Two recent articles address the large and small strides made for women’s rights in America.
The National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) created ” Equal Pay Day” in 1996 as ” a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men’s and women’s wages” . The average woman has to work nearly 4 more months to earn the yearly salary of her male colleagues.
A new initiative known as the “Gear Up Campaign” champions the goal of revolutionizing the UN’s approach to women’s issues. The GEAR campaign hopes to galvanize UN agencies to integrate women’s issues program-wide so that women are no longer deemed a separate or marginalized issue.
The civil conflict in Sri Lanka is once again a top headline in the international media. Several newspapers and media outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and BBC report that the twenty-four hour ultimatum given to the separatist rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers by the government of Sri Lanka earlier this week has expired and intense fighting has spread to the northern part of the island. However it is evident that following this recent wave of violence, more media attention of the civil conflict in Sri Lanka is needed.
The Arhuaco tribe is one of four Tairona indigenous groups that inhabit the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta of Northwestern Colombia. While the government of Colombia recognizes indigenous territories, the Arhuaco are quickly becoming one of Colombia’s 27 indigenous groups at risk for extinction. WCI’s programs with Arhuaca women in Colombia aim to end this devastating trend.
According to the United Nations, at least 1 in 12 people in Afghanistan abuse drugs and the numbers are increasing. Many of the addicts are women who, along with their children, suffer in silence and resort to desperate measures to feed their addiction.
A recent study found that China now has 32 million more boys under the age of 20 than girls, and in 2005 there were 120 male births for every 100 females. The authors suggest a ban against sex-selective abortion, but even so, China faces an excess of men for at least a generation…
South African-based gender advocacy organization, Gender Links, just released a report detailing a likely rise of women’s representation in South Africa’s parliament from 33% to 45%. Since South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 when the percentage of women’s representation rose from 2.7% to 27%, this would represent the largest increase in women’s political participation.
In a country where women’s rights are severely limited, blogging offers Egypt’s women an opportunity to converse as equals and discuss gender topics that aren’t generally addressed in public.
Sitara Achakzai, a well-known women’s rights activist and Provincial Councilor, was shot and killed yesterday by Taliban gunmen in Kandahar. Her assassination occurred on the same day that 300 women took to the streets of Kabul to protest a new law which supports marital rape and undermines the rights of Shi’a women in Afghanistan.
