In an environment where people are disgusted with politics in general, who represents clean and change? Women.”
-Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, commenting in a NYT story about Democratic women running in nearly two dozen House races

“We don’t have an all-woman cabinet. I toyed with that, but what I decided was to put women in charge of all the major areas – justice, finances, commerce, the police directorate. All of this sends a strong message. (Loud audience applause at this!) Women have a higher level of integration into society, based upon our experience.”
-Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, speaking in Washington DC this week
Reproductive Rights

Tennessee to require DNA from abortions – AP
Doctors performing abortions on girls younger than 13 years old would be required to preserve a sample of the fetal tissue for law enforcement under a bill passed by the Senate on Thursday. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation could use those samples for DNA tests to help prosecute rapists, said Sen. Roy Herron, the bill’s sponsor. “Whoever has sex with a child 12 years of age or younger is committing rape, whether force is involved or not, and they ought to be prosecuted,” he said.

General

Feminism — the monolith that still doesn’t exist – Tribune-Star Opinion
I have seen many Women’s History Months come and go, great gains made in economic, social, athletic and educational opportunities for females. No matter the year or decade, no matter the heel-height of fashionable shoes or the length of trendy skirts, no matter who is in the White House — or not — somebody still pops up with another sweeping condemnation of “feminism.” As if the term represented a monolithic army, marching in lock-step to commands of a powerful cabal of “feminist leaders.” As if. The latest expert executioner of feminism is a plucky college student named Noel Stanger. She has taken time off from her studies at the Thiel College to be an intern at the so-called conservative Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute in Herndon, Va.

American gets 9 years for Okinawa rapes – AP
A U.S. military civilian employee was sentenced to nine years in prison for two rapes on Okinawa, court officials and media reports said Friday. Dag A. Thompson, 36, was sentenced for the rapes in 1998 and 2004, said Naha District Court official Tatsuhiko Toguchi. Court officials refused to give further details about Thompson, including his home town. Japan’s Kyodo News said he was a civilian employee working on Kadena Air Base and was arrested in 2004. It said both victims were in their 20s.

Katrina Donation Ignites Debate – Houston Chronicle
As Barbara Bush spent two hours championing her son’s software company at a Houston middle school Thursday morning, a watchdog group questioned whether the former first lady should be allowed to channel a donation to Neil Bush’s Ignite Learning company through Houston’s Hurricane Katrina relief fund. “It’s strange that the former first lady would want to do this. If her son’s having a rough time of it, couldn’t she write him a check?” said Daniel Borochoff, founder of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a Chicago-based charity watchdog group. “Maybe she isn’t aware that people could frown upon this.” Some critics said donations to a tax-deductible charitable fund shouldn’t benefit the Bush family. Others questioned whether the Houston Independent School District violated district policy by allowing the company to host a promotional event on campus.

Politics

Women Wage Key Campaigns for Democrats – NY Times
If the Democrats have their way, the 2006 Congressional elections will be the revenge of the mommy party. Democratic women are running major campaigns in nearly half of the two dozen most competitive House races where their party hopes to pick up enough Republican seats to regain control of the House. Democratic strategists are betting that the voters’ unrest and hunger for change — reflected consistently in public opinion polls — create the perfect conditions for their party’s female candidates this year.

Protesters try to shout down Sen. Clinton during speech – AP
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech on women and equal pay was interrupted twice Thursday by anti-war protesters at a Long Island university. The 26 protesters, in an audience of about 300, shouted out “Stop the war” and “Troops out now” as the Democratic senator from New York spoke at Stony Brook University. They said Clinton supported President Bush and the war in Iraq.

International

Brazil to Hand Out a Billion Free Condoms – IPS
As a key part of its vigorous campaign against the spread of HIV/AIDS, the Brazilian government is planning to distribute over one billion condoms free of charge this year. “The government campaign in Brazil is straightforward, like nowhere else in Latin America,” said Frederico Meyer, a minister at the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations.

Interview: Accelerating African healthcare – UPI
In the mobile, fast-paced United States, many of us don’t give a second thought about jumping in our cars and driving off. But in Africa, a lack of reliable transportation gives a new meaning to the term “traffic jam.” Without vehicles, healthcare providers are blocked from reaching rural areas — one of the most overlooked crises in Africa, according to Andrea and Barry Coleman, founders of Riders for Health. For the past 15 years, these motorcycle enthusiasts have developed efficient and cost-effective techniques for maintaining transportation in harsh conditions of rural Africa. The Colemans, who recently received a $765,000 grant from the Skoll Foundation to further their initiative, spoke to United Press International about how they’re working to leave inefficient healthcare in the dust.

South Africa Rape Trial Dashes Hope for Change – Women’s eNews
The high-profile rape trial of South Africa’s former vice president Jacob Zuma alarms advocates for rape survivors, already upset by the weakening of a once-promising bill on sexual offenses.

MoveOn.org members filled the offices of over 100 swing vote Republican members of Congress yesterday to express their concerns about Bush’s budget and tell real stories about how the cuts have negatively impacted and will continue to impact their lives. Signing online petitions and making phone calls is well and good, but going directly to a politicians’ office with a group makes a huge impact:

“The best moment for me was seeing the look on the staffer’s face when he saw a group of people carrying signs walk into the office followed by 2 major tv news crews with cameras!”

-Linda O. from Hickory, NC.

“An elderly veteran spoke about how Medicare and veterans’ benefits cuts would hurt him, and how his grandson (an injured Iraq war veteran) was not being properly cared for. This short speech clearly moved Rep. Kolbe’s staff, and the senior aide came over and shook the old man’s hand. She was visibly moved by this story.”

-Geoffrey N. from Tucson, AZ.

“The congressional aide we met with stated that they rarely have anyone come by with an opinion, much less a group bigger then 10, and that this alone would garner our Rep’s attention.”

-Kernan H, Austin, TX

Gee, I wonder why the ‘liberal media’ isn’t giving a voice to these radical anti-American loony leftists.

“If we had a bill like South Dakota’s and it came through the Legislature, I would sign it. No clarification needed.”
-Florida’s Chief Financial Officer and candidate for Attorney General Tom Gallagher
Iraq

Female Soldier From Md. Dies In Iraq – AP
The Department of Defense says a 19-year-old female soldier from Maryland has died in Iraq. Private first class Amy Duerksen of Aberdeen Proving Ground died in Baghdad on March eleventh from a non-combat-related injury. Duerksen was assigned to the Fourth Combat Support Battalion, First Brigade, Fourth Infantry Division — based at Fort Hood, Texas. Last year, 23-year-old Specialist Toccara Green became Maryland’s first woman soldier to be killed in combat in Iraq.

General

Va. diocese allows female altar servers – UPI
Female altar servers are now allowed in Arlington, Va., leaving Lincoln, Neb., as the only U.S. Roman Catholic archdiocese to still ban them, a report said. Under Tuesday’s decision by Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde, girls and women in the diocese’s 21 counties may assist at mass as soon as Sunday, which individual priests may institute after consulting with parish leadership and informing the bishop.

Reproductive Rights

Miss. Lawmakers Face Deadline for Abortion Bill – AP
Mississippi lawmakers have until Monday to reach an agreement, if any, on an abortion bill. A House-passed proposal would ban all abortions in Mississippi, except when a woman’s life is at risk or she was the victim of rape or incest. The Senate wants to insert language in the bill, backed by Pro-Life Mississippi, that would require doctors to perform an ultrasound and fetal heart monitor before each procedure. Mississippi has one of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.

South Dakota abortion ban an issue in Florida governor’s race – The Gainesville Sun
South Dakota’s abortion ban is causing a stir in the Florida governor’s race. A day after Attorney General Charlie Crist said he would sign a bill similar to the one South Dakota passed to ban abortions except when the mother’s life is in danger, the three other major candidates in the race voiced their views. Crist’s Republican primary opponent, state Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, said he would sign the same bill South Dakota passed while the Democrats, U.S. Rep. Jim Davis and state Rod Smith, said that the right to legal abortions should be protected.

Bill seeks rare exceptions to 24-hour abortion waiting period – AP
Three years after lawmakers approved a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions, a Republican senator who voted for the law is pushing to lift its requirements for women whose fetuses have rare fatal conditions. Sen. Geoff Michel, R-Edina, said he’s trying to walk a careful line on a politically volatile issue. The waiting period became law in 2003 after years of controversy. It requires doctors to discuss risks and other information with women at least 24 hours before an abortion. But after hearing from obstetricians on both sides of the abortion divide, Michel says some of the provisions – such as giving women information about adoption and showing them images of healthy fetuses – are hurtful to families who have been told their fetus is dead or won’t live.

Romney opts against proclamation honoring 1972 birth control case – Boston Globe
Gov. Mitt Romney is declining to issue a proclamation recognizing a landmark 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control for unmarried people — the first time in 10 years a Massachusetts governor has taken a pass on the proclamation. The decision is irking family planning and abortion rights activists. The case, Eisenstadt vs. Baird, is seen a precursor to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Last year Romney signed the proclamation, but deleted a reference to Roe v. Wade. “It’s a shame that Gov. Mitt Romney has missed this opportunity to show his support for increased access to birth control,” said Melissa Kogut, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts.

In a March 3, 2006 NewsHour piece, South Dakota Republican Senator Bill Napoli was asked to describe a scenario in which an abortion exception may be invoked. “A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life,” he said.

As much as that quote gives me nightmares, we must remind ourselves that elected officials like Napoli believe in the right to control women’s bodies and lives and they’re passing laws to make sure their twisted fantasies become reality.
General

Grants Flow To Bush Allies On Social Issues – Washington Post
For years, conservatives have complained about what they saw as the liberal tilt of federal grant money. Taxpayer funds went to abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood to promote birth control, and groups closely aligned with the AFL-CIO got Labor Department grants to run worker-training programs. In the Bush administration, conservatives are discovering that turnabout is fair play: Millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have flowed to groups that support President Bush’s agenda on abortion and other social issues. Under the auspices of its religion-based initiatives and other federal programs, the administration has funneled at least $157 million in grants to organizations run by political and ideological allies, according to federal grant documents and interviews.

Sonia Nazario risked her life to write a story. It was nothing compared with what her subject went through. – SF Chronicle
For some journalists, research means sitting at a computer and surfing Google and other information services. For Sonia Nazario, a Los Angeles Times projects reporter, it means getting covered with fleas and filth as she investigates the children of hardcore drug addicts.

Amazon Says Technology, Not Ideology, Skewed Results – NY Times
Amazon.com last week modified its search engine after an abortion rights organization complained that search results appeared skewed toward anti-abortion books. Until a few days ago, a search of Amazon’s catalog of books using the word “abortion” turned up pages with the question, “Did you mean adoption?” at the top, followed by a list of books related to abortion. Amazon removed that question from the search results page after it received a complaint from a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a national organization based in Washington.

Benedict dropped a bombshell, saying it is right to ask if ‘more space’ can be given women in ministry – Newsday
Benedict dropped an ecclesiastical bombshell, proving his merit as a historian and a pastor. He said that sacramental ordination to priesthood was not the only avenue to ministerial service, but “nevertheless, it is right to ask oneself if more space, more positions of responsibility, can be given to women, even in the ministerial services.” He did not elaborate. Why is this such a bombshell? The priest asked about governance and ministry, each of which is restricted to the clergy. The pope answered that each might be possible for women.

Reproductive Rights

Abortion law a wake-up call to safeguard rights – Des Moiness Register
Here’s a chilling thought sequence: In South Dakota, a murderer can be sentenced to death. The state’s new abortion ban, signed this month, says a fetus has the same legal rights as its mother. So why not put women to death for having abortions?
It sounds far-fetched, but so did the bill that’s now law, banning all abortions except those necessary to save a mother’s life. The new law — which won’t be enforced until court cases are resolved — punishes only doctors, with up to five years in prison. But if it’s correct that “the unborn child from the moment of conception is a whole separate human being,” and that the state constitution applies equally to the born and unborn, then what’s the logical conclusion?

The NYT’s Woman Problem – The American Prospect
Is The New York Times still pro-choice? You wouldn’t know it from reading the op-ed page.

International

WATER: Women Have a Crucial Role to Play – IPS
Millions of women and girls in poor countries walk an average of six kilometres a day to carry 20 litres of water on average to their homes. Millions of others drop out of school because of the lack of private and separate sanitation facilities. Taking women into account in projects aimed at improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene would help them to lift themselves out of poverty. If women participated in defining these plans, it would multiply the benefit to the community, according to a report presented at the Mar. 16-22 Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico.

UNICEF official warns of continuing threats to Afghan women and children – UN News
With Afghanistan’s new school year officially beginning tomorrow, a senior United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official has warned of a continued threat facing Afghan women and children from high rates of child and maternal mortality, low levels of school enrolment and neglect of children’s fundamental rights.

Chinese family-planning official rules out changes in controversial ‘one child’ – AP
China’s top family-planning official has ruled out changes in its controversial ”one child” birth control policy, warning that the crowded country is facing a new surge of births, a news report said Wednesday. The communist government has limited most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two since the 1970s in an effort to restrain the growth of China’s population of 1.3 billion people and conserve scarce resources.

Asia must educate young on HIV – Stuff
Asia must break down taboos about sex and stop discrimination if it is to halt the world’s fastest growing HIV rates, an expert warns, with half of all new cases in the continent aged between 14 and 24. Professor Myung-Hwan Cho, President of the Aids Society of Asia and the Pacific, said Asia’s 8.3 million HIV cases were dwarfed by Africa’s 23 million, but that the disease was spreading faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world.

Penalise educated stay-at-home women – Expatica
The Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) has proposed recovering part of the cost of study from highly-educated women who decide not to seek paid work. MP Sharon Dijksma, deputy chairperson of the PvdA’s parliamentary party, believes the punitive measure is needed to stimulate more women to join the workforce. She outlined her ideas in ‘Forum’, a magazine published by employers’ group VNO-NCW. “A highly-educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to work – that is destruction of capital,” Dijksma said. “If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished.”

HIV Infections in Malaysia Women on Rise – AP
The number of women infected with HIV in Malaysia is on the rise, and housewives outnumber female sex workers four to one, the Malaysian AIDS Council said Wednesday. In 1986, when the first AIDS cases were discovered in Malaysia, there were no female victims, but by 2004 women accounted for 7 percent of all HIV infections, the council said. Of the 67,438 people found to be infected with HIV between 1996 and 2004, 4,841 were women. Of these, 1,756 were housewives and 435 were sex workers, said the council, Malaysia’s main non-governmental group dealing with AIDS.

I just wrote a piece for AlterNet focusing on how Bush’s budget is impacting organizations serving the elderly, children, poor, mothers, etc…

The point of the story was to get past the numbers (how many of you gloss over the word billion these days) and put a face to these cuts. Here’s a story about an elderly woman who receives a box of food each month though a program that might be completely slashed.

Every month, 80-year-old Sally Shaver pays someone to drive her to the Harvest Hope Food Bank in Columbia, S.C., to pick up a box of fresh produce, baked goods, dry cereals, juice, canned goods and cheese. “It really helps me out because after paying for my rent, phone bill and medication, I barely have enough for food,” she says. “If I could work, I would, but I have an artificial knee and a pacemaker, and I can’t get around.”

Shaver, who worked as a nurse’s aide for most of her life, brings in $451 a month in social security. Her fixed income qualifies her for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which is designed to improve the health and nutrition of low-income senior citizens, pregnant women, postpartum mothers, infants and children.

Last year, CSFP provided 536,196 people with a monthly box of food. Bush’s proposed budget for 2007 calls for a nationwide elimination of the entire program.

“As a food bank, we are very concerned about this program. When you have a growing population of elderly in this state, how are we going to find other resources to replace it?” asks Denise Holland, executive director of the Harvest Hope Food Bank. “We have already been serving these seniors for two years, and they have gotten accustomed to this. I can’t turn people away in wheelchairs. My heart won’t let me do it.”

Holland says if the program is cut entirely, she’ll seek food and financial donations to ensure the neediest recipients continue to receive their monthly box of food. “Because they are on a fixed income, this box makes the difference between them not having enough to eat for the month to really being able to spread it out over the month,” she says. “When they experience hunger, their health is going to decline, which is going to cost us more to help them in other ways.”

The Harvest Food Bank serves 56,000 people per week in 18 South Carolina counties, but is only able to offer the CSFP in two counties because of funding constraints. Bush’s 2006 budget cuts forced the program to cut the number of boxes it offers from 1,400 to 1,200 per month and that’s just in two counties. More than 350 low-income senior citizens are on the program’s waiting list.

South Carolina ranks second nationwide for the highest percentage of hungry people and fifth for the highest percentage of individuals with food insecurity, according to the Center on Hunger and Poverty.

November will be here before you know it. 20 million single women didn’t vote in 2004. If a small percentage of those women decide to vote, the political landscape will drastically change (as long as their votes are counted):
Reproductive Rights

Bill intends to shield right to abortion – Star Bulletin
For the first time since abortion was legalized in Hawaii in 1970, the Legislature is preparing to amend the law. Since Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortions, advocates and opponents largely left the law untouched because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that women had the right to an abortion with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Now, supporters fear two new conservative judges on the high court might change the ruling and that women in Hawaii would need a state law that would be difficult to pass in a heated political climate.

Abortion issue in Alaska gets new fuel – Anchorage Daily News
South Dakota’s recent adoption of tough restrictions on abortion could bring new life to an old political fight in Alaska.
Alaska has long been one of the least restrictive states in the nation on abortion, a distinction grounded in the state’s libertarian leanings. Alaska’s standard, however, hasn’t loomed nearly as large as Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that declared abortion a right under the U.S. Constitution, affecting all 50 states. But that could change if a challenge to the South Dakota law reaches the Supreme Court. Abortion opponents hope that the court’s two new members will tip the balance in their favor.

Abortion lessons from Latin America – LA Times
It’s been a long since the days of back-alley abortions in the U.S. Perhaps that’s why South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds signed into law a ban against abortion in his state, with one narrow exception: protecting the life of the pregnant woman. Perhaps Rounds, who was only 19 when Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, doesn’t remember what it was like to live in a country where women had no right to a safe, legal abortion. But there is a place he could visit if he wants to refresh his memory: Latin America. Abortion is illegal in most countries in Central and South America, though the law waives criminal penalties for women who have abortions in certain circumstances: after rape or incest or if their life or health is endangered by the pregnancy. Over the last five years, I have interviewed dozens of women and girls who faced unwanted pregnancies and had abortions in Argentina, Mexico and Peru, all countries that limit access to contraceptives, sex education and abortion. The most common tale I heard was one of desperation. “I don’t have $10 a month for contraceptives — I need that money for milk for my children.” “I didn’t even want to have sex, let alone become pregnant.” “If I have this child, I won’t be able to take care of the others.” “My father raped me.” The list goes on.

The battle to ban birth control – Salon
On the face of it, their fight seems doomed. The vast majority of Americans support access to birth control: According to a National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association poll last year, even 80 percent of anti-choice Americans support women’s access to contraception. And with the exception of a dwindling number of devout Catholics, a large majority of American women have used or regularly use some form of contraception. Perhaps most telling of all, no mainstream antiabortion organization has yet come out against contraception, a sign that they know it would be a political disaster. Still, the anti-birth-control movement’s efforts are making a significant political impact: Supporters have pressured insurance companies to refuse coverage of contraception, lobbied for “conscience clause” laws to protect pharmacists from having to dispense birth control, and are redefining the very meaning of pregnancy to classify certain contraceptive methods as abortion.

In the Workplace

Write to the Department of Labor by March 28th to Oppose Elimination of a Vital Anti-Discrimination Tool – National Women’s Law Center
The U.S. Department of Labor office charged with ensuring that federal contractors provide equal opportunity to their workers has proposed to eliminate a critical tool for detecting wage discrimination and other discriminatory practices in the workplace.  Act now to let the Department know that you oppose this latest attempt to weaken the civil rights laws. The Department has extended the deadline for comments. Comments from the public are due no later than March 28th.

International

Australian women shrink the pay gap – Christian Science Monitor
Equal pay for equal work has eluded generations of American women. But Australia – a country where men still refer to the ladies as “sheilas” and male bonding in pubs is often seen as a national right – has nearly closed the gender pay gap.
In a comparison of gender-pay ratios among developed nations from previous years, Australia ranks an impressive second. Women here make 91 cents to a man’s dollar – far ahead of US women at 79 cents.

Health

Black Women More Likely to Die From Breast Cancer – HealthDay News
Black American women are 19 percent more likely than white women to die of breast cancer, a new study finds. And a second study in the March 20 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that minority women in the United States are half as likely as white women to receive recommended post-surgical drug treatment for breast cancer. This may partially explain why black women are more likely to die from breast cancer, the researchers said.

The original Q&A is at StoriesinAmerica

At the ripe age of 25, Afghan activist Malalai Joya received international attention and acclaim for speaking out at the December 2003 Loya Jirga (Grand Council) convention in Kabul to create the country’s constitution. Much to the chagrin of the warlords sitting nearby, she gave an impassioned speech accusing them of committing crimes against humanity.

“These were those who turned our country into the nucleus of national and international wars. They were the most anti-women people in the society who wanted to … who brought our country to this state and they intend to do the same again,” she said. “I believe that it is a mistake to test those already being tested. They should be taken to national and international court. If they are forgiven by our people, the bare- footed Afghan people, our history will never forgive them. They are all recorded in the history of our country.”

Two years later, Joya won the second highest number of votes in the Farah Province and was elected to Afghanistan’s 249-seat National Assembly. She also heads the non-governmental group, “Organization of Promoting Afghan Women’s Capabilities.”

Joya was four-years-old when her family fled Afghanistan in 1982 to the refugee camps of Iran and then Pakistan. She finished her education in Pakistan and began teaching literacy courses to other women at age 19. After the 10-year Soviet Union occupation of Afghanistan, Joya returned to her country during the Taliban’s reign in 1998.

Joya, now 27, has survived four assassination attempts and receives death threats on a regular basis. She sits on the Assembly under the protection of government appointed armed bodyguards and is forced to travel incognito under a burqa, the head-to-toe shroud worn by many Afghan women.

With all attention focused on Iraq and now Iran, Afghanistan rarely makes front-page headlines. Joya is currently traveling the United States urging Americans not to forget her country and to discuss her ongoing fight for freedom from religious fundamentalism, women’s rights, education and basic medical care. I caught up with Joya after a speech she gave in Berkeley on Thursday. This week, she is scheduled to speak in Norwich, Vermont and New Haven, Connecticut.

On International Women’s Day earlier this month, Laura Bush said, “In Afghanistan, young girls go to school and women serve in government because America helped liberate the Afghan people.” The Bush administration often refers to Afghanistan, particularly Afghan women, in speeches about freedom and democracy. What do you think of those comments?

What the U.S. brought to Afghanistan is not democracy. It’s a mask of democracy. Instead of the Taliban, we have the Northern Alliance. There is no fundamental change in Afghanistan. The U.S. has not given us a gift. Our people are poor and they need help. The U.S. helped the warlords take power.  These warlords control Afghanistan.

Do Afghans have access to electricity and clean water?

In Kabul, it’s a little better. Day by day, they have electricity for a few hours, but not in the provinces. In Herat, they have electricity because of Iran and Kazakhstan, but most people don’t have electricity and water. Most still don’t have access to healthcare and education, especially the women who are not being educated.

What is the status of women in Afghanistan?

Women are being killed by their husbands, but no one is asking why. There is no law for justice. There is still death by stoning. A 13-year-old was raped by local warlords, but nobody talks about it.

A month ago, two women killed themselves. Why? Because their children were kidnapped. The U.S. wants to tell the people of the world that our main problem was the burqa. Taking off the burqa doesn’t solve our problems. Even right now, some women, because of security, have to wear the burqa. Because of security, I have to wear a burqa. Some women, because of our culture and the male domination of society, wear the burqa, but this is not the main problem.

What about women in government? You have more women in your government than we have here in the United States.

Yes, we have 68 women in the parliament, but most of them have compromised with warlords. They like to talk about women in parliament, but those women do not have rights. This cannot bring freedom and democracy for women in Afghanistan.

Do the women in parliament support you?

No, they are afraid to support me publicly because they are under the control of the warlords. One woman threatened to kill me with forks because I speak out.

You’ve said you are now used to receiving death threats and risking your life. Are you heightening that risk by visiting the United States?

Yes, the warlords say I’m an agent for the U.S., but the main reason I accepted this trip is to expose those warlords. I want to leave the message of our people to the freedom loving people of this country.

I want to also expose the policies of the U.S. Why are they replacing one criminal with another criminal? Right now we have many enemies in Afghanistan. The Taliban and Al Qaeda has support from fundamentalists around the world. The Northern Alliance is also committing crimes under the name of jihad and Islam. The warlords that are in power are brothers of the Taliban. Who supported the Taliban? Who destroyed the domination of the Taliban? Who supported Saddam? Who destroyed the government of Saddam? Which kind of government does Iraq have? What’s happening in Iraq has an impact on the people of Afghanistan, for security, for democracy and women’s rights.

Where does Afghan President Hamid Karzai fit in this picture?

He has compromised with warlords. Most people of Afghanistan voted for him and he has the support of international countries. As a president of a country, he should accept some risks and bring changes to Afghanistan, but unfortunately he has compromised and day by day, he is losing the trust of our people.

What will life be like for you when you return to Afghanistan?

I will spend as much time underground as possible. I have three bodyguards, but the government said they don’t have enough guns to give them. I know they have enough guns. I’m not sure about my security because the government doesn’t want to help me. They are trying to force me to stop talking, but they know very well that I will never stop speaking the truth. I will continue the struggle. They can kill me, but they can’t kill my words.

There’s a lot going on in the world of women’s issues…I compile this list daily at StoriesinAmerica

Remember, 20 million single women didn’t vote in 2004
General

*Women in the military are twice as likely to be targeted by the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on LGBT military personnel, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network said Monday. While women comprise about 15 percent of the total military force, they represent nearly 30 percent of all “don’t ask, don’t tell” discharges since 1993, Department of Defense figures show. “Lesbian-baiting goes back to the early days of World War II, when women began volunteering for service in what was traditionally a man’s world,” said retired Brigadier General Evelyn “Pat” Foote, an honorary board member of SLDN.
Source: PlanetOut

Reproductive Rights

*Gov. Jennifer Granholm will sign into law a bill requiring Michigan abortion providers to give a pregnant woman the option of viewing ultrasound images of her fetus before performing an abortion, according to her spokeswoman. It would mark the first time Granholm has agreed with the Legislature’s anti-abortion majority on a measure to regulate the procedure. The bill, which moved quietly through the Legislature, is an expansion of the state’s so-called informed consent law.
Source: Detroit Free Press

*Girls under 18 will need a parent’s permission before they can have an abortion under a bill signed Thursday by [Utah] Gov. Jon Huntsman. The old law required notification of at least one parent, but not permission. The new law allows minor girls to seek an exception in Juvenile Court to the parental consent rule — but not the notification requirement — in cases of abuse, incest or estrangement from their parents, or when a doctor determines the life or health of the girl is at risk.
Source: AP

*South Carolina lawmakers who oppose abortion are looking to next year to further restrict the procedure here. Other Southern states like Mississippi and Tennessee are already trying to follow the lead of South Dakota, where Republican Governor Mike Rounds signed legislation earlier this month that would ban all abortions except those necessary to save women’s lives.
Source: AP

*For all the conflict about abortion in recent sessions of the South Dakota Legislature, it’s interesting to note that the original decision by the U.S. Supreme Court back in 1973 was little more than a rumor in the halls of the state Capitol building. I look back on that in wonder that the decision that helped create perhaps the most enduring social, legal and political issue of the past three decades came to the state with so little fanfare.
Source: AgusLeader

*Kentucky motorists can soon add anti-abortion to the long list of causes to support through specialty license plates. The plates bearing the message “Choose Life” will be available within a few months, state officials said. A federal appeals court Friday allowed Tennessee to offer the anti-abortion license plates, paving the way for other states to do the same. A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned a lower-court ruling that said the tag illegally promoted only one side of the abortion debate.
Source: AP

*After receiving reports that two more women died after taking abortion pills, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest provider of abortion and contraceptive services, announced that it would immediately change the way it gives the medicines. The change partly resolves a long-running dispute between Planned Parenthood and the Food and Drug Administration over the safest way to provide pill-based abortions.
Source: NY Times

In the Courts

*The Supreme Court appears poised to make it far harder to prosecute cases of domestic violence when victims are unwilling or unable to testify in court. Over the last two decades, prosecutors in domestic violence and child abuse cases have relied heavily on testimony by police officers and counselors who interviewed the alleged victims when they could not or would not appear in court. But those prosecutions have a formidable foe in Justice Antonin Scalia. He insists the Constitution guarantees all defendants a right to confront their accusers in court, and sees no basis for an exception in cases of domestic violence or child abuse.
Source: LA Times

In the Workplace

*Although the nation’s law schools for years have been graduating classes that are almost evenly split between men and women, and although firms are absorbing new associates in numbers that largely reflect that balance, something unusual happens to most women after they begin to climb into the upper tiers of law firms. They disappear. According to the National Association for Law Placement, a trade group that provides career counseling to lawyers and law students, only about 17 percent of the partners at major law firms nationwide were women in 2005, a figure that has risen only slightly since 1995, when about 13 percent of partners were women.
Source: NY Times

International

*Married at the age of four, an Afghan girl was subjected to years of beatings and torture, finally escaping to discover that within all the world’s cruelty, there is also some kindness.
Source: Yahoo News

*A local NGO has launched a programme aimed at finding shelter and jobs for ostracised divorced women in an effort to help them cope with the travails of single life. According to Youmna Abu Hassan, who sits on the board of the Society for Developing the Role of Women in Syria, the project aims to rehabilitate female divorcees by educating them, teaching them skills and providing them with shelter, in order “to make them economically independent.” According to a study by the Central Statistics Bureau, there were roughly 17,000 cases of divorce nationwide in 2004. Abu Hassan explained that the majority of these women “couldn’t return to their parents’ house once they had left it.”
Source: IRIN

*Beatrice Were says she did just what her government recommended – shunned sex until her marriage and stayed faithful to her husband. What she didn’t realize is that he was unfaithful. Soon after their first child was born, he caught the AIDS virus and unwittingly infected her. The question of why Ugandans like her husband didn’t use a condom is at the heart of a dispute between some health activists and the U.S. government. The activists, as well as some Ugandan officials, accuse the United States of blunting the condom message in favor of abstinence, while the Americans say they are victims of misinformation and have actually increased nearly tenfold the number of condoms they supply to this African nation of 26 million.
Source: AP

*Nearly 80 per cent of the more than 6,000 women and juvenile girls on trial in Pakistan are facing charges under the controversial strict ‘Hudood’ Islamic laws that mainly deal with crimes of adultery and rape, said a human rights report published on Monday. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report also noted an increase in the killings of women in the name of honour, English Daily Times reported. Most such killings targetted women and girls who contracted marriages against family’s will.
Source: Khaleej Times

*Zeng Shuqing, a female farmer from central China’s Henan Province, traveled all the way to Beijing for a urban job. Though she is employed in a plastic factory in Beijing now, 41-year-old Zeng has been worrying about her lack of necessary skills to secure their future livelihood and support her two children’s education. A joint program, the Action of Promotion of Employment and Rights for female migrant workers in Beijing, was launched on Monday by China and the European Union in a bid to help female farmers like Zeng solve their problems. The program will study and analyze the living conditions, related policies and regulations, employment, medical care, insurance, housing, education and democratic rights of female migrant workers, improve their conditions and provide training and support. Statistics show that women account for a third of the 4 million migrant workers in Beijing.
Source: Xinhua

*Women and girls are far more vulnerable to AIDS than men and need their own U.N. agency to defend them, just as the U.N. children’s fund UNICEF protects young people, a top U.N. envoy said on Friday. “What has happened to women is such a gross and palpable violation of human rights that the funding must be found,” said Stephen Lewis, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special envoy for AIDS in Africa. “We must right the wrong.”
Source: Reuters

*Some 9 million children in Africa have lost a mother to AIDS, British charity Save the Children said Monday, calling on donors to sharply increase aid to meet their needs. “Incredibly, the impact of HIV and AIDS on children is still being ignored,” Save the Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said in a statement.
Source: Reuters

*By garnering enough votes from Jews and Arabs alike, Nadia Hilo placed high enough in the Labor Party’s national primaries in Israel in January to be considered a shoo-in for the March 28 parliamentary elections. This is Hilo’s third run for office. After two unsuccessful attempts, the outspoken grandmother of three is blunt about the obstacles that she has faced in trying to get elected as an Arab woman to the Israeli parliament. “With Arab women, it’s double discrimination,” she told Women’s eNews. “One, they belong to a circle of women in general and everything that discriminates against women also discriminates against them. In addition, they are a minority. It’s another kind of discrimination that lowers their representation.”
Source: Women’seNews

*The men of marrying age in East Africa are calling the current dry season “the drought that killed the dowry.” On the world’s poorest continent, droughts and changing weather patterns are pushing more and more Africans into cities, putting pressure on already strained resources and changing cultural practices, from diet to marriage traditions. Humanitarian organizations estimate that 3.5 million people, mostly nomadic herders, are facing food shortages in Kenya. About 40 people have died of hunger-related illnesses, and 70 percent of livestock in the drought-affected northeast have perished.
Source: Washington Post

The reproductive rights section keeps growing…and growing…and growing. The antis are on a rampage. Please go to your elections office, grab a stack of voter registration forms and register people, specifically young women, wherever you go. In the grocery store, on the bus, at the movie theatre. Remember, 20 million single women didn’t vote in 2004…Let’s hope the votes will be counted in 2006.
General

The United Nations is lagging. The premier world organization is still missing the point that many have grasped in countries such as Germany, Jamaica, Liberia, Chile and New Zealand: that women, too, can serve as leaders at the highest level. In the 60 years since the United Nations was founded, no woman has served as secretary general. And despite the body’s stated goal of achieving gender parity within the system by the year 2000, women remain grossly underrepresented. The numbers are embarrassing: Only 16 percent of undersecretaries general are women.
Source: Washington Post

Reproductive Rights

*In a squat, nondescript building on West 41st Street, just down the block from a Lutheran church and a YWCA, sits a small family-planning clinic. The one-story building has no windows facing the street, but closed-circuit TV cameras under the rain gutters scan for intruders. Visitors park in the back and have to show photo ID before being buzzed in through an anteroom enclosed by bulletproof glass. Welcome to South Dakota’s only abortion provider, the new ground zero of the national abortion-rights struggle.
Source: Chicago Tribune

*State lawmakers lashed out at Lincoln state Sen. Mike Foley on Thursday during a debate on low-income health care funding. Opponents accuse Foley of being dishonest during a two-day debate related to funding of family planning clinics, including Planned Parenthood. Some lawmakers accuse him of lying about his motives to expand funding to family planning clinics when actually, they said, he was trying to cut funds.
Source: KETV

*Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager filed a request with a federal judge Wednesday to join a lawsuit demanding the U.S. Food and Drug Administration make the morning-after pill available without a prescription. Wisconsin is the only state that has asked to join the Center for Reproductive Rights’ lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York. The case, filed in early 2005, is entering the discovery phase.
Source: AP

*Over the past 10 years, more than a dozen countries have made it easier to get abortions, and women from Mexico to Ireland have mounted court challenges to get access to the procedure. The trend contrasts sharply with the United States, where South Dakota’s governor signed legislation last week that would ban most abortions in the state, launching a new battle that activists seem ready to take to the Supreme Court. Abortion is far less divisive in the rest of the world.
Source: AP

*President Bush on Wednesday nominated acting Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach to permanently head the troubled Food and Drug Administration, but a controversy involving science and sexual mores could stall his confirmation by the Senate indefinitely. Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Patty Murray of Washington announced Wednesday that they would block a floor vote on the nomination until the FDA made a firm decision on the controversy — whether or not to allow Plan B, the “morning after” birth control pill, to be sold without a prescription.
Source: LA Times

*The abortion ban passed recently by the Mississippi House of Representatives is now before the Senate, which voted yesterday to begin negotiating changes to the bill so that it would not invalidate existing abortion provisions. Senate Public Health and Welfare Chairman Alan Nunnelee (R) told The Jackson Clarion-Ledger, “This outright ban has been put right in the middle of Mississippi’s informed consent statute. There’s very high likelihood that the two items would be challenged in court,” possibly leading to a court striking down the entire law.
Source: Feminist Daily News Wire

In the Workplace

*Life for women in the American workplace is far from paradise — they face economic punishment for almost every aspect of their biology.
Source: AlterNet

International

*Just collecting the cooking fuel essential for survival, millions of refugee and so-called internally displaced women are daily forced to put their lives at risk, says a new report by the New York-based Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. Uprooted from their homes by armed conflict, persecution and humanitarian disasters, almost 35 million people in the world live as internally displaced persons (IDPs) within the borders of their own countries, or as refugees across international borders. But for women and girls living in IDP and refugee settings, life is particularly grim and surrounding threats are notoriously dangerous, according to the report.
Source: IPS

*President Bush used the occasion of International Women’s Day to tout his administration’s commitment to women. He spoke in glowing terms of how bringing democracy to the Middle East had improved the lives of women in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both the President and Mrs. Bush (this was a day for women after all) talked enthusiastically about girls going to school and women participating in government in both countries. Neither however mentioned the continuing pandemic of sexual violence against women that was highlighted in the State Department’s report on Afghanistan’s continuing poor record on human rights that was released the following day. Nor was anything said about the continuing low literacy rates for women in Afghanistan (less than 20%) or that 50% of marriages in that country take place before girls reach the age of sixteen.
Source: CounterCurrents.org

*A second woman confirmed on Monday that she will run for the country’s [Yemen’s] highest political office in elections scheduled to be held in September. “The time has come for the intellectuals to occupy the post [of president],” said Rashida al-Qaili, the second woman to declare an intention to run for president after Sumaya Ali Raja, who announced her candidacy in December.
Source: IRIN

Full interview at StoriesinAmerica

Their numbers may be small, but South Dakota, like every so-called “red state” state in this country, has a progressive community and they’re outraged over the recent passage of the unconstitutional law that would force a girl who is raped by a male relative to have his child.

South Dakota, a state with 770,883 residents, made national and international headlines after Governor Mike Rounds signed the abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. With only one clinic providing abortions in the entire state, South Dakota’s women have been struggling for reproductive rights for some time. Only now are they getting widespread attention.
While South Dakota has a higher percentage of women with health insurance than the nation as a whole, it is below average for women’s employment and earnings and social and economic autonomy, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research report on the Status of Women in South Dakota.

A few facts about South Dakota’s women:

*Only 16 percent of South Dakota’s state legislators are women, compared with only 22 percent nationally.
*South Dakota ranks 48th nationally for women’s political participation.
*Women in South Dakota are the least likely in the country to own their own business and are among the least likely to work in professional or managerial positions.
*South Dakota does not require insurance companies to cover contraception.
*Almost half of all Native American women in South Dakota are poor, compared with approximately 10 percent of white women.
*Median annual earnings for women in South Dakota rank 50th, tied with Montana.
Source: The Status of Women in South Dakota

Two years ago, the state’s progressives formed a group called “Grassroots South Dakota: Ideas for Progress,” to educate people about those issues and encourage vocal opposition. “Obviously we haven’t been doing a very good job,” says member Sheila Flynn. Today the group has 900 members.

Flynn, a 56-year old South Dakota native, teaches high school literature.

Tell me about the progressive community in South Dakota.

There are many progressive groups: the Sierra Club and the clean water groups, but they are so splintered. We thought we could bring them all together and have a stronger voice.

What’s the political climate like now that your state is getting so much national and international attention?

The political climate is conservative, but I think there are conservative men and women who are stunned by our legislative inaction. The legislature didn’t deal with healthcare or education or water. They tabled those and came out with this restrictive ban on women’s health. We have 9,000 more people without health insurance this year. Even very, very conservative Republicans are shocked that women would no longer have a choice in South Dakota. I don’t think they thought it would happen. They thought someone would swoop in and stop this nonsense.

When the Republican Party wed themselves to the religious right, people in South Dakota thought that would be the end of the Republican Party. Obviously, we were very wrong about that.

There are lifelong Republicans in South Dakota who have changed their party affiliation in the last five years.

Do you know many Republicans who’ve changed their affiliation?

Yes, they have told me that Bush scares the heck out of them. These are people who fought in World War II, so there is a shift happening.

Then again, in a small state it takes very little money to influence an election. We’re not a populated state so you can really swing things with a just a few votes.  

What does your group plan to work on this year?

We plan to get out the vote on Native American reservations. We really want to fight the  disconnect between what people want the government to be doing and what the government is doing. We don’t have a paper trail with our voting system and we also plan to work on that.

Have you seen a rise in religion? Are there more fundamentalist churches in South Dakota today than say 10 years ago?

Yes, I have students who think the Left Behind series is non-fiction. When I tell them they should look at the other side of this issue, they look at me like I’m going to hell.

On the other hand, we have the United Church of Christ in Sioux Falls and their membership has tripled in the last year.

The fundamentalist movement is new to South Dakota, but they already have a loud voice. Our local school board just enacted a new sex education curriculum and they were there crying about it at every school board meeting. They make huge waves and they get things done. We have to be asking people who run for office some hard questions.

What is the sex education curriculum?

They’re just books, but according to these people, the books are encouraging sex. Our kids need information about safe sex.

As a teacher, do you worry about speaking out?

I am more open progressively outside of the school now than I was five years ago. We can no longer be quiet.

I try to challenge kids to think, but sadly, we’re in a climate where they don’t think they have to listen to another perspective.  It’s reflective of the climate. It’s red and blue and I don’t need to listen to your side.

What message would you like to send to people who are shocked and outraged over what’s happening in South Dakota? People are calling for tourism boycotts and saying nasty things about South Dakotans.

The progressives in South Dakota are truly heartsick about this. And they’re all ages. I think there is a perception that just old hippies are concerned with these issues and that’s not true.  

I don’t blame people for saying nasty things. We’re not proud of our state right now.

Did you grow up in South Dakota?

Yes, I’m a fourth generation South Dakotan. I have five children. They all left the state for college and came back to raise their children. I don’t think they would have come back if this was the climate a few years ago.

Have you always been progressive?

I have always been progressive, but not active. I didn’t get active until the 2000 election. That was frightening. The idea that our Supreme Court selected our president was frightening. I worry that that’s part of the problem. We go from one alarm to the next alarm. People are on hyper alert and feel helpless. My energy is going towards getting rid of every person who voted for this bill. I’m hoping the national interest in South Dakota will take the wind out of the their sails and get their voices out of our legislature.