Advancing the Human Rights of Women & Girls
Hundreds of Victorian women who applied for affordable housing through a women’s charity have been turned away because there was no availability.
Nine out of ten Victorian women who applied for affordable housing this year through a women’s charity were turned away.
Source: Nine out of 10 Victorian women seeking crisis accommodation turned away
High profile philanthropist, Melinda Gates has pledged a huge $1 billion to furthering gender equality and building the power of women.
After two trials described by Amnesty International as “grossly unfair,” Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.
Critics from around the world decried the outcome of Sotoudeh’s case. Amnesty International said it was harshest sentence documented against a human rights defender in Iran in recent memory. Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, told CBS News it exposed “the insecurity the regime has to any peaceful challenge.”
An Aboriginal woman – left with a broken rib sustained in a violent robbery over the weekend – feared she would die in custody when WA police jailed her for unpaid fines. Keennan Courtney Dickey, 34, was only released from jail through the #FreethePeople crowdfunding campaign run by Sisters Inside’s Debbie Kilroy, who were able to pay her fines. Her treatment has led to further pressure for the WA government to change the laws that disproportionately target Aboriginal women.
Source: Aboriginal robbery victim jailed for unpaid fines after seeking police help | NITV
Older women want to live in a society which recognises their
contribution and values them as an individual, regardless of their age.
Older women are the new face of poverty and the fastest growing
cohort amongst the homeless in Australia. Older women are also often
excluded from the statistics of violence against women, and therefore
remain hidden. Many older women are facing a future of economic
uncertainty. Join our conference and take part in the discussions
because Older Women also Refuse to be Invisible and Forgotten! We are
loud, feisty and ready to take up the new challenges ahead.
REGISTRATIONS: http://bit.ly/OWN2019Conf
(02) 9519 8044 or info@ownnsw.org.auPanels include
Invisible & Unvalued: Let’s Fix Ageism
Jane Caro AO, Wendy Bacon, Layla Pope, Eva Cox AO
How Feminism Changes the Narrative on Violence vs Older Women
Jenna Price, Amani Haydar, Moo Baulch, Sharron Sillett
Affordable Housing: From Myth to Reality
Katherine McKernan, Karen Walsh, Debbie Georgopoulos,
Romola Hollywood, Annabelle Daniel
Ionic Room, SMC Conference Centre, 66 Goulburn St, Sydney
Join us in Sydney on the 17th and 18th October and be part of the
solution to secure the future of Older Women in Australia.
Also featuring performances by: SOS Choir, “Don’t Knock Your Granny”
by OWN Theatre Group, Mansplaining by “It’s Still Germaine”
Source: A Place To Call Home: National Conference of the National Older Women’s Network | Humanitix
The deaths of Ms Maureen Mandijarra, Ms Mullaley’s son baby Charlie, Ms Dhu, Ms Amy Armstrong-Ugle, Ms Maher, Ms Williams and her unborn child, Aunty Tanya Day, Ms Cherdeena Wynne and Ms Joyce Clarke shows the fatal consequences of a legal system that refuses to protect Aboriginal woman, and a health system that too refuses to care. These systems work together like a well-oiled machine with devastating results. The one place in which Aboriginal woman should be able to count on to find recourse, one would think, would be the Human Rights Commission. But of course, it too is a state-sanctioned institution that fails to serve Aboriginal women in much the same way that the health and justice systems do.
In June this year, the HRC published ‘Let’s Talk About Race: a guide on how to conduct a conversation about racism’ which seeks to promote “positive” “constructive” and “objective” conversations about racism, to accompany the documentary ‘The Final Quarter’. The guide forms part of the HRC’s signature campaign ‘Racism. It Stops With Me’ which doesn’t appear to attend to the violence of racism, but instead advises that racism can cause “feelings of sadness and anger, even anxiety and depression”. The HRC assures us however, that racism exists among “a small minority of people”.
Source: Australian Human Rights Commission, where the bloody hell are you? | NITV
A new study has found that despite perceived signs of progress, the art world remains overwhelmingly male-dominated.
According to a report assembled by In Other Words & artnet News, the last 10 years has found a lack of growth for female representation in art with just 2% of global art auction spending on work by women. This figure is also unevenly distributed, with five artists making up 40.7% of this figure and Yayoi Kusama in particular accounting for 25% alone.
“The art world is simply not the liberal, progressive bastion that it imagines itself to be,” said Helen Molesworth, a former chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, “and you can’t solve a problem you can’t own.”
With the advent of the birth control, and abortion reform laws women were able to take more control over their reproduction. Changes to the Family Law Act in 1975, also allowed women to leave unhappy and abusive marriages. This has had an impact on the number of women raising children on their own.
Emily Wolfinger has analysed this trend and argues that whilst the denigration of single mothers on moral grounds has decreased, they now face being labelled as ‘welfare dependents”, resulting in “punitive and paternalistic policy measures”.
The oppression of women, and single mothers in particular, has been going on since the beginning of patriarchy, almost 5,000 years ago.
The witch hunts were about controlling and the oppression of women. Women are required to be under control of a male within the nuclear family and hence under the control of the state. And the treatment of single mothers today is indicative of state’s continued control and oppression of women.
An Iranian woman who was denied entry to a football stadium in Tehran has died after setting herself on fire, human rights organization Amnesty International said Tuesday.
Sahar Khodayari, 29, faced charges of “appearing in public without a hijab” when she attempted to enter the stadium “dressed as a man” in March, according to Amnesty.
Source: ‘Blue girl’: Iranian woman denied soccer stadium access dies after setting herself on fire – CNN
Exclusive: voice assistant’s responses were rewritten so it never says word ‘feminism’
An internal project to rewrite how Apple’s Siri voice assistant handles “sensitive topics” such as feminism and the #MeToo movement advised developers to respond in one of three ways: “don’t engage”, “deflect” and finally “inform”.
The project saw Siri’s responses explicitly rewritten to ensure that the service would say it was in favour of “equality”, but never say the word feminism – even when asked direct questions about the topic.
Previously, Siri’s answers included more explicitly dismissive responses such as “I just don’t get this whole gender thing,” and, “My name is Siri, and I was designed by Apple in California. That’s all I’m prepared to say.”
A similar sensitivity rewrite occurred for topics related to the #MeToo movement, apparently triggered by criticism of Siri’s initial responses to sexual harassment. Once, when users called Siri a “slut”, the service responded: “I’d blush if I could.” Now, a much sterner reply is offered: “I won’t respond to that.”
Source: Apple made Siri deflect questions on feminism, leaked papers reveal | Technology | The Guardian
