Archive for the 'Faith' Category
The three recent publications (links below) are also available in Spanish and French translations are just being produced. A further two publications are slated for release later this year.
1. Shared Insights: Women’s Rights Activists Define Religious Fundamentalisms
http://www.awid.org/eng/About-AWID/AWID-News/Shared-Insights-Women-s-rights-activists-define-religious-fundamentalisms
2. Religious Fundamentalisms on the Rise: A Case for Action
http://www.awid.org/eng/About-AWID/AWID-News/Religious-Fundamentalisms-on-the-Rise-A-case-for-action
3. Exposed: Ten Myths about Religious Fundamentalisms
http://www.awid.org/eng/About-AWID/AWID-News/Ten-myths-about-religious-fundamentalisms
i. Miradas Compartidas: Las [...]
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women who took part in a conference Monday organized by Kolech, an Orthodox feminist movement, were asked precisely that question.
The vote is a milestone. The very fact that women self-defined as committed to Orthodox Jewish law are deliberating the proper title for a female rabbi – the most powerful figure [...]
A senior Sudanese politician called on Tuesday for an enquiry into reports young women from Sudan’s Christian south had been flogged for defying Islamic law by wearing trousers in Khartoum.
Police arrested 13 young women earlier this month, accusing them of wearing indecent clothes in a Khartoum cafe, and later flogged 10 of them, one of [...]
Afghanistan’s Justice Ministry released a revision of the controversial Shia law that legalized rape within marriage, among other provisions. The Associated Press reports that the new version omits original provisions that allowed men to demand sex from their wives and that required women to ask their husbands’ permission to leave their home.
The law sparked international [...]
About 1,000 Afghan Shi’ite Muslims rallied in Kabul last week to demand the ratification of a controversial law which contains harsh provisions on women some critics have called a step back towards Taliban-era rules.
The Shi’ite Personal Status Law applies to Shi’ites who make up about 15 percent of Afghanistan’s roughly 30 million people. It requires [...]
Joint Statement By Malaysian Civil Society On PAS Resolution To Ban Sisters In Islam
We the undersigned are deeply disturbed by the call on the part of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) to have Sisters in Islam (SIS) banned and its members rehabilitated should its activities be determined to be contrary to the Islamic shariah. [...]
A new family law for Sunnis, which protects the rights of women in Shariah (Islamic) law courts, was approved by Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, on May 27. Women’s activists have pledged to continue their fight for a just law for the Gulf Arab kingdom’s Shiites.
The law-making lower and upper houses had approved [...]
Teenage pregnancy is on the rise in the Philippines and women’s groups said it is time to introduce sex education in government schools.
But their proposal has met with stiff resistance from the country’s influential Catholic Church.
According to the World Bank, the Philippines is among the top ten countries where there is an increasing [...]
Women in Afghanistan are routinely denied basic human rights, including education, healthcare, freedom from violence, and freedom of movement. Afghan women who fight to change this reality are attacked and even assassinated by ultra-conservatives.
Meanwhile, US airstrikes that kill civilians further endanger Afghan women and their families. They also increase the power of the Taliban [...]
Women’s organizations and the Rabbinical Courts Administration squared off in the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women yesterday over a bill to expand the rabbinical courts’ authority.
The proposal has not yet been formally submitted to the Knesset as a bill, since Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman is still studying it. However, the committee discussed [...]
A report prepared by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in an attempt to tackle the increasing rate of ’honor crimes’ across Europe says the problem has worsened in Europe and cooperation among countries is needed to deny safe harbor to guilty individuals
As rates of “honor crimes” are on the rise throughout Europe, [...]
“To cover or not to cover?” – that is the question now gripping Islamist politicians in Kuwait.
It is a debate that has become increasingly heated in this Arab Gulf state since the parliamentary elections on May 16, which saw the country’s first ever female deputies elected. However, it is not a question that the women [...]
A power struggle in Singapore’s top women’s advocacy group has awakened the conservative city-state’s civil society and created rare public debate about the taboo issues of sex and religion.
As two groups of women were tussling to control Singapore’s Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), the pro-government media became a battleground where supporters and [...]
That is how the Women’s Action Forum defined the meeting it held last Friday to mobilise public opinion against extremism.
Although WAF’s concern to protect the space women have created in the public mainstream has been on its agenda for some time, this goal has acquired urgency in the wake of the events in Swat. [...]
‘My husband rapes me repeatedly. I asked the ulama (religious leader) for help, but he sided with him, saying that according to Islam, a woman has to obey her husband. I have nowhere else to go. I have no tears left to shed. I no longer scream.’
It was while recording stories like this that staff [...]
Muslim women should be free to pursue a higher education no matter what their fathers say, according to a fatwa recently issued by the grand mufti of Egypt, a leading authority of Sunni Islam, according to The National, an Abu Dhabi-based newspaper.
The fatwa, which is similar to a nonbinding legal opinion, was issued last week [...]
Dominican lawmakers voted recently to approve a constitutional amendment that would effectively end legal abortion in the country. Assembly members approved the new Executive Branch article, which states that, “The right to the life is inviolable from conception until death.”
Aldrian Almonte, president of the Dominican Gynecology and Obstetrics Society has warned that the number [...]
Interview with Yifat Susskind, communications director with MADRE, conducted by Melinda Tuhus
Afghan women, long excluded from any public role, have become more visible in recent days. Legislation regulating family life for the nation’s Shiite minority was passed by the Afghan legislature and signed into law by President Hamid Karzai, even though critics — both [...]
Brazil is a Catholic country, but in this row the Church has been controversial. The issue of abortion in Brazil has been making headlines not just in South America’s biggest country, but around the world.
The controversy began when news emerged from Pernambuco, a poor state in the north-east of Brazil, that a nine-year-old girl [...]
Recent postings- Murder of human rights activist Natalia Estemirova condemned
- Three publications from AWID’s Resisting and Challenging Religious Fundamentalisms
- Rabbanit? Rabbah? Maybe just plain Rabbi? What should be the title of an Orthodox woman who happens to also be a rabbi?
- Inquiry urged after Sudan women flogged for wearing trousers
- Accountability To Women Could Upset Business As Usual
- Fight Sexism to Help Young Mothers – South Africa
- Soldiers Who Rape, Commanders Who Condone: Sexual Violence and Military Reform in the Democratic Republic of Congo
- Worrying increase in gang rape say police in Angola
- Repatriation of Rwandan Women Refugees in Uganda could increase hardships
- HRW condemns Rwanda’s draft law on HIV tests and sterilisation
- Gender Wire
- Q&A: Defending Women's Rights Under New Land Policy
- RIGHTS-UGANDA : Women Press for Domestic Violence Bill
- AFRICA: Organic Farming Could be Answer to Food Insecurity
- EDUCATION: Mother Tongue Absent in Thousands of Classrooms
- Q&A: 'Farmers Can Gain From Crisis'
- DR-CONGO: Rape by Regular Army a Growing Problem, HRW Says
- PERU: Going to School Still a Feat for Rural Girls
- CUBA: What Schools Can and Cannot Do for Equality
- FILM: Graphically Condemning a "Barbaric and Horrific Punishment"
- ECONOMY: Accountability To Women Could Upset Business-As-Usual
- new on womensgrid
- Sense of Self – A weekly support group for women focusing on enhancing self-esteem and self-confidence! 20th July 2009
- Dogs Trust seeks dog foster carers to help women fleeing domestic violence
- Soroptimists give £500,000 and three houses to charity in Gravesend
- A report into the death of Baby P has revealed that only half of NHS staff have the required levels of training in child protection
- One in four in custody in Glasgow held for domestic abuse
- Royal Assent for Sexual Offences Bill Scotland
- Unionists and nationalists have joined forces to round on English politicians who called for abortion laws to be extended to Northern Ireland
- Human rights court will hear Irish abortion ban case
- Teenagers who are raped leave school at earlier age study in Ireland finds
- Two boys who raped a 14-year-old for insulting their gang leader’s partner have had their sentences upheld
- new on women in london
- 4 vacancies - Refuge - 28th July 2009
- Female Community Outreach Officer - Kiran - 14th August 2009
- Volunteer Co-ordinator - Jewish Women’s Aid - 10th August 2009
- 2 vacancies - Eaves - 17th and 22nd July 2009
- Public investment in childcare : who cares, who pays? - Daycare Trust - 17th November 2009
- Feminism in London - conference organised by London Feminist Network - 10th October 2009
- GLDVP Newsletter - July 2009
- GLDVP Stella Project advanced training for experienced workers - 6th August and 8th September 2009
- Being a mum has ‘devastating’ impact on earnings - new report - Fawcett
- The GLDVP response to: The Way Forward – A call for action to end violence against women
To Help Women, Leaders Should Dig Deeper than Religious Clothing
3 July 2009 in Equality, Faith, Government, North America, Opinion Comment
President Sarkozy of France has reignited the debate about how Muslim women in Europe should dress by calling for a ban on clothing that, as he puts it, imprisons women and undermines their dignity. But in this burqa debate the voices of Muslim women are strangely absent.
For many men and women, the burqa, the niqab, [...]