Category: Inequity

The world’s top three happiest countries are led by women

The top three countries with the happiest population were led by women, the latest World Happiness Report has revealed.

Finland, led by Prime Mininster Sanna Marin, was crowned as the happiest population in the world.

Coming in second place was Denmark, whose Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has served as leader since June 2019. Third place went to yet another Scandinavian country — Iceland, whose Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir has been in the role since 2017.

Other top-ranking countries led by women include Sweden (ranked sixth) with Magdalena Andersson serving as Prime Minister from November 2021 to October 2022, New Zealand (ranked 10th) with Jacinda Ardern, who stepped down from the role earlier this year, and Lithuania (ranked 20th) with Ingrida Šimonytė, Prime Minister of Lithuania since December 2020.

That means five out of the top 20 happiest countries were led by women — at ratio that far exceeds the proportion of women taking on such roles worldwide.

Source: The world’s top three happiest countries are led by women

Want to support companies that support women? Look at your investments through a ‘gender lens’ – here’s how

While some rating agencies have created measures to identify companies suitable for a gender lens portfolio – for example, Sustainalytics has a gender equality index – others have very little on gender at all. Some rating agencies seem to base gender equity performance on the number of women on a company’s board or its in-house policies on diversity and discrimination.In short, there is little-to-no substantive information available to allow investing with a gender lens. And why is that?

The absence of data related to gender implies women-friendly policies are not viewed as affecting the performance or risk of companies.

It is time for potential investors to start demanding data be collected. Once that happens, rating agencies will send a message to companies that gender equity matters. As long as investors stay silent, progress will remain slow.

Source: Want to support companies that support women? Look at your investments through a ‘gender lens’ – here’s how

Older women are doing remarkable things – it’s time for the putdowns to end

Ageism is bad enough, but it’s often compounded by sexism. It is humiliating for a boy to be told he’s playing like a girl but even worse for a man expressing doubts or concerns to be called an old woman. The stereotype of the old woman is anxious, dependent, useless, and a burden – if she isn’t a nasty, bitter old witch. Dismissing old women in this way renders them invisible because they are considered of no use to society.

My recent interviews with women from the previous generation, dolefully named the Silent Generation (born before 1946), challenge these stereotypes. In their late seventies, eighties, and nineties, these women are leading fulfilling lives; contributing to their communities and to the wider society.

The United Nations has declared the years 2021 to 2030 to be the Decade of Healthy Ageing: a time for worldwide collaboration to promote longer and healthier lives. Physical health is emphasised not as an end but as a necessary condition for full participation in society. This endeavour is part of a magnificent movement towards creating age-friendly neighbourhoods. The World Health Organization has taken the lead through its age-friendly cities framework.

Source: Older women are doing remarkable things – it’s time for the putdowns to end

Veronica Nelson death: Victorian Corner’s urgent demand on bail reform

Veronica Nelson died in prison in January 2020 after calling for help about 40 times.

Warning to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers: This story contains images and references to a deceased person.

A Victorian coroner will call for urgent reform of the state’s controversial bail laws after finding cruel and inhumane treatment of an Indigenous woman caused her preventable death in jail.

Coroner Simon McGregor’s plea for the Andrews government to improve the criminal justice system’s treatment of Indigenous Australians is contained in highly anticipated findings of the inquest into Veronica Nelson’s death.

Nelson was withdrawing from heroin and suffering from an undiagnosed medical condition when she was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting in January 2020.

The 37-year-old was found dead in her cell at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, despite using the prison intercom system to buzz for help about 40 times.

McGregor will find her death could have been prevented if various CCA staff had given Nelson adequate medical screening and appropriate ongoing monitoring, and had called for an ambulance to take her to hospital.

Instead, staff sent Nelson from the prison’s health centre to a cell in its mainstream custody area, where she died.

Source: 12ft | Veronica Nelson death: Victorian Corner’s urgent demand on bail reform

She cooks, cleans and cares … so why is a woman in Uganda worth only 20% of divorce assets? | Primah Kwagala | The Guardian

[L]ast year, an appeal court in Kampala overturned a high-court divorce case ruling which gave a couple an equal share of the matrimonial home. The court decided that the woman, who did most of the housework, only deserved 20% of the assets. While the man in this case had receipts to show how much he’d paid to build and maintain the house, the woman had none.

The wife argued that she cared for the couple’s four children and ensured the family’s wellbeing. When the family house was being built, she cooked for builders and supervised construction. While the court acknowledged her contribution to the marriage, it said the “man’s contribution, evidenced by receipts and invoices, was bigger and therefore deserved [an] 80% share”.

This ruling sets a bad precedent and rolls back years of hard work to recognise unpaid care work. It values a moneymaker over a homemaker and exposes the law’s failure to address the systemic discrimination of women in Uganda.

The worry now is that judges in lower courts could totally disregard women’s non-monetary contribution in future divorce cases. Most women cannot afford to pay legal fees to appeal against such decisions.

Source: She cooks, cleans and cares … so why is a woman in Uganda worth only 20% of divorce assets? | Primah Kwagala | The Guardian

Women more likely to die in ICU: Australian medical research

Australian women in ICU for male-dominated conditions are at greater risk of dying compared with men, but the pattern “cuts both ways”, a study has found.

“The big question we set out to answer was, ‘Does sex or gender matter when you’re critically ill?’ And what we found is that sex absolutely matters,” Austin Health intensivist and lead researcher Dr Lucy Modra said.

“It has an impact on whether you live or die and your illness severity.”

“We’ve known for some time that women have worse outcomes than men from some typically male conditions, but what we essentially found is that this is a pattern that cuts both ways,” Modra said.

What perplexed researchers most, however, was the “minority effect”, with evidence that the gender balance of patients in an ICU could be linked to survival rates.

“What we found was that women admitted to ICUs with relatively few female patients were more likely to die than men, and vice versa. This was a big surprise – I did not expect to find that at all,” Modra said.

Source: Women more likely to die in ICU: Australian medical research

Education and gender: ‘Male decline’ is real, and it’s a problem for women too

Across OECD countries, there is an undeniable trend of “male decline” that is much commented upon, heavily researched and, increasingly, co-opted by reactionary forces who want to blame feminism for the difficulties of contemporary boys and men.

This decline is most remarkable in education trends. This week in NSW, the HSC school-leaving results were published, and they showed girls now outperform boys in most subjects. Girls are also gaining on boys in the traditionally male strongholds of mathematics and physics.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald report, this gender gap persists into university, with a 2022 University Admissions Centre study finding that boys enrol in university at lower rates than girls, they’re less likely to pass all their subjects, and more likely to fail everything.

The UAC study found that being male was “greater than any of the other recognised disadvantages we looked at”. That’s an extraordinary finding, and it’s not confined to Australia. In American colleges, there are roughly six female enrolments for every four male ones. “This is the largest female-male gender gap in the history of higher education, and it’s getting wider,” the Atlantic reported in 2021.

Male decline is eagerly pounced upon by “men’s rights activists” and anti-feminists who use it as proof that feminism has “gone too far” and that affirmative action and the woke agenda are displacing men.

Source: Education and gender: ‘Male decline’ is real, and it’s a problem for women too

Melbourne to get three new statues of prominent women

The City of Melbourne has committed to build three statues of prominent women in a bid to address the massive gender imbalance in public art.

Currently, just 9 of 580 statues in Melbourne depict real women, an issue that’s seen lobby group A Monument of One’s Own (AMOO) — co-convened by Clare Wright and Kristine Ziwica — placing pressure on governments to address the imbalance.

Independent MP for Goldstein Zoe Daniel said she would strongly put the case forward for Vida Goldstein, who was a leading suffragist and the first Australian woman to nominate for election in the federal parliament. Goldstein ran for election several times as an independent, and was also the first Australian to meet an American President at the Oval Office, when she was Australia and New Zealand’s sole delegate to the International Women’s Suffrage Conference.

Source: Melbourne to get three new statues of prominent women

Woman who escapes month-long captivity says other Black women killed by abductor | Missouri | The Guardian

A 22-year-old Black woman in Missouri who escaped after a white man abducted, tortured and held her captive for weeks in a basement has said several other Black women were killed by her captor – less than a month after police dismissed community concerns about a serial killer as “completely unfounded”.

The woman, who has not been named, escaped on 7 October after about a month in captivity, still wearing a metal collar locked with a padlock that authorities had to remove.

She told Kansas City police that 39-year-old Timothy M Haslett had imprisoned her in a basement room in Excelsior Springs – a city just north-east of Kansas City – where he whipped and raped her repeatedly. She escaped while Haslett was dropping his child off at school, and she sought help from neighbours whom she told that her friends “did not make it out” and were killed by Haslett.

Around the time she went missing, several prominent community leaders raised concerns about the disappearance of multiple Black women and girls. Last month, the Kansas City Defender, a nonprofit newsroom, published a video of Bishop Tony Caldwell saying that he had received information that the missing women had all been kidnapped from Prospect Avenue in Kansas City.

The police dismissed the concerns outright as “completely unfounded”, saying in a statement that “there is no basis to support this rumor”.

Haslett, a scruffy looking white man with dark brown hair and a greying beard, was detained and last week pleaded not guilty to charges including rape, kidnap and assault.

The case is just the latest example of a predominantly white police force refusing to take seriously reports of missing and murdered Black, Brown and Indigenous victims – especially women and girls.

Source: Woman who escapes month-long captivity says other Black women killed by abductor | Missouri | The Guardian

Lack of legal protection for flexible work arrangements – Law Society Journal

In Australia, there is currently no legal course of action available to employees if an employer refuses their request for flexible work.

The lack of legal protection has become particularly apparent since the pandemic transformed our attitudes towards working from home and working flexibly. Since 2020, many employees have continued to work from home or opt for a hybrid approach, with some days spent in the office and some days working from home.

In 2009, the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) established a right under section 65 to request flexible work arrangements. However, this is merely a right to make a request, not a right to challenge the result. To be eligible to make a request under the act the employee must have completed 12 months of continuous service with the employer.

Employers can reject a request if they have reasonable business grounds to do so. In deciding if there are reasonable business grounds, the employer will consider cost, capacity, practicality, efficiency, and productivity.

If an employer fails to provide a written response to the request within 21 days, an employee can take them to court to obtain one. However, doing so is costly. If the employer provides a written response rejecting the request, there is no legal right to challenge the result.

Source: Lack of legal protection for flexible work arrangements – Law Society Journal