Shamsea Alizada the Afghan Girl Tops National Varsity Exam after Surviving Blast at Study Centre
New
Age Islam News Bureau
27 September 2020
• Shamsea Alizada the Afghan Girl Tops National Varsity Exam after Surviving Blast at Study Centre
• Jessikka Aro, Finnish Journalist, Lost International
Women Of Courage Award For Criticising Trump
• To Resolve Water Crisis, MP Village Women Cut Hill
To Make Way For Water Into Pond
• On World Tourism Day, Let’s Dissect ‘Safety’ As a
Restriction on Solo Trips For Indian Women
• India One of Those Countries Where Women Are
Provided Paid Maternity Leave Of 26 Weeks: PM Modi At UNGA
• Pandemic Will ‘Take Our Women 10 Years Back’ In the
Workplace
• Japan's Democracy Is Biased Without Women
Participation: LDP Lawmaker
Compiled By New
Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/shamsea-alizada-afghan-girl-tops/d/122958
-------
Shamsea Alizada the Afghan Girl Tops National Varsity Exam after Surviving Blast at Study Centre
Sep 27, 2020
Shamsea Alizada, Afghan girl tops national varsity
exam
-----
KABUL: Shamsea Alizada’s story could so easily have
ended when she was just 15. A coal miner’s daughter whose family had moved all
around Afghanistan seeking safety and the chance for her and her siblings to
get a good education, Alizada was among the lucky who evaded the suicide
bombing that killed dozens of her fellow students at a Kabul tutoring centre
two years ago.
But if it was luck that saved Alizada, now 17, it was
resilience and hard work that made her a national inspiration when it was
announced on TV on Thursday that she had achieved the highest score out of
nearly 2,00,000 students on Afghanistan’s national university entrance exam.
Her mother saw it and gave her the news. “I thought she was kidding. But when I
entered the room, I saw the brightest smile on my mother’s face,” Alizada said.
“Yesterday’s smile was something else. Her smile was a gift and made my day. It
was better than gaining the highest score in the country.”
A generation ago, she would probably never have gotten
the chance. Under Taliban rule, girls were prevented from going to school. It
is the success of Alizada and young Afghans like her that have provided one of
the few bright spots in the decades of war since: More girls are not only going
to school, they are also starting to translate that into social mobility.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/after-surviving-blast-at-study-centre-afghan-girl-tops-national-varsity-exam/articleshowprint/78342616.cms
---------
Jessikka Aro, Finnish Journalist, Lost International
Women Of Courage Award For Criticising Trump
Martin Pengelly
26 Sep 2020
Jessikka Aro, Finnish Journalist
------
The US state department “owes an apology” to a Finnish
journalist who saw the International Women of Courage Award, bestowed in part
for her work on Russia, taken away because she criticised Donald Trump on
social media, a prominent senator said.
“Secretary [of state Mike] Pompeo should have honoured
a courageous journalist willing to stand up to Kremlin propaganda,” said Bob
Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations
committee, about Jessikka Aro, an investigative reporter.
“Instead, his department sought to stifle dissent to
avoid upsetting a president who, day after day, tries to take pages out of
[Vladimir] Putin’s playbook. The state department owes Ms Aro an apology.”
Aro was due to receive the award in March 2019.
Rescinding it, the state department insisted she had not been a finalist and
blamed the confusion on a “regrettable error”.
But Foreign Policy magazine reported that Aro was
punished “after US officials went through [her] social media posts and found
she had also frequently criticized President Donald Trump”.
Menendez said the posts concerned “President Trump’s
‘fake news’ attacks on the media”. In one tweet, Aro said Trump and Putin’s
summit in Helsinki in July 2018 meant “Finnish people can protest them both.
Sweet”.
On Friday, the state department Office of the
Inspector General confirmed criticism of Trump caused Aro to lose the award.
CNN quoted its report as saying: “Every person
interviewed in connection with this matter acknowledged that had [the Office of
Global Women’s Issues] not highlighted her social media posts as problematic,
Ms Aro would have received the IWOC award.”
According to the OIG, ambassador to Finland Robert
Pence said that “although he appreciated Ms Aro’s work, the risk of
embarrassment to the first lady [Melania Trump] and the department was too
great to have her appear on stage at the awards ceremony.”
In March last year, the ambassador, a Republican donor
not related to vice-president Mike Pence, told the Senate committee he had not
been “worried” by Aro’s posts. The then acting director of the Office of Global
Women’s Issues said the posts had “not really” caused the withdrawal of the
award.
Aro told CNN: “In my heart I feel like an
international woman of courage. That the Trump administration can’t take away
from me.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/sep/26/journalist-whose-award-was-rescinded-for-criticising-trump-owed-an-apology-senator-says
--------
To Resolve Water Crisis, MP Village Women Cut Hill To
Make Way For Water Into Pond
27 September 2020
By ANI
“For the past 18 months, the women here have decided
to provide water to our village Angrotha.
-----
Chhatarpur (Madhya Pradesh) [India], September 27
(ANI): Around 250 women from Angrotha village painstakingly cut a hill over a
period of 18 months to build a path for water to make its way into a pond in
the village, which was struggling to deal with water shortage.
Babita Rajput a local woman said, "We have been
working for over 18 months to channel into the village, the water that used to
freely flow in the forest and thus could not be used. So, the women in the
village formed a group and it was decided to cut the hill to a length of about
half kilometers and make way for the water to fall into a pond in the
village."
Vivitabai Adivasi from Angrotha village, said,
"We are doing this for ourself there is water shortage here.We are unable
to farm and our livestock was also suffering. About 250 women dig a way for
water to flow into the pond in our village. It took us about 18 months to
complete this work."
Another villager Ram Ratan Singh Rajput said,
"For the past 18 months, the women here have decided to provide water to
our village Angrotha. They have cut a hill and made a waterway. The women are
also working on removing several stones that are present in the path of the
water flow."
http://www.businessworld.in/article/To-resolve-water-crisis-MP-village-women-cut-hill-to-make-way-for-water-into-pond/27-09-2020-325180/
--------
On World Tourism Day, Let’s Dissect ‘Safety’ As A
Restriction On Solo Trips For Indian Women
By Spatika Jayaram
September 27, 2020
When I began attending a residential college, 1500 miles
away from where I lived, I was gripped with the curiosity to explore the
opposite side of the country. Everyone I spoke to there, would tell me about
the comedic pitfalls from driving up mountain roads, or group photographs
clicked in the sunset backdrop. After 3 years of waiting for this, I finally
decided to take off on my own. Media representations of solo trips tilt toward
the notion of self-discovery or worse still, finding love, and restrict
themselves to international settings. Indian movies like Queen and Tamasha
feature female protagonists finding themselves abroad, adapting to the cultural
climate there.
In most such movies, the trips cater to a select
section of the female population that can afford to take weeks off from daily
chores, and do so, at a large expense. At the other extreme is the portrayal of
traveling in India, which focuses more on the friends in whose company the trip
is undertaken, than the trip itself. My trip to Dalhousie in Himachal Pradesh
lay in that underrated intersection, between traveling in India and traveling
alone.
This was a question that popped up from many friends,
when I decided to go, not only on this trip, but in any form of inter-state
travel, bringing me to the other reason why traveling in a group is popular.
We cannot hide the fact that safety levels for women
vary across socio-economic sections. Staying in apartments guarded by security
officers or having reliable means of transportation are privileges. But this
isn’t an assurance that holds up uniformly, given that several cases of
harassment and sexual crimes have involved perpetrators previously known in
some capacity to victims. That being said, the backgrounds we belong to define
the people and environments we interact with, or are prevented from interacting
with, in our day-to-day lives.
Media representations of solo trips tilt toward the
notion of self-discovery or worse still, finding love, and restrict themselves
to international settings. Indian movies like Queen and Tamasha feature female
protagonists finding themselves abroad, adapting to the cultural climate there.
In most such movies, the trips cater to a select section of the female
population that can afford to take weeks off from daily chores, and do so, at a
large expense.
My choice to go on this trip was made because I could
spare a few thousand rupees towards traveling for leisure. It was within
similar circles of girls, that I found an unwillingness to travel and live
alone in India, heavily based on concerns of safety. I heard many female
friends speak of how much safer a solo trip would be, had it been abroad.
Safety is thrown around generically, which makes it all the more necessary to
understand when it is a mere luxury and when it truly speaks of women as a
whole.
When I went on that trip, I had to spend a great deal
of time in crowded buses and dimly lit stops in mountainous terrain with poor
connectivity, that my more affluent friends may have perceived as nothing short
of a dramatic movie beginning. The hesitancy to send daughters to live and
travel alone in India, is valid in the context of surging rates of crime. I am
not trying to downplay the importance of speaking about safety, but there is a
fine line where this simply becomes a limiting factor for young women, with
safety concerns acting as agents of control.
I found many parents who would simply refuse to let
their daughters study or intern in a different city, after passing out from
school, despite having the means to do so. Being conditioned this way resulted
in uncertainty among the same friends when I’d ask them about journeying in the
vacations. Being withheld from opportunities to remain alone affected the
extent to which many were comfortable with it when presented with that chance,
however close to home. One reason I went on that solo trip was because the
girls I asked, well into their college years, preferred the comfort of a large
group, as opposed to a duo. They spoke of traveling, meeting strangers and
adapting to local establishments in an alien sense.
I once came across a post by a girl that spoke of how
she passed her time in cab rides in constant anxiety, staring at the navigation
system to ensure that the driver followed her designated route. This was widely
empathised with for portraying how poor safety levels were.
Maybe the post was true in the sentiment conveyed, but
it also propagated platitudes that we take for granted. There is a subtle
distinction between staying anxious, and staying alert, regardless of the mode
of transportation used. But that simply scratches the surface. How many women
possess the luxury to say no to government buses, shared auto rickshaws and
walking, be it at day or night? Having to stay anxious in all scenarios
involving unknown men and localities, is problematic in the bias it displays. How
responsible is it to encourage a culture of spending time in such environments
remaining paranoid about where we are and when we reach?
I heard many female friends speak of how much safer a
solo trip would be, had it been abroad. Safety is thrown around generically,
which makes it all the more necessary to understand when it is a mere luxury
and when it truly speaks of women as a whole.
Watching these movies with women on solo trips abroad
inevitably brings up a pertinent question—How many Indian women can afford to
even state international safety standards as excuses for not traveling alone
here, let alone use them? The traveling abroad alternative is also linked to
holding an added mistrust towards the non-upper class non-upper caste man while
exploring Indian terrain, based on unfounded generalizations of where women are
really safe. Such a mode of thought rarely functions in foreign trips, thus
making it a convenient alternative for those who can use it.
In such a system, a walk to the market that an average
woman might take through a sparsely populated area might be treated as
avoidable. Caution and demeanour are traits that adapt with exposure, and
constantly backing away for safety, obstructs the very chance of allowing these
to develop. Yes, it is true that there are incidents, but when I spoke of
traveling alone, I heard concerns that transcended the boundaries of safety,
because they no longer applied to all women.
The conversations I had, highlighted how the privilege
to stay safe was not recognised by many women, and oftentimes used as a reason
to shelter oneself. They convert being cautious to being fearful. We pay for
such preventive measures adopted by continuing to remain in bubbles.
My college experiences led me to conversations that I may
not have had, had I found a circle to travel with after going that far to
study. We are at an age where more female travelers sit across Indian
landscapes because movements in the past have paved the way for it. It is hence
imperative that we ask for more inclusive female representation, when
presenting the solo traveler narrative. It is also high time we began including
privilege in conversations of safety and acknowledging it, when it serves to
exist as merely a shackle to progress, and exploration.
https://feminisminindia.com/2020/09/27/world-tourism-day-safety-restriction-solo-trips-women-india/
----------
India One Of Those Countries Where Women Are Provided
Paid Maternity Leave Of 26 Weeks: PM Modi At UNGA
26 September, 2020
by ANI
New York/New Delhi [US/India], September 26 (ANI): In
his address to the UN General Assembly's general debate on Saturday, Prime
Minister Narendra Modi outlined how the world's largest democracy has moved
forward with the vision of a "Self-reliant India" along with paying
more attention to the health of women in the country by providing them Paid
Maternity Leave of 26 weeks.
"In the changed circumstances of the
post-pandemic era, we are moving forward with the vision of a
"Self-reliant India". A Self-reliant India will also be a force
multiplier for the Global Economy. Today, it is also being ensured that there
is no discrimination in extending the benefits of all the schemes and
initiatives to every citizen of the country," Prime Minister Modi said.
Addressing the general debate of 75th United Nations
General Assembly, he added, "India is one of those countries where women
are provided Paid Maternity Leave of 26 weeks," further highlighting the
progress made in regard to the rights of members belonging to the transgender community.
"In India, the rights of transgenders are also being secured through
necessary legal reforms."
Prime Minister Modi further told the assembly that
about 600 million people have been freed from open defecation and 500 million
people have been provided free access to healthcare.
"Following the mantra of
Reform-Perform-Transform, India has made great efforts to bring about
transformation in the lives of millions of its citizens," he said.
"In just about 4-5 years, 600 million people have
been freed from open defecation. This was not an easy task. But India has
achieved it. Within just about 2-3 years, more than 500 million people have
been provided access to free health care services. This again was not an easy
task," the Prime Minister said.
Earlier, the Prime Minister said that India's
coronavirus vaccine production and delivery capacity will help all humanity in
fighting the pandemic.
http://www.businessworld.in/article/India-one-of-those-countries-where-women-are-provided-Paid-Maternity-Leave-of-26-weeks-PM-Modi-at-UNGA/26-09-2020-325025/
--------
Pandemic will ‘take our women 10 years back’ in the
workplace
Amanda Taub
27 Sep 2020
Substantial research has shown that most professional
gender gaps are in fact motherhood gaps; women without children are much closer
to parity with men when it comes to salaries and promotions, but mothers pay a
large career penalty.
Women tend to take on more of the burdens of caring
for children and the family. To go to work, they need someone to help with that
care. But fathers have been slow to change their behaviour. And without
subsidies, private child care can be prohibitively expensive.
Workplaces already tend to penalise women who choose
to work fewer hours or need more flexibility, and that, too, is proving to be
exacerbated in the pandemic.
“The bottom line is that, based on decades of
research, we know that there was one institution that was effective at limiting
gender inequality and encouraging women’s participation in the workplace, and
it was early childhood education,” said Claudia Olivetti, an economist at the
University of Chicago.
Now the pandemic — and its hobbling of schools and
child care providers — is taking that away, too, piling pressure on working
mothers, like me.
Around the world, working women are facing brutally
hard choices about whether to stay home if they haven’t already been laid off.
And the effect may be particularly severe in countries like the United States,
where the pandemic is compounding inequalities that women already faced as a
result of the lack of guaranteed paid maternity leave and affordable child
care.
Israel is both an example of subsidised child care’s
power to narrow gender gaps at work and a cautionary tale about how easily the
pandemic can shatter that fragile progress.
The Israeli government provides free early childhood
education from age 3 and means-tested day care for many babies and younger
toddlers. As a consequence, before the pandemic, women’s overall labour force
participation had reached 74%, significantly higher than the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development average of 66%, according to a recent
report from the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies, an Israeli think tank.
The gender wage gap, though persistent, was narrowing.
Then came COVID-19. Schools and day care centres
closed in mid-March, and the child care that had allowed so many mothers to
work was gone.
Women already held more precarious positions in the
workforce — working fewer hours, for less money, with shorter tenures and in lower-ranking
jobs than men. The loss of child care limited many working mothers’ hours and
availability even further, meaning they were often the first to be selected for
layoffs and unpaid leave, the report concluded. And it noted that many families
appear to be deciding that if they need one parent to give up a job and
prioritise child care, it should be the lower-paid parent — usually the mother.
Sveta Skibinsky Raskin, a mother of five who lives in
Jerusalem, worked as a writer while her children were in school and day care.
But when the schools closed, she had to stop. “I tried for a week, and I just
couldn’t do it,” she said. “I can’t work in an environment that constantly
requires my attention.”
Even when schools reopened in May, they were too
unpredictable to rely on, she said. As we spoke, her two oldest children were
self-isolating at home after some classmates tested positive for the virus.
Now, with the country back in lockdown to combat a second wave and schools
closed once again, “a lot of women are having to make difficult choices,” she
said.
Before the pandemic, many American mothers were
effectively forced to stop working for some period of time because they could
not afford paid child care. And research shows that the longer a woman is out
of the workforce, the more severe the long-term effects on her earnings will
be.
A 2018 study by the Institute for Women’s Policy
Research found that an employment gap of four years or more leads to a whopping
65% reduction in annual earnings, compared with a 39% decrease after a one-year
break. As school closures force women out of the workplace for a year or two
more than planned, that will have lifelong consequences for their financial
stability.
A July report from McKinsey Global found that in the
United States, where women made up 43% of the workforce, they accounted for 56%
of COVID-related job losses — though it is unclear how much of that is
specifically because of day care and school volatility.
By contrast, Sweden, which heavily subsidises day care
and has one of the highest rates of female labour participation in the
developed world, has kept schools and day care centres open throughout the
pandemic. Although this has been questionable as a public health strategy —
Sweden’s death rate from the virus has been higher than its neighbours — it has
allowed working parents to avoid the burdens of lockdown.
As with most social phenomena, this plays out
differently for wealthy women than for poor ones. Research shows that when
high-earning couples have children, they tend to divide responsibilities, with
one parent stepping back from a career to take on the increased care duties,
and the other making work a priority — and in heterosexual couples, it is
usually the mother who steps back.
Once on the “mommy track,” women make less money and
have fewer opportunities for advancement. “If the woman is the secondary
earner, then it is less costly at the margin to cut her hours” when a crisis
like the pandemic hits, Olivetti said.
Poorer families tend to have more parity between the
parents’ earnings, but they rely on both incomes to survive and are also more
likely to have jobs that must be done in person rather than remotely. When
schools and day cares close, there is no one to care for young children or
supervise older ones’ remote schooling if both parents work. But if one stays
home, the family faces financial catastrophe.
“Trying to help working families ease this child care
constraint — it’s not just a gender inequality issue; it’s also an income
inequality issue,” Olivetti said.
Women from minority and immigrant backgrounds are even
more vulnerable to the pressures of lockdown, said Zinthiya Ganeshpanchan, who
runs the Zinthiya Trust, a charity serving disadvantaged women in Leicester,
England.
“They are often living in overcrowded living
situations. Many had three, four children living in just a two- or
three-bedroom flat with extended family,” she said. “Many were also dealing
with domestic violence.”
The loss of school and day care, Ganeshpanchan said,
“is going to take our women 10 years back because the only way for women to
improve their public participation is by reducing the extra burden of caring
responsibilities they have.”
https://bdnews24.com/world/2020/09/27/pandemic-will-take-our-women-10-years-back-in-the-workplace
---------
Japan's democracy is biased without women
participation: LDP lawmaker
KYODO NEWS
27-09-2020
A senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker has urged
her party to squarely face the lack of female presence in Japanese politics,
saying the country's democracy will remain biased without a significantly
higher number of women involved in decision-making at both the parliament and
local assembly levels.
Former Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who has made no
secret about her aim of becoming prime minister, asserted that women are hardly
represented in the Diet even though they make up half of the population and 40
percent of the LDP membership.
Photo taken in November 2019 shows Tomomi Inada (2nd
from L), then executive acting secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic
Party, launching the party's Headquarters for Promoting Women's Active
Participation. (Kyodo)
"If women do not have a place to discuss policies
they want to see enacted, Japan's democracy cannot help but be biased,"
she said at a recent press conference in Tokyo.
Inada herself has faced hurdles -- first in turning
from a lawyer to become a politician and most recently, in running for LDP
leadership. Yoshihide Suga won the LDP presidency with the backing of the
majority of LDP factions and replaced Shinzo Abe, who stepped down due to
health reasons.
"I saw faction politics suddenly taking center
stage during the presidential race...but I found it quite peculiar that Mr.
Suga, who belongs to no faction, was elected through the power of
factions," Inada said.
Her faction, the biggest in the LDP that has deep ties
with Abe, discouraged her by backing Suga, then the chief Cabinet secretary
under Abe.
During the LDP leadership race, a group of female
lawmakers including Inada proposed to Suga and two other candidates that the
winner place more women in the Cabinet and key party posts. Suga, however, only
appointed two women to his Cabinet.
Given the LDP's stable rule and no strong opposition
force present, Inada said Japan may only get a female prime minister "when
the LDP holds a sense of critical urgency to better Japanese democracy."
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, 68, was the LDP's first-ever
female candidate in the 2008 presidential election, but there has been no one
to follow.
Japan ranked 121st in the World Economic Forum's
ranking on gender equality among 153 countries surveyed last year, and its
percentage of female lawmakers in the House of Representatives stood at 9.9
percent in August.
"In order to enhance Japanese democracy and
ensure Japan a bright future, I want to create a society in which women have
more of a voice in politics," Inada said.
"I'd like to realize a free democratic and
diverse political landscape that even in Japan, women aim to become prime
ministers and girls who see them aim to become politicians," she said.
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/09/f5ca922ceffe-japans-democracy-is-biased-without-women-participation-ldp-lawmaker.html
---------
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/shamsea-alizada-afghan-girl-tops/d/122958
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism