Women's Views on News

Vietnamese bride killed by South Korean husband she met through a matchmaking agency

Eight days after moving to South Korea from Vietnam to marry a man she met through a matchmaking agency, 20-year-old Thi Hoang Ngoc was dead, the Los Angeles Times reports. 

She was beaten and stabbed to death by her 47-year-old husband who told police that "voices" ordered him to kill his young bride. She was not told about his mental illness, police said. 

But her death in early July has drawn attention to the growing trend of South Korean men looking overseas for brides and the lack of protection provided for the women who marry them in hopes of a better life.

President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea has promised that the government will take action to better support multicultural families.

South Korean police also announced that they would begin investigating matchmaking agencies suspected of operating illegally. And, starting in August, new requirements for South Koreans seeking to bring foreign wives into the country will take effect, government officials said.

Thanks to Terry Reis Kennedy for this story. 

Men and women must work together to end violence against women

The Pixel Project, which advocates a gender-blind approach to ending gender-based violence, has also picked up on the Time magazine article (see previous post), arguing that the cover picture provides a clear illustration of the extent of the global pandemic of violence against women. 

It says that the portrait of Aisha, a young Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off by abusive in-laws, on the cover of this week's magazine "highlights the urgency and importance of addressing and ending cultures that perpetuate violence against women, not just in Afghanistan, but around the world in all its forms". 

It says that Aisha’s face also offers irrefutable proof that violence against women has very real and damaging consequences for women’s health. It should be seen not just as a socio-economic issue, but also as a preventable global healthcare issue.

But most importantly, the Pixel Project argues that Aisha's portrait provides us with a "teachable moment" about the importance of working towards the elimination of violence against women. " Men and women alike need to realise that it is only by working together that we will be able to end violence against women worldwide". Hear, hear. 

You can read the full article here.

Why have the rights of Afghan women not improved since 2001?

Further to the recent Time magazine article about the impact of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan on women's rights (see WVON story), the Feminist Peace Network points out that the article completely ignored the negative impact of the US presence in the country. 

It says that much the same applies to this article in the New York Times which is predicated on the notion that the rights of women (such as they are) will be threatened by a US withdrawal and a return of the Taliban. 

Clearly that is a realistic fear but as the New York Time piece points out, women's precarious rights are already seeping away. And that is before the US leaves. They have been increasingly shut out of political decisions by President Karzai and although US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has promised that women's rights would not be traded in a deal with the Taliban, women remain wary. 

So a US withdrawal would clearly not be helpful to women, but perhaps a more realistic assessment of why things have barely improved for women since the US invasion of 2001 might shed some light on how to move forward now. 

Aboriginal women fight for rights in Canada

A group of women who are officially 'Status Indians' are fighting for their right to live in and participate in the life of the Cold Lake Indian reserve in Alberta, including the right to vote for new Chief and council. The women are officially excluded because they married non-aboriginal men, reports The Winnipeg Free Press.

Until 1985, if an aboriginal woman married a non-native man, she lost her status as an Indian and all the rights that went with it. A man who married a non-native woman kept his status. That year the federal government amended the Indian Act with Bill C-31 to fix the inequity. But the law hasn't helped Agnes Gendron, Nancy Scanie, Lillian Shirt or thousands of other aboriginal women across Canada who still are known as "C-31s." They and their children have been kicked off reserves and cannot get access to schools, medical or other services available to those living on reserve. And they can't vote out those who don't recognize them.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but given that the same rule does not apply to aboriginal men who married non-aboriginal women, this seems a straightforward case of blatant sexism. Despite repeated protests, the reserve continues to exercise its right to exclude these women, and in so doing, deny them the ability to participate in their own culture.

Weekend of support for Sarah Shourd

Safer World 4 Women highlights a weekend of action in support of Sarah Shourd, one of three hikers abducted in Iran a year ago today.

Sarah and her boyfriend Shane Bauer, together with their friend Josh Fattal, disappeared on 31st July 2009, while on holiday together in Iraqi Kurdistan. In mid-August 2009, the Iranian government confirmed they were being held in Iran for 'crossing the border'. Sarah and her friends have neither been charged with any offence nor had access to a lawyer.

Sarah is held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. Her cell has one small window too high to see out of - and a small shuttered hole in the door. To go to the bathroom, Sarah has to ring a bell and is forced to wear a blindfold. She is allowed out one hour a day when she meets her 2 friends. Denial on this privilege is used as a punitive measure.

Protests took place in London yesterday, but you can still take part in action online. Go to the Safer World 4 Women site to take action and find out more about efforts to 'Free the Hikers'.

Pregnancy denial: Crime or condition?

Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory adds to the debate - recently covered on WVON, here and here - following the case of Dominique Cottrez this week, who has admitted to killing eight of her newborn babies. Tracy argues that women suffering from the condition of 'pregnancy denial' (which I confess to having never heard of before this week) should be treated for this little known mental health condition, rather than prosecuted as criminals:

"However terrible its consequences," writes former gynaecologist and expert witness in similar cases to Cottrez, Michel Delcroix, " Pregnancy denial acts in infanticide cases much as a psychotic state that drives someone to kill another person does. Yet we still try women for what they do during pregnancy denial when we don't try psychotic killers deemed not responsible for their actions."

Pregnancy denial takes three main forms, the article posits:

"pervasive denial (where a woman is both emotionally and intellectually unaware of the pregnancy), affective denial (she's intellectually aware but emotionally in denial) and psychotic denial. The latter is what experts suggest in Cottrez's case."

Regardless of whether pregnancy denial is formally recognised as a form of psychological illness, this story is bound to generate a lot of controversy, both within the feminist movement and beyond.

The clothes on our backs: Garment workers fight for higher wages

Reuters reports today on clashes between police and garment workers (who are mostly women) in Bangladesh during a second day of protests for higher wages. Over 100 people were injured today when garment workers attacked factories and vehicles during the continuing protests. Police fired rubber bullets and used teargas and batons against workers blocking roads in the capital Dhaka's suburbs.

Authorities have been quick to condemn the protesters, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina quoted as saying, "Who will benefit if the (garment) industry is destroyed? The workers should not involve themselves in any activity that might put their own source of bread at risk."

An accompanying report in Today online states that the garment workers involved produce clothing for labels that will be all too familiar on our local high streets, including Walmart (who own Asda) and Marks and Spencer. So whilst this may seem like an international issue, one might say the roots of the dissent stretch as far as our very own wardrobes...

Women's under-20 world cup final takes place tomorrow - Nigeria v Germany

Hands up how many people knew that the women's under-20 world cup football finals are tomorrow? Okay, I admit neither did I until I came across this story in AllAfrica.com. 

And for the first time, an African team will be in the final  in which the Nigeria national women's team, the Falconets, will meet Germany. 

According to Fifa.com, even Nigeria's president - Goodluck Jonathan - is delighted and has devoted space on his Facebook page to celebrate the achievements of the team and their coach, Ndem Egan. 

"By this victory the team has inspired an entire nation to believe that the best is yet to come in our football," the President wrote after their semi-final victory over Colombia. "I want to commend the Falconets for a job well done. This is an unprecedented feat in African women's participation in the female World Cup".

Missing half the story - the supremacy of gendered journalism

The Hindu's Aditi Seshadri reviews a book on a subject very close to our hearts here at WVON: how gender bias operates in the media. The book is Kalpana Sharma's Missing Half the Story: Journalism as if Gender Matters, and she takes as her starting point:

"A journalist is not just a journalist. She or he carries baggage, from earlier socialisation, from present day influences and from realities about which they had no choice – such as gender or caste... Only the more honest (journalist) will admit that there can never be anything like “objective” journalism and that everything we write is ultimately mediated by our own hidden and open biases'."

Amen to that. As WVON readers and editors are all too aware, the (lack of ) coverage of women's news is half the issue, and the other half is how we cover stories relating to women. According to the Global Media Monitoring Project, only 24% of the people interviewed, heard, seen or read about in mainstream broadcast and print news coverage are female, while male viewpoints continue to dominate the mainstream media, often relegating feminist perspectives to the fringe.

Sharma peppers the book's theoretical framework with practical examples of international news stories that demonstrate her point. Although Seshadri criticises some of the jargon in the book, the overall review is a positive one, making me think this is definitely one for the WVON newsroom - when we get one, that is!

Women standing for council seats in Malawi, against the odds

It's expensive trying to run an election campaigns in Malawi because most potential voters expect contestants to distribute handouts, such as T-Shirts, clothes, food and even money as a sign of 'compassion' to their constituents. If they don't, they're deemed 'stingy leaders' and voters shun them. 

The trouble is that most women don't have the same financial resources as men who are generally more educated, employed and own land and other assets, according to this story in IPS news. 

But that hasn't deterred 24-year-old Beauty Kasonda who is campaigning for a local government seat in the forthcoming November 2010 elections. 

"I don’t have money for freebies and so I take advantage of any assembly to coax people into voting for me. My husband is very supportive. He escorts me to the gatherings all the time. We ride on his bicycle," said Kasonda. 

There is some help available for women candidates like Beauty Kasonda. The Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, a human rights non-governmental organisation engaged is identifying aspiring female councillors in Malawi and is teaching them skills in election campaigning, among other things.