Women’s Rights

The Kurds Unbowed

June 28, 2020 By Dilar Dirik, New Internationalist. Educate! Kurds, Rojavia, Syria, Türkiye, Women's Rights

Despite the odds stacked against it, the women’s movement is determined to continue the struggle. In response to the Turkish invasions, hundreds of thousands of women from the different communities in Northern Syria have taken to the streets. On the International Day against Violence against Women, all the women’s organizations in Northern Syria organized large rallies across the region with the slogan ‘Occupation is Violence’. These local actions were echoed by feminist actions around the world under the campaign ‘Women Defend Rojava’. ‘Day and night, we engage in efforts to struggle against the occupation,’ Evîn says. ‘Our aim is for these areas to be liberated and for our people to see a dignified return. Both things must be led by the organized, free woman.’

Violence Against Women And Girls: The Shadow Pandemic

April 9, 2020 By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women. Educate! COVID-19, domestic violence, Violence against Women, Women's Rights

Confinement is fostering the tension and strain created by security, health, and money worries. And it is increasing isolation for women with violent partners, separating them from the people and resources that can best help them. It’s a perfect storm for controlling, violent behaviour behind closed doors. And in parallel, as health systems are stretching to breaking point, domestic violence shelters are also reaching capacity, a service deficit made worse when centres are repurposed for additional COVID-response. Even before COVID-19 existed, domestic violence was already one of the greatest human rights violations. In the previous 12 months, 243 million women and girls (aged 15-49) across the world have been subjected to sexual or physical violence by an intimate partner.

Corporate Media Silent On New Accusation Of Sexual Assault By Joe Biden

April 1, 2020 Britni de la Cretaz, Refinery 29. Educate! Joe Biden, presidential elections, Sexual Assault, Women's Rights

The media is not covering a new sexual assault allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden from a woman named Tara Reade, who says she has been trying to share her story since 1993 when it allegedly happened. Reade's allegation comes in the midst of Biden’s surging presidential campaign and is consistent with other stories women have shared about their discomfort with the way Biden has touched them.

Why Women Will Prove More Vulnerable Than Men In This Pandemic Moment Of Economic Crisis

April 1, 2020 Rebecca Gordon, Tom Dispatch. Educate! COVID-19, Femicide, Patriarchy, Women's Rights

Before I found myself “sheltering in place,” this article was to be about women’s actions around the world to mark March 8th, International Women’s Day. From Pakistan to Chile, women in their millions filled the streets, demanding that we be able to control our bodies and our lives. Women came out in Iraq and Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and Peru, the Philippines and Malaysia. In some places, they risked beatings by masked men. In others, they demanded an end to femicide -- the millennia-old reality that women in this world are murdered daily simply because they are women. This year’s celebrations were especially militant. It’s been 45 years since the United Nations declared 1975 the International Women’s Year and sponsored its first international conference on women in Mexico City. Similar conferences followed at five-year intervals, culminating in a 1995 Beijing conference, producing a platform that has in many ways guided international feminism ever since.

Saudi’s Brave Women Pull Back the Curtain on Crown Prince MBS

March 11, 2020 Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold, Popular Resistance Educate! Saudi Arabia, Women's Rights

Loujain al-Hathloul gained notoriety in 2013 for campaigning against the driving ban when she posted videos of herself driving as an act of civil disobedience. She was first arrested in December 2014 when she attempted to drive from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia and spent 73 days in prison at that time. Al-Hathloul has also been an outspoken advocate for an end to the male guardianship system that treats women as no more than children throughout their entire lives. The bogus trial against Loujan al-Hathloul taking place this week should compel governments around the world to put more pressure on the Saudis and demand Al Houthloul’s immediate and unconditional release.

Women Protest Around The World For Equality And Ending Violence And Exploitation

March 8, 2020 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Resist! Women, Women's Day, Women's Rights

The first National Woman's Day was observed in the United States on February 28, 1909, organized by the Socialist Party of America, to honor the 1908 garment workers' strike in New York. Thousands of people showed up to various events uniting the suffragist and socialist causes, whose goals had often been at odds. The 1910 International Socialist Woman's Conference adopted a proposal that "a special Women's Day" be organized each year. History.com reports, that on March 19, 1911, the 40th anniversary of the Paris Commune, a radical socialist movement that briefly ruled in France in 1871, the first International Woman’s Day was held. It drew more than 1 million people to rallies worldwide. During World War I, women continued to march and demonstrate on International Woman’s Day.

Mexican Women Plan Historic Strike Against Femicides

March 8, 2020 Isabella Cora, Open Democracy. Resist! Femicide, Mexico, Strike, Women's Rights

On 10 February, two Mexican newspapers published leaked photos of the mutilated body of Ingrid Escamilla, a 25-year-old woman who was murdered and skinned from head to toe by her boyfriend. Five days later, on 15 February, the body of a seven-year-old girl named Fátima, who had been reported missing, was found in a plastic bag. She had been kidnapped, raped, tortured and had her organs removed. In Mexico, where an average of ten women are murdered each day, many are growing restless – and angry at this level of violence. Tens of thousands are expected to take to the streets on Sunday 8 March, as part of protests happening around the world for International Women’s Day. But recent news of gruesome femicides – murders with suspected or confirmed gender-related motives – and the government’s perceived indifference have driven women to also organise a nationwide strike the next day, 9 March, under the banner #UnDíaSinNosotras (#ADayWithoutUs).

French Women March For Equal Rights In Solidarity With Women Around The World

March 7, 2020 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Resist! France, Police abuse, Women's March, Women's Rights

The ongoing protests in France took a new turn today as French women marched for equal rights and respect in the #MarcheFeministe. Thousands of women peacefully marched in solidarity with women of the world on International Women's Day. As has become the norm in Macron's France, nonviolent protest was met by violent police who used tear gas as well as charged the crowd, assaulted and arrested women.

#Mexico: “We Don’t Give Up and Don’t Give In” Call For Collective Action

March 3, 2020 National Indigenous Congress, Enough is Enough. Resist! Capitalism, Indigenous Rights, Patriarchy, Women's Rights

As a “Women’s” working group of the CIG, we would like to remember the words of Comandanta Yesica at the end of her closing speech at the Second International Gathering of Women who Struggle held at the caracol “Torbellino de nuestras palabras” in the Zapatista mountains in resistance and rebellion, on December 29, 2019: “One last thing before we finish and close this Second International Gathering of Women who Struggle. It’s regarding time. We know that no matter the day, week, month or year, there will be a woman somewhere in the world who is afraid, attacked, disappeared or killed. We have said before that for women who fight there is no time to rest. Therefore for those of you listening, reading or watching us, we want to propose a collective action here.

Second Zapatista Gathering Of Women Who Struggle

January 26, 2020 Radio Zapatista, It's Going Down. Create! Patriarchy, Women's Rights, Zapatistas

We dreamed “that the patriarchy burned” and that it was possible to inhabit spaces free of cruelty. For a long time, we graffitied it, theorized it, protested for it, and proposed it. We then came to shout this dream in a territory free of femicides. Here we cried it and wailed it. Here we sang it, danced it, cared for it in this valley of organization and work. From December 26 – 29, 2019, the Zapatista women sheltered us in their collective and rebellious lap to clothe us in dignity inside the seedbed carrying the name of Commander Ramona, who died 14 years ago. Walking in her footprints, in those of Susana and of all the founding mothers of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, we arrived at this gathering that never should have been.

New Study Destroys The Central Argument Behind ‘Abortion Reversal’

January 19, 2020 By Tiffany Diane Tso, Rewire.News Educate! Abortion, Women's Rights

Ninety-nine percent of women don’t regret their abortions five years after getting the procedure, according to a new study that undercuts the myth of abortion regret perpetuated by state lawmakers in support of “abortion reversal” laws. So-called “abortion reversal” laws require clinicians to provide patients with inaccurate information about the possibility of reversing a medication abortion. “Abortion reversal” is a medically unproven, experimental protocol pushed by anti-choice activists who claim medication abortions can be reversed in the middle of the process: after a patient has taken the initial dose of mifepristone but before they take the misoprostol pill.

50 Years After Congress Passed ERA, Amendment Meets Constitutional Threshold

January 19, 2020 Julia Conley, Commondreams. Create! Congress, ERA, Women's Rights

Women's rights advocates celebrated Wednesday as the Virginia legislature became the 38th in the nation to approve the Equal Rights Amendment, nearly 100 years after activists first called for equality between men and women to be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The approval of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by Virginia's state Senate and House means that the required three-quarters of U.S. states have now voted to ratify the amendment, which was passed by Congress in 1972. The law aims to constitutionally guarantee the same legal rights regarding pay equity and other workplace discrimination to all Americans regardless of sex. It also provides protections for women from domestic abuse and pregnancy discrimination.

Southern States Funnel Public Money To Fake Abortion Clinics

July 21, 2019 By Sarah Moore, Facing South Educate! Abortion, Women's Rights

Nationwide, 14 states are sending tax dollars to so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" (CPCs), which pose as legitimate medical facilities offering free pregnancy testing and ultrasounds when in fact their true function is to dissuade people from seeking an abortion, often by providing them with false information. Many women enter CPCs believing they are visiting a clinic that will provide them with counseling and resources for abortion and leave feeling manipulated and ashamed. The organizations intentionally target low-income women and women of color.

Sorry For The Inconvenience, This Is A Revolution

January 5, 2019 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Resist! Cuba, Kerala, Women's Rights, Zapatistas

On 1 January, 5.5 million women formed a 620-kilometre wall across the length of the Indian state of Kerala (population 35 million). This was not like Donald Trump’s wall across the US-Mexico border, a wall of inhumanity and toxicity. The wall of these women was a wall for freedom, a wall against traditions whose purpose is to humiliate. The immediate reason for the women’s wall was a fight over entry for women into the Sabrimala temple in southern Kerala. On 28 September 2018, the Supreme Court of India ruled that women must be allowed to enter the temple since the selective ban on women was not an ‘essential part’ of Hinduism but instead was a form of ‘religious patriarchy’.

Single Moms Sucked Into the Cruelest Debtors’ Prison We’ve Ever Seen

December 23, 2018 By Nusrat Choudhury, ACLU Educate! Debtor's Prison, Prison system, Women's Rights

Across the country, state and local governments are running modern-day debtors’ prisons that rip families apart because they cannot afford fines and fees owed to courts, including for traffic offenses and misdemeanors. For single mothers of color, who are far more likely to live in poverty, the consequences are nothing short of devastating. I represent four of these women, including Brown, in Brown v. Lexington County, South Carolina, the ACLU’s lawsuit against one of the most draconian debtor's prisons we’ve ever seen.

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