Today, non-profit Girl Effect and Vodafone Foundation publish findings of the first comprehensive global study into how adolescent girls access and use mobile technology. The research reveals that boys are 1.5 times more likely to own a phone than girls as societal prejudice and other barriers disproportionately restrict girls’ access and usage of mobile.
[T]he research – a qualitative and quantitative study across 25 countries – found that girls’ access and use is dramatically restricted by negative social norms that prevent them from having the same freedoms as boys. More than two-thirds (67%) of boys surveyed reported owning a phone (compared to 44% of girls) and 28% borrowed – compared to more than half (52%) for girls.
In countries like India and Bangladesh, girls seen using phones often face negative judgement from community members, meaning parents are more likely to ban access to a device. Girls who break rules around phones are also more likely to be punished by scolding, beatings, being kept out of school or even early marriage.
https://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/vodafone-group-releases/2018/societal-prejudice-restricts-girls-access-to-mobile.html#https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/international-day-girl-un-technology-phones-sexism-report-girl-effect-feminism-a8578746.html
Author: fem4admin39
Dawn Wilson is counting women murdered by men in the United States, and the results are grim
Meghan Murphy for Feminist Current reports:
In 2017, Dawn Wilcox founded Women Count USA, a national database and femicide census of all women and girls murdered by men in the United States. The numbers are shocking. When I spoke to Dawn in July, she’d counted 805 women killed by men since January 2018. As of today, the number has reached 1037.
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/10/12/podcast-dawn-wilson-counting-women-murdered-men-united-states-results-grim/
Transgender prisoner who sexually assaulted inmates jailed for life
Nazia Parveen for The Guardian writes:
A “predatory and controlling” rapist has been jailed for life after she(sic) attacked vulnerable women in female prisons.
Karen White, 52, who was described as being a danger to women and children, admitted sexually assaulting women in a female prison and raping another two women outside jail.
The 52-year-old, who is currently transitioning, was sentenced yesterday for two counts of rape, two sexual assaults and one offence of wounding.
White has previous convictions for indecent assault, indecent exposure and gross indecency involving children, animal cruelty and dishonesty.
The Ministry of Justice has apologised for moving her(sic) to the women’s prison, saying that her(sic) previous offending history had not been taken into account.
Prosecutor Chris Dunn described White as an “alleged transgender female” who has used her(sic) “transgender persona to put herself in contact with vulnerable persons” whom she(sic) could then abuse.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-prisoner-who-sexually-assaulted-inmates-jailed-for-life
How Indigenous women have become targets in a domestic violence system intended to protect them
Heather Douglas and Robin Fitzgerald for The Conversation write:
In our study, we examined Queensland court data on protection order applications and breaches for the year 2013-14. We found a dramatic over-representation of ATSI people – especially women – in the protection order system.
Women are typically much less likely to be respondents in domestic violence cases and charged with breaches of a protection order. However, of the women imprisoned for breaches in our study, 69% of them were ATSI women.
When these women fight back, they may not fit with stereotypical expectations of how a victim should behave: for example, vulnerable, blameless and weak. This might result in police applying for a protection order against them or charging them with breaching an order.
Of urgent concern to us is the plight of ATSI women being incarcerated in ever-increasing numbers in a system originally introduced to protect women from violence.
https://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-women-have-become-targets-in-a-domestic-violence-system-intended-to-protect-them-102656
Women’s surfing riding wave towards gender equity
Holly Thorpe and Belinda Wheaton for The Conversation write:
The World Surfing League recently became the first US-based global sporting league to offer equal pay to male and female competitors.
In a Facebook post, the league announced that women surfers will receive equal pay at all events from 2019. In the world of surfing – a sport and culture long dominated by men — this is a monumental development.
Surfing will be making its Olympic debut in the Tokyo 2020 summer games, and this also has an important effect. Much of the public commentary on the inclusion of surfing, alongside skateboarding and sport climbing, has focused on these sports’ appeal to younger audiences. But promoting women’s participation and involvement in sport is also central to the IOC’s modernisation agenda. Key aspirations include achieving 50% female participation.
https://theconversation.com/womens-surfing-riding-wave-towards-gender-equity-103299?
Care Is An Economic Issue: Addressing Gender Inequalities in Care Work
International Women’s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW) Asia Pacific writes:
Ipek Ilkkaracan is Professor of Economics at Istanbul Technical University, a founding member of Women for Women’s Human Rights (WWHR) – New Ways and a member of IWRAW Asia Pacific’s advisory committee. She coined the term ‘purple economy’ to convey the need for an economic model which recognises care work. Without it, the sustainability of human societies will be threatened.
The current free market system is such that those who provide unpaid care work (mostly women) are penalised in market terms, and those who do not (mostly men) are rewarded.
The purple economy entails four pillars aimed at recognition, reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work. When care work is left to private markets/solutions, the only women who have the option of pursuing a career are from the higher-income households that can afford market substitutes for care. This is not
simply an issue of gender, but of class, too.The international migration of domestic workers is the epitome of multi-layered inequalities when the care economy is left to private markets/solutions.
https://www.iwraw-ap.org/ipek-ilkkaracan-purple-economy/
https://www.iwraw-ap.org/resources/four-things-to-know-about-the-purple-economy/
IBA: 43% of lawyers bullied and 25% sexually harassed
Grace Ormsby for Lawyers Weekly writes:
Preliminary results from the International Bar Association’s research into bullying and sexual harassment in the legal profession have indicated a global phenomenon of bullying and harassment among lawyers.
Over 5,000 lawyers from 120 jurisdictions have responded to the survey so far, showing that approximately one in two females and one in three males have been bullied (43 percent of respondents).
43 percent of victims said they had experienced bullying in the last year.
Of the same respondents, 25 percent of lawyers say they have been sexually harassed, with figures highlighting this has affected approximately one in three female lawyers and one in 15 males.
Sydney Law School’s challis chair of international law, Professor Ben Saul, said he is not surprised by the IBA’s preliminary findings.
He said “in many countries, the culture of the legal profession tends to bring out the worst in some people – adversarialism, competitiveness, ambition, “alpha” type personalities, long working hours and over tiredness, financial pressures and business risks, lack of work/life balance, and sub-optimal inter-personal skills.”
https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/biglaw/24234-iba-43-of-lawyers-bullied-and-25-sexually-harassed?
'I miss him so much': why did a devoted wife kill the man she loved?
Anna Moore for The Guardian writes:
Sentencing Sally to life imprisonment, Judge Christopher Critchlow told her that she had been “eaten up with jealousy” at Richard’s “friendships” with other women. “You are somebody who killed the only man you loved,” he said, “and you will have to live with knowing what you did.”
Now, the case is making headlines again – and events have been cast in a different light. In March this year, Sally Challen won leave to appeal against her conviction, on the grounds that she’d suffered “coercive and controlling behaviour” from her husband – something that did not become a criminal offence until four years after her trial, under the 2015 Serious Crime Act. A date for the appeal is expected later this autumn.
Sally Challen’s case is a new challenge, the first of its kind. She was not subject to sustained, persistent physical violence. There are no broken bones or hospital visits for Wistrich to draw on. Instead, she has numerous witness statements taken in 2010, but not used in court; emails from Richard to Sally; and months of prison visits and video calls with Sally herself. With this, Wistrich hopes to show that, for 30 years, Richard’s behaviour pushed his wife to the brink. “Here is a woman who absolutely adored her husband – a very old-fashioned housewife who had never committed an act of violence or criminal offence,” Wistrich says.
“From the outside, it’s such a bizarre thing to happen. It’s only when you look at their whole marriage and understand coercive control that the picture starts making sense.”
Is it enough to explain a murderous hammer attack? The Challens’ two sons, David, now 30, and James, 34, believe so. Neighbours, friends and family – as well as Richard’s family and his oldest friend – are all behind the appeal. “That’s pretty unprecedented,” Wistrich says. “Usually in these cases – and I’ve done a lot – you’ve got the family gunning for the woman, saying: ‘She’s killed him, she deserves to rot in jail.’ This time, no one has come out in support of Richard.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/29/devoted-wife-who-killed-husband-with-hammer-sally-challen?
They were taken from their mom to rebond with their dad. It didn’t go well.
Cara Tabachnick for The Washington Post writes:
These workshops have sprung up in the past decade mostly to address parental alienation, a disputed disorder coined in 1985 by psychiatrist Richard Gardner that refers to a situation where a child chooses not to have a relationship with one parent because of the influence of the other parent. Opponents charge that the reunification programs, and accusations of parental alienation itself, are shams — a way for lawyers, psychologists and social workers to profit from parents in bitter custody battles, and for the more financially secure parent to gain a custodial advantage. Proponents say that parental alienation involves truly harmful psychological behaviors that should be recognized by the therapeutic community and tort law, and that reunification programs are sometimes the only way to put families back together.
A Canadian research paper found that judges mandated family reunification programs in 27 percent of all family court cases where there was an allegation of alienation. While there is no similar research available in the United States, Ontario-based social worker Shely Polak, who spent five years researching U.S. and Canadian reunification programs for her dissertation, thinks the prevalence in the United States is significantly higher.
Just as research has not definitively proved the validity of parental alienation, it has not shown that family reunification programs work. Often the workshops are billed as educational or psycho-educational, which allows them to circumvent medical regulations and oversight (they are not covered by health insurance).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/a-divorced-father-his-estranged-kids-and-a-controversial-program-to-bring-them-together/2017/05/09/b50ac6f6-204c-11e7-ad74-3a742a6e93a7_story.html?
Why is forced marriage still getting a pass from the UK government?
The way forced marriage plays out and is treated, culturally and legally, makes inequality between the sexes glaringly obvious. Power differences between men and women (girls, really, in this case) are not taken into account. Immigration officials turn a blind eye while abuse happens right under their noses. Caseworkers grant rapists the legal right to continue to access and abuse girls by issuing them UK Spouse Visas, while women’s rights to safety, security, and autonomy are ignored. Women and girls’ voices are silenced and the law fails to protect them.
Often what happens is that British teenagers and children are duped into a holiday by their family members, then, once abroad, they are forced to marry men they’ve never met. Taken far from home, away from the intervention of friends or concerned school teachers, victims have no choice but to comply.
[O]ut of the 175 reports made by reluctant sponsors last year, only 88 were investigated further. This means that a potential 87 victims fell through the cracks of the system, and almost half of the investigated cases were granted a visa regardless. Ultimately, 129 reluctant sponsors attempted to, but were not able to, block their husband’s visas. This number could climb to 139 should the remaining 10 cases still pending due to an an appeal result in a visa.
Home Office hypocrisy has no end: while immigration officials are quick to refuse visas for genuine, consenting couples, they continue to approve visas for men who purchase wives overseas.
The last chance a forced marriage victim has to block her oppressor from tormenting her for life is to file a statement. However, after indicting her exploiters in this statement and outlining the trauma she has experienced at the hands of her oppressors, the authorities then disclose the statement to her spouse and family. This is problematic the victim’s own family are the ones responsible, exposing her to honour-based violence and further danger.
While foreign spouse visa applicants can have their applications blocked by their British wives, Home Affairs believed that husbands “deserve” to know how and why their visa has been rejected.
Since both marriage parties must be over the age of 18 to legitimately apply for a spouse visa, arranging for the intended husband to rape the girl, in order to get her pregnant, is common in the case of minors. Families ensure the girl gives birth to her rapist’s child in the UK, and the low bar of requirements for a family visa means the husband can then enter the UK on the grounds that he has a child who is a British citizen. In other words, impregnating a British girl guarantees a UK visa since the victim has no opportunity to block it.
These women and girls are exploited first by their families, then by their “husbands,” then abandoned by the government and legal system.
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/10/10/forced-marriage-still-getting-pass-uk-government/
