Syrian Swimmers Yusra, Sarah Mardini Attend Time 100 Gala In New York
New Age
Islam News Bureau
26 April
2023
• Syrian Swimmers Yusra, Sarah
Mardini Attend Time 100 Gala In New York
• Asma Warsi First Muslim
Municipal Judge Of Edison Court
• In Pakistan, Women Behind Bars
Face Discrimination And Physical Harassment, Says Report
• Women Still Underrepresented
In Senior Editorial Roles In Malaysia
• Art Of Darkness: Saudi Actress
Reem Al-Habib Is Reveling In The Role Of Villain
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/syrian-swimmers-yusra-mardini/d/129653
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Syrian Swimmers Yusra, Sarah Mardini Attend Time 100 Gala In New York
Sara (L) and Yusra (R) Mardini attended the star-studded Time 100 Gala
2023 in New York City. (AFP)
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April 27, 2023
DUBAI: The Mardini sisters, Yusra and Sarah, on Wednesday attended the
star-studded Time 100 Gala 2023 in New York City.
The event, attended by Kim Kardashian, Salma Hayek, Jennifer Coolidge
and Doja Cat, among others, celebrates the New York-based magazine’s list of
the 100 Most Influential People in the world.
The Syrian Olympic swimmer Yusra and her sister, Sara, secured a spot on
the list.
Yursra and Sarah’s journey from Syrian war refugees swimming for three
hours to the Greek island of Lesbos to Olympic athletes has been chronicled in
the BAFTA-nominated film “The Swimmers.”
Yusra, who competed in the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics as part of the
Refugee Olympic Athletes Team, wore a form-fitting black dress with a
heart-shaped neckline to the event, while Sarah opted for a silver gown with a
plunging neckline, structured shoulders and a long train.
Dutch Palestinian US model Bella Hadid also joined the 2023 list.
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2293736/lifestyle
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Asma Warsi First Muslim Municipal Judge Of Edison Court
Asma Warsi was unanimously confirmed to serve as the first Muslim
American municipal court judge in Edison’s history. (Courtesy of Vision Media)
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April 26 2023
Edison Mayor Sam Joshi announced today that he has appointed Asma Warsi
to be a judge of the Edison Municipal Court; the Edison Township Council
unanimously approved Warsi’s nomination, giving the majority-Asian Middlesex
County township its first-ever Muslim municipal judge.
This is a historic moment that highlights our commitment to diversity
and inclusion in our justice system,” Joshi said in a statement. “Judge Warsi
brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and integrity to the bench, and I am
confident that she will serve our community with fairness and impartiality.”
Warsi, an immigrant from Pakistan and a Rutgers Law School graduate,
began her career as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx. She is
currently the immigration services program director for Catholic Charities of
Metuchen, and has operated her own law practice since 2009.
Warsi’s new judicial position parallels similar developments in the New
Jersey Superior Court, where Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration has been intent
on increasing diversity. Murphy has nominated a number of Asian American judges
in the past several years, including two – Nadia Kahf Alqudah and Dalya Youssef
– who are seemingly the first two Superior Court judges in New Jersey history
to wear hijabs on the bench.
Source: newjerseyglobe.com
https://newjerseyglobe.com/judiciary/joshi-appoints-edisons-first-muslim-municipal-judge/
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In Pakistan, Women Behind Bars Face Discrimination And Physical
Harassment, Says Report
22nd April, 2023
In Pakistan, female prisoners encounter bias and ill-treatment, with
several experiencing verbal and physical harassment. Moreover, they are
deprived of medical attention by both the jail personnel and fellow inmates,
reported Lahore-based daily newspaper The Nation.
The ordeal of being incarcerated often entails distress, inequity, and
shattered expectations for women. In Pakistan, many women are grappling with a
harsh existence within the confines of the prison walls, which may be difficult
for most of us to fathom. Every day, they struggle to endure a system that
appears to have abandoned them. Despite their voices being stifled, their
anguish cannot be ignored, opined ANI.
Samina Shah, an educationist, philanthropist and social worker, working
for the uplift of women in Pakistan said, “Arbitrary detention is one of the
most pressing issues faced by women in Pakistani prisons.”
She also said, “Many women are detained without charge or trial, often
as a result of cultural and social norms that view women as property and
restrict their freedom of movement and association,” adding that a clear
violation of international human rights standards, which require that all
detainees be afforded due process and a fair trial, as per a report penned by
Muhammad Ali Falak in a Pakistan English Daily.
Most women detained for drug-related crimes: Report
In 2020, ShumailaKanwal, a 27-year-old woman, passed away while in
custody on allegations of drug trafficking. Her demise has highlighted the
problem of custodial deaths in Pakistan, which are frequently linked to
maltreatment and exploitation by law enforcement personnel and jail staff.
As per a report by Human Rights Watch, most women incarcerated in
Pakistani prisons are detained for drug-related offenses. These women are not
drug traffickers but instead, they are low-level drug carriers or addicts who
were coerced into transporting drugs. The same report also suggests that women
in Pakistani prisons face significant barriers in accessing legal counsel. This
is partly because of inadequate resources and expertise among legal aid
organizations, and also due to cultural and societal beliefs that undervalue
women's ability to receive legal representation, according to The Nation.
In addition, as per the International Committee of the Red Cross, many
women in Pakistani jails experience untreated illnesses and injuries, which is
partially due to a scarcity of skilled medical personnel and inadequate medical
facilities. The World Health Organization has also expressed concern regarding
the high risk of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse faced by women in
Pakistani prisons.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further aggravated these issues, exacerbating
the challenges faced by women in prison.
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics has reported that the number of women
incarcerated in Pakistani prisons has increased by over 20 percent in the past
decade. This trend is worrying because it suggests that women in custody are
not being adequately safeguarded.
The issue of women in Pakistani prisons is complex and has severe human
rights implications. This calls for a comprehensive approach that includes
enhancing access to legal representation, improving the living conditions of
prisons, expanding access to healthcare services, and addressing cultural and
societal attitudes that contribute to the mistreatment of women in detention.
As reported by The Nation, it is only by working together that we can hope to
achieve a more equitable and just society for everyone, irrespective of their
legal status or gender.
Source: republicworld.com
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/pakistan-news/in-pakistan-women-behind-bars-face-discrimination-and-physical-harassment-says-report-articleshow.html
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Women still underrepresented in senior editorial roles in Malaysia
April 27, 2023
KUALA LUMPUR: A new report has found that women still feel excluded from
having power in the news media industry globally.
According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report
2023, only 22 per cent of the 180 top editors at 240 news organisations
worldwide are women despite the fact that on average, 40 per cent of
journalists in the 12 markets surveyed were women.
In Malaysia, the lack of women in senior editorial positions has
resulted in a "toxic and self-perpetuating cycle in which there are few
mentors in newsrooms for future female leaders", according to a 2020 media
report by the National Union of Journalists and International Federation of
Journalists Asia-Pacific Region.
The report was based on the findings of a survey of 240 Malaysian media
personnel and it gauged their respective working conditions ranging from wage
concerns and safety issues to overall job security.
The report found that while women were well represented in executive and
management roles such as chief executive officer, executive and general
manager, they were however less well represented in senior editorial roles such
director, bureau chief and editor.
According to the survey, 83.3 percent of the respondents said their
organisations had women in high-ranking roles but the proportion of women in
top editorial positions was lower than men.
The report said such underrepresentation of women in key editorial roles
in the media industry also led to under-reporting of issues pertaining to
women's rights and gender equity.
Independent broadcast journalist TehminaKaoosji, who is based in
Malaysia, pointed out that gender diversity in editorial positions has
increased "slightly" over the last decade.
"While there is a fair representation of women in such positions,
they often replicate parochial models of leadership. If these leaders are
younger women, then there tends to be improved awareness and commitment towards
gender mainstreaming principles in news coverage," she told Bernama
recently.
CHANGES IN NEWSROOMS
Galen Centre's health portal CodeBlue editor-in-chief Boo Su-Lyn said
female media professionals still have a long way to go before greater gender
equality becomes more visible in top editorial positions.
"The same goes for other fields as well. Women are often seen as
having more family commitments than men, and they may not be willing to spend
more time on their careers which prevents them from being given opportunities
to climb the ladder.
"Another challenge is that many newsrooms are still being led by
older men and vacancies are only created when they retire or resign. This
leaves little opportunity for younger female journalists to shine and take on
leadership positions," Boo said.
Tehmina said mentoring and leadership programmes for women in newsrooms
are essential in order to ensure capable and talented female journalists are
not overlooked for promotions due to conscious and unconscious bias.
"Newsrooms can begin addressing this by ensuring that female
journalists who are mothers have adequate access to subsidised and affordable
childcare. Both male and female journalists who are parents must be allowed to
work flexible hours so they can pitch in equally to undertake childcare
duties," she said.
Tehmina also said Malaysian newsrooms should have more gender-sensitised
copy editors to ensure the daily news cycle "does not perpetuate sexist
stereotypes" and uses gender-neutral language and also covers the general
news cycle with gender mainstreaming as a guiding principle.
"They also should provide regular training and awareness workshops
for all levels of employees, including C-suite (executive-level managers), with
organisational and management KPIs (key performance indicators) to track the
progress for a non-discriminatory workplace in the newsroom and also fair,
ethical, gender-sensitised news," she added.
WOMEN'S VOICES UNDERREPRESENTED
A 2020 report titled "The Missing Perspectives of Women in
News", which was commissioned by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
found that women's voices continue to be underrepresented in the global news
media.
It said more than 70 per cent of people seen, quoted and heard in the
news are men while women make up less than 30 per cent.
Boo said one of the reasons women are underrepresented in senior
editorial positions is the fact that men remain the vast majority of experts
and sources quoted by the media.
"The newsmakers (sources) are mostly male such as the politicians
and lawmakers quoted in political reports. This means the news reports tend to
be male-centric, which results in an overrepresentation of men in the
media," she said.
Boo said as a female editor-in-chief of a healthcare portal, she always
makes sure that women experts and sources are included in each news article.
"Women are more health conscious and their concerns should be
highlighted in order to attract more female readers," she said.
She said if women are given the opportunity to lead editorial positions,
specific issues relating to gender equality, children and vulnerable
communities can be easily highlighted.
"This is because women are perceived as a group that understands
and empathises more and only they can highlight these issues in the
media," she added.
SAFETY OF WOMEN JOURNALISTS
Despite the challenges of the profession, quite a few Malaysian women
journalists have risen through the ranks, one of them being Salbiah Said, 70,
former deputy editor-in-chief of Economic Service at the Malaysian National
News Agency (Bernama).
According to this veteran journalist, the early female journalists of
this nation demonstrated that women can be as competent as their male
counterparts in the field of journalism.
"However, the situation has seen some positive changes today, with
a good number of women holding key positions as editors. Today we tend to see
women journalists moving up even against all odds," she said.
Salbiah said in terms of safety, globally women journalists are facing
increasing offline and online attacks and are subject to disproportional and
specific threats, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organisation (Unesco).
She said the gender-based violence they are exposed to implies
stigmatisation, sexist hate speech, trolling, physical assault, rape and even
murder.
"Sexual harassment, however, has not been traditionally viewed as
gender-based violence, but was (and still is) prevalent in the industry. Sadly,
most of these incidents were left unreported.
Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) executive director Wathshlah
Naidu said they have put together a set of guidelines to tackle the issue of
gender equality in media organisations as well as the safety of women
journalists.
"As the work of journalists is at most times out on the field,
occupational health and safety practices may be undermined at times.
"Women journalists have had to wade through numerous physical,
mental and digital safety concerns like dealing with harassment, sexual
advances and online gender-based violence while on the job," she told
Bernama in an email interview.
She said CIJ has urged all media organisations in Malaysia to pay
attention to the concerns of their female employees and ensure adequate
standards and protection are put in place for them.
HAWANA 2023
This year's National Journalists Day (Hawana) celebrations will take
place from May 27 to 29 in Ipoh, Perak. Hawana is observed every year to
recognise the contributions of journalists to the country.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is expected to officiate Hawana
2023 on the last day of the celebrations.-- BERNAMA
Source: nst.com
https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2023/04/903288/women-still-underrepresented-senior-editorial-roles-malaysia
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Art Of Darkness: Saudi Actress Reem Al-Habib Is Reveling In The Role Of
Villain
William Mullally
April 27, 2023
DUBAI: There has never been a role like this for a Saudi woman before.
Actress Reem Al-Habib, in the near 15 years she’s been performing
professionally, had been hoping that, one day, she would get the call to play
someone that would break her free of the usual roles of the mother, daughter,
or sister. She yearned to use her talents to explore a darker character, the
kind usually reserved for men. Finally, as the titular character in Netflix’s
“The Matchmaker,” billed as Saudi’s first psychological thriller, Al-Habib got
her wish — and then some.
“I was reading through the script, and I said to myself, ‘Oh gosh, hold
on — this is actually a villain. Where did this come from?” Al-Habib tells Arab
News. “Having a Saudi female character as the villain shocked me. I was like,
‘Wow, she’s almost a serial killer.’ There’s so much psychological depth. I was
hooked. I needed to dive deeper into this world.”
With the film receiving a global release on the world’s biggest
streaming platform on April 27, Al-Habib has the chance to make her mark on the
world stage, showing the kind of range that could lead to parts she once never
thought possible. There was a time, of course, when acting itself seemed an
impossibility, as she grew up in a conservative ‘tribal’ family, as she calls
it, that viewed public performance itself as a shameful act.
“Acting was a huge taboo — the worst nightmare for a family like mine.
We weren’t really allowed to do anything with art, because art itself was associated
with the lowest spectrum of society. It was viewed as a dirty environment, an
unsafe environment, and in Saudi Arabia, it was a career that seemingly had no
future,” says Al-Habib.
As a result, Al-Habib had no ambitions in the space. As a kid, she would
imitate characters, do voices, but it was just a form of play, somethings she
never thought others besides her immediate family might see. But when she went
to university in the United States, she was compelled to participate in a play
as part of her curriculum, and found that she had hidden talents.
“Everyone said I was the best of the 300 students. I thought, ‘Wait, is
this something I can do for real?’” says Al-Habib. “Then I returned to Saudi,
and I forgot about acting entirely.”
Al-Habib thought her acting days were over, until she received a frantic
phone call in 2009 from a director friend who had created a guerilla-style
YouTube series.
“He said, ‘Reem, my actress has disappeared. She turned off her phone.
She never showed up to set. I need help. Can you come over and take her
place?’” says Al-Habib.
She immediately went to the aide of her close friend, performing a small
scene playing a character’s mother. While she enjoyed it, she thought it was
just a nice way to spend an afternoon, and things would immediately go back to
normal. They didn’t.
“It just went viral. People were sharing it all over,” says Al-Habib.
“The comments on YouTube were all asking about me: ‘Who is this girl? What’s
her name? Where’s her account? How can I see more?’ Then Ali Al-Kalthami, one
of the founders of Telfaz11, posted the scene on Twitter, with the caption:
‘Reem Al-Habib is the best actress in the region.’
“I thought it went OK,” she continues, “but I never expected anything
like this.”
Al-Habib soon received a call from MBC, who offered her a role in the
series “Harat Al-Sheikh,” a folk tale set in Old Jeddah about two brothers who
ended up on opposite paths in life.
“I accepted the role, but it was very difficult for me at the time. I
was a new mom, and it was so hard for me to leave my son and travel, living in
a hotel for a few months doing 14- to 16-hour shoots every day. But it was well
received, and I started getting a lot of offers for new projects, and things
kept rolling,” says Al-Habib.
She refused most of the roles she was offered — as she still does today
— because she wasn’t interested in characters that felt too safe, that couldn’t
lead to a true turning point that could take her to the next level.
“Most producers are afraid to break out of the box, afraid to place a
woman in a role that’s too bold or a bit edgy. It takes guts and knowledge to
push the boundaries a bit more, and that’s what I’ve always been hoping for.
I’ve even turned down huge roles in major Ramadan shows — I turned down three
Ramadan shows this year alone — because I’m not interested in these
one-dimensional female characters,” says Al-Habib.
Fittingly, it’s her old friends at Telfaz11 that are offering the
characters she’d always been hoping for, first in a role in the anthology
Netflix series “Love, Life and Everything in Between,” and now as the menacing
matchmaker in their latest original feature film.
“There are so few producers coming up with extreme, unique, and out of
the norm roles for women. I just want women to play roles that are closer to
society. We see the abused woman, the loved woman, but we rarely see the
criminal, the mentally unbalanced, the psychopathic, or the seriously flawed.
We need to see the darkness, the nasty, the taboo, or we’re not seeing the full
spectrum of the human experience, which is what this artform is all about,”
says Al-Habib.
Al-Habib takes this all very personally, and it’s easy to understand
why. While she says she’s still close to her father and siblings, her career
has cut her off from the rest of her family.
“My extended family — aunts, uncles, cousins — have disowned me. I’m no
longer in contact with them since I pursued acting,” she says.
“I got over it,” Al Habib says when we suggest how difficult that must
be. “I guess I’m a tough cookie. I have a high amount of awareness and
forgiveness, and I don’t hate them for it. I took it as them being incapable of
understanding my choice, because it goes against the way they see the world.
They can’t see it my way. I was upset at the time, but I said to myself, ‘This
is their choice, and one day they’ll come around.’ And I stuck to what I wanted
to pursue.”
Al-Habib refused to be put into a box then, just as she does now in the
roles she chooses.
“I was great at playing a mother, but a great actress can play anything.
I won’t be suffocated in that box,” says Al-Habib.
Source: arabnews.com
With “The Matchmaker,” Al-Habib can finally show the world how great she
truly is.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2293631/lifestyle
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/syrian-swimmers-yusra-mardini/d/129653