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Old 03-12-2015, 10:45 AM   #81
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Default U.N. Reveals ‘Alarmingly High’ Levels of Violence Against Women

UNITED NATIONS — The evidence is ubiquitous. The gang rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi sets off an unusual burst of national outrage in India. In South Sudan, women are assaulted by both sides in the civil war. In Iraq, jihadists enslave women for sex. And American colleges face mounting scrutiny about campus rape.

Despite the gains women have made in education, health and even political power in the course of a generation, violence against women and girls worldwide “persists at alarmingly high levels,” according to a United Nations analysis that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon presented to the General Assembly on Monday.

About 35 percent of women worldwide — more than one in three — said they had experienced physical violence in their lifetime, the report finds. One in 10 girls under the age of 18 was forced to have sex, it says.

The subject is under sharp focus as delegates from around the world gather here starting on Monday to assess how well governments have done since they promised to ensure women’s equality at a landmark conference in Beijing 20 years ago — and what to do next.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, who attended the Beijing conference in 1995, is scheduled to speak on Tuesday.

Since the Beijing conference, there has been measurable, though mixed, progress on many fronts, according to the United Nations analysis.

As many girls as boys are now enrolled in primary school, a sharp advance since 1995. Maternal mortality rates have fallen by half. And women are more likely to be in the labor force, though the pay gap is closing so slowly that it will take another 75 years before women and men are paid equally for equal work.

The share of women serving in legislatures has nearly doubled, too, though women still account for only one in five legislators. All but 32 countries have adopted laws that guarantee gender equality in their constitutions.

But violence against women — including rape, murder and sexual harassment — remains stubbornly high in countries rich and poor, at war and at peace. The United Nations’ main health agency, the World Health Organization, found that 38 percent of women who are murdered are killed by their partners.

Little was even known 20 years ago about the extent of such violence, a measure of the lack of focus on the issue.

“At the time of the Beijing conference there was a desperate call for more information,” said Mary Ellsberg, director of the Global Women’s Institute at George Washington University. Now, she said: “We have data from most of the countries in the world. That, in and of itself, is a huge accomplishment. The issue is, it’s very hard to collect this data.”

Even as women’s groups continue to push for laws that criminalize violence — marital rape is still permitted in many countries — new types of attacks have emerged, some of them online, including rape threats on Twitter.

Where there are laws on the books — 125 countries criminalize domestic violence today, up from 89 in 2006, according to Equality Now, which tracks laws that affect women’s rights — they are not reliably enforced.

The economic impact is huge. One recent study found that domestic violence against women and children alone costs the global economy $4 trillion.

“Overall, as you look at the world, there have been no large victories in eradicating violence against women,” said Valerie M. Hudson, a professor of international affairs at Texas A & M University who has developed world maps that chart the status of women.

In some cases, the laws on the books are the problem, women’s rights advocates say. In some countries, like Nigeria, the law permits a man to beat his wife under certain circumstances. But even when laws are technically adequate, victims often do not feel comfortable going to law enforcement, or they are unable to pay the bribes required to file a police report.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of the United Nations agency for gender equity and women’s empowerment — known as UN Women — said that for the laws to mean anything, governments around the world have to persuade their police officers, judges and medical personnel to take violence against women seriously.

“I am disappointed, I have to be honest,” she said about the stubborn hold of violence against women. “More than asking for more laws to be passed, I’m asking for implementation.”

Yasmeen Hassan, the executive director of Equality Now, said governments needed to be reminded that they committed to making their laws fair for women. Cultural differences cannot be an excuse, she said. “It’s always a cop-out for governments to not do what they signed up to do,” she said.

The new round of global development targets that governments around the world will have to agree to later this year, known as Sustainable Development Goals, includes a separate requirement for women’s equal rights, including how they protect their female citizens from violence.

The latest United Nations report draws attention to the rise of “extremism and conservatism,” and without naming any countries or groups, it argues that what they share is a “resistance to women’s human rights.” The assaults and abductions by the Islamic State have brought new urgency to the issue.

Dr. Hudson, the academic, said the persistence of violence in so many forms is in part because it can establish domination against women of all kinds, for a broad range of personal and political purposes. A husband can just as easily beat his wife if she is a high school dropout or a college graduate. An entire territory can be claimed if fighters rape the local women — or take them as sex slaves, as is the case of the Islamic State.

“I think violence against women is so darn useful,” she said. “That’s why it’ll be so hard to eradicate.”

Violence can start before birth. Sex-selective abortions have been reduced in some countries, as in South Korea, but are higher than ever in other places, like India, and are going up sharply in places like Armenia.

Harassment is commonplace. In the United States, 83 percent of girls aged 12 to 16 said they had experienced some form of harassment in public schools. In New Delhi, a 2010 study found that two out of three women said they were harassed more than twice in the last year alone.

Violence against women is often unreported. For instance, a study conducted in the 28 countries of the European Union found that only 14 percent of women reported their most serious episode of domestic violence to the police.

“Violence against women has epidemic proportions, and is present in every single country around the world,” said Lydia Alpizar, executive director of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, a global feminist group. “Yet it is still not a real priority for most governments.”

At Monday’s gathering, member governments adopted a nonbinding declaration vowing to abide by the promises made at the 1995 Beijing conference, which included language on reproductive rights, and pledged to work for women’s equal rights by 2030. Women’s groups called it “bland” and said much more needed to be done.

Perhaps the biggest change in 20 years, say those who attended the Beijing conference, is that the subject is now front and center in public discussion.

“There is actually a great deal more attention being paid today to violence against women,” said Charlotte Bunch, a feminist scholar who attended the Beijing conference. “The truth is, it’s a complex issue that isn’t solved easily.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/wo...omen.html?_r=0
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Old 03-12-2015, 11:09 AM   #82
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Default For richer, for poorer: how China's laws put women second

In Dadun village, in China’s southern Hainan province, some residents are more equal than others: the men.

When inhabitants were told to make way for a tourism development, they learned that only men would receive compensation. Now, 92 angry female residents are suing the village committee.

“The money used to build these new houses comes from selling our old homes. Everyone should get fair compensation,” said Xu Jinyi, 24, one of the plaintiffs.

The deliberate discrimination in Dadun is particularly glaring. But it highlights the property gap in the world’s second largest economy.

China’s women have a high rate of economic participation. But not only do their incomes lag behind those of men; women also lose out when it comes to wealth.

“Women in China have missed out on the greatest accumulation of residential property wealth in history,” said Leta Hong Fincher, author of Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. “That tremendous accumulation is now over. Even if every single woman in China suddenly acquired the ability to buy a home in her own name, it would still be too late to catch up.”

Women are actually worse off than five years ago, thanks to judicial guidance in 2011 that property should no longer be split on divorce, but awarded to the person whose name is on the deeds.

The decision is a backward step for women. It looks like a fair division, but in most cases, men provide the house and women provide the money for decoration and furniture,” said Li Ying, a Beijing-based lawyer focused on gender issues. In China, properties are usually sold as shells, and decorating can cost almost as much as the initial purchase.

The norm is that the man buys the property when a couple sets up home. But most men need family help to do so, said Fincher, and their wife’s contribution is often vital. Research in China’s biggest real-estate markets in 2012 found that in 70% of cases brides or their families at least partially financed properties, but women were named on only 30% of deeds.

Fincher said in-laws often insist the bride’s name is left off on the grounds she has paid a smaller share. In a society where the pressure to wed is intense, many women – often at the urging of parents – think it is better to marry even if financial arrangements seem unfair.

Rural women fare particularly badly because they also lose out on rights to use land, despite accounting for more than 65% of the rural labour force.

Such rights are assigned to households, with no clear definition of the rights of individual members. If family circumstances change, the village committee or the head of the household usually decides what to do.

“For widows it depends on their relationship with their husband’s family. Sometimes they are treated very well. Divorced women have a very hard time,” said Wang Xiaobei, an expert on gender issues at Landesa, which works on land issues globally.
A textile worker in Huaibei, Anhui province. It is not uncommon for divorced women to lose everything and go to the cities to find work.
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A textile worker in Huaibei, Anhui province. It is not uncommon for divorced women to lose everything and go to the cities to find work. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

The tradition is for women to marry into their husband’s families, with the land they have previously farmed often going to their brothers or their brothers’ wives. Should they get divorced, they usually have to leave their new village. Research by a court in one county in Henan province found fewer than 10% of women in rural divorce cases even requested the division of land rights.

Yet if they return to their birth village, they may not have any land there either. Many are forced into low-paid jobs in the cities.

The All-China Women’s Federation, the official group representing women, has backed Landesa’s proposal that as a first step all household members should be named on land rights certificates and that wives should be named alongside husbands as the household’s representatives.

The discrimination in the Dadun case is extreme, but Li said the only unusual aspect of it was that a court had agreed to take the women’s case.

“The problem doesn’t just exist in Hainan. It’s national. There are many laws protecting the rights of women – the problem is traditions and customs,” she said.

The head of the village committee – who said he had no time to talk when contacted by the Guardian – has said the decision was legal because the committee approved it. But the voting process does not allow it to override female villagers’ legal rights. “The law of our country clearly states that all people should have equal rights regardless of their sex or age,” said Hu Qifang, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

He noted that like most committees, Dadun’s is stacked with men: only three or four women were among the dozens who voted.

The scheme allocates houses according to how many men are in the family’s youngest generation. A family with three sons gains three houses; a family with three daughters only one, for the father. In essence, women are expected to count on the dutifulness or chivalry of male relatives.

“We fear what will happen to us in future,” said Wu Yanjiao, 20. “Girls might not have a place to live if they don’t get on well with their brothers. Also, what would happen if I were to marry to someone from outside the village and later divorce? I would have nowhere to go.”

Villagers report growing discord within families, as brothers and sisters quarrel over the scheme, and are disturbed by the message it sends as well as its immediate unfairness. Li Qingquan, 50, said villagers were markedly more hostile to women.

“I‘ve heard people openly saying that girls are useless to their families because they didn’t get houses,” he said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...s-land-housing
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Old 03-12-2015, 11:11 AM   #83
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Default Iran aims to ban vasectomies and cut access to contraceptives to boost births

Iran is seeking to reverse progressive laws on family planning by outlawing voluntary sterilisation and restricting access to contraceptives, in a move human rights groups say would set Iranian women back decades and reduce them to “baby-making machines”.

The Iranian parliament is considering two separate bills aimed at boosting the population. But Amnesty International warned in a report published on Wednesday that the proposals are misguided and, if approved, would “entrench discriminatory practices” and expose women to health risks.

Iran has pursued an effective birth control programme for over two decades. It included subsidised vasectomies, free condoms and affordable contraceptives, as well as countrywide education on sexual health and family planning.

The new legislation would effectively put an end to the country’s famous slogan “two children is enough”. The U-turn has come after the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, slammed family planning as an imitation of western lifestyle and asked Iran’s population to be doubled. Given his support, the bills are likely to be approved.

Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and north Africa, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, said: “The authorities are promoting a dangerous culture in which women are stripped of key rights and viewed as baby-making machines rather than human beings with fundamental rights to make choices about their own bodies and lives..

“The bills reinforce discriminatory stereotypes of women and mark an unprecedented move by the state to interfere in people’s personal lives,” she continued. “In their zealous quest to project an image of military might and geopolitical strength by attempting to increase birth rates, Iran’s authorities are trampling all over the fundamental rights of women – even the marital bed is not out of bounds.”

Last year, Khamenei said that Iran would face an ageing population in the not-too-distant future if couples refuse to have more children. Critics say his concerns are unfounded as about 70% of the country’s 77 million people are under the age of 35.

“Why do some [couples] prefer to have one … or two children? Why do men or women avoid having children through different means?” Khamenei asked in October. “The reasons need to be studied. We are not a country of 75 million, we have [the capacity] to become at least 150 million people, if not more.”

The bill to increase fertility rates and prevent population decline will ban all surgeries intended for permanent contraception, except in cases in which there are threats to physical health. Harsh punishments are designed for doctors involved in such surgeries. The legislation will also slash state funding for birth control programmes which provided subsidies for modern contraceptives.

Amnesty warned this would increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and force women to seek illegal abortions. It would also lead to a spike in sexually transmitted infections, such as HIV, the organisation warned.

The second proposed legislation, the comprehensive population and exaltation of family bill, “instructs all private and public entities to prioritise, in sequence, men with children, married men without children and married women with children when hiring for certain jobs,” Amnesty said. The bill will also tighten the divorce laws, which are already heavily in favour of men.

Hadj Sahraoui said the bill would have “devastating consequences for women trapped in abusive relationships”. She added: “The bills send a message that women are good for nothing more than being obedient housewives and creating babies, and suggests they do not have the right to work or pursue a career until they have fulfilled that primary role and duty.”

Amnesty said the proposals are also in stark contrast with promises by President Hassan Rouhani for gender equality and warned they would add to “the catalogue of discriminations” against women.

Iran has an active female population. Until recently most university graduates were women and many, especially in bigger cities, work alongside men. Although women can vote and drive, discriminatory laws are persistent. Women are required to wear mandatory hijab and, in courts, their testimony is worth only half that of a man. They also face inequality with regard to inheritance rights.

“The age of criminal responsibility for girls is just under nine years old but just under 15 years for a boy,” said Amnesty. “Rape within marriage and domestic violence are not recognised as criminal offences. Engaging in lesbian sex is punishable by 100 lashes with a fourth conviction resulting in the death penalty.”

According to official figures for 2013-2014, 41,226 girls were subject to early or forced marriages while between the ages of 10 and 14. At least 201 girls had married while under the age of 10.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...P=share_btn_fb
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