Including Women in Digital Economy

More than a billion women lack access to formal financial services, limiting their access to loans, savings and bank accounts. By decreasing the gender divide in technology, women’s economic opportunities can be expanded, benefiting the global economy.

But, financial inclusion requires innovative solutions with an energetic and supportive ecosystem. Blockchain lowers costs, shortens settlement times, and can provide a user-friendly experience for internal and cross-border payments. In addition, its youthful and motivated online creation community is talented and diverse.

Blockchain technology can improve the financial inclusion of women in the economy. Blockchain is still at an early stage, to be certain, and disparate regulatory approaches will complicate blockchain adoption. Understanding the technology, its risks, benefits and the surrounding ecosystem, will be key to helping shape the innovation’s future.

https://blog.everex.io/including-women-in-digital-economy-ced5dfd96270

Airline Vistara Won’t Give Solo Women The Middle Seat

[W]hen you’re a woman traveling solo, sitting in the middle seat can be more than just uncomfortable, it can be dangerous. That’s why the New Delhi-based airline Vistara began the Woman Flyer service. . . .

And the problem might be much bigger than anyone can say, thanks to convoluted data. According to an FBI spokesperson, 57 in-flight sexual assault cases were investigated in 2016, up from 40 cases in 2016.

But it’s important to keep in mind that there could be a number of unreported incidents; the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that 68 percent of victims do not report the crime.

https://www.simplemost.com/indian-airline-vistara-wont-assign-solo-female-travelers-middle-seat/?

‘I call him my rapist’: Women accusing men of rape take justice into their own hands

Despite police warnings that public shaming could backfire, women across Australia are joining private Facebook groups that share stories about which men to avoid.

“I’m a part of the secret underground feminist mafia that tells all of my friends, and even just women I meet … about who the bad guys are, who the rapists are,” said Anna, a member of one group like this.

“The system isn’t set up to help me. It’s set up to help him. This is our own system.”

Anna said she could think of five men she regularly told her friends to avoid. Even within the last month, she said, she’d cut a man out of her social circle after hearing about his ugly history.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-03/women-accusing-men-of-rape-take-justice-into-their-own-hands/8767106

Men still prefer mothers to stay at home: 12 charts on attitudes to work and family

The Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey is Australia’s only nationally representative household longitudinal study, following the same individuals and households since 2001.

The good news is that despite the fact men still prefer women not to work, we are progressing: across the board there have been positive shifts in the way we view working women.

Despite educating women better than 143 other countries, women in Australia struggle to effectively participate in the workforce, which means they struggle to attain economic independence. In 2016 Australia ranked 55th for women’s workforce participation, a figure that has also steadily slid back throughout the past decade.

The price too many women are paying for caring, for being directly and indirectly discriminated against, for being unable to work as much as they would like, or bearing the cost of raising their family, is poverty.

https://theconversation.com/men-still-prefer-mothers-to-stay-at-home-12-charts-on-attitudes-to-work-and-family-81897
https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/men-who-prefer-women-not-to-work/

Photo shoot captures historic rise of women in law – Lawyers Weekly

LIV CEO Nerida Wallace described the photograph of the state’s top women in the legal profession as historic. She said that the photo signified the contribution and advancement of Australian women in law, 112 years since Australia’s first woman lawyer was admitted to practise in Victoria.

A the time of Flos Greig’s admission to the legal profession in 1905, then Chief Justice John Madden described the occasion as “the graceful incoming of a revolution”.

“We took the photograph to acknowledge and celebrate how far women have come since Flos Greig, but it is also recognition of the number of women who have risen to the top in the most demanding of professions,” Ms Wallace said.

https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/wig-chamber/21601-photo-shoot-captures-historic-rise-of-women-in-law?

ALHR – Australia should heed UK Supreme Court decision on access to justice

Leading Australian human rights lawyers have welcomed a landmark UK Supreme Court judgement handed down last Wednesday, arguing the decision sets an important precedent for Australian courts in relation to the need to ensure access to justice and equality before the law.

“Women, in particular, are systemically disadvantaged within Australia’s legal system. For example, in NSW the majority of legal aid goes to assisting men, with only 26% of legal aid clients being women. This is despite the fact that women are more likely to be living in poverty than men.”

Kerr noted that “fees in Australia’s courts must be affordable so that people involved in complex or intractable matters are not denied access to the court because of their financial vulnerability. Reductions in legal aid funding by governments over recent years are having a very real human rights impact on vulnerable members of our community accessing justice. Despite the recent restoration of some funding, Australia’s legal assistance sector remains chronically underfunded.”

https://alhr.org.au/australia-heed-uk-supreme-court-decision-access-justice/

Campus shame: One in five students sexually harassed at universities last year

Today, the Australian Human Rights Commission released its long-awaited report of 30,000 students at 39 Australian universities on the issue, revealing assault and harassment is occurring at disturbingly high rates.

One in five students were sexually harassed at an Australian university last year. 1.6% of students were sexually assaulted at an Australian university setting in the past two years.

Colleges are particular areas of concern – with women four times as likely as men to be sexually assaulted in these settings.

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/campus-shame-one-five-students-sexually-harassed-last-year/

Women still under-represented in judiciary says study

Research by the Law Society in England & Wales shows that there is some way to go before women are properly represented in the judiciary.

Data from the courts and tribunals show that just 28% of court judges and 45% of tribunal judges are female. Women make up just 22% of high court judges and deputy judges and only 24% in the court of appeal.

https://www.australasianlawyer.com.au/news/women-still-underrepresented-in-judiciary-says-study-239340.aspx

And in other UK news:

The Government is to take immediate steps to stop charging employment tribunal fees and refund those who have paid following a “landmark” Supreme Court ruling.

The Ministry of Justice said it accepted a Supreme Court judgment in favour of public sector union Unison which has fought a four-year battle against controversial fees of up to £1,200 for taking a case to a tribunal.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favour of the union, which had argued that the fees discriminated against women and other groups of workers.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/government-to-take-immediate-steps-to-stop-charging-employment-tribunal-fees-35969494.html
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/26/union-supreme-court-fees-unfair-dismissal-claims

Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism

The game’s little-known inventor, Elizabeth Magie, would no doubt have made herself go directly to jail if she’d lived to know just how influential today’s twisted version of her game has turned out to be. Why? Because it encourages its players to celebrate exactly the opposite values to those she intended to champion. . . .

In addition to confronting gender politics, Magie decided to take on the capitalist system of property ownership – this time not through a publicity stunt but in the form of a board game. . . .

Magie invented and in 1904 patented what she called the Landlord’s Game. Laid out on the board as a circuit (which was a novelty at the time), it was populated with streets and landmarks for sale. The key innovation of her game, however, lay in the two sets of rules that she wrote for playing it. . . .

The purpose of the dual sets of rules, said Magie, was for players to experience a ‘practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences’ and hence to understand how different approaches to property ownership can lead to vastly different social outcomes.

Among the players of this Quaker adaptation was an unemployed man called Charles Darrow, who later sold such a modified version to the games company Parker Brothers as his own. . . .

Once the game’s true origins came to light, Parker Brothers bought up Magie’s patent, but then re-launched the board game simply as Monopoly, and provided the eager public with just one set of rules: those that celebrate the triumph of one over all.

https://aeon.co/ideas/monopoly-was-invented-to-demonstrate-the-evils-of-capitalism

Migrant women forced to stay in abusive relationships, refuges warn

According to Anna Kerr, co-chair of the Women and Girl’s Rights Subcommittee of the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights advocacy group, “women’s refuges are frequently unable or unwilling to accept women who do not have a visa status that qualifies them for Centrelink payments”.

A 2016 survey conducted by the Coalition for Women’s Refuges found only 61 per cent reported being always able to take women without residency, with one in five reporting they had no ability to take women in such circumstances.

Julie Stewart, a member of the coalition, has been working in the domestic violence sector for more than 30 years. As CEO of Manly-Warringah Women’s Resource Centre, a service where she has worked since 2011 and which is listed as a specialist homelessness service on the FACS website, she says general homelessness shelters are often “inappropriate” for women fleeing abusive situations.

Stewart has observed a clear difference between the services her centre was able to offer before and after the 2014 reforms, which saw the shelter’s annual funding decrease by $500,000.

In Stewart’s experience, whether migrant women end up receiving any support varies greatly depending on the type of visa they hold, and whether they have children born in Australia.

“We believe that a woman who has arrived in Australia on a spousal visa, mostly on the promise of a better life, and has subsequently been abused, beaten, deprived, kept as a slave, exploited, discarded should be supported by the Commonwealth government who enabled their entry into Australia in the first instance.”

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/news-features/citizenship-changes-may-force-migrant-women-to-stay-in-abusive-relationships-refuges-warn-20170712-gx9i47.html