teleSUR English reports:
Juana Ramirez Santiago, a 57-year-old Mayan Ixil community leader and human rights defender, was shot dead on Friday in Guatemala’s Quiche department.
Ramirez was a founding member of the Network of Ixil Women, an organization fighting for women’s rights, and a prominent midwife in her community. People close to her say had been threatened before and had already filed a complaint with the Public Ministry (MP).
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Indigenous-Mayan-Ixil-Midwife-Defender-Killed-Guatemala-20180922-0020.html
[category: global, reproductive rights, violence]
Author: fem4admin39
ABC chairman told Michelle Guthrie to sack Emma Alberici to appease Coalition
Justin Milne of The Guardian writes:
The chairman of the ABC told Michelle Guthrie to fire economics editor Emma Alberici after the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull complained about her reporting of tax policy.
“They [the government] hate her,” Milne wrote. “We are tarred with her brush. I think it’s simple. Get rid of her. We need to save the ABC – not Emma. There is no guarantee they [the
Coalition] will lose the next election.”
The secretary of the ABC section of the Community and Public Sector Union, Sinddy Ealy, said Milne had to resign over the Alberici intervention.
“Protecting the ABC from political interference is the most important responsibility of the chair.
“There can be no more serious breach than the apparent demand that a journalist be sacked at the behest of the prime minister of the day.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/sep/26/abc-chairman-michelle-guthrie-sack-emma-alberici-appease-coalition?
More context from Denis Muller at The Conversation:
One first-hand example makes the point. In May, when Barnaby Joyce accepted money – reportedly $150,000 – to go on Channel Nine with his partner Vikki Campion and talk about their affair, the ABC invited me to write a commentary on the ethics involved.
I wrote that by agreeing to take the money, Joyce had called into question his fitness for public office.
This was too strong for the ABC, and the article did not run. I was told that it was a sensitive time for the ABC’s relations with the government. Instead the article was published by The Conversation and then by The Age and an online newspaper, The Mandarin.
It showed the effect of the water-torture approach the government has taken to the ABC, cheered on by News Corp’s The Australian: grizzles about the work of Emma Alberici as economics editor, most of which turned out to be baseless; grievances about Triple J’s changing the date of its Hottest 100 from Australia Day; more grizzles about Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s comments about Anzac Day.
https://theconversation.com/michelle-guthries-stint-at-abc-helm-had-a-key-weakness-she-failed-to-back-the-journalists-103759
[Ed: Patriarchy working to silence strong women!]
Advocates fear NSW child protection bill reduces rights of birth parents
Lorena Allam for The Guardian writes:
Lawyers working with vulnerable families in New South Wales are demanding the government make public its plan to overhaul child protection laws, saying they are worried the government wants to significantly reduce the legal rights of birth parents in a greater push towards adoption.
More than 20 of the state’s community legal centres and Aboriginal legal services have written to the NSW government to call for public consultation on its draft bill. They claim a draft has been shared with some government agencies but not with the sector itself.
There has also been a policy shift towards adoption. The non-government agency Adopt Change was awarded a $2.3mcontract to recruit and support foster carers for the next three years, with an emphasis on finding carers who can double as adoptive parents if needed.
The government is also offering a fortnightly adoption allowance, to encourage eligible carers to adopt, and last week said it would pay specialised foster carers $75,000 a year to temporarily look after children with complex needs.
It also sought views on “whether the Adoption Act should be amended to provide additional grounds for dispensing with parental consent”, a question that has alarmed community legal centres and the Aboriginal legal service.
They are “particularly concerned about proposals to transfer jurisdiction to decide adoption matters from the supreme court to the children’s court and to dispense with parental consent in these matters”.
“To dispense with parental consent … for many of our clients, there’re reasons why people don’t want that to happen. Homelessness is sometimes due to domestic violence. And they are potentially going to have no say in the custody of their children.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/25/advocates-fear-nsw-child-protection-bill-reduces-rights-of-birth-parents?
INTERVIEW: The irrepressible Venice Allan on her fight against changes to the UK Gender Recognition Act
Julie Moss speaks with Venice Allan for Feminist Current:
Caroline Flint, a Labour MP, stood up in the House of Commons on July 3, 2018 and asked for debate on the Government’s LGBT action plan. It’s an issue that divides every party. David Davies wants debate. But all that lobbying. Groups like Stonewall and Mermaids have public money to brief the government — they have full-time paid employees to do that. We are just volunteers and mums. It’s so sinister.
One good thing is that the general public is behind us — the average person thinks this all is wrong. A YouGov poll sponsored by PinkNews found that only 18 per cent of people are in favour of allowing individuals to change their legal sex through self-identification. Nobody goes along with this shit.
I don’t think the average person actually understands that all lesbian and female-only spaces are under threat. That can engage quite a lot of people. We all have to keep fighting. The Consultation period for amendments to the GRA ends on October 19th, but we must continue fighting after that whatever the outcome.
My message has always been that I’m just an ordinary concerned mother and woman. I haven’t really done anything and everyone needs to stand up — this is not the time to be worrying about our reputations and what people think of us. It’s now or never, and if these laws go through, we’re fucked.
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/09/24/interview-irrepressible-venice-allan-fight-changes-uk-gender-recognition-act/
German Catholic Church to own up to decades of child abuse
According to the study, 1,670 clergymen in Germany committed some form of sexual attack against 3,677 minors, mostly boys, between 1946 and 2014, Spiegel Online reported.
It points to a pattern of priests who have taken the vow of celibacy and diocese staff abusing minors. They kept the victims quiet by intimidation, instilling guilt and using their own status as figures of authority and trust.
More than half of the victims were 13 years old or younger, the study concluded, after examining 38,000 documents from the 27 German dioceses.
Researchers from three universities who carried out the survey warned that the true scale of the abuse was far greater, as many documents had been “destroyed or manipulated”.
Predator priests were often transferred to another parish, which was commonly not warned about their criminal history.
Only 38 percent of the accused were prosecuted by civil courts, mostly on complaints lodged by victims or their families.
https://www.afp.com/en/news/205/german-catholic-church-own-decades-child-abuse-doc-19c9392
Girl Guide leaders expelled for questioning trans policy
Andrew Gilligan of The Sunday Times writes:
Two Guide leaders who had raised safeguarding concerns about the organisation’s transgender policy have been expelled and had their units closed down.
Helen Watts, one of 12 leaders who signed a letter to The Sunday Times in April asking for a review of the policy, was told on Friday that her membership was being terminated after more than 15 years with the Guides.
Watts was told she was being removed because she was “not willing to follow Girlguiding’s equality and diversity policy in so far as it provides for transgender inclusion”.
Since last year the Guides have allowed male-bodied trans adults who self-identify as women to be Guide leaders and trans children who self-identify as girls to be members. On trips the children can share lavatories, showers and sleeping accommodation. The policy says parents should not be told if their daughter’s leader, or a child, is transgender.
Another expelled leader said: “I was told my membership was revoked, I had to shut my unit down and I was not allowed to talk to the girls or their parents. They said I was refusing to follow Girlguiding procedures. I told them I would follow any procedure unless it conflicted with the safety of a girl in my care.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/girl-guide-leaders-expelled-for-questioning-trans-policy-550x7m55r
McDonald’s Workers Strike to Demand Response to Sexual Harassment Charges
Kalena Thomhave of The American Prospect writes:
McDonald’s workers in ten cities went on strike during the lunch hour to protest sexual harassment, as well as inadequate responses or retaliation they’d received from management. For its part, McDonald’s says that no workers walked off the job.
McDonald’s restaurants in Chicago; Durham, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Los Angeles; Miami; Milwaukee; New Orleans; Orlando; San Francisco; and St. Louis all saw strikes as workers demanded that the McDonald’s Corporation respond to their complaints. A similar strike over the sexual harassment of women workers has not happened in over 100 years, when, in 1912, corset workers in Kalamazoo, Michigan, walked off the job in protest of sexual abuse.
A 2016 surveyby Hart Research Associates found that 40 percent of women fast food workers, disproportionately women of color, reported experiencing sexual harassment on the job. Nearly half of those women reported health problems, like stress and depression, stemming from the abuse. One in five experienced retaliation from management.
Fighting sexual harassment in a low-wage job without the protections of a union can not only be difficult, but risky. Women earning the minimum wage or just above it may not be able to afford to speak up and risk their jobs. Such workers are also more vulnerable to retaliation—for instance, having their hours reduced.
http://prospect.org/article/mcdonald%E2%80%99s-workers-strike-demand-response-sexual-harassment-charges
Gender pay gap transparency: How would Australia's tech titans fare?
George Nott for CIO writes:
So how would Australia’s biggest IT sector players fare?
The UK has been publishing pay gap data for all companies with more than 250 employees since April.
Google
Women’s mean bonus pay is 43 per cent lower than that received by men.
The company has achieved a 50:50 gender split – but only among its lowest paid workers. In the upper two pay quartiles women make up 22 per cent and 25 per cent of the highest paid groups of workers.
Microsoft
In the UK, Microsoft’s median hourly rate for women is 8.4 per cent lower than men’s. Women’s median bonus pay is 11.4 per cent lower.
In the top two pay quartiles women make up just over 22 per cent of the workforce, a figure that rises to 35.3 per cent for the lowest paid quartile of employees.
Despite the disparity, Microsoft is one of the best performing tech companies in the UK for gender equality.
IBM
Big Blue in the UK has a disparity in the median hourly rate between men and women of 14.6 per cent.
Women make up 17.5 per cent of the highest paid workers at the company and around 30 per cent in the other three quartiles. Women’s median bonus pay is 34.8 per cent lower than men’s.
Amazon Web Services
AWS’ gender equity figures are significantly worse. In the UK the cloud provider has a median hourly rate for women which is 18.4 per cent lower than for men. Women’s median bonus pay is a whopping 47.1 per cent lower than men’s.
Only 17.4 per cent of the top pay quartile are women, which falls to 10.9 per cent in the lower middle quartile.
In Australia, AWS employs 247 people, which is below the threshold proposed by Labor.
https://www.cio.com.au/article/647199/gender-pay-gap-transparency-how-would-australia-tech-titans-fare/
NZ PM Jacinda Ardern and baby Neve at the UN
The New Daily reports:
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been joined by her baby daughter Neve in a history-making visit to the United Nations in New York.
It is the first time a world leader has brought a newborn baby to the general assembly meeting.
Later on, Ms Ardern appeared on US NBC’s Today show – where she was asked if it was harder to govern New Zealand or take her daughter on a 17-hour flight. With a laugh, she said both felt “on-par”.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2018/09/25/jaacinda-ardern-neve-united-nations/?
Anger over women’s business honour for cross-dressing banker
Lucy Bannerman for The Times writes:
A male Credit Suisse director who sometimes goes to work in a wig and dress has prompted outrage by accepting a place on a list of the Top 100 Women in Business.
Philip Bunce, who is married with two grow-up children, typically spends half his time as Philip and half as his female alter ego, Pippa. He says he is “gender fluid” and “non-binary.”
Kristina Harrison, an LGBT activist who was born male but transitioned 20 years said ago, she would never accept a place on an all-women shortlist as it was “insulting” to women who faced different challenges. “Being a woman is not a costume you can put on, on some days and not on others. The idea that you can become a woman by donning a wig and a dress is deeply sexist.”
She praised Mr Bunce’s willingness to challenge corporate stereotypes. “I would be the first to applaud Bunce’s gender non-conformity, especially in [the male-dominated business world] as it would be brave and boundary-pushing. It’s a shame he has to spoil it by accepting accolades for female executives, when he is clearly male.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/94eeddbe-bddd-11e8-8fbe-1261885931e2
