Jacinda Ardern Marks Anniversary Of Christchurch Mosque Terror Attacks
New
Age Islam News Bureau
14 March 2021
•
Jacinda Ardern Marks Anniversary Of Christchurch Mosque Terror Attacks
•
Fury As Charlie Hebdo Cartoon Depicts Britain's Queen Kneeling On Meghan's Neck
•
‘No Stopping Us’: The Black Women Fighting For Breonna Taylor
•
In Kuwait, Women Denounce Harassment As Instagram Page Sparks Country's #Metoo
Movement
•
What International Women’s Day Looked Like Around The World In 2021
•
How Women In East Asia Became Freer Than Their Sisters In South Asia
•
NCW Condemns the Murder of an Egyptian Woman by Her Landlord over Male Visitor
Compiled By New
Age Islam News Bureau
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Jacinda
Ardern Marks Anniversary Of Christchurch Mosque Terror Attacks
Jacidna
Ardern was widely praised for the compassion shown to survivors. (File)
-----
By
: Niamh Shackleton
13
MAR 2021
On
March 15, 2019, 51 people praying inside a Mosque were killed by a white
supremacist gunman.
The
massacre was described as one of the country’s most traumatic days in history.
To
mark its two year anniversary, Ardern addressed hundreds of people today, March
13, where she said that the 2019 events have left an ‘unquestionable legacy’
and that nothing she could say could change what happened that day.
She
said, as per the Independent, during the service held at the Christchurch
arena, ‘While words cannot perform miracles, they do have the power to heal.’
‘There
will be an unquestionable legacy from March 15, much of it will be
heartbreaking. But it is never too early or too late for the legacy to be a
more inclusive nation.’
Kiran
Munir, whose husband Haroon Mahmood was killed in the attacks, also spoke at
the service, and said that the day had ‘broke [her] heart into a thousand
pieces’.
Little
did I know that the next time I would see him the body and soul would not be
together. Little did I know that the darkest day in New Zealand’s history had
dawned. That day my heart broke into a thousand pieces, just like the hearts of
the 50 other families.
Temel
Atacocugu, who survived being shot nine times during the attack, spoke at
today’s service as well. He said, as per Gulf News, ‘They were attacks on all
of humanity. However, the future is in our hands. We will go on and we will be
positive together.’
https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/jacinda-ardern-marks-anniversary-of-christchurch-mosque-terror-attacks/
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Fury
As Charlie Hebdo Cartoon Depicts Britain's Queen Kneeling On Meghan's Neck
The
Charlie Hebdo front cover, criticised for mocking Meghan Markle and George
Floyd’s death, has sparked fury
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14-03-2021
TRT
WORLD
Controversial
French magazine Charlie Hebdo has published a cartoon on its front page
depicting Britain's Queen Elizabeth II kneeling on Meghan Markle's neck,
sparking harsh criticism on social media where users slammed it for being
racist and mocking George Floyd's death.
The
notorious magazine captioned its Saturday's cover, "Why Meghan left
Buckingham", to which Markle, the Duchess of Sussex and wife of Prince
Harry, who was lying on the ground replying, "Because I couldn't breathe
anymore."
“#CharlieHebdo,
this is wrong on every level. The Queen as #GeorgeFloyd's murderer crushing
Meghan's neck? #Meghan saying she's unable to breathe?" Halime Begum, CEO
of Runnymede Trust, a UK-based racial equality think tank, posted on Twitter.
"Charlie
Hebdo was extremely rude about the Prophet Mohammed and many on the right in
the UK applauded. Now, Charlie Hebdo is extremely rude about the Queen. What
will the same people on the right in the UK say now, I wonder?" wrote one
user.
In
a historic all-tell interview Markle, who has a Black mother and a white
father, had said last week the British press drove her to the point where life
no longer seemed worth living.
"I
knew that if I didn't say it, that I would do it. And I... just didn't want to
be alive anymore. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant
thought," she told Oprah Winfrey.
Floyd,
who was Black, died on May 25 after a police officer, who is white, pressed his
knee on Floyd's neck while he was handcuffed and pleading that he couldn't
breathe.
The
Black and Asian Lawyers For Justice said that the cover was "outrageous,
disgusting, fascistic racism," and accused the magazine of using Floyd's
trauma for profit.
"Words
cannot describe just how disgusting I found that Charlie Hebdo cover,"
another user said. "Punching down and constantly drawing racist
caricatures it's not satire."
"If
you have to continually explain that your "satire" isn't racist &
isn't punching down, then it isn't very good satire," another user said.
Charlie
Hebdo has been criticised in the past for publishing caricatures insulting
Islam's Prophet Muhammad, sparking large protests in Muslim-majority countries
and calls for boycott of French goods.
The
Daily Express shared the story with readers: "Disgust as Charlie Hebdo
depicts Queen kneeling on Meghan Markle's neck like George Floyd."
"Charlie
Hebdo: Fury at cover of Queen knelt on Meghan's neck in George Floyd
'parody'," was the title from The Mirror.
https://www.trtworld.com/europe/fury-as-charlie-hebdo-depicts-britain-s-queen-kneeling-on-meghan-s-neck-44990
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‘No Stopping Us’: The Black Women Fighting For
Breonna Taylor
By
Chris Kenning
13
Mar 2021
Louisville,
Kentucky – Dozens of cars blared their horns as they rolled up on the north
side of Kentucky’s state Capitol last week, one woman waving a Black Lives
Matter flag from a truck bed.
It
has been nearly a year since Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville Metro
Police in the early hours of March 13, 2020, in a botched raid.
After
the police killing of George Floyd in May, Taylor’s name became a rallying cry
during worldwide marches against systemic racism and police brutality
throughout the summer and fall.
In
Louisville, protesters took to the streets for more than 180 consecutive days,
pressuring the city to pay $12m to Taylor’s family and agree to wide-ranging
police reforms. But Palmer was pushing the state’s General Assembly to pass
“Breonna’s Law”, a proposed statewide ban on no-knock warrants.
Calls
for policy reforms such as a ban on “no-knock” police warrants are just one way
Louisville’s Black community is pushing for change since Taylor’s death.
In
neighbourhoods and halls of power, a cadre of Black women in Louisville is
honouring Taylor’s legacy by giving back to their communities, just as Taylor,
a hospital technician, did when she was alive.
They
are running nonprofits that feed Black communities. They are seeding new
businesses to rebuild Black wealth. They are pushing back on evictions and a
cash bail system that disproportionately strands people of colour behind bars.
They are leading the effort for legislative reforms. They are running for
office. And the Breonna Taylor Foundation is developing education, youth and
other initiatives.
The
community efforts spearheaded by Black women is fitting given Taylor’s job.
Prior to her death, Taylor’s mother worried her daughter would contract
COVID-19 due to her work as an emergency room technician in two local area
hospitals.
But
the 26-year-old, who dreamed of being a nurse, brushed off the concerns,
telling her family at the time, “I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do to help,
and do my part.”
One
year after her death, Al Jazeera spoke to five Black women in Louisville
honouring Taylor by making a change in her hometown, with or without the
establishment’s help.
Breonna’s
Law, modelled off a Louisville ordinance under the same name, would ban all
no-knock warrants, like the one used by police to raid Taylor’s home, and would
require officers to wear activated body cameras before and after serving a
warrant and submit to drug and alcohol testing if involved in a deadly
incident. The piece of legislation is also the first bill to be named for a
Black woman in Kentucky’s history, Scott said.
After
learning that no officers would be directly charged for Taylor’s death, many
protesters shifted their focus to advocating for Breonna’s Law. The bill was
discussed by the state’s House Judiciary Committee this week, but it does not
have enough time to make it through the legislative process before lawmakers
adjourn at the end of this month.
Instead,
leaders in the Republican-controlled statehouse are rallying around a different
bill centred on no-knock warrants. That bill passed Kentucky’s Senate last
month, and for Scott and protesters, it’s a first step, but it simply falls
short. The Senate bill, not named for Taylor, would only limit the use of
no-knock warrants. It was filed by Senate President Robert Stivers, who is
white.
To
have the president of the Senate when he presented the bill refuse to even say
Breonna Taylor's name ... it was such a removal of her from even what got us
here today.
“It
wasn’t benevolence from a white saviour elected official, it was because
Breonna Taylor was murdered,” she added. “People rose up and demanded justice,
and you cannot continue to erase our work as Black women and think that we are
going to be silent about that pain.”
It
is that pain that, in part, continues to motivate Scott in her work. Last week,
when Tamika Palmer briefly spoke to protesters who caravanned to the state
capital for Breonna’s Law, Scott’s eyes met Palmer’s and she saw “the pain and
hope” Taylor’s mother carries with her every day.
“All
of the people who have shown up for racial justice, all of the 700 plus people
who’ve been arrested, including myself and daughter who was a teenager at the
time, all of the people who have taken on actual policy,” Scott added, “they
have left me with this reminder that our protest includes policy and it
includes politics.”
Scott
says she is especially inspired by those involved in the movement for Black
Lives who told her they plan to run for office in 2022. “That is what a
movement is about. That is what building collective power is about,” she said.
“And that is how we will get justice for Breonna Taylor.”
The
44-year-old was in Atlanta, Georgia, last January with Attica Scott and their
daughters door-knocking for Democratic candidates when she found out Louisville
had picked its next police chief. The city was bringing in Erika Shields, who
resigned as Atlanta’s top law enforcement officer last year following a police
shooting of a Black man.
Parrish-Wright
could not understand why Louisville would look to the outside when what the
police department needed, she said, was someone who knew the city well and
could identify with the people on the ground.
“That’s
when I decided it’s going to take us to change things,” Parrish-Wright told Al
Jazeera, just months after she announced her plans to run for Louisville mayor
in 2022. “We have to have people who are willing to be elected and to bring the
people’s agenda because [officials are] not listening to us.”
“I’m
always deciding, putting out fires, answering questions, seeing who should get
what, when, where and how, making sure that I delegate and bring people to the
table,” she said.
The
co-chair of the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and
the operations manager for The Bail Project, Parrish-Wright has been at the
forefront of the protests in Louisville, and the effort to get those arrested
the legal help they need.
On
a blazing day last September, Parrish-Wright, her eyes heavy from a night of no
sleep, patiently talked to a slew of reporters under the beating sun. In
between conversations, she inquired about a young protester, who had been
arrested the night before. As her interviews wrapped up, Parrish-Wright
urgently walked towards the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections to check
on the protester who remained behind bars.
Just
hours before, she herself had been released from jail after being arrested on
charges that were later dropped. It is moments like these that young protesters
have repeatedly told Al Jazeera make Parrish-Wright not only a protest leader,
but mentor to so many.
For
Parrish-Wright, it is the young people who have motivated her to continue the
fight for justice for Breonna Taylor and Louisville’s Black community.
“Before
they said activist revolutionaries don’t make good politicians. We’re turning
that [notion] on its head,” she added. “Now, we get to diversify our leadership
in a real way … And that’s because our young people are not accepting anything
less. They want your words to match your actions and that inspires me.”
She
was marching as Louisville was exploding with night-time street protests,
overcome with tears and grief over the police killing of a Black woman who was
the same age as Croney, 26.
“This
was the time that everything had to change. It was now or never. It was a time
in history we’d never seen,” she said. But after a couple of days of emotional
marches that were often met with police tear gas, she decided, “I can’t do
this. The front lines aren’t for me. But I can fight in other ways.”
Nearly
a year later, Croney has put a social work career on hold to become the
full-time deputy director of Change Today, Change Tomorrow, a nonprofit started
by young Black women that serves the Black community’s food justice, education
and public health needs.
The
grassroots organisation has blossomed with an influx of donations and
volunteers to employ eight staffers. In the last six months of 2020, the group
served 65,000 people in Louisville’s predominantly Black West End.
Among
their programmes is an initiative that gives underpaid educators school
supplies. Another provides toiletries to the homeless and holiday gifts for
children.
They
also opened Pocket Change, a retail space to help Black-owned businesses sell
goods and attend business workshops near one of Louisville’s top
dining-and-shopping strips. An education centre offers mentoring, tutoring and
space for preteens.
Croney
said many Black women felt similarly compelled after protests seemed to mark a
sea change both inside and outside her community amid an unprecedented wave of
“so much passion, fight and urge for change.”
Change
Today, Change Tomorrow has drawn money from some establishment funders, such as
the Community Foundation of Louisville, who “are opening up dollars for racial
justice, for organisations doing this necessary work”, she said.
But
other foundations have been slow or reticent, which she attributes in part to a
distrust of Black-led, Black-serving organisations, she said. “There’s still a
lot of barriers into the nonprofit ecosystem for money.”
Croney
is originally from Hopkinsville, on Kentucky’s western edge, where her mother
and grandmother were known for community service. In Louisville, where she
attended college, the needs rooted in past racist policies have long plagued the
community.
The
Taylor case brought a renewed spotlight on deeper issues such as racial
disparities in generational wealth, which require a far longer game than do
police procedural reforms.
“We’ve
only begun to scratch the surface of what needs to happen,” she said. “When
America gets the flu, Black America gets pneumonia. Everything that’s happened
from the pandemic to the racial injustice and protests has further proved and
intensified the needs.”
On
a recent Saturday, she spent the afternoon handing out fresh eggs and bags of
fresh produce for 100 people in the area, all bought from Black-owned farms.
The
next night, she was in evening wear at her organisation’s event called Black
Recharge, a celebration at a hip brewery that included a fashion show and
pop-up vendors. She sipped water and said the last year had created a new
momentum for the Black community.
“Breonna
Taylor’s legacy and life has impacted this city in ways I’ve never seen,” she
said. “As painful as her death was, it has been so powerful. It has caused such
an awakening in Black people to know, this is the time. Let’s do this.”
“A
lot of our elders who were taking the city bus showed up [to get groceries],”
she told Al Jazeera, noting that it was “blazing hot” outside. With no other
large grocery stores within a reasonable distance and Kroger telling residents
the store would be closed “indefinitely”, Martin feared many would have to go
without groceries for days, if not longer.
With
the help of friends, Martin immediately jumped into action, creating Google
Forms so people could request grocery deliveries or sign up to volunteer and
donate. By the time she woke up the next morning, she had hundreds of
responses. “I thought I had been hacked,” she said. At that moment, #FeedTheWest
was born.
Louisville’s
West End, home to some of the state’s poorest areas, is a food desert, where
residents find it especially hard to buy affordable, healthy food. These are
the same areas that have a lower life expectancy and higher rates of diabetes, heart
disease and other health conditions.
Martin
is hoping to change that, however, through her work and the power of local
residents. Since its launch, the #FeedTheWest programme, sponsored by Change
Today, Change Tomorrow and Black Lives Matter – Louisville, has fed thousands
of families and provided supplies like diapers, toilet paper and feminine
hygiene products.
In
January, Martin opened the first Black-owned grocery store in the city’s West
End, the Black Market. While the Black Market is still building out its
storefront, residents can order online for delivery or pickup or buy products
at the store’s counter. The Black Market carries some of the typical products
one would see at a health food store, but it also has shelves of inventory from
Black-owned businesses, like teas, sauces and eggs. Its produce is sourced
mostly from Black farmers in Kentucky.
As
Martin reflects on the last year, she points to the need for lasting reform,
like Breonna’s Law, but she is also focused on building sustainable ways for
her community to live safer, healthier lives.
Last
week, volunteers packed dozens of bags full of pears, oranges, potatoes and
other fruits and vegetables to give away for free.
According
to Martin, #FeedTheWest has handed out more than 100 bags and boxes of
groceries every day in March to honour Taylor.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/3/13/no-stopping-us-the-black-women-fighting-for-breonna-taylor
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In
Kuwait, women denounce harassment as Instagram page sparks country's #MeToo
movement
The
Associated Press
March
14, 2021
Dubai:
Abrar Zenkawi was cruising toward the beach in Kuwait City when she saw a man
waving and smiling in her rearview mirror.
Elsewhere,
this may have been a benign highway flirtation. But in Kuwait, it’s a haunting
routine that often turns dangerous. The man pulled up beside her, inched closer
and finally drove into her. Zenkawi’s car, carrying her toddler nieces, sister
and friend, flipped six times.
“It’s
considered normal here. Men always drive way too close to scare girls, chase
them to their homes, follow them to work, just for fun,” said Zenkawi, 34, who
spent months in the hospital with a shattered spine. “They don’t think about
the consequences.”
But
that may be changing as women are increasingly challenging Kuwait’s deeply
patriarchal society. In recent weeks, a growing number of women have broken
taboos to speak out about the scourge of harassment and violence that plagues
the Gulf nation’s streets, highways and malls, in an echo of the global #MeToo
movement.
An
Instagram page has led to an outpouring of testimony from women fed up with
being intimidated or attacked in a country where the criminal code doesn’t
define sexual harassment and lays out few repercussions for men who kill female
relatives for actions they consider immoral. A wide variety of news and talk
shows have taken up the subject of harassment for the first time. And one
journalist used a hidden camera to document how women are treated in the
streets.
The
spark may have come from fashion blogger Ascia al-Faraj, who vented in January
on Snapchat to her millions of followers after being hounded by a man in a
speeding car. In such episodes, men often try to “bump” a woman’s car, but many
serious accidents result, as in Zenkawi’s case.
“It’s
terrifying, all the time you’re feeling so unsafe in your own skin,” al-Faraj
told The Associated Press. “The responsibility is always on us. … We must have
had our music too loud or our windows down.”
Shayma
Shamo, a 27-year-old doctor, sought to seize the momentum of al-Faraj’s viral
video, creating an Instagram page called Lan Asket, Arabic for “I will not be
silent.”
Shamo’s
rage had been building for weeks. In December, a female employee of Kuwait’s
Parliament was stabbed to death by her 17-year-old brother, reportedly because
he didn’t want her working as a security guard. It was the third such case —
described as “honour killings” — to make headlines in as many months. The
National Assembly, all-male despite a record number of female candidates in the
recent election, offered none of the customary condolences.
Kuwait,
unlike other oil-rich Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, has a legislature with genuine
power and some tolerance for political dissent. But restrictions to slow the
the spread of the coronavirus prevented Shamo from staging a protest and forced
her to take her grievances online, as women in the region’s more repressive
countries have done recently.
From
there, the conversation moved to traditional media. A well-known female
journalist at state-linked al-Qabas newspaper went out at night with a hidden
camera and captured motorbike riders recklessly trying to catch her attention,
men yelling sexual slurs on the street and strangers pulling the hair of female
passersby — offering proof to millions in Kuwait of the harassment women were
describing.
“It
seems rudimentary, but we’ve never had these discussions before,” said Najeeba
Hayat, who helped organise the Lan Asket campaign, which is also training bus
drivers to report harassment, organising an ad campaign to raise awareness and
creating an app that allows women to anonymously report abuse to police. “Every
single girl has kept this in her chest for so long.”
As
the movement gained steam, lawmakers scrambled to respond. Seven politicians,
from conservative Islamists to stalwart liberals, submitted amendments to the
penal code last month that would define and punish sexual harassment, including
one that called for a $10,000 fine and one-year prison sentence.
“The
Kuwaiti penal code doesn’t cover harassment, there are just some laws that
cover immorality that are so vague that women can’t go and report to the local
police,” said Abdulaziz al-Saqabi, a conservative who was among those who
drafted amendments.
But
women’s rights activists, whose input the lawmakers did not solicit, are
skeptical that the proposals will result in significant change, especially with
the nation in the midst of a financial crisis and with Parliament now suspended
because of a political standoff.
The
frustration is familiar for activist Nour al-Mukhled. For years, she and other
women have struggled to abolish a law that classifies the killing of adulterous
women by their fathers, brothers or husbands as a misdemeanor and sets the
maximum penalty at three years in prison. Such leniency remains common across
the Gulf, although the United Arab Emirates criminalised “honour killings” last
fall.
Kuwait
also has statues that let kidnappers evade punishment by marrying their victims
and empower men to “discipline” their female relatives with assault.
“In
Kuwait, there can be no legal change without cultural change, and this is still
culturally acceptable,” al-Mukhled said. Only in August did Parliament pass a
law that opened shelters for victims of domestic abuse.
But
progress is happening outside of official circles, activists say. In recent
weeks, a growing number of female collectives have sprung up, in homes and on
Zoom — a mirror to the custom of the “diwanyia,” gentlemen’s clubs that often
vault men to top jobs. Women also have turned to Clubhouse, the buzzy app that
lets people gather in audio chat rooms, to hold discussions of sexual assault
and harassment.
“Right
now, attempted murder is considered ‘flirting,’” said Hayat, one of the
organisers of the Lan Asket campaign. “We just want to be treated like human
beings, not as aliens and not as prey.”
https://www.firstpost.com/world/in-kuwait-women-denounce-harassment-as-instagram-page-sparks-countrys-metoo-movement-9416021.html
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What
International Women’s Day looked like around the world in 2021
13.03.2021
Global
Voices Online
International
Women’s Day celebrated on March 8 has become a day of marches for women’s
rights and equality throughout the world. Although COVID-19 dampened
participation in many countries, women still raised their voices on the streets
on different continents, especially as the pandemic has worsened inequalities
faced by women in terms of labor, household chores, and gender violence. In
2021, women and LGBTQ+ people marched against political and gender violence and
for reproductive and sexual health. Here is a wrap-up from Latin America, the
Middle East, Asia, and Europe on March 8, 2021, based on tweets and
contributors’ photos.
In
Trinidad and Tobago, 15 local civil society groups, which included feminist,
human rights, LGBTQ+, and social justice organizations, conducted a “Walk-Out
for Women” on March 8. Protestors demanded immediate actions against
gender-based violence and commemorated recent femicide victims.
In
Buenos Aires, as well as other cities in Argentina, women and trans people
gathered to protest against gender violence and the state’s failure to prevent
femicides, despite reports previously made by the victims.
Left:
‘I, too, like women, but I don’t harass them.’ Right: ‘Being alive should not
be an accomplishment.’ Photo by co-author Romina Navarro.
In
El Salvador, women marched on March 7 for women’s rights and abortion rights.
They performed the song and dance of the Chilean feminist song “The Rapist is
You.”
Nor
how I was In Ecuador, Blanca Chancosa, a leader of the indigenous movement of
Ecuador, performed an ancestral ceremony before the National Electoral Council
of Ecuador in Quito. Amazonian women issued a collective statement and various
communities and organizations marched in several cities of the country.
In
Mexico, women turned the fences around the National Palace, placed days before
International Women’s Day, into a monument to the victims of femicide
throughout the country.
Young
feminists, unable to take to the streets on International Women’s Day,
protested and staged a sit-in at the Central American University (UCA) in
Nicaragua. They protested against gender violence and for the liberation of
political prisoners.
In
Venezuela, women’s rights are deemed to have been left behind in the Bolivarian
revolution, so several feminist groups on either side of the current
authoritarian rule of Chavismo, have come together to demand action. Femicides
and impunity around them have increased in the past year, along with poverty.
In
Palestine, expressions of support, appreciation, and solidarity with women’s
fight for liberation and their rights flooded social media platforms.
Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces raided an event organized by Palestinian
women to celebrate identity and heritage on March 8, arresting two
participants.
In
North and East Syria, precisely in the Hassakah province, Syrian Kurdish female
fighters from the Women’s Protection Units (YPG) celebrated March 8 with song,
traditional attire, and displays of physical strength and military training.
In
Algeria, a rally of women protested the country’s Family Code, which is seen to
treat women as second-class citizens, took place in Algiers to mark
International Women’s Day.
In
Pakistan, the Aurat March (Women’s March) took place in various cities of the
country as the third wave of COVID-19 hit the country. The tweet below was
filmed in Lahore, and the shirts depict the ages of rape victims as well as the
relationship they had with their abuser. The Aurat March also presented a
feminist health manifesto this year to raise awareness about women’s health.
In
Kabul, Afghanistan, Rada Akbar, an Afghan artist and activist, began her 2021
“Abarzanan” exhibition to celebrate the achievements of Afghan women by giving
a tribute to those lost to violence in Afghanistan. Also, Afghans gathered for
a street art exhibition at Rebel Art Cafe on March 8.
As
Myanmar goes through a military coup, women used variations of the hashtag
#htamineResistance (SarongResistance), alluding to the fact that the civil
disobedience movement protestors hang women’s sarongs to block the military, as
it is believed that men would lose their spirituality if they touch the sarong.
Women have also been on the frontlines of the protests.
In
Jakarta, Indonesia, women and non-binary people gathered under the rain to head
towards the Presidential Palace. Yet, they could not reach their destination as
the police blocked the main road and people got arrested.
In
Istanbul, Turkey, thousands of women came together for the traditional March 8
Feminist Night Walk. They chanted, “We are not silent, we are not afraid, we do
not obey,” and demanded the implementation of the Istanbul Convention. The next
day, 18 women were taken from their homes at night by the police and detained
for participating in the march along with anti-presidential slogans; they have
later been released on bail.
In
Italy, feminists and transfeminists organized strikes in the main cities’
squares. They organized pickets, read poems, sang songs, danced flash mobs, and
put up banners.
In
Zaragoza, Spain, the demonstration was made under strict social distancing
rules. In 2020, March 8 demonstrations were severely criticized for
transmitting COVID-19, and demonstrations were banned in Madrid in 2021.
https://www.pressenza.com/2021/03/what-international-womens-day-looked-like-around-the-world-in-2021/
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How
women in East Asia became freer than their sisters in South Asia
March
14th, 2021
Alice
Evans
Around
1900, women in East Asia and South Asia were equally oppressed and unfree. But
over the course of the 20th century, gender equality in East Asia advanced far
ahead of South Asia. What accounts for this divergence?
The
first-order difference between East and South Asia is economic development.
East Asian women left the country-side in droves to meet the huge demand for
labour in the cities and escaped the patriarchal constraints of the village.
They earned their own money, supported their parents, and gained independence.
By contrast, the slower pace of structural transformation has kept South Asia a
more agrarian and less urban society, with fewer opportunities for women to
liberate themselves.
But
growth is not the whole story. Cultural and religious norms have persisted in
spite of growth. Even though women in South Asia are having fewer children and
are better educated than ever before, they seldom work outside the family or
collectively challenge their subordination. By global standards, gender
equality indicators in South Asia remain low relative to regions at similar
levels of development or even compared with many poorer countries.
Patrilineal
societies exhibit a powerful son preference. Families invest in boys as much as
possible, since they are future providers, scions of the family line and
performers of funeral rites. But daughters were perceived as less valuable
because they would soon marry into another family. This difference in treatment
is reflected in sex ratios, mortality, education, and stunting.
When
Chinese families were plagued by cholera or famine, they drowned girls at birth
or sold them as slaves. Elite boys were educated in the Chinese classics, but
girls (however wealthy) were kept ignorant.
Chinese
men were over four times as likely to be literate in the 1880s. In India before
1901 female literacy was almost zero. “Bringing up a daughter is like watering
a plant in another’s courtyard” -- they said in Telegu. Girls grew up learning
they were less valued and more constrained.
Patrilocality
meant that a bride relocated to live with her husband’s family. Men lived on
family land, supported by their family and village. Women did gain status once
they had produced sons for the lineage, but a young bride was an outsider with
no claim to resources. Moreover, she was closely policed by her husband’s kin,
so had little autonomy.
The
restriction of women’s freedom in traditional patrilineal societies emerged
from a coordination failure which I call the “patrilineal trap.”
In
patrilineal societies, the function of women is to produce sons who would
perpetuate their husbands’ lineage. This generates profound anxiety about
women’s sexuality. Since the paternity of sons must never be in doubt, the
slightest hint of sexual activity by a woman outside the confines of marriage
constituted a threat to the social order.
The
entire sense of honour and shame in a patrilineal society is bound up in the
sexual propriety of women. Therefore, the whole society is organized around
removing any and all doubt about the virginity of unmarried women and the
fidelity of wives.
Despite
the grinding poverty of village life, women earning wages away from home was
rare. Few families wanted to stick their neck out and be the first to send
their daughter away, because she might be perceived by the village as
promiscuous.
In
abstraction, we might theorize that each peasant family faced a tradeoff
between honour and income. They might be tempted to supplement their meagre
earnings by putting their daughter to work outside the village, maybe in the
city. But this incentive had to be weighed against the potential loss of honour
and the severity of social sanctions. The social ideal was to keep the women at
home. But the more women were secluded, the less their labour power could be
harnessed for the benefit of the household.
So
generally the poorest families were the most likely to send their daughters and
wives away to work. Yet once family circumstances improved, the women would be
brought back home to regain social respectability.
Meanwhile,
the wealthiest families displayed their affluence by keeping women in seclusion
and foregoing the financial benefits of female work. Upwardly mobile families
sought status by following suit.
There
are analogues in the history of North America and Western Europe. Before the
mid-20th century, women tended to work less outside the home when their
husbands’ incomes were rising. The “negative income effect” (household income
and women’s employment were inversely related) testified to the ideal that men
work outside and women at home.
East
Asian families were slightly less obsessed with policing women’s movements than
South Asian families, but this small difference could make a big difference when
economic conditions changed.
In
northern and southwestern China, rural girls had their feet bound by their
families undertaking textile handwork in order to keep them working intensely
at the spinning wheel. There was no compunction about treating them like mules
or chattel slaves. But when railways brought cheaper industrial goods, families
ceased to bind their daughters’ feet, so they could move into new productive
activities. Even before Maoism (which increased female labour force
participation), women’s economic contributions were similar to men’s in the
highly commercialized Lower Yangzi region.
Women
in East Asia were not treated better than in South Asia, but they were seen
slightly more as an economic resource. And this meant that female employment
was more responsive to economic conditions in East Asia.
South
Asia has seen quite a different pattern. For example, even as commerce
flourished in the early 1900s, many castes in Uttar Pradesh restricted female
mobility because they prioritized honour over earnings. Ahir men prevented
women from selling milk. Urban Dalits put their wives in seclusion. When mills
opened in Calcutta, Bengali women worked from home at a third of the factory
wage.
The
age of marriage was always much earlier in South Asia than East Asia. In 1931,
Indian girls’ mean age of marriage was just 13 years. Chinese girls were
marrying at 18 years and Japanese girls even later.
Pre-pubescent
marriages indicate a strong preference to control female sexuality. Daughters
were married off before they were physically able to reproduce for the “wrong”
lineage. Thereafter she would be guarded by his kin.
East
Asia shares many characteristics with South Asia: Powerful, patrilineal,
patrilocal clans policed female reproduction. But the age of marriage was
always higher and there was much more inter-ethnic marriage.
South
Asians guarded female reproduction more zealously. This was manifest in child
marriage, purdah, and strict surveillance. All of these were less responsive to
economic conditions. When the industry moved from home-production to factories,
women stayed at home. Female workers in industry fell from 17% to 11% between
1901 and 1921, then remained low. Families forfeited earnings to maintain
respect.
East
Asia overcame the patrilineal trap because it industrialized rapidly, and
families were willing to exploit female labour in response to new economic
opportunities. In the long run, East Asian women gained autonomy and status by
moving to cities and working in factories, freeing themselves from the control
of their families, earning their own money and building social support
networks. Industrialization was necessary but not sufficient: Female
emancipation required the prior willingness of families to treat women as an
economic resource.
East
Asia witnessed the classic case of balanced growth: Rapid productivity growth
in agriculture, which released labour into other sectors; combined with rapid
growth in manufacturing and services, which absorbed the rural labour.
Thanks
to the late age of marriage for girls, there was an abundant supply of young,
unmarried, educated women who could be hired by the thousands simultaneously.
And
the demand for labour was so strong that the opportunity cost of keeping your
daughter at home increased for entire villages. This synchronized effect helped
overcome the coordination problem of individual families being unwilling to
stick their neck out by putting their girls to work in the factories. When all
families wanted to do it, there could be no social condemnation.
East
Asian states realized that women were cheap but efficient workers. Thus the
Meiji Government called on girls to “reel for the nation.” Emulating the
Japanese experience, factory managers in South Korea, Taiwan, and China sought
to capitalize on low-cost, educated, disposable labour -- in food-processing,
textiles, electronics, and subsequently services.
Norms
about women’s work shifted. With the economic rewards high, and the fear of
social condemnation removed, factory work soon became a normal, predictable,
and pervasive stage in the life cycle of East Asian woman.
There
has been much less industrialization than in East Asia. Since India, Pakistan,
and Bangladesh still remain 63%-65% rural, traditional agrarian institutions
are more persistent in South Asia. Villagers continue to rely on kinship and
caste networks for survival, and women remain subject to patriarchal
constraints.
Female
seclusion remains the social ideal, reducing the supply of female labour. Women
in South Asia have been less responsive to labour demand despite falling
fertility and rising female education. Elsewhere in the world, these changes
are normally associated with female labour force participation.
At
the same time, industrialization in South Asia has been less labour-intensive
(ie the industry has absorbed less labour) than in East Asia. The labour
shortages which caused employers in the “Asian tiger” countries to resort to
hiring women have never materialized in South Asia. Men are first in line for
jobs, and employers need not hire women.
Today
in South Asia, female seclusion continues to be idealized. This is because
South Asians continue to be embedded in caste and kin networks, which are kept
alive by the slow pace and unique nature of economic development in South Asia.
Caste
and kin networks are crucial for everything from jobs to loans to mutual
insurance where jobs are scarce, retail banking is underdeveloped, and there is
little welfare provision by the state. Yet membership in those networks
requires social respectability, primarily about women’s honour. Therefore,
caste panchayats strictly enforce the surveillance of women and within-caste
marriages.
Therefore,
in rural Bangladesh, Pakistan, and North India, female employment responds
weakly to urban demand for labour. Women stay close to their homes, only
interacting with kin, and often withdraw from the labour market altogether.
Men
go out into the world, while women are closely guarded. Surveillance is so
strong in rural Bihar that young women relish open defecation as their only
opportunity to get some fresh air, escape in-laws, and speak to their friends
in privacy. In rural Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, women (and especially wealthy
women) have very few friends. This limits their opportunities to share ideas,
critique unfairness, and build alliances outside the family.
The
poorest, lower-caste families have little to lose and regularly sacrifice
social respect for the sake of barebones survival. In rural Uttar Pradesh,
women only turn to waged work under the most desperate conditions. Yet once
family finances improve, women withdraw from the workforce and “buy” some
respectability again. Prosperity actually seems to reinforce the patrilineal
trap in the villages.
Women’s
reluctance to enter the labour market is enforced by a male backlash. In North
(but not South) India, women with outside earnings are more likely to
experience domestic violence. Likewise, Bangladeshi women who join savings
groups or work in garment factories are at heightened risk of domestic
violence. To preserve their dominance, Bangladeshi men usually try to control
women’s earnings.
Many
women are incentivized to stay home when the modest earnings from outside work
may be seized by men and instigate intimate partner violence.
India’s
industrial sector has always been smaller in the aggregate and less
labour-intensive than East Asia’s. This has suppressed demand for low-skilled
labour, with numerous consequences for female employment amongst the poor.
Dalit
women have had fewer opportunities to escape the oppression of the villages and
find work in the city. Gender wage gaps are the largest among the lower castes.
The poorest, least educated women have been the major victims of falling female
employment.
Even
more important than the size of the industry is the unique pattern of South
Asia’s industrial transformation -- the great majority of jobs are in the
informal sector, with adverse consequences for women.
Most
non-agricultural workers do not have stable, salaried employment. Instead, they
are employed in micro-enterprises, ranging from one-man entrepreneurial
operations to petty family firms with a handful of workers. Such work is
precarious.
The
precarity of informal employment creates powerful incentives for city-dwellers
to rely heavily on their caste-networks and live close to their kin. India’s
cities (especially the smaller ones) are thus rife with caste-based residential
segregation. Segregation by caste is actually more widespread than segregation
by socio-economic status.
Ambedkar
famously decried the village as “a sink of localism, a den of ignorance,
narrow-mindedness, and communalism.” Yet, thanks to South Asia’s pattern of
economic development, those same institutions have been transported to the
cities.
Protective
labour legislation may partly explain why Indian enterprises remain small and
most jobs are still informal. If firms do not employ more than 10 workers, they
can circumvent labour laws.
They
need not offer paid leave, pensions, or health insurance. They can terminate
workers with no notice or severance pay. If firms employ less than seven
workers they can also escape India’s Trade Union Act (1926) and workers cannot
form a union.
Traditional
rural patriarchy in South Asia, instead of being undermined as happened in East
Asia, has actually been reinforced by economic development. Thus men go out
into the world, run family businesses, migrate to new economic opportunities,
inherit assets, resolve community problems, mobilize political networks, and
make the laws of the land.
Elsewhere
in the world, female politicians inspire other women to become politically
active and stand for public office. By seeing women demonstrating their equal
competence in socially valued domains, societies become more supportive of
gender equality.
But
in India, a woman’s electoral victory has no demonstration effect. Other
parties are no more likely to field women candidates and women in nearby
constituencies are no more likely to stand for office.
Despite
the persistence of cultural traditions in South Asia, the patrilineal trap is
not insurmountable. The diversity of historical experience within South Asia
suggests there are many ways to tip the income-honour tradeoff in positive
directions.
When
factories opened up in Bangladesh, families increasingly invested in their
daughters’ education, delayed marriage, and supported their employment. Female
employment continues to rise in Bangladesh, especially among graduates. Through
formal employment, women accrue self-esteem and social respect. Bangladeshi
women’s relatively strong response to economic opportunities may stem from
lower levels of endogamy and thus slightly weaker policing (compared to Bihar
and West Bengal).
Indian
women seize economic opportunities when they feel safe. If a woman can work for
a female-owned enterprise, she will readily accept a lower wage. Free from
lecherous outsiders, her family no longer need to worry about a loss of honour.
For similar reasons, women are much more likely to work in neighbourhoods where
they do not fear rape.
Female
graduates are pursuing careers in IT, engineering, telecoms, finance, and
hospitality. Emboldened by peers, they are capitalizing on the rising demand
for skilled labour in Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. Many female graduates
want to work.
Traditional
institutions are clearly not insurmountable, and they are likely to weaken with
structural transformation. In large, thriving, southern cities there is less
untouchability, more social mobility, and declining caste segregation. This
bodes well for gender equality.
In
1900, East and South Asian women were under the control of patrilineal,
patrilocal clans. Each family restricted female mobility, as they did not want
their daughters to be seen as disreputable.
East
Asia overcame the patrilineal trap because it industrialized rapidly and
families were willing to exploit female labour in response to new economic
opportunities. By migrating to cities and working outside the family, women
accrued “face,” freedom, and friendships.
South
Asia’s slower and weaker structural transformation has not changed the
income-honour tradeoff as much. The economic returns to female employment
remain low, while the costs to honour are high. Given the dearth of good jobs,
people remain economically dependent on kin.
This
perpetuates caste-endogamy, social surveillance, and purdah. Hence female
employment only weakly responds to economic growth. Women remain secluded and
separated, seldom challenging their patriarchal providers.
Many
young, educated, urban, and especially South Indian women want to break out of
the patrilineal trap. Safety and structural transformation would help them
realize their ambitions.
https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/2021/03/14/op-ed-how-women-in-east-asia-became-freer-than-their-sisters-in-south-asia
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NCW
Condemns the Murder of an Egyptian Woman by Her Landlord over Male Visitor
EGYPTIAN
STREETS
MARCH
13, 2021
Egypt’s
National Council for Women (NCW) issued a statement earlier today condemning
the murder of a woman at the hands of her landlord and two other suspects.
According to local media reports, the tenant, who plummeted to her death from
her 6th floor apartment is believed to have been pushed or thrown off by her
landlord, neighbor and the doorman in her building.
The
woman, a 34-year-old doctor, was a resident of the Al Sallam district in Cairo.
According to local media reports, her body was found at the foot of one of the
neighborhood’s residential buildings.
A
police investigation has uncovered that the building’s doorman and another
resident, as well as the victim’s landlord were involved in the tenant’s death.
Local media reports that the confrontation ensued after the doorman told the
landlord that the victim was receiving a male visitor, at which point the landlord
and a resident of the building proceeded to break into the woman’s apartment
and physically assault her and ultimately killed her.
Prosecutors
have ordered the arrest of the three men pending investigation into the murder,
accusing the suspects of breaking into the victim’s apartment, beating her,
which authorities believe led to her fall from the building.
The
investigation has also implicated the landlord’s wife, according to Al Masry Al
Youm, which also reports that the landlord has denied the charges against him
and has alleged that the tenant committed suicide as a result of ‘psychological
crisis.’
News
of the alleged crime has sparked outrage, with women’s rights activists
decrying gender-based violence and honor killings, calling on authorities to
prosecute the suspects to the fullest extent of the law.
In
the NCW’s statement, released on Facebook, the agency’s president Maya Morsy
decried the act and expressed her condolences to and solidarity with the
victim’s family, saying the council was ready to provide them with the
necessary legal counsel and support in order to ensure justice for their slain
daughter.
https://egyptianstreets.com/2021/03/13/ncw-condemns-the-murder-of-an-egyptian-woman-at-the-hands-of-her-landlord-over-male-visitor/
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