Just broadcast! PBS Wideangle podcast on the Taliban and Women in Pakistan -- and how they are targeting women's rights and education. This is by the producer of Children of the Taliban.
100th International Women's Day
March 8th is International Women's Day, and we are celebrating in our own way: by reading an anthology of Pakistani women writers- stories set all around the world.
Interesting facts about Women's Day: in 1909, the Socialist Party of America declared the first National Women's Day, celebrated on February 28th. In 1910, leader of the Women's Office of the German Social Democratic Party Clara Zetkin called for an International Women's Day at the second International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen. 100 women from 17 countries were in attendance. Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland celebrated International Women's Day for the first time on March 25th, 1911. In 1913, Russia celebrated their first International Women's Day. In 1917, Russian women organized a strike, based on the 2 million Russian solders who died in the war, calling for 'bread and peace', and the movement ended up forcing the Czar to abdicate, and women got the right to vote!
HRW's Women's Rights Division
In honor of International Women's Day and as part of their 20th anniversary of the Women's Rights Division, HRW released a beautiful new webpage hub, which includes audio clips and a timeline:
Women's Rights Division
The following is the message that the WRD sent out on International Women's Day, 2011:
Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day and there is still much that we must do to ensure that women and girls can enjoy their human rights:
· Women still constitute the majority of those who are illiterate – two thirds of adults who cannot read and write are women, and this figure has not changed much over the last 20 years;
· Women workers continue to be clustered in the most insecure forms of work, including part time, casual and informal employment. They earn less than men, and bear the burden of (largely) unpaid domestic work and childcare;
· Customary and statutory laws still limit women’s access to, and ownership of, land and other economic resources in Africa and Asia and consequently, women are over-represented amongst the poor;
· Violence against women, in its many manifestations, remains one of the most widespread and pervasive violations of human rights.
Despite this, there are many reasons to celebrate today and these include the establishment of UN Women (an achievement that represents several years of advocacy by women’s rights activists), women in the Middle East and North Africa taking their rightful places in demonstrations and protests to demand their human rights, the slow reduction of female genital mutilation, the increased numbers of women who are receiving ante natal care, and the diminishing gender gap in the enrollment of girls in primary education. As Michele Bachelet said last Thursday night at the official launch of UN Women, “we have hope”.
Cries From the Heart, May 9th, 2011
Mark your calendars!
This is an evening of prose, poetry and performance at the Broad in Santa Monica.
For one night only, star performers will come together with Human Rights Watch, bringing to life the stories of Ordinary Heros. A cocktail reception precedes the performance, and a dessert and coffee reception concludes the evening.
We are seeking sponsors at levels from $1,000 - $10,000
Individual tickets are $100- $150
More information coming soon. Please start preparing a list of possible sponsors you could ask to support this important event!
And the World Changed
What a fantastic, passionate, committed group! We started out the evening talking about the new article posted by a fellow female journalist about CBS/60 minutes journalist Lara Logan, who experienced violent assault and rape while reporting on the protests in Tahrir Square, Egypt. Along with the well-written article in the New York Times (see the comments to this post), Amanda Marcotte's article for The Guardian provides a very clear summary and analysis, as well as a broadly representative set of links. Frustrating that women are still forced to make such difficult decisions about whether they should report gender-based violence on the job or just keep quiet, because if they speak up, they will face character assassination, claims that they 'asked for it', that they are lying for personal gain, and that men should do those jobs just to avoid such messy situations. This is an age-old dilemma, however, and one of many challenging, messy, murky life decisions that women often face. And this leads us to the discussion of the book!
As an anthology, this book presented us with a very wide-reaching and complex view of Pakistani women's worlds. One theme that we came to notice was the complexity of women's responsibilities, allegiances, cultural and religious backgrounds, priorities and goals. Sometimes, when thinking about human rights work, it is easy to fall into a pretty black-and-white view of things: right and wrong, abuser and victim, justice and truth... but life is often not so obvious. Victims become aggressors; family members retain oppressive expectations along with providing abiding love and support; past violence continues to shape everyday meaning even for those who were not yet born when the conflict "ended"...
And the stories reminded us that the violence of colonial rule, and of Partition seem to be key elements of individual and familial identity, and daily life, even generations later. There were clear echoes in the claims of War is Not Over When It's Over . Also of the variety of women's lived experiences, the rich cultural, educational, political and artistic heritage of Pakistani women, of their global and cosmopolitan as well as parochial and conservative selves, of the importance of class and race in women's experience, and of how hard it was to generalize -- once we read these individuals' voices.
Recurring questions also arose: of the nature of the humanity of human rights abusers (how can they do such violence); of the utility and moral appropriateness of trying to understand why human rights abusers do what they do (how to explain and not excuse); of relativism and culture wars (HRW link); of impressing our ideas of what should be done or standing back; of how to define 'help' and 'solidarity' when we cannot understand the people we reach out to; and of idealism and anger at injustice, frustration with the intransigence of oppression, impatience with the slowness of change, and the danger of accepting people's suffering because we want to be understanding and patient. In other words, we got to the philosophical and ethical roots of human right work!
This anthology is available from the Feminist Press, as well as your more standard online booksellers, and comes highly recommended. Each author is introduced, and the 25 different stories cover a lot of topical ground. If you are interested in themes of social and cultural change, immigration, East-meets-West issues, and the challenging of stereotypes (gender, race, and class), you will be bound to find something here that is interesting.
In terms of background, we all know that Pakistan is important to the foreign policy of the U.S., particularly in the context of the ongoing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistan is a nuclear power, and that makes it a really important player in the region. To take a look at the recent human rights issues in Pakistan, see HRW's website.
The BBC has a very useful and concise introduction to Pakistan.
