Women’s Agenda reports:
The presence of Senator Larissa Waters was very much being felt back in senate estimates earlier this week, as Senator David Leyonhjelm was questioning the Office for Women on whether their work would be undermined if there was an ‘Office for Men’.
“It’s called Parliament,” Waters immediately responded to the question.
https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/leyonhjelm-asks-if-we-need-an-office-for-men-larissa-waters-responds-its-called-parliament/
Author: fem4admin39
Foley signals Labor would decriminalise abortion
Alexandra Smith for the Sydney Morning Herald writes:
Opposition Leader Luke Foley has indicated he would decriminalise abortion in NSW after an overhaul of laws in Queensland left NSW the only state where abortion remains a criminal offence.
Mr Foley said a Labor government would ask the NSW Law Reform Commission to review the abortion laws.
Last year, former NSW Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi introduced a bill to state Parliament that sought to have offences relating to abortion removed from the Crimes Act and common law. It was defeated.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/labor-s-luke-foley-signals-decriminalising-abortion-in-nsw-20181023-p50bgd.html
Tax reform is pushed by rich males, for rich males
Ross Gittins for the Sydney Morning Herald writes:
She didn’t put it this way, but the truth that tax “reform” has long been pushed by well-off men for their own benefit – and at the expense of less well-paid women – was demonstrated in a paper given at a tax conference last week by one of our leading tax economists, Professor Patricia Apps, of the University of Sydney Law School.
She showed how the Productivity Commission’s recent report finding there’d been no increase in inequality in recent decades rested on lumping couples’ incomes together, ignoring the difference in contributions by each partner and, in particularly, assuming that “home produced goods and services” – such as childcare, cooking or cleaning – make no contribution to the family’s standard of living, so can be ignored when they have to be bought in because both partners are working.
To be fair, the commission did its analysis the way it’s usually done. But that’s because such analysis is mainly done by men, to whom it never occurs to take account of home production.
The various tax changes we’ve had – which aren’t nearly enough to satisfy the tax reformers – have favoured (mainly male) high income-earners, without any sign it’s made them work more.
The people whose decisions about whether to leave the home to do paid work, or to move from part-time to full-time, are those most likely to be affected by the tax they have to pay, but are no better off and probably worse off.
No prize for guessing these are mainly women with children. All this is long known by true tax experts – but just as long ignored. Tax reform is a game for well-off men on the make. Wake me when the women take over.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/tax-reform-is-pushed-by-rich-males-for-rich-males-20181023-p50bcz.html
It's time to shut the White Ribbon campaign down
Jenna Price for the Sydney Morning Herald writes:
Close White Ribbon down. Its time has passed.
It has passed not because violence against women has passed. It hasn’t.
But White Ribbon is not fit-for-purpose. It is – and always was – the wrong tool for the job of dismantling the behaviours which lead to violence against women. It tries to engage men in this most wicked of problems by rewarding them for surface behaviour, for the shallow actions of hosting morning teas and wearing a pretty white ribbon on their lapels. That is not and never will be behaviour change.
Its process for selecting its ambassadors is so corrupted that the title White Ribbon ambassador is nearly meaningless.
It no longer carries a comprehensive list of those who are ambassadors or advocates, probably because it wishes to avoid transparency and accountability. Where once you could check to see if a person claiming to be an ambassador actually was one, now it is up to the individual ambassador to decide whether to list themselves.
Just last year, Lisa Visentin revealed a plan by the men’s organisation to accept money from a publican if the authorities let him install more poker machines in his venue. White Ribbon only changed its mind on the money when Visentin called. In other words, it was willing to take money in exchange for supporting contributing factors to violence against women.
And White Ribbon is a consultant to the NRL on violence against women, the same NRL which this year refused to respond to questions about the figures which showed a dramatic increase in family violence on State of Origin game days (and which refuses to acknowledge the relationship between alcohol and violence).
Last year, I criticised White Ribbon for colonising the day set to honour the International Day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women to celebrate men who claim to do the right thing. And instead of picking a date months away, it decided to place White Ribbon day just two days ahead, front and centre.
Close White Ribbon. Spend your money where it matters.
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/it-s-time-to-shut-the-white-ribbon-campaign-down-20181021-p50b33.html
Punishing LNP MPs who backed abortion rights could ‘light the fuse’ for demerger
Ben Smee for The Guardian writes:
Leading moderates in the Queensland Liberal National party have warned that any recriminations against MPs who supported abortion rights would “light the fuse” for a demerger push.
Three MPs – Tim Nicholls, Steve Minnikin and Jann Stuckey – used their conscience vote in parliament to support the Palaszczuk government’s abortion decriminalisation bill.
The LNP state party room allowed MPs a conscience vote, but the party’s formal policy is for abortion to be a criminal offence. Next month, the LNP state council is expected to consider a motion by party members to ban Nicholls, Minnikin and Stuckey from seeking re-election.
Entsch, whose seat runs from Cairns to Cape York, said he was “told to show cause [by the party] because of my stand on gay marriage”.
He said any attempt to disendorse Nicholls, Minnikin or Stuckey would be “absolutely disgraceful”.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/22/punishing-lnp-mps-who-backed-abortion-rights-could-light-the-fuse-for-dermerger?
Police officers in the US were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period
Eliott C. McLaughlin for CNN reports:
A police officer in Prince George’s County, Maryland, was charged this week with raping a woman during a traffic stop. He’s pleaded not guilty, but it’s a disturbing headline — even more disturbing when you consider there are hundreds more like him.
Yes, hundreds. According to research from Bowling Green State University, police officers in the US were charged with forcible rape 405 times between 2005 and 2013. That’s an average of 45 a year. Forcible fondling was more common, with 636 instances.
Yet experts say those statistics are, by no means, comprehensive. Data on sexual assaults by police are almost nonexistent, they say.
One of the greatest impediments to understanding the scope of police sexual assault is the victims’ reluctance to report the crime.
“Opportunities for sex-related police crime abound because officers operate in a low visibility environment with very little supervision,” it says. “The potential victims of sex-related police crime include criminal suspects but also unaccompanied victims of crime.”
Researchers find that a predominance of the victims fall into at least one of several categories: They have criminal records, are homeless, are sex workers or have issues with drug or alcohol abuse. Essentially, predatory cops are “picking on people who juries won’t believe”
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/19/us/police-sexual-assaults-maryland-scope/index.html
USC to pay $215m over gynaecologist sex abuse claims
BBC News reports:
The University of Southern California (USC) has agreed to pay $215m (£165m) to patients treated by a former campus doctor accused of sexual abuse.
The proposed settlement would compensate students who saw gynaecologist George Tyndall, whom hundreds of women have accused.
It comes a day after 93 women filed a lawsuit against the school, alleging it ignored complaints for decades.
Lawyer Howard Janet said his team’s case “centres on allegations of grossly improper pelvic exams that involved improper probing, at times without gloves, sexually charged remarks and illicit photographing of genitalia”.
Mr Manly said the case echoes that of Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar, who is serving a life term in jail for sexually abusing more than 300 women and girls at the university and at USA Gymnastics.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45918089
'It is time': Afghanistan's female candidates promise change
Hamza Mohamed for Al Jazeera writes:
Arabzai is among the 118 women candidates trying to secure one of the nine seats in the city reserved for women. Kabul has a total of 33 seats.
A record 417 female candidates are campaigning for a seat in the 250-member parliament.
The country’s constitution reserves 27 percent of the seats for women, making the Afghan parliament one of the most representative as far as women are concerned.
Arabzai and Karokhel say the reason why more women are now deciding to take part in politics is simple: to fight corruption.
“Women are less corrupt than men in our country. We are the first victims of corruption. More women in places of power means less corruption and more development,” Karokhel said.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/time-women-candidates-afghanistan-promise-change-181019091831158.html
Lib Dem trans activists ‘hounded’ abuse victim
Lucy Bannerman for The Times writes:
Natalie Bird, 38, a mother of two who fled an abusive former partner, was accused of “dangerous transphobia” by transgender activists in the party. She had said that opening up safe spaces without proper safeguards to anyone who said that they were female could put women at risk.
She opposed segregating women’s refuges by chosen gender instead of biological sex, and said that it was not fair to make female victims of domestic violence, abuse and rape share services with people with “functioning” male anatomy.
After being allegedly bullied on social media by party activists, Ms Bird was brought before a disciplinary hearing to face a complaint in the name of Zoe O’Connell, on behalf of the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats. The correspondence says that Ms Bird had “expressed troublesome views”.
The hearing found no evidence to support the complaint of transphobia, but Ms Bird lost her position as chairwoman of the Radical Association, made up of party members, following a vote of no confidence. This cost her her role as a judge of the Ashdown Prize for Radical Thought; an ironic move, Ms Bird said, given that the prize’s aim was to reward “big, bold, radical” solutions to society’s most “daunting problems . . . no one has the courage to argue for”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/lib-dem-trans-activists-hounded-abuse-victim-b6dx39tv3
Modi’s temple protest turns to riot after India revokes ban on women
Hugh Tomlinson for The Times writes:
Women attempting to enter one of India’s holiest Hindu temples for the first time thanks to a court order were driven back by a mob this morning while hardliners pelted police with stones as tensions continued to rise over the judicial decision.
“We are ready to die . . . Come what may, we will not allow women to enter Sabarimala,” said P Ratnamma, a woman leading a group of female protestors. Like many at the site, she has threatened to kill herself at the temple gates if women are allowed inside.
Hindus consider menstruating women “unclean” and they are commonly barred from religious sites and rituals. The ban on women entering Sabarimala is cherished because the ruling deity there, Lord Ayyappa, is considered to be celibate.
The Supreme Court removed the ban last month. “Religion cannot be the cover to deny women right to worship,” Chief Justice Dipak Misra said in his last major judgment before retiring. “To treat women as children of a lesser god is to blink at constitutional morality.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/riots-outside-temple-after-india-revokes-ban-on-women-vr3wtz8gn
