Stories from Quick Reads and Women & Gender
Jailed Cartoonist Atena Faraghdani's Lawyer is Arrested for Shaking Her Hand
Mohammad Moghimi, the attorney of the Iranian activist and cartoonist Atena Faraghdani was arrested on 10 June following a visit to his client in jail. His charges are based on the fact that he shook Faraghdani's hand. Faraghdani was recently sentenced to 12.5 years in prison for posting drawings and content critical...
#GirlsCan Campaign Kicks Off with FIFA Women's World Cup to Empower Girls in Sports
As the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada started kicked off on June 6, a number of organizations joined forces in launching the #GirlsCan advocacy campaign. Women Deliver, UNICEF, Right to Play, GAIN and One Goal are using the FIFA as a backdrop to raise awareness of how sports can positively influence...
Can Abortion Be Discussed in Medellín's Metro?
Residents of the city of Medellín, Colombia, are asking themselves if the metro is the place to talk about abortion, stemming from an ad by the #ladecisiónestuya (the decision is yours) campaign that's running in the public transit system's cars, as shared by user Jaime Andrés (@JAIM3_ANDR3S): #LaDecisionEsTuya pic.twitter.com/Nbaq2zJHXn — Jaime...
Pregnant 11-Year-Old in Uruguay Refuses Abortion
Niña de 11 años embarazada que no quiere abortar genera polémica➝http://t.co/uPBo6NEKcC #Aborto #Embarazo #Uruguay — Periódico La Tribuna (@PLaTribunaFunza) May 8, 2015 Pregnant 11-year-old who refused to abort creates controversy. We wrote recently about about a 10-year-old pregnant girl from Paraguay who was allegedly raped by her stepfather and who was unable to have an abortion...
Argentinians Organize Online to Demonstrate Against Femicides
Under the hashtag #NiUnaMenos (Not One Less), Argentina is mounting a campaign against the alarming increase in the number of femicides, which shows no signs of going down. Many of the country's public personalities have joined the campaign, like cartoonist Liniers, who used one of his best known characters to participate in the movement. 3...
Amaal Said’s Portraits of Belonging: An Interview
Zachary Rosen interviews photographer/poet Amaal Said. Amaal was born in Denmark to Somali parents and is currently based in London: AIAC: Your photographs are remarkable in how they challenge and evolve notions of beauty in mainstream Western media by featuring intimate portraits of melanin-rich young people – with piercings, in...
The Mexican ‘Corrido’ of Feminist Liberation
Junio del 75 en México no te asombres Se juntaron mil señoras para hablar mal de los hombres […] Liberación absoluta es meta de la mujer Pero aquello de que hablamos Que no lo dejen de hacer aunque sea por favor In June of '75 in Mexico don’t be surprised...
Mother Regains Custody of Child Following Social Media Pressure in Ecuador
The battle of a French mother to recover her son held in Ecuador by his Ecuadorian father, a case characterized by sexism and misogyny, had been followed closely on Ecuadorian social networks. Valeria Coronel and Antonio Jurado relate for the blog Plató Mundo: Arianais Alezra, la madre de Gaspard Bruzzone, denunció hace...
Former French Defense Minister Finds Excuses for the Alleged Rape of Central African Children by French Soldiers
Afrique Info reports that JP Chevènement, a former defense minister of France, stated on public radio Europe 1 on May 3 that the challenging conditions that French soldiers face in the Central African Republic could explain “behavior of that kind” (see video above). Chevènement was referring to the allegation of child...
Blunt Pro-Abortion Campaign in Chile
The NGO Miles (Thousands) and the advertising agency Grey Chile are taking a provocative approach to showing the problem that thousands of women face in Chile with respect to abortion, using three fictitious tutorial videos that show the only legal way to have an abortion in the country. The “advice”...
The Troubling State of Abortion Rights in Ecuador
This text is part of the 49th edition of #LunesDeBlogsGV (Monday of blogs on GV) on April 13, 2015. Underage pregnancy has been rising in Ecuador for the past several years, while abortion even in cases of rape or incest remains criminalized. According to the State Prosecutor, 98 percent of rapes in Ecuador last year occurred...
‘Nappies in Adolescence': Alarming Number of Pregnant Teens in Venezuela
Desireé Lozano, blogging for Voces Visibles, urges attention be paid to the extremely high rate of teenage pregnancies in Venezuela, where 25% of the pregnancies are among young people, and the lack of an appropriate public policy to counter this phenomenon and its repercussions. Venezuelan statistics are the highest in South America...
Mexican Women Are Being Called on to Help Transform Their Portrayal in Mexican Media
WACC, SocialTIC, WITNESS, La Sandía Digital, and Subversiones have called on women interested in telling the stories of strong women in their communities with the purpose of changing the way women are represented in the media. As one of the representatives of the project told Global Voices, in Mexican media there...
Ecuador's Creeping Criminalization of Abortion
Marita Seara, blogging for Voces Visibles, warns about the growing criminalization of abortion in Ecuador, one of the most difficult countries in Latin America for women to obtain an abortion, second only to Venezuela. Hay dos únicos casos en los cuales es permitido el aborto: cuando corre peligro la vida...
Mexican Beauty Pageant Contestant’s Baffling ‘Chimpanzee’ Answer
It's well known that every aspiring beauty queen must answer a difficult question in the interview portion of the contest. Also well known are some of the answers that contestants have given, answers that earned them more publicity than their good looks ever did. The most recent of those answers was given...
‘Western Women Don't Care If They Are Raped on the Roadside,’ Says Saudi Historian
Saudi historian Dr Saleh Al-Saadoon says women in the West drive because they “don't care if they get raped on the roadside.” He made the remarks in an interview with Rotana Khalijia, a Saudi-owned television channel aimed at Gulf countries, in his defense of a Saudi prohibition that bans women...
Iran Releases British-Iranian Goncheh Ghavami After Arrested for Attending a Volleyball Match
26 year old British-Iranian Goncheh Ghavami was arrested in Iran on June 2014 for protesting for equal access for women during sporting events. She was arrested after she attempted to attend a men-only volleyball match at Azadi Indoor Stadium in Tehran. International petitions have been ongoing for her release, until...
Looking for Books on Islam, Feminism and Racialisation?
Blogger Royayah Chamseddin, a Sydney based Lebanese-American journalist and commentator, shares a list of books on Islam, feminism and racialization in this blog post on her blog Letters from The Underground. The list, which will continue to be expanded, includes links to some books which are available for free download...
German Company's Videos Imagine Modern Women as Passive and Dependent
Women in Germany are outraged over one insurance company's videos explaining different types of policies, in which women are described as passive and naive — a role more in line with the expectations of the 1950s than 2015. Birte Vogel writes on her blog Thea – Frauen in Sprache, Medien und Gesellschaft (Thea –...
Documenting the Systematic Decline of Women's Rights in Macedonia
Although southeast European countries are progressive in many other ways, the decline of women's reproductive rights in some Western Balkan countries has been a worrying trend. In Macedonia, several small protests have been held in recent years to demonstrate people's opposition to government involvement in determining public sentiment on issues...
The Political Apartheid Against Women in Venezuela
Desireé Lozano, a blogger for the Spanish-language website Voces Visibles (Visible Voices), reflects on the existing limitations on women’s political participation in Venezuela. According to the sociologist Evangelina García Prince, a kind of political apartheid that excludes women from decision-making reigns in the Venezuelan parties: En los partidos venezolanos, el discurso oficial...
