tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40871830463501651112024-03-06T00:02:19.360+05:30DeltaWomenStrength, Beauty, Courage, and Power!DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.comBlogger2198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-90883987309004874822016-12-05T14:17:00.000+05:302016-12-05T14:17:51.950+05:30Understanding Fibromyalgia, Its effects on patients and their family members<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Fibromyalgia is one of the commonest musculoskeletal syndromes in the world. It affects over 3 million people in United States alone, which is definitely upsetting since to date the ailment has no cure. Patients are left frustrated and depressed because most of the patients aren’t diagnosed for years after the symptoms start. Diagnosis can take on average five years with 60 percent of fibromyalgia patients diagnosed in their 30s and 40s, another 35 percent diagnosed in their 20s or between the ages of 50-65.</div>
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With fibromyalgia syndrome, the patient experiences chronic muscle pain or spasm, moderate or severe fatigue and decreased energy, insomnia or waking up feeling just as tired as when they went to sleep, stiffness upon waking or after staying in one position for too long, difficulty remembering, concentrating, and performing simple mental tasks (“Fibro fog”), irritable bowel syndrome, tension or migraine headaches, jaw and facial tenderness, sensitivity to odors, noise, bright lights, certain foods, and cold, feeling anxious or depressed, tingling in the face, arms, hands, legs, or feet, increase in urinary urgency or frequency, reduced tolerance for exercise or feeling of swelling (without actual swelling) in the hands and feet</div>
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These symptoms may intensify depending on the time (morning, late afternoon, and evening tend to be the worst times). Symptoms may also get worse with tension, inactivity, changes in the weather, cold or drafty conditions, overexertion, hormonal fluctuations , stress, depression, or other emotional factors.</div>
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Fibromyalgia can be very distressing for the women and can affect their lives in many ways<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">. </em>The disease occurs seven times more often in women than in men and some 80-90 percent of fibromyalgia sufferers are women. These women feel misconceived because people around them think they are a hypochondriacs or attention seekers or just acting to get rid of responsibilities.</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It took 17 years for one lady in Pakistan to get diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. She was suffering from fibromyalgia since birth of her second child and had multiple visits every year to her family practitioner in the hope that she will get some cure but every visit to the doctor made her more worried and frustrated. She spent her prime years worrying and suffering just because Fibromyalgia is not yet recognized by most GPs. She took multiple pain killers during this time to get rid of the pain which only gave her stomach ulcers and GERD. After suffering for 17 years she went into major depression and had to be admitted to the hospital for acute depression which led her to being referred to a psychiatrist who finally diagnosed her with Fibromyalgia.</em></div>
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Fibromyalgia doesn’t only affect the patients life it also affects the people around them. It affects their families, their lifestyle and their careers.</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A girl from Nigeria told us that she has a strained relationship with her mother because every time she called her mother all she did was complain about her pain and fatigue. According to the girl it annoyed her that her mother always complained of symptoms that the doctor always brushed off as nothing significant . She thought that her mother was just making up stories to avoid responsibilities and hence she never emotionally supported her. When the girl found out about fibromyalgia she felt extremely guilty and took her mother to the right doctor for treatment.</em></div>
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Just like these women there are millions of other women out there who are misunderstood and dejected. We all know few women who have complained of these symptoms on and off. We might even know some lucky ones who got diagnosed but there are still millions of them who have no idea that they actually suffer from fibromyalgia which is a real disease and these symptoms are not just in their head. We can help these ladies by spreading the word about fibromyalgia, educating people about fibromyalgia or by simply telling them that we believe them and by emotionally supporting them.</div>
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<b style="color: #303030; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-style: inherit;">Dr. Rabbiya Aamir</b><br />
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Medical Practitioner &</h5>
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Volunteer with Deltawomen.</div>
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<a href="https://talkobsession.wordpress.com/2016/12/04/fibromyalgia-is-real/">Source</a></div>
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DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-42786680783406665672016-12-02T16:46:00.001+05:302016-12-02T17:07:03.640+05:30What is Fibromyalgia?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-16913266980721682682016-11-28T18:26:00.000+05:302016-11-28T18:26:07.989+05:30Fibromyalgia – Feeling so alone.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Having a close companion on the quest to learn about fibromyalgia can be a wonderful psychological boost. "It helps the person not to feel so alone," says says John Fry, a Newport Beach, California-based psychologist whose wife Elizabeth was diagnosed with fibromyalgia about four years ago. He recommends learning about how depression and anxiety — and on the flip side, positive thoughts and gratitude — can impact the disease and color the experiences of daily life. "Counting your blessings in the midst of difficulty" is one way to nurture a positive attitude, he says.<br />
I can’t agree more with Fry. Having my daughter and close friends supporting me has really boasted my desire to fight this illness!<br />
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I used to be this person who felt that showing my emotions, fear or asking for help made me vulnerable. I mastered the act of smiling even when all I wanted to do was crawl and cry. I saw myself as a giver, the strong one and the shoulder for others to cry on. This was one of the many reasons why I hide my illness for many years from friends and family.<br />
Unbeknownst to me my daughter knew something was wrong with mama and she heard me cry at night when I thought she was asleep.<br />
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I felt so alone.<br />
I felt nobody would understand.<br />
I felt ashamed to ask for help.<br />
I did not want anyone to see me as a weak person.<br />
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Sometimes I would work myself up emotionally with these thought which triggered my illness.<br />
Then, things changed. I could not hide it anymore and I began to open up. I lost some friends and family who were used to seeing me as the strong one, and could not deal with me being weak.<br />
But the few who stayed have really helped and encouraged me on my bad days. Another big change is my daughter. She overheard me telling her dad that I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and she rushed to Google to find out what it was. She spent the evening asking me where I felt pain most and asked me a lot of questions to put me at ease. She told me she knew I was ill and felt better now she knew what was wrong with me and how she could help.<br />
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It dawned on me that it is more frustrating and confusing when we shut our loved ones out. We are not helping them by hiding our illness from them, because they know something is not right. We are sometimes alone because we want to be, because we shut the world out.</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-90926988491119593342016-11-27T15:38:00.003+05:302016-11-27T15:43:28.159+05:30Acknowledging Fibromyalgia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</header><a class="post-thumbnail" href="https://talkobsession.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/acknowledging-fibromyalgia/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #8e44ac; display: block; font-family: "PT Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="fibromyalgia_awareness_square_car_magnet_3quot_x" class="attachment-edin-featured-image size-edin-featured-image wp-post-image" height="460" sizes="(max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px" src="https://talkobsession.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/fibromyalgia_awareness_square_car_magnet_3quot_x.jpg?w=460" srcset="https://talkobsession.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/fibromyalgia_awareness_square_car_magnet_3quot_x.jpg 460w, https://talkobsession.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/fibromyalgia_awareness_square_car_magnet_3quot_x.jpg?w=150 150w, https://talkobsession.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/fibromyalgia_awareness_square_car_magnet_3quot_x.jpg?w=300 300w" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%;" width="460" /></a><br />
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Have you ever come across a woman with chronic widespread pain and a heightened pain response to pressure who also complains of stiffness, numbness, fatigue, headaches and sleep disorders? Did she also moan that she had multiple visits to her local doctors with negative tests and no cure from over the counter pain killers? You probably did.</div>
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There are chances that woman is suffering from Fibromyalgia. Never heard about fibromyalgia? This condition affects about 3 to 5% of the general population. It is a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. Researchers believe that fibromyalgia amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way pain signals are processed in your brain.</div>
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Symptoms sometimes begin after a physical trauma or accident, surgery, child birth, death of a loved one, divorce or significant psychological stress. In other cases, symptoms gradually accumulate over time with no single triggering event.</div>
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Women are more likely to develop fibromyalgia than are men. Many women who have fibromyalgia also have tension headaches, anxiety and depression. These women are unable to fulfill the physical, social, and emotional needs of others in the household. Due to lack of awareness about fibromyalgia these women are often misunderstood and people think they are being lazy and making up excuses to avoid responsibilities. Their symptoms may be affecting their marriage which leads to more stress and depression which inturn increases their symptoms. It’s like a vicious cycle.</div>
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People with fibromyalgia who are involved in fairly vigorous manual occupations often need to modify their work environment and may need to switch to a completely different job. A survey comparing people with fibromyalgia to individuals being treated for other conditions found that 47% of those with fibromyalgia had lost a job because of the disease, compared with only 14% of people losing a job for another health problem. In another survey, people with fibromyalgia lost three times as many workdays as compared to healthy workers.</div>
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Fibromyalgia can be emotionally devastating. Imagine being around people who don’t understand what you are going through, who thinks you are just making up stories about your pain to avoid work and being told that its all in your head. Add this stress on to the stress of being ill and the situation becomes almost impossible to bear. Emotional support from loved ones is essential for the person suffering from Fibromyalgia. It will not cure it but lack of support will make matters worse.</div>
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So do you have anyone suffering from fibromyalgia? Do you want to help them? What’s the first step towards it? Acknowledging Fibromyalgia. Accepting that your mother, wife, daughter or sister doesn’t have these symptoms in her head she is really suffering. Lets make an oath that from today onwards not only will we support and show understanding to the people around us with fibromyalgia, we will also raise awareness about it.</div>
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Written By </div>
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<b>Dr. Rabbiya Aamir</b></div>
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Medical Practitioner &</h5>
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Volunteer with Deltawomen.</div>
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<a href="https://talkobsession.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/acknowledging-fibromyalgia/">source</a></div>
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DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-5692299300658299582016-11-26T15:18:00.002+05:302016-11-26T15:18:34.203+05:30My struggle with Fibromyalgia.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I started experiencing pain 1 year after giving birth to my second born son.it all begun as mild pain on my knees and around my wrist areas. I took pain killers and the pain would reduce, but it will still recur after a few hours. These went on for a while and the pain started spreading to other parts of my body. The intensity of the pain was also increasing as time went by and my remedy was getting more strong painkillers to ease the pain.<br />
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The painkillers didn’t help much and I went to see the doctor, all the tests that were done turned out negative. The doctor added me more pain killers and advised me to go back for a review whenever the pain is unbearable. Back home things were getting worse; I started feeling tired all the time and having sleepless nights. Doing house chores became an uphill task as I could not even cook for the family and take care of my little boys.<br />
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I could stay in bed most of the time and would still feel tired to do any work. My husband would go to work and come to do house chores in the evening. The thought of not being able to do house chores stressed me much. My husband had to stop working to take care of his family.<br />
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This came with lots of financial constraints as we could not afford most of the basic needs. In the quest of finding a cure for my pain I was advised to go see a herbalist who gave me some herbal remedies which did not help .I visited a second herbalist but his medicine didn’t work, the pain was getting worse each day. I decided to consult a different doctor, after assessing me he concluded I had Fibromyalgia.<br />
We began working on my recovery which included changing my diet and also exercise. After three months I started feeling well and could do simple house chores and sleep well. Right now I still follow the treatment routine which has eased my pain and I know given time ill improve more. It calls for so much discipline to manage this condition.<br />
I’m taking it one step at a time and I know I’ll emerge victorious, it’s not easy but I will make it. I’m able to encourage those who have this condition. I'm also educating my community about it and what can be done to ease the pain.<br />
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DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-46493647999049415982016-11-25T20:06:00.003+05:302016-11-25T20:06:38.620+05:30 The Need For Science As The Fulcrum Of Modern Communication<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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-Written By Charitarth Sindhu<br />
Have you ever wondered why there are so many instances when you just cannot successfully convey your ideas and feelings to another person even though you have excellent communication skills? Even though we seem to provide a flawless and detailed form of information some people just don’t seem to understand what we are trying to say. We may not realize it in our day-to-day lives but our daily form of communication is highly subjective and quite frankly obsolete in a technology driven society. It may not matter how well you convey an idea to another person because if that person has been taught to interpret words in a perspective different from yours then there will definitely be a language barrier that will make it considerably difficult for people to understand each other.<br />
Suppose a Person from Finland is speaking to a Person from Saudi Arabia, the Finn says “It is hot today, what is the weather like there?” The person in Saudi Arabia will say “It is hot here too.”<br />
Looking at the average temperature in Finland during summer it is 20-25°C and in Saudi Arabia during the summer, temperatures reach 45 °C. Even the coastal temperatures in Saudi Arabia reaches 37 °C, with humidity averaging over 90%. The highest recorded temperature in Dubai is 52.1 °C. Now on a neurological level when the Saudi says it is hot, this information travels through the different filters and the information is interpreted in a very different picture by both individuals. In other words, they mean two different things. These types of issues cause a lot of misunderstandings and in many scenarios leads to conflict of ideas and conflicts in understanding.<br />
Take another example- Paul R Porter, a famous economist who attended a banquet in Greece in which he was a guest. And in an attempt to connect with the host and audience he politely stated:<br />
“…you Greeks and we Americans have very much in common. We like to eat, we like to drink and we want to sit around and talk.”<br />
And the very next day the Greek communist party (KKE) wrote that he insulted the Greeks, calling them gluttons, alcoholics, and gossipers.<br />
Different variations of language exist such as those in different jobs, different time periods, new knowledge (for example: the quite insufficiency of words like ‘sunrise’/’sunset’ even though it has been well established that Earth rotates instead), and in different nations, e.g. a British person will use the word ‘pants’ as a synonym for ‘underwear’ an American will use the word pants for ‘trousers’.<br />
The language used by the average person is inadequate for resolving conflicts in understanding, but the language of science is free from misinterpretation and the conflicts found in everyday emotionally-driven language. It is deliberately designed – as opposed to having evolved haphazardly through centuries of social evolution in order to express one’s subjective emotions in terms that are verifiable and readily understood only by those who use it. Much of today’s conflict in communication is the result of our inability to state problems precisely. When one can state problems precisely, we are more than half way to the solutions. Technology has solved most of our problems, it is hard to imagine our lives without modern technology, like the washing machine, the automobile, cell phones, and the internet. Most technical and theoretical advances in 1) Our understanding of the universe (i.e. science) and 2)application of that understanding towards making our lives better (i.e. Technology) would have been unattainable without an improved language that serves as a universal mode of understanding. Without a common descriptive language of science, we wouldn’t have been able to prevent disease, increase crop yields, talk across thousands of miles instantly, or build bridges, dams, transportation systems, and the other technological marvels of this computerized age.<br />
Unfortunately, the same is not true of conversational language. Attempts to discuss or evaluate newer concepts in social designs that defy conventional forms of culture and thinking are greatly limited by existing systems and beliefs within the majority of population that has not learnt to use the definition based language of science. The decisive advantage that the language of science has over conventional forms of education is the presence of ‘Technical Terms’.<br />
We can safely hypothesize that communication amongst primitive humans was slow and subjective. When someone wanted to say “This is not something I like” they would push it away. When they were injured they would express themselves through utterances similar to the ones used today, such as moaning and groaning. If they held their leg, moaned and groaned, this communicated pain in that particular region of their body. When they wanted to show where the food was, they would point towards a direction. When danger was close, they might have made a loud noise, something like screaming.<br />
That initial language development came about by using the senses that are in direct connection to the surrounding environment. Unlike the intermediate stages of the eye which have left behind fossil records, the same has unfortunately not been possible for language, bluntly speaking because the language does not fossilize. We can only briefly mention examples of kinds of linguistic behaviours that seem to have been identified by archaeologists.<br />
If we can find anything in common in all forms of primitive linguistic behaviours it is that all of them have some minimal structure, i.e. sentences are made of words which have been given distinct meanings, and the understanding of the sentence is in a very limited way composed of those designated word-meanings.<br />
Even though this conventional forms of communication fulfil our daily needs it is counterproductive to progress. As needs change according to biosocial pressures so does the requirement for more complex or simpler communication systems depending on the situation. The world is in need of a language which is relevant (i.e. updatable) to our current understanding of our environment in order to reduce misinterpretation just like in mathematics or chemistry.<br />
Technical terms are words with a fixed definition and are not open to interpretation by different perspectives, such as Deoxyribonucleic Acid. This is a specific term that if said to another person with the relevant background and who speaks English, has no way of being misinterpreted. On the other hand conventional language consists only of non-technical terms which are open to interpretation by people with different perspectives hence leading to conflict in understanding, such as ‘good‘, ‘bad‘, ‘right‘, ‘wrong‘.<br />
A technical term always gives precise information, but non-technical terms are mostly subject to our personal interpretation. When we say subject to our interpretation, we mean when we hear or read these words, the brain tends to associate those words to past observations and current understanding of its environment, the process involves several filters such as culture, politics, memories of situations, religion etc.<br />
In other words when it comes to conventional languages the listener hears the words and he/she always interprets them according to what he/she thinks it means and not according to what it was actually intended to mean. People reading the same source but understanding different aspects may be explained on a neurological level where the nervous system abstracts, therefore, selecting, picking out, separating, summarizing, deducting, removing, omitting, disengaging, taking away and stripping the actual parts of the message that was communicated based on its own background, experiences and memories.<br />
Conclusively, the sooner we realize the need to teach students as well as professionals how to use technical and scientific definitions in their daily life the faster our society will progress, as mutual understanding and conflict resolution is the foundation that civilization must be built on.<br />
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DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-55347289947170834962016-11-24T17:52:00.002+05:302016-11-24T17:52:15.408+05:30Life became meaningless with Fibromyalgia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>‘‘I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia 11 years ago, but my husband does not understand ,he says that I’m lazy and don’t want to perform any chores .</b><br />
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He finds fault in everything I do. He has not held me for 3 years, I feel lonely and wish for death’’ Those are the words Emma said when I met her at her house crying. She is a mother of 2 She leaves with her husband and has had Fibromyalgia 11 years ago .She is still struggling to live with it as the Doctor told her it’s a lifetime condition. She even refused to take pain killers as she said they were not helping in any way.<br />
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Emma suffers alone as most of her friends do not visit her anymore. No one understands her condition and many say she’s lazy as she has added weight. Many a times she has wished for death to take her. Things became worse for her when she was laid off from work as she could not perform her duties. She would take 3 days a week without going to work. sShe stays in the house all through, when I visited her she had not gone out of her compound for three months.<br />
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This is just Emma's story; many individuals who have Fibromyalgia go through so much pain and depression. Things become worse when they realize they cannot perform even the simplest of duties like ironing, cooking, bathing or even doing laundry. Some will push themselves to work until they can’t take it anymore and fall into severe depression. Many people will report having had suicidal thoughts as they are rejected by people who are close to them.<br />
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What can we do to help those with this condition?<br />
Let’s understand that it’s not their wish to have this condition. Help them with work when the pain flares.<br />
We can encourage them to exercise by taking them along our morning runs or walks. We can help plan their meals. Visit them and let them know that we care for them. Let’s do all that we can to help ease their pain, lets show them love.<br />
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A simple gesture can help ease the pain and improve one’s well-being.<br />
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Written by Lilian Wakhule.<br />
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DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-23452664046031852932016-09-15T17:14:00.001+05:302016-09-15T17:14:22.019+05:30Reviewing: 'Suburbia' by Troye Sivan<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6QppqQHs12M" width="480"></iframe>Sinmisola Ogúnyinkahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11440510298676707390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-37749764914755937182015-05-09T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-09T00:00:00.798+05:30Is Hillary Clinton vulnerable on women's rights?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul suggested Sunday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won't be able to make a credible argument that she promotes women's rights because the foundation run by her family has accepted donations from foreign countries where women are treated poorly.</div>
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"She's taken money from countries that abuse the rights of women. In Saudi Arabia, a woman was raped by seven men. The woman was then publically whipped. And then she was arrested for being in a car with an unmarried man. I think we should be boycotting that activity, not encouraging it. And it looks really bad for the case of defending women's rights, if you're accepting money," Paul said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday.</div>
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For 2016, will it be Clinton vs. Bush?</h3>
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He also cited a donation from Brunei, "where they stone women to death for adultery."</div>
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"It's going to be hard for her to say she's for women's rights, when she's accepting money from sort of stone-age sort of regimes that really abuse the rights of women," he said.</div>
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Clinton is <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-hillary-clinton-announcing-her-candidacy-soon/" style="color: rgb(132, 28, 28) !important; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">expected to announce Sunday</a> that she is running for president. Paul <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rand-paul-announces-hes-running-for-president/" style="color: rgb(132, 28, 28) !important; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">jumped into the race last week</a>, becoming the second official candidate on the GOP side.</div>
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The Clinton Foundation <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-foundation-defends-foreign-fundraising/" style="color: rgb(132, 28, 28) !important; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">accepts donations from foreign governments</a>, although it imposed restrictions on raising new money from those sources in 2009 to avoid any conflicts of interest while Clinton was secretary of state. They restarted the practice in 2013 and have argued amid criticism that the foundation is a philanthropy and has strong transparency practices.</div>
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Clinton unmatched on promoting women’s rights, Amy Klobuchar says</h3>
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That's what Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, argued when she defended Clinton in a separate interview on "Face the Nation."</div>
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"I think that those contributions to the foundation are open for everyone to look at," she said. "I think she's answered this. She talked about that this was the foundation. I think you've seen other foundations take similar contributions. But the point of it is that I don't think anyone can quite match her record for promoting women's rights all across the world. And if they want to go on that claim and have that argument, I'll say she wins."</div>
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RNC Chairman: Hillary Clinton presidency not inevitable</h3>
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Host Bob Schieffer asked Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus to explain why the foundation accepting donations from foreign government is any different from candidates and the groups that support them taking money from sources that won't always be disclosed to the public.</div>
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"The differences is all those other entities, super PACs, parties, individual candidates, they can't take money from kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco and Oman and Yemen. And that's what Hilary Clinton did. And so she's going to have to account for this money," Priebus said.</div>
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"The point is, if we stick to the facts, and that's where we want to be, then we're going to be able to make the case to the American people that she has a product that isn't worth buying," Priebus added.</div>
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He also said the question of accepting money from foreign governments makes it all the more important that the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-used-only-personal-email-account-at-state-department/" style="color: rgb(132, 28, 28) !important; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">emails she kept on a private server</a> be available to the public.</div>
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"She's going to be under even more scrutiny about where she got the money from, if she used her position as Secretary of State," he said.</div>
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State Department reviewing Clinton emails for a few more months, Kerry says</h3>
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Secretary of State John Kerry said the State Department is currently reviewing the emails that Clinton has handed over to the department, and will take "a couple" more months to go through them.</div>
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"We will release all the emails that are appropriate based on classification. We're obviously looking through them to determine that no classified information is inadvertently released. But those emails will be released at the appropriate moment," Kerry said.</div>
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He added that he has asked the State Department's Inspector General to examine the entire department's email management system to ensure the procedures in place are appropriate.</div>
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"And as for myself, I deal with a state dot gov address and all of my emails are being secured by the State Department," Kerry added.</div>
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Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/will-hillary-clintons-stance-on-womens-rights-come-under-attack/</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-66355318407870908922015-05-08T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-08T00:00:01.881+05:30The distance travelled: Beijing, Hillary, and women's rights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Hillary Rodham Clinton will need to listen to listen to the voices of women working at grassroots on the frontline, and be prepared to use her power, should she win, to defend the human rights defenders.</div>
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So Hillary is running again. And the campaign against her has also taken off, with her gender and her record on women’s rights part of the story. How far will Clinton go this time in positioning herself as a champion of women?</div>
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On the morning of Hillary Clinton’s low key announcement that she is running for President for the second time, potential Republican rival Senator Rand Paul weighed in with a CNN interview, managing to patronise her as a woman in the same breath as saying it would be wrong to patronise her. He said it would be ‘sexist’ to suggest that Clinton deserves not to be treated aggressively in the political fight ‘because she’s only a woman’.</div>
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Clinton herself avoided a gender-based strategy in her 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination but this time, she is building it <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/4/10/8383283/hillary-2016-campaign-gender-strategy" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">into her campaign</a>. An ‘<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/grandmother-in-chief/385238/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">America’s Grandmother</a>’ theme has emerged to improve Clinton’s appeal to voters and the campaign is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2015/apr/12/hillary-clinton-announces-2016-presidential-campaign-iowa" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">prioritising</a> women and young people, emphasising the chance to make history by putting the first woman President in the White House and leading on policies such as equal pay and paid leave as part of her broader programme on improving the incomes of workers and reducing inequality.</div>
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In the years since her earlier Presidential bid failed and Clinton became the world’s most powerful diplomat as Obama’s Secretary of State, she felt able to be more vocal on gender. She launched the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review initiative, making the <a href="http://www.state.gov/s/dmr/qddr/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">empowerment of women</a> one of the objectives of US diplomatic missions abroad. The Clinton Foundation, which Hillary runs with husband Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea, recently launched the ‘No Ceilings’ project, an initiative to inspire and advance the <a href="https://www.clintonfoundation.org/our-work/no-ceilings-full-participation-project" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">full participation</a> of women and girls around the world, and in a recent television interview marking twenty years since the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing she said: ‘In the 21st century, the biggest piece of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05nz2r1" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">unfinished business</a>is the full rights of women and girls and that’s what we should be focused on.’ </div>
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The <a href="http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">Fourth World Conference on Women</a> held in Beijing in 1995, attended by more 30,000 activists, was a landmark breakthrough for women’s rights, and Clinton’s part in it cannot be underestimated. She was First Lady, not an elected official, but nevertheless her speech proclaiming ‘<em>women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights</em>’ was electrifying, not just for what she said but for the fact that there was someone with real influence in the White House prepared to say it.</div>
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The speech put the moral and legal force of the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> in the service of women. Running for the nomination and possibly being a candidate, and even elected President next year, once again places Clinton, and progress on women’s rights, in a historic position at a time when real political will could make all the difference.</div>
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Since Beijing, while the UN itself has devoted more attention to the status and conditions of women and some progress has been made, there have also been alarming developments. Violence against women has become an undeniable and widespread universal reality, and speaking out against it no longer a taboo, as it once was. Everything from rape as a weapon of war to sex trafficking to female genital mutilation (FGM) are far better understood, acknowledged and addressed in public discourse and policy.</div>
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But even in the midst of progress at this level, the tide of violence has continued to rise and a special brand of violence has come to the fore: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">violence</a>against women and girls who defend human rights such as Malala Yousafzai - now a Noble Peace laureate - and Salwa Bugaighis, a Libyan lawyer who played a key part in the Arab Spring and who was <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lindsey-hilsum/desolation-and-despair-in-libya-murder-of-salwa-bugaighis" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">murdered</a> in her own home last year as Libya descended into jihadist conflict. </div>
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The challenge is no longer simply to promote women’s rights themselves. There is an additional struggle: to fight the backlash and protect the women who defend all human rights. Whether it is because of the rise of religious fundamentalism, the spread of criminal networks, the land grabs of corporations or the inertia, resistance or weakness of governments, women who promote human rights have very little protection from the powers and forces they challenge, and as a result their own lives are often at risk. Even when not in mortal danger, such women are regularly and extensively targeted around the world through judicial harassment, travel bans, threats, smears and detention as <a href="http://www.awid.org/Get-Involved/Urgent-Actions" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">evidence</a> gathered by the <a href="http://www.awid.org/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">Association for Women’s Rights in Development</a> shows.</div>
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A new front has opened up: the defence of women human rights defenders which is to be the subject of the <a href="http://www.nobelwomensinitiative.org/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">Nobel Women’s Initiative’s</a> biennial conference in the Netherlands April 24-26.</div>
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As with so much in the political sphere, the struggle for progress at the highest levels hinges on language and ideas. As a new concept, ‘human rights defenders’ first gained currency in a UN resolution in <a href="http://www.ishr.ch/news/un-declaration-human-rights-defenders" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">1998</a>, then in <a href="http://www.awid.org/Library/First-Resolution-on-Protecting-Women-Human-Rights-Defenders-Adopted-at-the-UN-Amid-Strong-Conservative-Opposition-to-Already-Agreed-Rights" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">2013</a>, the General Assembly adopted a resolution specifically on protecting <em>women</em>human rights defenders. The resolution was a breakthrough but was a hotly contested matter with difficult negotiations about the final wording on several flanks. The resolution expressed the UN’s ‘grave concern’ about the risks and violations that women human rights defenders faced. But initial drafts contained contentious references to issues including matters of sexual and reproductive health, reproductive rights and sexuality that were later dropped in the final text. Key points that would have strengthened the text were excluded as a result of opposition voiced by a number of states from Africa, Asia and the Vatican. </div>
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When the resolution was adopted four global rights organisations issued a<a href="http://www.ishr.ch/news/un-adopts-landmark-resolution-protecting-women-human-rights-defenders" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">statement</a> saying: ‘It is deeply regrettable that this last minute consensus came at the expense of a crucial paragraph containing language calling on states to condemn all forms of violence against women and women human rights defenders, and to refrain from invoking any customs, tradition or religious consideration to avoid obligations related to the elimination of violence against women.’</div>
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The focus now is on implementation. Nicole Bjerler of Amnesty International’s UN Office in New York said: ‘The resolution urges states to put in place gender-specific laws and policies for the protection of women human rights defenders and to ensure that defenders themselves are involved in the design and implementation of these measures,’ adding that ‘effective implementation of such measures by states will be key to enabling women human rights defenders to carry out their important and legitimate work.’</div>
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This week's Nobel Women’s Initiative conference is designed to move from international resolution to action, building support for women human rights defenders and developing strategies for real progress on the ground through looking in detail at case studies from different regions around the world. Topics include digital and internet security, funding, media training, climate change and the protection of natural resources and the environment, and the monitoring and documenting of specific threats against women.</div>
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The conference is an essential move in keeping up the pressure to make governments and other agencies take action, not just make resolutions. The issue could so easily slip off the agenda otherwise. The Nobel Women's Initiative have pointed out that recent studies, echoed by <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/SRHRDefenders/Pages/SRHRDefendersIndex.aspx" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">findings</a> of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, demonstrate that women environmental activists and women protecting land against mining and other resource developments are often facing the highest level of risk, and that 'to date, governments are doing very little to address their specific needs.'</div>
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At the recent meeting of the UN <a href="http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw59-2015" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">Commission on the Status of Women</a>, a Political Declaration was issued that failed to include a reference to women human rights defenders. Lydia Alpizar, Executive Director of the Association of Women’s Rights in Development, did not less it pass unremarked in her<a href="https://opendemocracy.net/5050/lydia-alpizar/csw-vital-need-to-defend-women-human-rights-defenders" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">speech</a>. '<em>A vital prerequisite for the continuity of the achievements and the future progress of our work is the integrated protection and prevention of violence against women human rights defenders in all our diversity,’ she said. ‘It is a shame that all language on defenders was removed from the Political Declaration.'</em></div>
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Alpizar added: ‘This is the moment; there are important opportunities before us. This is the moment when we must have all resources needed - the political commitment and the action - to achieve real transformations.’</div>
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With Hillary Clinton declaring her candidacy for the Democratic nomination on a gender-inflected programme, the distance travelled from Beijing is considerable. The possibility of having a woman with power in the White House who at least has a track record in women’s rights, and who could yet have the political commitment, is a historic opportunity.</div>
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The Nobel Women’s Initiative is providing the route through for the voices of women at the grass roots and in the frontline to be raised and amplified. Hillary Clinton will need to do more than campaign, but to listen to them and be prepared to use her power, should she win, to defend the human rights defenders.</div>
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<strong><em> </em></strong><strong><em><strong><em>Marion Bowman will be reporting for 50.50 from </em></strong>the </em></strong><strong><em><a href="http://nobelwomensinitiative.org/" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">Nobel Women’s Initiative</a><em> </em>conference on the defence of women human rights defenders, 24-26 April. </em></strong><strong><em><strong><em>Read more <a href="https://opendemocracy.net/5050/nobel-women%27s-initiative/nobel-women%27s-initiative-2015" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">articles by participants and speakers</a> attending</em></strong>conference. Read <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/taxonomy/term/8432/all" style="color: #0061bf; text-decoration: none;">previous years' coverage</a>.</em></strong></div>
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Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/marion-bowman/distance-travelled-beijing-hillary-and-women's-rights</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-76870387809233635792015-05-07T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-07T00:00:02.064+05:30China Frees Detained Women’s-Rights Activists<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="name" itemprop="name" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #0080c3; font-size: 1.4rem; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">JOSH CHIN</span></div>
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BEIJING—Chinese authorities released the five women’s-rights activists whose detentions last month sparked an international outcry and stoked fears that the Communist Party planned to expand political controls.</div>
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Police notified families Monday night that the five activist—Li Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Wei Tingting, Wang Man and Zheng Churan—would be set free, said Wang Qiushi, a lawyer representing Ms. Wei. Mr. Wang said around 1 a.m. on Tuesday that all had returned to their families.</div>
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Liang Xiaojun, another of the activists’ lawyer, said the five had been released on China’s equivalent of bail, meaning they would be subject to police surveillance and could still be vulnerable to criminal charges for up to a year.</div>
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“They are not completely free. At any time in the next year, the police could take them away again,” Mr. Liang said.</div>
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“The releases are a profound relief, and they make clear that public pressure from inside and outside China can change the government’s position,” said Sophie Richardson, the director of Asia advocacy at Human Rights Watch. Still, she added, the women shouldn’t have been detained in the first place.</div>
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The detention came as the Communist Party pursued an aggressive campaign against independent political activities, detaining or jailing dozens of lawyers, activists and others. But even against that background, the detentions baffled many inside China. Gender equality has been a central plank in the Communist Party’s platform since its inception, with Mao famously declaring that “women hold up half the sky.”</div>
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Activists note that the country recently has made progress on women’s issues, with a landmark law on domestic violence scheduled to come out later this year.</div>
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The last time a Chinese regime arrested women for feminist activity was in 1913, according to feminist Chinese historians, when then-President Yuan Shikai attempted to crush a nascent women’s suffrage movement.</div>
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Prosecutors faced a deadline Monday to either charge or release the five women, who were detained while planning a multicity campaign against sexual harassment on public transportation timed to coincide with International Women’s Day.</div>
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Mr. Wang, the lawyer for Ms. Wei, said earlier that police had requested that prosecutors charge the five with “gathering a crowd to disturb public order.” Mr. Wang said police had opened investigations into some of the activists’ prior campaigns.</div>
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Beijing police and prosecutors didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Haidian District Detention Center, where the women had been held, declined to comment, saying it would only answer questions posed in person by relatives.</div>
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement Friday calling for the release of the women, a few days after his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, called their detention “inexcusable” in a post on Twitter. Mr. Kerry said the U.S. supported the efforts of the activists to fight sexual harassment, adding, “Chinese authorities should also support them, not silence them.”</div>
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At a daily news briefing Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had complained to the U.S. over the comments made by U.S. leaders, and urged the U.S. to “stop interfering in China’s domestic affairs.”</div>
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On Saturday, relatives released a public letter asking the government to release the women. “Given our country’s outstanding historical tradition, the social reality of sexual harassment, and the relevant laws and regulations, we firmly believe that the thoughts and actions of our five relatives did not in any way violate national policy or laws,” the letter read.</div>
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Human rights and civil society experts noted that the detained activists had been successful in drawing attention to women’s issues with eye-catching campaigns, such as one in 2012 where they “occupied” men’s toilets to highlight insufficient facilities for women. The women also had worked with foreign organizations—something the Communist Party increasingly finds suspicious.</div>
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China’s authorities “want gender equality to be something they control,” said Lu Jun,director of the Beijing Yirenping Center, an antidiscrimination nonprofit that employed Ms. Li, one of the detained activists. “They don’t want civil society to have anything to do with it.”</div>
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Government pressure has cast a chill over many women’s-rights activities in recent weeks. Nonprofit groups associated with the detained women have had their offices searched by police, while a number of lectures and activities have either been canceled or altered, women’s-rights campaigners say.</div>
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Rehearsals for a production of “Our Vaginas, Ourselves,” a play about female empowerment based on the “Vagina Monologues” by American playwright Eve Ensler, have been put on hold as the cast searches for a new space to meet, according to one of the show’s creators, who said she had been among a group of activists who had been briefly detained along with the five but quickly let go.</div>
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“Right now it’s not clear if we’ll be able to put on any shows in Beijing this year,” she said.</div>
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Mr. Lu said all of Yirenping’s gender-related programs had been temporarily suspended as the group waited to see what happened to the women.</div>
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Even after their release, it remained unclear what long-term effect the recent pressure would have on the women’s-rights movement.</div>
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“For some people, there will definitely be a chilling effect,” said Feng Yuan, a veteran women’s-rights campaigner, but for many young people, perceived suppression could serve as “a rallying point.”</div>
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For one 24-year-old activist, the detentions served as an awakening. She said she saw police bring home one of the detained activists, Ms. Zheng, only to take her away again. The sight left her speechless, she said.</div>
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After Chinese authorities began searching for associates of the detained activists, she found herself moving from apartment to apartment. “I got a call from someone and just ran,” she said.</div>
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Being on the run hasn’t kept her from continuing her activism. She joined four other activists in Guangzhou to don masks of the detained women and take photos around the city as part of a campaign to focus attention on them.</div>
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“I’m so happy I’m crying,” she said on hearing that Ms. Zheng had been released. Still, she said, they might keep the masks around, “just for fun.”</div>
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—Kersten Zhang contributed to this article.</div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Write to </span>Josh Chin at <a class="icon " href="mailto:josh.chin@wsj.com" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 30px 30px; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">josh.chin@wsj.com</a></div>
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Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-frees-three-womens-rights-activists-1428934300</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-16982984782662443302015-05-06T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-06T00:00:01.841+05:30So far so good? Not for women’s rights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px;">While women in Zimbabwe have enjoyed freedom from colonialism oppression, women’s conditions have changed little despite progressive legislation such as the 1982 Legal Age of Majority Act where women enjoy equal status as adults in society and the Domestic Violence Act of 2006 and others.</span><br />
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Political developments in Zimbabwe’s demographic and social shifts regarding the position and condition of women over the past 35 years need examining and documenting.</div>
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Having legally achieved their equal rights, re-enforced by the Constitution of 2013, Zimbabwean women are now demanding equality for all citizens, and that these rights become a lived reality for all. Women are now highly visible. Women hold senior positions in government: for 10 years we had a female Vice President, Dr. Joice Mujuru, the President of the Senate is Edna Madzongwe, and there are a number of female government ministers and members of Parliament.</div>
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The private sector has its own crop of powerful female CEOs and managing directors: Divine Ndhlukula, Florence Ziumbe, Eve Gadzikwa, Lydia Tanyanyiwa, Dr Charity Jinya, just to name a few. In the non-profit sector, the same applies; leading NGOs are headed by women, Irene Petras, Netty Musanhu, Jenni Williams, Jestina Mukoko and Rindai Chipfunde –Vava.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Girls are tops</strong></div>
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At the end of 2014, girls out-scored the boys academically in high school examinations, and there is almost 50% gender parity at the University of Zimbabwe and the National University of Science and Technology. However, the socio economic, political and cultural conditions of women are getting worse.</div>
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The social norms that discriminate against women in Zimbabwe are becoming entrenched because of the economic decline and the suffering that ordinary Zimbabweans are experiencing. During difficult periods in Zimbabwe, women generally suffer considerably more than their male counterparts. In addition to the everyday pressures that all Zimbabweans have, women are further burdened with domestic responsiblities, taking care of the young, sick and the elderly and looking after the household. When there is no water, it is mainly the women who are out with buckets and containers, and finding firewood when the power goes out. This is ongoing 35 years after Independence, and yet those in the corridors of power say “so far so good”.</div>
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The past 35 years is a manifestation of underlying frustrations. Social and political restrictions, coupled with high rates of unemployment and costs of living, have made it increasingly difficult for Zimbabwean women to sustain themselves and their families, pushing them to leave the country in large numbers to find jobs in places such as South Africa, Botswana, UK, USA, Australia and many other countries.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cross-border abuse</strong></div>
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These women suffer untold abuses crossing borders, including rape, in order to make a living. It is not uncommon to come across talented Zimbabwean women in almost all sectors of employment in Africa and beyond. The cost to Zimbabwe for losing its human capital adds up to billions of dollars a year.</div>
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Many Zimbabwean families are kept going by the remittances from their family members living in the Diaspora. For example, research by First National Bank (FNB) in South Africa revealed that an estimated 1.9 million Zimbabweans living and working in South Africa send an average R6.7 billion (about US $740 million) a year to Zimbabwe. The recent xenophobic attacks in South Africa could have far reaching effects for Zimbabwean families. How will they survive if their family members are killed or forced to return home? What are they returning to? Will they say so far so good?</div>
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Zimbabwean women are an accelerating force for development, as manifested in their behaviour and desire to improve their lives. Their sheer resilence is to be commended, but this is not recognised as discrimination is entrenched: behind closed doors, patriarchal family codes rule.</div>
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With women’s rights education and the changing socio-economic factors, women have changed both positively and negatively in the last 35 years - they have become powerful, independent, adventurous, self-confident, and happy. At the same time they have become ballsy, unyielding and hard. But not without cost.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">More violence</strong></div>
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Domestic violence against women is increasingly rife amongst Zimbabweans: although the counter argument that men are being beaten by their wives too is inevitably raised, this is massively more a problem for women than it is for men. Women continue to be abused. despite the Constitution that states under Section 80 that every woman has full and equal dignity of the person to man. Women have the same rights as men, all laws customs,traditions and cultural practices that go against the rights of women are void.</div>
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The issue of women's rights becomes a major topic in political campaigns during the elections. Recognising the key role that women voters - younger women in particular - play in the election, politicians go beyond slogans that emphasise high cultural and religious value placed on women as wives and mothers, and specifically address the demands voiced by women's rights activists.</div>
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However, as soon as politicians have been voted into positions, their engagement with women and addressing their issues are relegated to the bottom of the pile or they simply disappear. Research carried out by RAU in 2014 shows that women have a general interest in participating in politics, and there has been a steady increase in their numbers since 1980; however, young women have lost interest in politics, particularly elections, as they do not see it making any significant changes in their lives.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No trust</strong></div>
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In a soon to be released study by RAU, women have indicated that they do not trust their MPs because they feel used, the politicans are only active during the campaign periods and they are nowhere to be seen until the next election is looming.</div>
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As we celebrate 35 years of indpendence from colonial rule, let us be mindful that although great strides have been made to uplift women, several giant steps have taken us backwards. The women who were part of the movement in the 1980s say that we are still fighting the same battles they did back then because of these backward steps. Let us use the Constitution to our advantage and ensure that all legislation is aligned and adhered to, so that 35 years from now, the women’s movement will not be addressing the same issues their great grandmothers did: let them say, with regards to gender equality and the upholding of women’s rights, so far so good.</div>
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Source: http://www.thezimbabwean.co/politics/gender-equality/75625/so-far-so-good-not.html</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-28897291096815157922015-05-05T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-05T00:00:01.819+05:30Don't Abort Women's Rights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I write to commend Minister Lisa Hanna's speaking to a difficult but realistically urgent matter. This is leadership.</div>
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Obviously, affirming the urgency of women's reproductive rights is neither politically expedient nor point-accumulating in general. I am tired of meeting poor Jamaican sisters who do not have access to professional advice concerning the pros and cons of the challenging decision to abort or not.</div>
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It seems pretty clear to me that many persons will misunderstand her call, simply because they do not understand the depth of this necessity. Who knows, for example, that within a legal framework, pregnant girls and women can receive professional advice without the stigma and discrimination that currently prevails? Who knows that medical personnel who are so qualified are not at liberty to advise a pregnant client regarding the full gamut of her reproductive rights? Who knows that under the current dispensation, it is mere guesswork regarding the true statistical data concerning abortions?</div>
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It is my hope that we will not be satisfied with the continued botched back-door abortions that often lead to complications and even death.</div>
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We are a country that loves our women and we place a premium on the office of motherhood. Should we not protect our women and mothers by doing all in our power to protect women's rights to equality and non-discrimination? Who would disagree with our country making the progressive decision to protect the right to life and the right to health? Would anyone really stand in the way of reforming the current law, so that the right to liberty and the security of the person may be truly affirmed in accordance with the values Jamaica shares within the community of nations?</div>
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Minister Hanna, you have made a timely call. Hopefully it will receive more than the often emotive responses.</div>
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It is so sad to see how archaic pieces of legislation have been used only to serve the purpose of intellectual discussions, religious quarrels, and political ball games. Meanwhile, hundreds of poverty-stricken Jamaican women suffer the indignity and threat of life-threatening procedures/practices as a result of these oppressive laws.</div>
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Even if they are going to be drilled with biblical quotations in the midst of their confusion, should they not be facilitated with a comprehensive approach in an effort to empower them with information?</div>
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Imagine with me a context in which a fellow Jamaican citizen is faced with the challenging decision of doing an abortion. She is a member of some religious community. She is ridden with guilt. However, nursing advisers, medical personnel, and her pastor all agree that she must be approached in a non-judgemental way. She is presented with the pros and cons of such a procedure. She is assured of her capacity to make her own authentic and respect-deserving decision. Wow! Pardon me here, forgot I am in Jamaica.</div>
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Parliament must move with haste to arrest the risks of maternal morbidity and mortality as a result of our unwise clutching on to these antiquated remains which have long been discarded by their masters of origin.</div>
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We have had years of talking, debating, sermonising, and politicking. What next? We need leadership! We need our political servants of the people to act in the interest of our country. Jamaica needs you, the primary protectors of human rights, to lead the way for our girls and women. Will you?</div>
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P.S.: By the way, Minister Hanna, I still loved you in the bathing suit. Next time, please ditch the T-shirt.</div>
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-<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>Fr<span style="border: 0px; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Sean Major-Campbell is an Anglican priest. Email feedback to<a href="mailto:columns@gleanerjm.com" style="border: 0px; color: #0071b8; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.66667em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">columns@gleanerjm.com</a> and <a href="mailto:seanmajorcampbell@yahoo.com" style="border: 0px; color: #0071b8; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.66667em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">seanmajorcampbell@yahoo.com</a>.</span></div>
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Source: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/commentary/20150424/dont-abort-womens-rights</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-9866671390283588942015-05-04T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-04T00:00:02.145+05:30Cecily Strong Tackles Hillary Clinton, Women's Rights, & More in Funny Speech at WHCD 2015 (Video) <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.justjared.com/tags/cecily-strong" style="color: #1a9dfe; text-decoration: none;" title="Cecily Strong"><strong>Cecily Strong</strong></a> takes the podium at the <a href="http://www.justjared.com/tags/2015-white-house-correspondents-dinner" style="color: #1a9dfe; text-decoration: none;" title="2015 White House Correspondents Dinner"><strong><em>2015 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner</em></strong></a> held at the Washington Hilton on Saturday (April 25) in Washington, D.C.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The 31-year-old <em>Saturday Night Live</em> castmember made jokes for more than 20 minutes about everything from <a href="http://www.justjared.com/tags/barack-obama" style="color: #1a9dfe; text-decoration: none;" title="Barack Obama"><strong>President Obama</strong></a> to Fox News.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">When speaking about the Secret Service, she said, “The only law enforcement agency that actually gets in trouble if a black guy gets shot.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It feels so weird to be up here,” <strong>Cecily</strong> also said. “Since I’m only a comedian, I’m not going to try and tell you how to do politics. That would be like you guys telling me what to do with my body. I mean, can you even imagine? Crazy.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Watch <strong>Cecily Strong</strong>‘s entire <em>WHCD</em> speech below!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><br />Read more: <a href="http://www.justjared.com/2015/04/26/cecily-strong-tackles-hillary-clinton-womens-rights-more-in-funny-speech-at-whcd-2015-video/#ixzz3YRCiavtK" style="color: #003399; text-decoration: none;">http://www.justjared.com/2015/04/26/cecily-strong-tackles-hillary-clinton-womens-rights-more-in-funny-speech-at-whcd-2015-video/#ixzz3YRCiavtK</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Source: http://www.justjared.com/2015/04/26/cecily-strong-tackles-hillary-clinton-womens-rights-more-in-funny-speech-at-whcd-2015-video/</span></div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-56205459963071251022015-05-03T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-03T00:00:00.923+05:30Hillary Unveils Her Plan to Advance Women’s Rights (and Her Own Campaign)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">109</span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: black; display: block; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Shares</span></span></h3>
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<span style="line-height: 2.3rem;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was hard not to read double meanings into most of Hillary Clinton’s speech at this year’s Women of the World summit. When she told the audience, composed primarily of young women, that we were “so close, closer than we’ve ever been,” she could have been talking about women’s rights and the fact that it’s better to be born female today than it has ever been in history. Or she could have been alluding to her finally official second attempt at the presidency, and her massive lead in the polls. When Clinton said “this work is far from finished,” she could have been talking about giving women equal pay and prosperity, or she could have been referring to the fact that she has yet to win any primaries, and her victory is far from assured.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Regardless of her intent in such phrasing or how it was interpreted by her whooping audience, this speech — her first big one since announcing — made it clear that the two could become inseparable. Fighting for women is going to be a big part of her campaign, which makes sense given that First Lady Hillary Clinton’s 1995 speech about women’s rights at the Fourth World Conference on Women was one of the first moments we realized she might make a great politician. Tina Brown, the former magazine editor who keeps inviting Clinton to come back to speak to the Women in the World summit every year, <a data-track="Body Text Link: External" href="http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/anonymous/hillary-clinton" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1782a9; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">wrote</a> that it was "<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">the speech that launched a movement." </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"></span>“It is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights,” Clinton said as First Lady, and now she seems to have learned that keeping her advocacy for women separate from her presidential ambitions didn’t make sense either, as much as it seems she tried in 2008.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In Thursday's speech she said it was “unthinkable” that mothers in the United States weren’t entitled to paid leave, that child-care benefits were nearly nonexistent, and that women and men alike are forced to work inflexible hours that make being a parent impossible. She mentioned a path for citizenship for immigrants, and last week’s strike for a living wage for fast-food workers. She slammed Hobby Lobby for not paying for its employees' contraception, and Senate Republicans for delaying Loretta Lynch’s ascendancy to the top of the Justice Department. In a brief Shakespearian aside, she called the World Economic Forum “hardly a hotbed of feminist thought.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The speech was an intricately quilted assemblage of campaign policies and anecdotes, which Clinton got to audition before what was likely the most receptive audience she'll face for the next two years. It probably wouldn’t have mattered what Clinton said — the crowd was primed to hear someone tell them about a future where women rule, or at least don’t have to fight so hard. Moments before Clinton walked onstage to an instantaneous standing ovation, her opening lines buffered by a constant hum of dozens of iPhone cameras beeping, the audience had been sniffing en masse after hearing Yeonmi Park tell her horrifying story about defecting from North Korea. Before that, Ashley Judd and Anita Sarkeesian had talked about how tiring it can be to be harassed on the internet. Who wouldn’t cheer to someone who followed up that depressing fare with a promise that tomorrow might be better?</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, the speech had other double meanings that show fiery rhetoric geared toward a group of mostly progressive women is no cheat code that will Clinton skip ahead to a victory speech. The event took place at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, which happens to share a name with one of the political donors prepared to spend millions of dollars to make sure she doesn’t win. Elections don’t take place in a vacuum, and neither do crowd-pleasing speeches.</span></span></div>
<aside class="related-side" data-component="related-side" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border-bottom-color: rgb(234, 234, 234); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(234, 234, 234); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; box-sizing: inherit; float: left; margin: 0.8rem 2.5rem 1.5rem 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px 0px; position: relative; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; width: 19rem;"><h2 style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #555555; font-style: italic; line-height: 2rem; margin: 0px; padding-right: 0.8rem; position: absolute; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; top: -1.2rem;">
<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Related Stories</span></span></h2>
<a class="" data-track="Links" href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/04/disastrous-clinton-post-presidency.html" id="-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-position: 0px 1rem; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 4.7rem; border-bottom-color: rgb(241, 241, 241); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #2881b3; display: block; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; min-height: 6.7rem; padding: 1rem 0px; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Disastrous Clinton Post-Presidency</span></a><a class="" data-track="Links" href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/04/did-hillary-back-deals-due-to-foundation-money.html" id="-2" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-position: 0px 1rem; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 4.7rem; border-bottom-color: rgb(241, 241, 241); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #2881b3; display: block; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; min-height: 6.7rem; padding: 1rem 0px; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Did Hillary Back Foreign Deals Due to Clinton Foundation Donations?</span></a><a class="" data-track="Links" href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/clinton-charity-failed-to-disclose-donors.html" id="-3" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-position: 0px 1rem; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 4.7rem; border-bottom-width: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #2881b3; display: block; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; min-height: 6.7rem; padding: 1rem 0px; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite Pledge, Clinton Charity Failed to Disclose Donors</span></a></aside><div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 2.3rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Clinton gave another well-received speech scored with hollers from excited women last month at a United Nations conference on women, which no one will ever remember because most reporters only covered what she said moments after the speech in a<a data-track="Body Text Link: Internal: dailyintel" href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/press-salivates-over-first-taste-of-clinton-2016.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1782a9; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">press conference about her private email account</a>. On the morning of Clinton’s speech at the Women in the World summit, a handful of <a data-track="Body Text Link: Internal: dailyintel" href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/04/disastrous-clinton-post-presidency.html" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1782a9; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">unflattering stories about the Clinton Foundation’s donors and bookkeeping</a> appeared on the websites of half a dozen reputable news organizations, upstaging Clinton’s remarks on women once again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She can keep trying to pivot her election toward the future, but the Clintons’ past, which keeps accruing more fascinating layers, has proved far too entertaining for people to move past it so soon in the election cycle.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And so Clinton keeps trying to think of new ways to overpower the news cycle until the primaries arrive, such as appending her granddaughter's name with a combination of adjectives so adorable that voters’ memories of computers and complex finance dealings will be obliterated — by the end of Thursday’s speech, Clinton was referring to Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky as her “most amazing, fabulous granddaughter.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After the speech and the standing ovations, a well-mannered mosh pit formed around the stage, bathing Clinton in phone flashes as she shook hands.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">A young woman exiting the theater’s balcony scanned through her photos of the event as she told her friend, “I am </span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">so</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"> glad I saw that.” Clinton, who was cheered one last time as she exited stage right to return to a world where the receptions were far less fawning, was probably thinking the same thing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Source: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/04/hillary-plans-to-advance-womens-rights-herself.html</span></div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-50747635885047308552015-05-02T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-02T00:00:01.305+05:30Women’s rights hero in Pakistan shot dead by motorcycle-riding killers: cops<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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KARACHI, Pakistan — Gunmen on a motorcycle killed a prominent <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/malala-yousafzai-blood-stained-uniform-display-article-1.2040042" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; -webkit-transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #015fb6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline;">women's rights activist in Pakistan</a> just hours after she held a forum on the country's restive Baluchistan region, home to a long-running insurgency, police said Saturday.</div>
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While investigators declined to speculate on a motive for the killing of Sabeen Mahmud, friends and colleagues immediately described her death as a targeted assassination in Pakistan, a country with a nascent democracy where the military and intelligence services still hold tremendous sway.</div>
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The gunmen shot both Mahmud and her mother, Mehnaz Mahmud, as they stopped at a traffic light Friday night in an upscale Karachi neighborhood, senior police officer Zafar Iqbal said. Later, Mahmud's car was brought to a nearby police station. Blood stained the car's white exterior, the front driver's side window was smashed and a pair of sandals sat on the floor, surrounded by broken glass.</div>
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"Two men riding a motorcycle opened fire on the car," Iqbal said. Mahmud "died on her way to the hospital. Her mother was also wounded," he said.</div>
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Alia Chughtai, a close friend of Mahmud, told The Associated Press that Mahmud was driving at the time of attack and her mother was sitting next to her. Chughtai said Mahmud's driver, who escaped unharmed, was sitting in the back seat at the time of the attack. She said she did not know why the driver wasn't operating the car.</div>
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Iqbal and other police officials declined to speculate on a motive for the slaying. However, earlier that night, Mahmud hosted an event at her organization called The Second Floor to discuss human rights in Baluchistan, an impoverished but resource-rich southwestern province bordering Iran.</div>
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<figure class="a-image h" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 635px;"><img alt="PICTURE TAKEN FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2015" src="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2199456.1430059595!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_635/pakistan.jpg" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 635px;" /><span class="a-credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; -webkit-transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #333333; display: block; font-size: 9px; line-height: 10px; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 0px 0px; position: relative; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline; width: 635px; z-index: 900;">SHAKIL ADIL/AP</span><h2 class="a-caption" itemprop="description" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; -webkit-transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 0px 0px; position: relative; transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline; z-index: 100;">
Sandals and broken glass lie on the floor of the car in which Sabeen Mahmud was riding when unknown gunmen shot and killed her Friday.</h2>
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Thousands of people have disappeared from Baluchistan province in recent years amid a government crackdown on nationalists and insurgent groups there. Activists blame the government and intelligence agencies for the disappearances, something authorities deny.</div>
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Qadeer Baluch, an activist who last year led a nearly 3,000-kilometer (1,900-mile) protest march across Pakistan to demand justice for the missing in Baluchistan, attended Mahmud's event Friday night. Baluch, known widely as Mama or "Uncle" in Urdu, hinted that the government could be involved in Mahmud's slaying.</div>
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"Everybody knows who killed her and why," Baluch told Pakistan's The Nation newspaper, without elaborating.</div>
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In a statement Saturday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned Mahmud's killing and ordered an investigation into the attack. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad also condemned Mahmud's slaying and offered condolences to her loved ones.</div>
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Mahmud was "a courageous voice of the Pakistani people and her death represents a great loss," it said.</div>
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<figure class="a-image h" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 635px;"><img alt="The casket of Pakistani activist Sabeen Mahmud is carried by mourners." src="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2199458.1430059597!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_635/pakistan.jpg" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 635px;" /><span class="a-credit" itemprop="copyrightHolder" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; -webkit-transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #333333; display: block; font-size: 9px; line-height: 10px; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 0px 0px; position: relative; text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline; width: 635px; z-index: 900;">SHAKIL ADIL/AP</span><h2 class="a-caption" itemprop="description" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; -webkit-transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; background: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 0px 0px; position: relative; transition: color 300ms ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline; z-index: 100;">
The casket of Pakistani activist Sabeen Mahmud is carried by mourners.</h2>
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Mahmud, a well-known activist who also ran a small technology company, hosted poetry readings, computer workshops and other events at The Second Floor. She continued to live in Karachi, Pakistan's southern port city, even while acknowledging the danger from insurgent groups and criminals operating there.</div>
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"Fear is just a line in your head," Mahmud told Wired magazine in 2013. "You can choose what side of that line you want to be on."</div>
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Also Saturday, Pakistan's powerful army condemned the killing of Mahmud, pledging that the country's intelligence agencies would assist in the investigation and that authorizes would "apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice."</div>
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"We condemn the tragic and unfortunate killing of Ms. Sabeen Mahmud," Maj. Gen. Asim Salim Bajwa, the army spokesman, said in a statement. "Our heart goes out to bereaved family at this sad moment."</div>
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Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/women-rights-hero-pakistan-shot-dead-cops-article-1.2199459</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-4703241058940407532015-05-01T00:00:00.000+05:302015-05-01T00:00:01.292+05:30Sabeen Mehmud, Pakistani women's rights activist, shot dead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A leading member of Pakistan’s small band of liberal social activists has been gunned down outside the pioneering Karachi arts venue she founded, in an apparent bid to silence discussion about the country’s brutal efforts to smother separatism in the restive province of Balochistan.</div>
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The murder of Sabeen Mahmud on Friday sent shockwaves through Pakistan’s embattled intelligentsia both because <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.dawn.com/news/1178157/sabeen-the-one-who-never-backed-down" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">she was much loved</a> but also because the killing happened immediately after an event she organised with Mama Abdul Qadeer, an elderly Baloch activist campaigning on behalf of so-called “missing people” abducted by the state security apparatus.</div>
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Witnesses said she was shot several times by unknown gunmen in her car just after she left the talk at The Second Floor, or T2F as her cafe and arts space is known. Her mother was also critically injured in the gunfire and rushed to hospital.</div>
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On Saturday Pakistan’s army spokesman Asim Bajwa decried the killing of Mahmud as “tragic and unfortunate”.</div>
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Intelligence agencies had been “tasked to render all possible assistance to investigating agencies for apprehension of perpetrators and bringing them to justice,” General Bajwa said.</div>
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Although Mahmud had also made enemies among religious militants – not least with her counter-protest against Islamist attempts to stop Karachites marking Valentine’s Day – many of her friends believe the country’s “deep state” is responsible.</div>
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Pakistan’s military establishment is extremely touchy about the issue of Balochistan, where a nationalist movement has developed into a potent insurgency in the last decade.</div>
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The separatists are demanding independence from a Pakistani state they claim is oppressive and only interested in extracting the province’s energy and mineral resources.</div>
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Authorities are particularly sensitive about Qadeer, the 73-year-old who in 2013-14 <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/families-balochistan-missing-disappeared-march" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">walked 1,200 miles</a> from the Baloch capital of Quetta to Islamabad to protest about missing people, including his own son who was found dead and mutilated in 2011 having vanished in 2009.</div>
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In March he was banned from travelling to the US to attend a human rights conference in the US.</div>
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This month the Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the country’s most prestigious colleges, was forced to cancel an event to which Qadeer had been invited.</div>
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Senior faculty members told Dawn, a leading Pakistani newspaper, they had been forced to scrap the “Un-Silencing Balochistan” talk <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.dawn.com/news/1175785/footprints-post-gag-the-talk-heats-up" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">on the orders of the Inter-Service Intelligence directorate, the military’s powerful spy wing</a>. </div>
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Following the cancellation of the LUMS talk Mahmud was all too aware of the risks and asked her circle of friends on Facebook about what “pre-emptive measures” she should take before hosting what she called “Un-silencing Balochistan (Take 2)”.</div>
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“A lot of people did say there would be blowback but nobody thought they could shoot someone dead like that,” said Taha Siddiqui, an outspoken journalist and one of Mahmud’s many friends on Pakistan’s liberal-left.</div>
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“Shooting dead seemed a little too brutal, something that happens only in remote areas of Balochistan,” Siddiqui said. “But now they are doing in in Karachi.”</div>
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The country is extremely sensitive to the threat from nationalists, given it lost half its territory when East <a class=" u-underline" data-component="auto-linked-tag" data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/pakistan" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Pakistan</a> seceded to form Bangladesh in 1971.</div>
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Authorities are especially keen to quell the insurgency now the province is slated to play a critical role in the grand strategic plan to turn Pakistan into a land corridor connecting China with Arabian Sea.</div>
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Last week Chinese president Xi Jinping made an important stat visit to Pakistan where he <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/20/china-president-xi-jinping-pakistan-land-corridor-agreement" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">signed off on a multi-billion dollar spending splurge</a> which hopes to turn Gwadar, a town on the coast of Balochistan, into one of the world’s great trading hubs.</div>
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Many Pakistani activists and journalists have learned that it is best not to publicly scrutinise the Balochistan issue.</div>
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Hamid Mir, the country’s most famous television news presenter, was seriously wounded by gunmen in Karachi following a confrontation with the army over his coverage of Qadeer.</div>
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Mahmud’s funeral procession began on Saturday at T2F, the cafe she established to organise debates and art events.<br />
Local novelist <a class=" u-underline" data-component="auto-linked-tag" data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/mohammed-hanif" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Mohammed Hanif</a> described T2F as “a space for Karachites to come and play and create”.</div>
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“The deep state already controls media in reference to Balochistan coverage,” said the acclaimed writer and journalist. “Now Baloch voices can’t be heard in private spaces.”</div>
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Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/25/sabeen-mehmud-pakistani-womens-rights-activist-shot-dead</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-2973470356174833632015-04-30T00:00:00.000+05:302015-04-30T00:00:01.123+05:30Pictured: The female tow company clerk given a vicious dressing down by ESPN reporter as it's revealed the blonde used her blog to champion the importance of 'intelligence and class over beauty' <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">For a self-professed champion of women's rights, ESPN sports reporter Britt McHenry has a funny way of showing it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">The 28-year-old has been suspended from the network for a week after being caught on camera telling a parking lot attendant she should 'lose some weight, baby girl', adding 'I'm on television and you're in a f---ing trailer, honey'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">But according to her blog, the former model is dedicated to helping women feel 'comfortable in their own skin'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">In a self-aggrandizing rant, McHenry tells her readers she is 'taking a stand' against 'sexist' commercials that focus on 'appearance alone'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1.2em;">It is an almost unrecognizable tone from the one she took on April 6, when she raged at towing company clerk Gina Michelle: 'Just being here makes my skin crawl... Maybe if I was missing some teeth they would hire me, huh?'</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px;"><br /><br />Read more: <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3043754/How-shamed-ESPN-reporter-Britt-McHenry-used-blog-champion-women-s-rights-importance-intelligence-class-beauty.html#ixzz3XlvwFx9F" style="color: #003399; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; min-height: 1px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3043754/How-shamed-ESPN-reporter-Britt-McHenry-used-blog-champion-women-s-rights-importance-intelligence-class-beauty.html#ixzz3XlvwFx9F</a><br />Follow us: <a href="http://ec.tynt.com/b/rw?id=bBOTTqvd0r3Pooab7jrHcU&u=MailOnline" style="color: #003580; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; min-height: 1px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">@MailOnline on Twitter</a> | <a href="http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bBOTTqvd0r3Pooab7jrHcU&u=DailyMail" style="color: #003580; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; min-height: 1px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">DailyMail on Facebook</a></span><br />
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Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3043754/How-shamed-ESPN-reporter-Britt-McHenry-used-blog-champion-women-s-rights-importance-intelligence-class-beauty.html</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-87058251265743851512015-04-29T00:00:00.000+05:302015-04-29T00:00:00.095+05:30Afghanistan: US watchdog criticises aid scheme for women's rights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A high-profile US aid scheme in Afghanistan, hailed as the largest ever women’s empowerment programme, has come under criticism for lack of transparency and for failing to consult the women it is supposed to benefit. In another reproach of international aid efforts, an <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/articles/news/2015/04/afghanistan-women-human-rights-defenders/" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Amnesty International report</a> released on Tuesday details how women’s rights defenders, despite achieving significant gains over the past decade, are being abandoned by the international community.</div>
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The US aid scheme <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.usaid.gov/afghanistan/promote" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Promote</a>, launched in October last year, aims to funnel $416m into programmes to strengthen women’s rights groups and boost women’s role in the economy and national decision-making. However, it is uncertain whether the 75,000 women expected to engage in the programme will actually receive any tangible benefit, says a US watchdog.</div>
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In a recent <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/special%20projects/SIGAR-15-44-SP.pdf" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">inquiry letter</a>, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar), which reports to the US Congress, raises concerns that USAid may not be able to “effectively implement, monitor, and assess the impact of Promote”.</div>
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The watchdog quotes Afghanistan’s first lady, Rula Ghani, warning against falling “into a game of contracting and sub-contracting”, generating a lot of paper certificates without real skill behind them.</div>
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Her husband, president Ashraf Ghani, has also previously criticised foreign aid delivery to <a class=" u-underline" data-component="auto-linked-tag" data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/afghanistan" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Afghanistan</a>, claiming that the majority of American aid returns to the US through contracting.</div>
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Women’s activists have raised concerns similar to Sigar’s. “I emphasised again and again that the programmes should be designed based on the needs of the women of Afghanistan,” said Hasina Safi, executive director of the <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.awn-af.net/" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Afghan Women’s Network</a>.</div>
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Safi was appointed to an advisory committee for one of Promote’s three contractors, Tetra Tech, Inc, which is responsible for training 25,000 participants in “women leadership development”. She said Promote’s beneficiaries are selected too narrowly. “Promote was only designed for literate women, while in Afghanistan there is a big majority of non-educated young women,” Safi said. “They need to have more confidence in the women of Afghanistan, that they really can design a programme based on their needs.”</div>
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USAid said the criticism is “unfounded”. According to a USAid official, civil society actors were consulted, “to ask about what the project needs to do”, including women’s leaders in and outside the capital, as well as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.</div>
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The official added that over 300 “implementers” had submitted 175 questions in a “robust discussion”, and that a procurement document had been made available online for comment in early 2013. “I can very confidently say that the outreach has been significant and taken a lot of time,” the official said, stressing that Promote does not replace USAid’s existing investments in rural education and healthcare.</div>
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In its inquiry, Sigar also questions the amount of money Promote claims to oversee. At its inception, USAid committed $216m over a five-year period, while seeking another $200m from other donors. So far, no other donor has offered money, and USAid has awarded only $42m to one contractor.</div>
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At a time of transition in Afghanistan, rights advocates worry that the attention of western countries on women’s issues will wane along with their military engagement. In the face of a worsening security situation and a stagnant economy, <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/09/fawzia-koofi-afghanistan-mp-turn-off-microphones" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">gender equality is a priority only for a small minority</a> of the country’s power brokers.</div>
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<a class="rich-link__link" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="background: transparent; color: inherit; cursor: pointer;">Afghan women protest at absence of female ministers in new cabinet</a></h1>
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Six months after his inauguration, President Ghani is struggling to keep electoral promises to include more women in the country’s higher echelons. His pledge to appoint the first woman to the supreme court seems to be floundering, and his goal of naming at least four female ministers has proved difficult. In late March, Ghani introduced a cabinet for parliamentary approval for the second time, after lawmakers rejected half of his nominees in January, including all three of his female choices.</div>
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Amnesty International said that <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/dec/04/afghan-womens-rights-foreign-troops" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">efforts to strengthen women’s rights</a> have been “piecemeal and ad hoc, and much of the aid money is drying up”.</div>
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In its report, the organisation echoed Sigar’s criticism of international aid, pointing to “hundreds of millions of dollars” spent on women’s rights since 2001, on projects that have “too often focused on short-term gains, and been implemented without consulting women’s activists themselves”.</div>
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Amnesty also said that violence against women’s rights proponents such as lawyers, politicians, journalists and teachers is on the rise in Afghanistan.</div>
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On 19 March, an Afghan woman, Farkhunda, was <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/22/afghan-woman-beaten-to-death-kabul-mob-buried" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">killed by a mob in central Kabul</a>for speaking out against what she saw as un-Islamic practice by a mullah, who retorted by claiming she had burned the Qur’an, enraging the men around her.</div>
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Though more than a dozen alleged perpetrators have been arrested, the incident has become <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/28/farkhunda-women-kabul-afghanistan-mob-killing" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">emblematic for the impunity with which men in Afghanistan can abuse and attack women</a>. Farkhunda’s public defiance of a male authority has turned her into an icon for women’s rights defenders.</div>
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Amnesty said despite the existence of a hard-won legal framework to protect women, “laws are often badly enforced and remain mere paper promises”.</div>
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Source: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/07/afghanistan-us-watchdog-criticises-aid-womens-rights</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-75079087244254472952015-04-28T00:00:00.000+05:302015-04-28T00:00:01.409+05:30U.S. Slams Iran's Record On Women's Rights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Iran was elected to the board of UN Women on April 10 with 36 of 53 possible votes.</div>
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The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said the low vote total reflected "deep concerns" UN members have about Iran joining the board of UN Women, created in 2010 to push for gender equality and empowerment of women.</div>
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"In Iran, women are legally barred from holding some government positions, there are no laws against domestic violence, and adultery is punishable by stoning, making it wholly inappropriate that Iran assume a leadership role on women's rights and welfare at the UN," Power said.</div>
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Power said she was "extremely disappointed" that the Asia-Pacific group had endorsed Iran's candidacy for the three-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2016.</div>
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The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</div>
Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/united-states-iran-united-nations-women-rights/26950072.html</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-49097806186824873392015-04-27T00:00:00.000+05:302015-04-27T00:00:01.920+05:30Respect women's right to wear veil in court, says Britain's most senior judge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Judges must show respect to women who choose to keep their faces covered due to their religious beliefs, the UK’s most senior judge has said.</div>
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Lord Neuberger said judges must have “an understanding of different cultural and social habits” in their bid to show fairness to those involved in trials.</div>
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Addressing the Criminal Justice Alliance, the supreme court president said: “It is necessary to have some understanding as to how people from different cultural, social, religious or other backgrounds think and behave and how they expect others to behave.</div>
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“Well-known examples include how some religions consider it inappropriate to take the oath, how some people consider it rude to look other people in the eye, how some women find it inappropriate to appear in public with their face uncovered, and how some people deem it inappropriate to confront others or to be confronted - for instance with an outright denial.”</div>
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In 2014 Judge Peter Murphy upheld a ruling allowing Muslim woman Rebekah Dawson to stand trial wearing a full-face veil.</div>
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The 22-year-old waived her right to give evidence in her defence, however, after it was ruled that she would have to remove the niqab, which made only her eyes visible, if she took the stand.</div>
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She later admitted witness intimidation after denying the charge during a seven-day trial.</div>
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In a lengthy speech entitled “Fairness in the courts: the best we can do”, Neuberger accepted that judges tended to come from privileged backgrounds and warned of the dangers of this. “A white male public school judge presiding in a trial of an unemployed traveller from eastern Europe accused of assaulting or robbing a white female public school woman will, I hope, always be unbiased,” he said.</div>
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“However he should always think to himself what his subconscious may be thinking or how it may be causing him to act; and he should always remember how things may look to the defendant, and indeed to the jury and to the public generally.”</div>
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Neuberger said judges and lawyers should always keep in mind how “intimidating” the court process could be for those involved in trials, including “the parties, their families, the victims, the witnesses and the jurors”.</div>
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Speaking in the context of legal aid cuts, he said ensuring all parties involved in a case understood the goings-on in a court had become more important because “people are having to choose between representing themselves or not getting justice at all”.</div>
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Source: http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/apr/17/respect-womens-right-to-weir-veil-in-court-says-britains-most-senior-judge</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-16342528060919670922015-04-26T00:00:00.000+05:302015-04-26T00:00:00.441+05:30EXCLUSIVE: CHELSEA CLINTON OPENS UP ABOUT MOTHERHOOD AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<em>Chelsea Clinton in a Gucci dress, Mateo New York bracelet, Cartier bracelet, Garland Collection ring, Halleh ring.</em></div>
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Chelsea Clinton was thoughtful and candid during her conversation with ELLE editor-at-large Rachael Combe for this month's cover story. Their discussion topics ranged from whether she'd like her daughter Charlotte's grandmother to be the first female president of the United States, to the pressures she feels as a woman in a leadership role, to how she influences her parents on topics of national importance such as gay rights, to what it's like riding the subway and going to the grocery store as, well, Chelsea Clinton. She talked passionately about motherhood and her seven-month-old daughter—along with her other baby, the <a href="http://noceilings.org/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out; background: transparent; color: #0082b3; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">No Ceilings Full Participation Report</a>—and the happy place in which she finds herself, finally writing her own story as a mother, wife, advocate, and, yes, the beloved daughter of two of the most powerful people on the planet.</div>
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WE RECOMMEND</div>
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Taylor Swift Fangirled Over Ina Garten for 'Time'</div>
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In her May issue editor's letter, ELLE Editor-in-Chief Robbie Myers writes: "There is something innately regal about Chelsea—a kind of grace that doesn't seem practiced, or trotted out just for public consumption. She's a person of substance for sure, a young woman who, while measured in her manner, has a fierceness of conviction, and a calling to make the world a better place."</div>
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<a href="http://noceilings.org/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out; background: transparent; color: #0082b3; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;" target="_blank">No Ceilings</a> is emblematic of the work Chelsea says she felt called to do. It was an idea she and her mother dreamed up together, looking back at the United Nations' World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, where Hillary, then First Lady, made her famous declaration that "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights." Chelsea says she wanted to use the 20th anniversary of that historic event to provide perspective on the status of women's rights, and last month she was able to do just that as she officially released the <a href="http://www.noceilings.org/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out; background: transparent; color: #0082b3; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;">No Ceilings Full Participation Report</a>at an event in New York City, alongside her mother and Melinda Gates (The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined forces with the No Ceilings initiative of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation to create the report).</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 600;">Read a preview of what Chelsea had to say below:</span></div>
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<em>Derek Lam blouse, Stella McCartney trousers, Bulgari necklace, Tiffany & Co. bracelets, Trollbeads bangle, Garland Collection ring, Halleh ring, Brian Atwood pumps.</em></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 600;">On how life has changed since her daughter Charlotte was born…</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 600;">ELLE:</span> Is it a big change from before she was born?</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 600;">CHELSEA CLINTON:</span> Marc and I are like, "What did we do before we were parents?" My whole life is reoriented around my daughter in the most blessed sense. I now understand—this is something else that Marc and I talk about all the time—all of the enthusiastic, bombastically spectacular, wonderful things people say about their children, because we also feel and think all those things about Charlotte—that she is just the most remarkable little bubbly, perfect, chunky monkey creature ever.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 600;">On the importance of having a woman president…</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 600;">ELLE:</span> I was pregnant with my eldest daughter when your mother ran in 2008. I remember feeling that extra intensity you're talking about and being really frustrated when people said that it didn't matter if we had a female president, that it wouldn't make any real change, that it was just symbolic. What do you think?</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 600;">CC:</span> We've made real progress on legal protections for women, but in no way are women at parity to men in our country in the workplace. And if we look in the political sphere, it is challenging to me that women comprising 20 percent of Congress is treated as a real success. Since when did 20 percent become the definition of equality? And so when you ask about the importance of having a woman president, absolutely it's important, for, yes, symbolic reasons—symbols are important; it is important who and what we choose to elevate, and to celebrate. And one of our core values in this country is that we are the land of equal opportunity, but when equal hasn't yet included gender, there is a fundamental challenge there that, I believe, having our first woman president—whenever that is—will help resolve. And do I think it would make a substantive difference? Yes, we've seen again and again, when women have been in positions of leadership, they have had different degrees of success versus their male counterparts, historically being able to build more consensus so that decisions have longer-term effects, whether in economic investments or in building social capital. Who sits around the table matters. And who sits at the head of the table matters, too.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 600;">For the full story, pick up the May issue of ELLE—available </span><a href="https://subscribe.hearstmags.com/subscribe/elle/159557?source=pr" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out; background: transparent; color: #0082b3; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;"><span style="font-weight: 600;">digitally</span></a><span style="font-weight: 600;"> and in select cities on April 14, and on newsstands nationwide April 21.</span></div>
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Source: http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/news/a27707/chelsea-clinton-may-2015/</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-10227142963173719942015-04-25T00:00:00.000+05:302015-04-25T00:00:01.829+05:30Pushing The Boundaries on the Perception of Muslim Women<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The last thing one would expect would be Muslim women on the comedic scene, yet here they are -- <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/apr/06/muslim-pakistani-female-comedians-aizzah-fatima-mona-shaikh-fawzia-mira" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #058b7b; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_hplink">a group of Muslim Pakistani-American women</a> are pushing the boundaries of perception on desi Muslim women and they do it while inviting the audience to share in their jokes and laughter.</div>
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New York-based writer/performer Aizzah Fatima produced a one-woman comedy show called "Dirty Paki Lingerie" as a result of her growing frustration with the limited perception other have of her as a refugee or a victim.</div>
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On the other hand,<a href="http://fawziamirza.com/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #058b7b; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_hplink"> Fawzia Mirza</a>, a Chicago-based actor/writer/producer, explained that a lot of limitations imposed on Pakistani children regarding an artistic career stems from being born in a conservative culture where an artistic endeavor is seen as not financially stable enough and potentially harmful to one's reputation.</div>
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The consensus in their artistic endeavor seems to be that their experience is not necessarily representative of the Pakistani experience in general, but that there is a need for a broader representation that would pull away from the usual one and give more insight.</div>
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/womens-rights-news/pushing-the-boundaries-on-the-perception-of-muslim-women_b_7078282.html?ir=India</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-63958792383608014172015-04-24T00:00:00.000+05:302015-04-24T00:00:01.599+05:30Chinese feminist: 'If I talk about women's rights in China, people will think I'm sick'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Near midnight on Monday night, it was confirmed that all<strong> <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/china-frees-women-activists-on-bail-after-a-month-of-detainm?bftw&utm_term=4ldqpgm#.qxZEy794r" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">five Chinese feminist activists had been released</a></strong>, having been taken away by police over 37 days ago.</div>
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Their crime? Planning to distribute stickers on buses to raise awareness of sexual harassment on public transportation on International Women’s Day (March 8th).</div>
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Wei Tingting, Wang Man and Zheng Churan, Wu Rongrong and Li Tingting were freed by police, according to lawyers. They seem unlikely to face charges.</div>
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It’s hard to escape the irony that the five women - all aged under 32 - were taken away (on <strong><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11531001/Chinese-feminists-detained-for-picking-quarrels.html" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”</a></strong>) just before staging their protest on International Women’s Day. It is an occasion that is not only widely celebrated in China, but is intended to draw attention to the empowerment of women around the world.</div>
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The arrest had been <strong><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11467396/Amnesty-attacks-China-over-chilling-detentions-of-female-activists.html" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">condemned by organisations worldwide, including Amnesty International</a></strong>. And their release this week was called “a victory” by Jing Xiong, the Project Manager of<strong> <a href="http://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina/html1/source/14/3442-1.htm" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Monitor for Women Network</a></strong>, an NGO that has worked closely with the women in the past.</div>
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So who are they? And what does the future hold for the fledging feminist movement in China?</div>
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The five women are part of small, upcoming group young female activists who have recently been campaigning for women’s rights. This is something relatively new in China.</div>
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Their stunts have included <strong><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9100292/Occupy-movement-spreads-to-Beijing-lavatories.html" sl-processed="1" style="color: #234b7b; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Occupy Men’s Toilet, staged in 2012</a></strong> to bring focus to an unfair ratio of women to men’s toilets in China; and Bloody Brides, in 2013, where women dressed in blood-stained wedding dresses to raise awareness of domestic violence.</div>
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Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11535311/Chinese-female-activist-Womens-rights-are-seen-as-a-sickness-here.html</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087183046350165111.post-19241260778125643382015-04-23T00:00:00.000+05:302015-04-23T00:00:00.051+05:30China Frees Detained Women’s-Rights Activists<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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BEIJING—Chinese authorities released the five women’s-rights activists whose detentions last month sparked an international outcry and stoked fears that the Communist Party planned to expand political controls.</div>
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Police notified families Monday night that the five activist—Li Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Wei Tingting, Wang Man and Zheng Churan—would be set free, said Wang Qiushi, a lawyer representing Ms. Wei. Mr. Wang said around 1 a.m. on Tuesday that all had returned to their families.</div>
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Liang Xiaojun, another of the activists’ lawyer, said the five had been released on China’s equivalent of bail, meaning they would be subject to police surveillance and could still be vulnerable to criminal charges for up to a year.</div>
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“They are not completely free. At any time in the next year, the police could take them away again,” Mr. Liang said.</div>
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“The releases are a profound relief, and they make clear that public pressure from inside and outside China can change the government’s position,” said Sophie Richardson, the director of Asia advocacy at Human Rights Watch. Still, she added, the women shouldn’t have been detained in the first place.</div>
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The detention came as the Communist Party pursued an aggressive campaign against independent political activities, detaining or jailing dozens of lawyers, activists and others. But even against that background, the detentions baffled many inside China. Gender equality has been a central plank in the Communist Party’s platform since its inception, with Mao famously declaring that “women hold up half the sky.”</div>
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Activists note that the country recently has made progress on women’s issues, with a landmark law on domestic violence scheduled to come out later this year.</div>
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The last time a Chinese regime arrested women for feminist activity was in 1913, according to feminist Chinese historians, when then-President Yuan Shikai attempted to crush a nascent women’s suffrage movement.</div>
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Prosecutors faced a deadline Monday to either charge or release the five women, who were detained while planning a multicity campaign against sexual harassment on public transportation timed to coincide with International Women’s Day.</div>
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Mr. Wang, the lawyer for Ms. Wei, said earlier that police had requested that prosecutors charge the five with “gathering a crowd to disturb public order.” Mr. Wang said police had opened investigations into some of the activists’ prior campaigns.</div>
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Beijing police and prosecutors didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Haidian District Detention Center, where the women had been held, declined to comment, saying it would only answer questions posed in person by relatives.</div>
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement Friday calling for the release of the women, a few days after his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, called their detention “inexcusable” in a post on Twitter. Mr. Kerry said the U.S. supported the efforts of the activists to fight sexual harassment, adding, “Chinese authorities should also support them, not silence them.”</div>
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At a daily news briefing Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had complained to the U.S. over the comments made by U.S. leaders, and urged the U.S. to “stop interfering in China’s domestic affairs.”</div>
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On Saturday, relatives released a public letter asking the government to release the women. “Given our country’s outstanding historical tradition, the social reality of sexual harassment, and the relevant laws and regulations, we firmly believe that the thoughts and actions of our five relatives did not in any way violate national policy or laws,” the letter read.</div>
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Human rights and civil society experts noted that the detained activists had been successful in drawing attention to women’s issues with eye-catching campaigns, such as one in 2012 where they “occupied” men’s toilets to highlight insufficient facilities for women. The women also had worked with foreign organizations—something the Communist Party increasingly finds suspicious.</div>
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China’s authorities “want gender equality to be something they control,” said Lu Jun,director of the Beijing Yirenping Center, an antidiscrimination nonprofit that employed Ms. Li, one of the detained activists. “They don’t want civil society to have anything to do with it.”</div>
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Government pressure has cast a chill over many women’s-rights activities in recent weeks. Nonprofit groups associated with the detained women have had their offices searched by police, while a number of lectures and activities have either been canceled or altered, women’s-rights campaigners say.</div>
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Rehearsals for a production of “Our Vaginas, Ourselves,” a play about female empowerment based on the “Vagina Monologues” by American playwright Eve Ensler, have been put on hold as the cast searches for a new space to meet, according to one of the show’s creators, who said she had been among a group of activists who had been briefly detained along with the five but quickly let go.</div>
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“Right now it’s not clear if we’ll be able to put on any shows in Beijing this year,” she said.</div>
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Mr. Lu said all of Yirenping’s gender-related programs had been temporarily suspended as the group waited to see what happened to the women.</div>
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Even after their release, it remained unclear what long-term effect the recent pressure would have on the women’s-rights movement.</div>
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“For some people, there will definitely be a chilling effect,” said Feng Yuan, a veteran women’s-rights campaigner, but for many young people, perceived suppression could serve as “a rallying point.”</div>
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For one 24-year-old activist, the detentions served as an awakening. She said she saw police bring home one of the detained activists, Ms. Zheng, only to take her away again. The sight left her speechless, she said.</div>
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After Chinese authorities began searching for associates of the detained activists, she found herself moving from apartment to apartment. “I got a call from someone and just ran,” she said.</div>
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Being on the run hasn’t kept her from continuing her activism. She joined four other activists in Guangzhou to don masks of the detained women and take photos around the city as part of a campaign to focus attention on them.</div>
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“I’m so happy I’m crying,” she said on hearing that Ms. Zheng had been released. Still, she said, they might keep the masks around, “just for fun.”</div>
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—Kersten Zhang contributed to this article.</div>
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<span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Write to </span>Josh Chin at <a class="icon " href="mailto:josh.chin@wsj.com" style="background: 0px 0px / 30px 30px no-repeat; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">josh.chin@wsj.com</a></div>
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Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-frees-three-womens-rights-activists-1428934300</div>
DeltaWomenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06719213220465708348noreply@blogger.com0