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EuropePolitics

CSW: Advancing women’s rights since 1946

by Narges Mohammadi

The annual UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meets in March each year to address the widespread inequalities, violence and discrimination women continue to face, all around the world. Here is a brief five-point guide to this high-profile UN event.

At current rates, it will take almost another three centuries to bring about equality for women and girls.  

Hobbled by persistent inequalities, about 383 million women and girls live in extreme poverty, and every 11 minutes, a woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family.

These are some of the reasons that the CSW continues to be relevant and has been a vitally important fixture on the United Nations calendar ever since it was first convened, shortly after the creation of the UN itself.

Pushing for action for eight decades

The work of the Commission began in 1946, days after the UN General Assembly’s inaugural meetings heard former US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and part of the country’s delegation, read an open letter addressed to “the women of the world”.

Ms Roosevelt had called “on the Governments of the world to encourage women everywhere to take a more active part in national and international affairs, and on women who are conscious of their opportunities to come forward and share in the work of peace and reconstruction as they did in war and resistance”.

The UN’s Economic and Social Affairs Commission (ECOSOC) promptly established a sub-commission. Its six members – China, Denmark, Dominican Republic, France, India, Lebanon, and Poland ­– were tasked with assessing “problems relating to the status of women” to advise the UN Commission on Human Rights, a precursor to the UN Human Rights Council.

In its first report, “members considered that the work of the sub-commission should last until women had reached the point where they were on equal footing with men in all fields of human enterprise”.

From the beginning there were calls for action, including prioritizing political rights, “since little progress could be made without them”, alongside recommendations for improvements in civil educational, social, and economic fields, by which “problems should be attacked simultaneously”, the report said. In addition, the report called for a “United Nations Women’s Conference to further the programme.”

By June 1946, it formally became the Commission on the Status of Women, as one of ECOSOC’s subsidiary bodies. From 1947 to 1962, the Commission focused on setting standards and formulating international conventions to change discriminatory legislation and foster global awareness of women’s issues.

Landmark international agreements struck

Dating back to the Commission’s early days, its growing membership contributed to some of the most widely agreed upon international conventions in UN history. Here are just a few.

Helping Ms Roosevelt, chair of the  Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafting committee, the Commission had successfully argued against references to “men” as a synonym for humanity. It also introduced a new, more inclusive language in the final version of the General Assembly adopted in 1948.

In 1963, efforts to consolidate standards on women’s rights led the General Assembly to request the Commission to draft a Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which the world body adopted in 1967.

CSW was pivotal in the adoption of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the key global policy document on gender equality.

More countries, more needs

With a growing UN membership and mounting evidence in the 1960s that poverty disproportionately affected women, CSW focused on women’s needs in the community and rural development, agricultural work, family planning, and scientific and technological advances. It also encouraged the UN system to expand technical assistance to further the advancement of women, especially in developing countries.

Advanced work in this regard, CSW also drafted the legally binding Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979.

During this decade, the UN declared 1975 the International Year of Women and convened the first World Conference on Women, held in Mexico. 1977 the UN formally recognized International Women’s Day, on 8 March.

In 2010, after years of negotiations, the General Assembly adopted a resolution consolidating the Organization’s related sections and departments into the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), which continues to collaborate closely with the Commission.

Addressing emerging issues

Annual sessions address and assess emerging issues along with progress and gaps in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action. Member States then agree on further steps to speed up progress. Since 2018, CSW has addressed such challenges as climate change, gender-based violence, and ensuring women’s full participation in decision-making and sustainable development strategies.

Adopting multi-year programmes of work to appraise progress and make further recommendations to accelerate the implementation of the Platform for Action, CSW sends its negotiated agreed conclusions to ECOSOC for action.

Intending to reach all women and leave no one behind, the Commission also contributes to the follow-up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Tackling 21st-century challenges

It’s become increasingly apparent that the ongoing discrimination, abuse, and misogyny women face in the physical world is mirrored in the virtual world.

These twenty-first-century issues are being addressed at the 2023 CSW session, which is aimed at levelling the digital playing field to address, among other things, limited access to technology, disproportionate online violence, and underrepresentation and gender bias in tech industries.

The Commission’s 45 members will discuss innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, at its first in-person meeting since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

More than 7,000 stakeholders attended the previous in-person session, CSW63, including nearly 2,000 Member State delegates, 86 ministers, and 5,000 representatives from civil society organizations around the world.

Source: UN News Agency

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North AmericaSociety

NEW; Progress & Challenges Facing Women in Central Texas

by Narges Mohammadi

AUSTIN, TEXAS/ “Women’s Issues are Community Issues“, a new report released by the Women’s Fund at Austin Community Foundation sheds light on what life is like for women and children living in Central Texas, including recent progress and challenges. According to the report, the gender pay gap in Texas persists, with men making nearly 40% more than women. For Central Texans, this leaves one in three women below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line, a common standard for determining eligibility for social services.

The new report examines the landscape of economic security for women and their families through four critical areas: child care, education, housing, and women’s health. The report also digs into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women.

Additional data points from the report include:

  • The average cost for full-time child care in Austin is $12,240 annually. One in five Central Texas families is experiencing a childcare cost burden, meaning childcare costs exceed 7% of a household’s income.
  • 62% of children from low-income families were not considered Kindergarten-ready compared to 39% of higher-earning peers. No significant improvements have been made in this area over the last decade.
  • In Travis County, white women are three times more likely to live in owned homes than a rental compared to Black and Latina women.
  • Teen childbirths in Central Texas have declined since 2017, yet in some counties, like Caldwell and Bastrop, teen birth rates are higher than the national average.
  • In 2020, Black women were twice as likely as White peers to experience health issues related to pregnancy and childbirth.
  • The greatest departure from the workforce during the pandemic was women with children under six years old. In Central Texas, nearly 7% of mothers with children six and under left the workforce in a single year (2020).

“While some of the findings in Women’s Issues are Community Issues may be startling, they are not surprising to the women who call Central Texas home,” said Meagan Anderson Longley, vice president of community impact, Austin Community Foundation. “In releasing this report, we seek to bring more attention to these issues and inspire investment in the economic mobility of women and their families.”

Where Did This Idea Come From?

Women’s Issues are Community Issues was developed in collaboration with the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service CONNECT Fellows program at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. The RGK Center is leading the Austin Area Sustainability Indicators (A2SI) project, a community data initiative that tracks 128 regional indicators of community sustainability. The data in this report is pulled from the A2SI Community Survey and other publicly available data sources.

Data from this report will drive the philanthropic work of the Women’s Fund, a giving network at Austin Community Foundation that invests in women’s economic security in Central Texas. Since its founding in 2004, the fund has awarded over $3 million to more than 100 organizations across the region.

Source: austincf.org

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CultureEurope

‘Culture of exclusion’ keeps women of color from top media jobs, a report reveals

by Narges Mohammadi

Analysis of media organizations and news stories shows underrepresentation across editorial leadership and coverage

Women of color are suffering from a “culture of exclusion” that is seeing them passed over for the top jobs in media organizations and written out of the stories those outlets cover, a report has found.

In an unprecedented analysis of newsrooms and news stories from six countries – the UK, Nigeria, India, South Africa, Kenya, and the US – women of all backgrounds were found to be significantly underrepresented in editorial leadership roles and in coverage.

For every woman who was editor-in-chief, the analysis found, there were at least two – and in some places as many as 12 – men at the same level. But the challenges facing women of color in racially diverse countries, such as South Africa, the UK, and the US, were even greater, the report concluded. In Britain, where 37% of the media organizations surveyed, including the Guardian, had a female editor-in-chief, only 1% had a woman of color at the helm.

“For me, this was by far the most arresting, upsetting, and important finding to act upon urgently,” said Luba Kassova, the author of the report entitled From Outrage to Opportunity: How to Include the Missing Perspectives of Women of All Colors in News Leadership and Coverage.

Women of Color

Women of color faced multiple barriers to equality in the newsroom, she added, and were often “expected to resolve the problem of their own underrepresentation and inclusion”.

The report, which analyzed the workforce of 76 UK news brands, found there were no women of color occupying the most senior editorial positions in politics, foreign affairs, and health news. Women of color were more marginalized in news leadership in the UK than in South Africa or the US, the report found.

“Compared to their proportion in the UK working population, and compared to the US and South Africa, women of color are severely underrepresented or altogether missing from editorial roles in the UK,” the report said. “Moreover women of color are experiencing extraordinary levels of exclusion and remain invisible within news organizations and the news industry, as leaders and as protagonists in news stories.”

Levels of female representation in Kenya, Nigeria and, in particular, India, were often startlingly low. The report found that women were more marginalized in news leadership and in coverage in India than in the other five countries, with only one in 10 editors-in-chief, one in seven business editors, and one in five political editors women.

Kenya

In Kenya, while nearly one in five editors-in-chief and nearly a third of business editors are women, there were no women at the helm of the politics beat in any of the media organizations surveyed; and in Nigeria 18% of editors-in-chief and 16% of political editors were female.

The report found that interviewees in all countries believed the “maternal wall” – the barrier facing all women who have children – to be a factor in the stymying of career advancement. The colleague of one interviewee was told by a male editor that she had impressive journalistic credentials, adding: “Just make sure you leave your womb at the door.”

One of the knock-on effects of this culture of exclusion is women’s declining news consumption, which the report’s authors estimate is about 11-12% lower than men’s. In its analysis of more than 900m online news stories, it found there was a “huge” absence of coverage of structural gaps disproportionately affecting women, such as pay and health disparities.

Before & After Covid19

Between 2017 and April 2022, less than one in 5,000 news stories globally featured any reference to these issues. Global news coverage of gender equality issues had declined from 0.56% before the Covid-19 pandemic to 0.44% since.

Kassova said that although there was “no silver bullet” media organizations could make a real difference by conducting gender and race disparity audits; setting targets, possibly relatively moderate ones, to improve representation, and committing to broadening coverage.

As well as the moral imperative, there is a significant financial incentive, according to the report’s authors. If the global news industry, creaking under the pressure of declining newspaper sales, was able to reduce the gender news consumption gap by just one percentage point a year over the next decade, it would generate additional cumulative revenues of $11bn (£9bn) by 2027 and $38bn by 2032, they say.

Kassova said that when making the case for greater female representation in media companies she had often been met with a counter-argument focusing on the risk posed to men’s employment by the hiring of more top-level women.

“The answer to this is that women are a lifeline,” she said. “And by engaging them through the whole news value chain better – and thus increasing female audiences – this will reduce revenue loss and … men in leading organizations… are less likely to lose their jobs rather than more likely to lose them.”

The report was prepared by the consultancy AKAS and was commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Source: The Guardian

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EuropeSociety

NEW; More Women Now Make as Much as Their Husbands-but still work more at home

by Narges Mohammadi

GENDER PAY GAP/ Few women will be surprised to learn that even when wives earn about the same as their husbands or more, a new Pew Research Center study finds that they still spend more time on housework and child care, while their husbands spend more time on paid work and leisure.

“Even as financial contributions have become more equal in marriages, the way couples divide their time between paid work and home life remains unbalanced,” Pew noted.

So who’s earning what?

Pew found that in 29% of heterosexual marriages today, women and men earn about the same (roughly $60,000 each). “Husbands in egalitarian marriages spend about 3.5 hours more per week on leisure activities than wives do. Wives in these marriages spend roughly 2 hours more per week on caregiving than husbands do and about 2.5 hours more on housework,” the study notes.

In 55% of opposite-sex marriages, men are the primary or sole breadwinners, earning a median of $96,000 to their wives’ $30,000.

Meanwhile, in 16% of marriages, the wives out earn their husbands as the primary (10%) or sole breadwinner (6%). In these marriages, women earn a median of $88,000 to their husbands’ $35,000.

Of all of these categories, the only one in which men are reported to spend more time caregiving than their wives is when the woman is the sole breadwinner. And the time spent per week on household chores in those marriages is split evenly between husbands and wives.

In all instances, it’s a big change from 50 years ago — when, for instance, husbands were the primary breadwinner in 85% of marriages.

Women most likely to be the biggest earner

Today, which women are most likely to be the primary or sole breadwinners can vary by age, family status, education, and race.

For instance, Pew found Black women are “significantly more likely” than other women to earn more than their husbands. For instance, 26% of Black women bring home more than their husbands, while only 17% of White women and 13% of Hispanic women do.

But Black women with a college degree or higher and few children at home are also among the most likely to earn about the same as their husbands.

These numbers are reported against a backdrop of society’s attitudes about who should earn more and how caregiving should be divvied up between spouses.

Nearly half of Americans (48%) in Pew’s survey said husbands prefer to earn more than their wives, while 13% said men would prefer their wives earn about the same as them.

What do women want? Twenty-two percent of Americans said most women want a husband who earns more, while 26% said most would want a man who earns about the same.

Meanwhile, when it comes to having a family, 77% said that children are better off when both parents focus equally on their job and on taking care of the kids. Only 19% said children are better off when their mother focuses more on home life and their father focuses more on his job.

The Pew study is based on three data sources: earnings data from the US Census’ Current Population Survey; data from the American Time Use Survey and a nationally representative survey of public attitudes among 5,152 US adults conducted in January.

Source: CNN

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EuropePolitics

Politics as Usual?; Rising Violence Against Female Politicians is a Threat to Democracy

by Narges Mohammadi

BRITAIN/ On 12 July, MPs took part in a Westminster Hall debate on abuse and intimidation of candidates and the public in the recent UK elections. During the debate, Chris Skidmore, the Minister for the Constitution, announced that Prime Minister Theresa May had requested that the Committee on Standards in Public Life carry out a review – firstly, to examine the nature of the problem and its implications for candidates and office holders and, secondly, to consider whether measures already in place to deal with this issue are sufficient, effective, and enforceable.

Research published in 2016 and 2017 indicates that the vast majority of British MPs have experienced ‘intrusive or aggressive behavior’ from constituents, while more than half of female MPs report having received physical threats. News reports suggest that intimidation and harassment have been on the rise for at least the last several years, with the online harassment of Stella Creasy being perhaps the most well-known case. Assassination of Jo Cox in June 2016, however, brought this issue into greater focus – and highlighted that women, in particular, appear to be targeted more often and more viciously than their male colleagues.

Over the past year, numerous MPs have reported online rape and death threats, including Jess Phillips, Yvette Cooper and Anna Soubry. In some cases, these attacks have occurred on multiple fronts, with misogyny combining with homophobia against Angela Eagle, racism against Diane Abbott, and anti-semitism against Luciana Berger.

Further Information

Shortly after the 2017 general elections, some Conservative MPs began to share their experiences, with Sheryll Murray and Sarah Wollaston divulging threats received on social media, as well as incidents of vandalism and intimidation occurring at their homes and offices. In early July, the Citizens Commission on Islam, Participation, and Public Life published Missing Muslims, with a section detailing harassment of British Muslim women aspiring to participate in local politics.

In 2011, for example, the United Nations General Assembly approved Resolution 66/130, calling for zero tolerance for violence against female candidates and elected officials. Furthermore in 2015, states-parties to the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women endorsed a Declaration on Political Harassment and Violence against Women. In 2017, the French Senate approved an amendment that would disqualify those found guilty of sexual or psychological harassment from holding political office.

In a recent article published in the Journal of Democracy, I map these emerging global debates, focusing on the nature of the problem, its implications for candidates and other office-holders, and solutions that might be employed by different actors to address this problem. These international experiences provide a useful starting point for the work of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, enabling it to focus its efforts on developing strategies to combat political violence and harassment in all its manifestations.

What is violence against women in politics?

International actors typically define violence and harassment against women in politics as (1) aggressive acts toward female political actors, faced largely or only by women; (2) because they are women, often using gendered means of attack; (3) in order to deter their participation, as a way to preserve traditional gender roles and undermine democratic institutions. This definition seeks to go beyond traditional understandings of political and electoral violence and harassment, understood as attempts to defeat or silence a particular political perspective through force.

Present debates seek to expand the discussion to address efforts to exclude and silence women specifically – sometimes due to their political affiliation, but also, more often, in spite of it.

The result is that female politicians often confront similar challenges as their male colleagues, stemming from their work as public servants, while also facing resistance and even danger in spaces accessible and safe for men – like political assemblies, party meetings, their offices, and their homes.

Differences in male and female politicians

Differences in male and female politicians’ experiences on social media illustrate these dynamics: while both women and men are (and, for democratic reasons, should be) criticized online for their policy positions, female MPs – and women who voice their opinions more generally – tend to be attacked in highly personalized, sexualised, and often vitriolic ways.

To be sure, there are high levels of political disaffection among the public towards politics and politicians and, when asked to compare the US Congress to a series of unpleasant things, respondents reported a higher opinion of root canals, cockroaches, and traffic jams.

Even in such a context, however, individuals tend to express greater levels of hostility toward female as compared to male leaders, judging women to be less likeable, qualified, and competent despite equivalent profiles.

Devastating consequences for democracy

Normalizing the abuse of public figures – and dismissing sexism and misogyny in the political world – as simply the ‘cost of doing politics’ has devastating consequences for the quality of democracy.

First, it can undermine the will of voters by skewing electoral outcomes and rendering elected representatives less effective. Sexist comments and the sexual objectification of female politicians can have a critical impact on their electoral fortunes, while sexist hostility and intimidation can detract from substantive policy work and drive female politicians to step down.

Second, violence and harassment can impoverish political discourse by truncating the diversity of perspectives brought into the policy-making process. Women whose presence challenges multiple inequalities are frequently targeted, like Cécile Kyenge, the first black minister in Italy, who had bananas and racist epithets thrown at her.

Former Texas state senator Wendy Davis noted: ‘I have lots of bots who follow me. I could literally say it’s a beautiful day in Texas and the responses I get on Twitter are “baby murderer.”’

Third, violence and harassment directed at women can restrict women’s political rights. Motivated by a desire to preserve traditional gender roles, perpetrators may target individual women, but in so doing, communicate a broader message that women as a group should not participate in politics.

Fighting perceptions that this is just ‘politics as usual’

Together with online harassers – whose identities are often more difficult to ascertain amid fake and anonymous accounts, as well as automated bots and communities of trolls – this landscape calls for a multi-level, multi-actor response.

A crucial first step is to resist dismissing violence and harassment as simply ‘politics as usual.’ In 2016, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) launched the #NotTheCost campaign to stop violence against women in politics, arguing that violence is not the cost of doing politics: women should be able to be politically active without experiencing discrimination, harassment, or assault.

At the state level, the National Commission on the Status of Women in Pakistan began collecting official data on violence against women in politics in 2015. In Mexico, various state agencies came together in 2016 to develop a protocol to coordinate their work to combat political violence and harassment.

Within parliaments, legislators have launched reforms to criminalize political violence and harassment, such as a law passed in Bolivia in 2012 and bills proposed in at least five other Latin American countries. In 2014, an all-party committee in the Canadian House of Commons instituted a new code of conduct and procedure for handling sexual harassment complaints.

Final Word

There is no doubt, however, that global momentum is building as women and men around the world recognise that violence against women in politics poses a serious and growing threat to democracy. In the words of former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “When a woman participates in politics, she should be putting her hopes and dreams for the future on the line, not her dignity and not her life.”

Source: London School of Economics Blog

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North AmericaWomen Pioneers

First Female Executive Director Appointed at Human Rights Watch ©

by Narges Mohammadi

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA/ Human Rights Watch wrote in a statement published on its website, “Tirana Hassan”, a 48-year-old woman who first joined the organization in 2010, became the first woman to hold the position of Executive Director of this non-governmental organization.

What is HRW?

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is a non-governmental organization headquartered in New York City that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policymakers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners.

In 1997, HRW shared the Nobel Peace Prize as a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. It played a leading role in the 2008 treaty banning cluster munitions.

HRW’s annual expenses totaled $50.6 million in 2011,$69.2 million in 2014, and $75.5 million in 2017.

HRW publishes research reports on violations of international human rights norms as set out by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and what it perceives to be other internationally accepted human-rights norms. These reports are used as the basis for drawing international attention to abuses and pressuring governments and international organizations to reform.

Tirana Hassan

In this way, in this position, Tirana Hassan succeeded “Kenneth Roth” who worked for 29 years as the head of this non-governmental organization.

Reviewing the statement published by Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan is a lawyer and researcher in the field of human rights and has documented human rights violations in crises and wars around the world.

Tirana Hassan was born in Singapore. Her father is Pakistani and her mother is Chinese Malaysian born in Sri Lanka.

She temporarily replaced Kenneth Roth from the position of executive director of HRW in September 2022.

According to this statement, Tirana Hassan left Human Rights Watch to work for Amnesty International and returned to Human Rights Watch as a program manager in 2020.

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EuropeSociety

Exploring The Key Issues Facing Girls & Young Women Today

by Narges Mohammadi

SURVEY/ Girl-guiding’s Girls’ Attitudes Survey 2022 asks girls and young women-how they feel about their everyday lives and today’s pressures.

The survey was taken by 3,015 girls and young women aged 7-21 across the UK. The findings of the survey are useful to charities looking to understand what the group cares about today. They study their biggest challenges they are facing, and how they are getting involved in their communities.

The issues girls and young women care about

The survey asked respondents to rank the importance of some key issues.

The girls and young women surveyed voted mental health as the most important issue. Following this was women’s and girls’ safety, then equality and inclusion. Respondents ranked climate change as the fourth most important issue.

This is useful information for understanding the demographic, both in terms of adapting relevant services to the group and engaging them with the charitable projects they feel most passionate about.  

The survey also reflected that more and more girls and young women are identifying as feminists, with a steady increase from 35% in 2013 to 47% in 2018, and finally to 54% in 2022.

Appearance Pressures Impact Mental Health & Wellbeing

When it comes to mental health and wellbeing, Girl-guiding identifies appearance pressures as a “real challenge” for girls and young women, especially as they get older. Happiness with appearance declines from 42% in girls aged 7 to 10 to 10% in those aged 17 to 21.

Over a third of girls and young women between 11 and 21 don’t like posting pictures of themselves on social media unless they use filters or apps to change their appearance.

Charities looking to support the mental health and wellbeing of girls and young women might therefore prioritize addressing the specific issue of appearance pressures upon the group.   

Feeling Unsafe In Public, Online, & at School

The survey found that over half of girls and young women aged 11 to 21 said they don’t feel safe when they’re outside on their own. A quarter (26%) of girls and young women don’t feel safe when they’re online, and around 1 in 5 of the group don’t feel safe in school.

Girl-guiding advocate Maddie from Southwest England comments: “It’s unsurprising to see girls and young women are feeling unsafe in many areas of life right now, this being higher in marginalized groups. Changes are being made to education and it’s good this seems to be working. However, more needs to be done to make sure girls can enjoy their lives without fearing for their safety.”

Seeing & Experiencing Sexism & Stereotypes

Sexism and stereotypes influence several aspects of life for girls and young women.

For 11–21-year-olds, sexism was experienced the most online and on social media (80%, which has risen from 68% in 2018). 73% said they experienced sexism in the media, and 68% said they experienced it in public places such as parks and public transport.

Experiencing sexism at school, college, university, or work has increased from 58% in 2018 to 66% in 2022. Over a fifth of girls aged 11 to 21 said gender stereotypes hold them back in school, while one in six respondents aged between 13 and 21 say fear of sexual harassment holds them back in school.

The survey also found that girls and women experienced several barriers to taking part in sport and physical activity. This includes insecurity (48% of those aged 11 to 21), some sports only being available for boys (21%), sport being too expensive (16%), feeling unsafe (13%), and experiencing sexism while taking part in sport (59%).

How Girls & Young Women Are Taking Community Action

A high number of girls and young women are getting involved in their communities. Over a third of those surveyed helped to improve their local area in the past year, while a third engaged in fundraising. Across the UK, 59% supported people who aren’t friends or relatives, and 61% donated money or goods.

Just under a third of girls and young women campaigned for something they believe in over the past year, while nearly half have helped a charity or cause.

Angela Salt OBE, the CEO of Girl-guiding, comments: “I am…encouraged by their unwavering enthusiasm for social and community action, and inspired by their commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.”

Source: Charity Digital Blog

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EuropeHealth

‘I got a brain injury and a life sentence’: the hidden legacy of male violence against women

by Narges Mohammadi

HEALTH/ The effects of head trauma on athletes are well documented. Finally, a UK study is examining the long-term brain health of females abused by their partner The violence began long before Freya Doe* married at 18 – and it quickly escalated. “It was what I thought love was,” she says, speaking on Zoom from her home in the US. On one occasion, her husband punched her in the face, threw her off a porch, and repeatedly slammed her head on the ground. He threatened her with one of the several guns he owned and then strangled her until she lost consciousness. When she came to, he was talking on the phone, saying: “I finally did it. I finally killed the bitch.”

Blood vessels in her eyes had burst. She was in hospital for a week. Twenty-two X-rays were taken of her head, neck, back, and chest. “I was told the migraines would go away. They didn’t,” she says.

Doe left her husband after 18 months. “He slams your head against a wall – which he used to do a lot – and a couple of days later, he [does it] again. Your brain doesn’t have time to recover from those traumas.” Fifteen years later, in her 30s, Doe thought she was experiencing early-onset dementia. She would forget words and suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. Then, in 2017, she read an article by US neuroscientist Dr. Eve Valera, a pioneer in the field, and she understood. Her ex-husband’s violence had damaged her brain. “I laugh about it now,” she says, “so I don’t cry.”

Brain Injury

The connection between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global scandal and a public health secret. In the UK, it is hard to find any reference to it on websites concerning violence against women and girls, women’s organizations, major brain injury charities, or in training for health, police, and social workers. Yet physically, mentally, and emotionally it can affect thousands of women over their lifetime, long after the abuse has ended.

Precisely how many is unknown but in the UK now, for the first time, a longitudinal study is underway to try to establish the potential scale of the numbers of people affected and investigate the long-term brain health risks associated with exposure to IPV.

The Drake IPV study was established in 2021 and is due to publish its first two papers soon. It is headed by Glasgow University neuropathologist Prof William Stewart. The study focuses on women who are participating in Prevent Dementia, a UK-wide longitudinal study looking at risk factors for dementia in midlife.

“Remarkably, up to 30% of women may experience IPV over their lifetime, yet so little is understood,” says Stewart. “Even that statistic makes people sit up and say: ‘Hang on a second, that can’t be right.’ But it is. Sadly, studies and pathology of IPV-related TBI are vanishingly small.”

Drake Foundation

Scientific publisher James Drake initially established the Drake Foundation in 2014 to understand and improve the health and welfare of people in sports affected by head injuries. Research has since established that footballers have four to five times the risk of developing dementia than the general public. In 2021, 1.7 million women in England and Wales experienced domestic violence.

How many are also at increased risk of dementia? “You’re doing my head in” may yet prove all too true. The brain, floating in fluid, is highly fragile. Injury is caused by a hard blow or jolt that causes the head to move rapidly back and forth. Injury can also happen from lack of oxygen to the brain as a result of strangulation or suffocation.

One extreme consequence of multiple concussions is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which may mimic forms of dementia and the development of neurodegenerative diseases. CTE is only established after death by a post-mortem. Doe, now in her 50s and happily remarried, has had to cut down her work and suffers from neural fatigue, anxiety, migraines, and dizziness. “It’s damage that’s progressive and it’s going to last my lifetime,” she says.

“At Glasgow, we have the largest archive of brain tissue for research globally,” Stewart says, “25% to 30% female. Undoubtedly, we must have many cases of unrecognized IPV-related brain injury in our archive, but the stories remain hidden.”

Standing Courageous

Individuals who have become campaigners, like Doe, do have personal stories to tell. Paula Walters is another survivor. She founded Standing Courageous, a non-profit organization, in Ohio in 2015. In 2006, her then-boyfriend threatened her at gunpoint. He hit, kicked, and strangled her. “I don’t know if I should kiss you or kill you,” he said. He was given probation and a fine. “I got a disability and a life sentence.”

Walters developed problems with balance. She became forgetful and irritable and found it difficult to concentrate. She was constantly tired and avoided bright lights and noisy areas. Medical bills left her in debt as one incorrect diagnosis followed another. A paramedic, she lost her job.

It took 13 years before Walters received a correct diagnosis – traumatic brain injury caused by IPV, revealed by an MRI scan. Since 2019 she has been getting her life back on track. “I didn’t realize how sick I was until I felt well,” she has said.

Now she speaks publicly about IPV-related TBI and trains professionals, including the police. They may see a woman in a confused state and unable to get her story straight and assume she is lying or drunk. The signs of brain injury are rarely recognized. In 2019, the domestic abuse charity SafeLives conducted research for the Disabilities Trust. It revealed that 81% of practitioners supporting survivors of domestic abuse had no training in brain injuries and 62% felt unprepared to identify symptoms.

More Details of the Research for Disabilities Trust

Survivors themselves may fail to realize the true cause of their lives falling apart – behavior that may result in eviction from a refuge, a failure to navigate benefits, housing, employment, and the loss of a child because of perceived “failings” as a mother. “Taking the children away and giving them to the abuser, what sense does that make?” asks Valera. In the 1990s she was studying neuropsychology while volunteering in a women’s shelter where users were reporting many post-concussive symptoms. Valera linked. “I heard what the women were saying. Shockingly, my search for literature on this topic yielded zero results.”

Undaunted, and unable to acquire proper funding, Valera conducted her research “on a shoestring”. She interviewed 99 women in a shelter: 75% reported at least one brain injury sustained from partners, and half reported sometimes many more. Interviewees had major cognitive difficulties and suffered from high levels of anxiety and depression.

Thirty years later Valera points out that while there has been lavish funding and a plethora of concussion-related research into “punch drunk syndrome” in boxing and a range of other sports and the military, the connection between battered women and brain injury has only just begun to attract attention. Why the delay?

“We live in a patriarchal society and women are still second class,” Valera says. “We aren’t given the same appreciation in science. Males, including in animal research, are studied far more than females.” Valera also points out that while athletics makes money, dealing with the aftermath of male violence does not. “Money is key.”

The Enigma

The Enigma (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis) consortium is an ambitious global attempt to study neuroimaging, cognitive, psychological, and genetic data to uncover biomarkers and outcomes associated with different diseases and disorders. Set up in 2009, it now encompasses over 40 countries, 1,400 scientists, 200 institutions, and 50 working sub-groups examining areas such as schizophrenia, autism, brain injury, and the development of aging. The group has already accessed over 50,000 participants.

Five years ago, the Enigma brain working team developed a sub-group to investigate IPV-related brain injury – except that, globally, very limited data on IPV-related violence exists. “At the time, I don’t think people in our field understood how high the prevalence of brain injury and head trauma is in people with exposure to intimate partner violence,” says Dr. Carrie Esopenko, head of the sub-group.

Not all brain injury is apparent when individuals are seeking support so, says Esopenko, the right questions must be asked – by police, by health professionals, by researchers. She is also conducting a separate brain study of IPV. “We received a multimillion-dollar grant in 2021 but this is a marathon, not a sprint.”

As research develops, questions to be answered include how much IPV may increase a woman’s risk of dementia, as well as her fertility and health, later in life. It ought also to trigger a reappraisal in policing and the criminal justice system of a crime that can inflict more injury than initially is apparent. In 2019, the Canadian government gave $1m for research on IPV-related TBI to Soar (Supporting Survivors of Abuse and Brain Injury through Research) set up three years earlier in British Columbia by Karen Mason, head of a women’s shelter, and neuroscientist Dr Paul van Donkelaar.

Goals of Soar

Soar has three goals, “Explore, Educate, Empower”.

“When you think about injuries in sport, people choose to do it anyway,” Doe says. “But a victim of IPV is an unwilling participant.”

One woman who suffered at least three concussions at the hands of her ex-partner suggested to her doctor that the violence might be the cause of her migraines. She was told: “Let’s not go chasing zebras every time we hear hoofbeats.” By contrast, at Soar, survivors receive six months of part-time holistic rehabilitation services that include counseling, occupational therapy, aerobic exercise, meditation, and help addressing health and practical problems, plus follow-up support.

“I have yet to meet a woman who doesn’t find it empowering just to know that TBI is part of their trauma versus not knowing,” Valera says.

The dots haven’t yet been fully joined up but awareness is growing. In 2019 the Disabilities Trust organized a roundtable of frontline professionals and called for “uniquely tailored support”. More recently, research revealed that four in five women prisoners in Scotland have a history of significant head injury, while the Brain Charity announced a free program to support those who work with offenders with brain injury and other neurodiversity.

Last week, the Institute for Addressing Strangulation (IFAS) opened and it, too, hopes to improve training and awareness of the risk of brain injury.

“What can we do if we do learn more?” says Professor Stewart. “If the answer is ‘nothing’, I wouldn’t be doing this work.”

Source: The Guardian

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AsiaPolitics

AGAIN; The Taliban Government Suppresses Women’s Demonstrations in Kabul ©

by Narges Mohammadi

AFGHANISTAN/Afghan women protested against the continued Taliban ban on girls’ education. There chants were “Education is our right“, “Right, justice, freedom” and “Either all or none“.

The first demonstration of Afghan women this year was held in the west of Kabul. The Taliban government suppressed these protests “violently”.

When the protestors arrived at the “school station” in the west of Kabul, they faced the obstruction of the Taliban troops who disrupted the women’s demonstration with “violence” and “insults”. They arrested three women in these protests.

According to the information provided by certain sources, Malala Hashemi, Roqia SaeI, and Fatemeh Mohammadi are the women who were arrested. We have no further information about their fate until now.

Female protesters say that the Taliban transferred these women to the 13th security district of Kabul City after their arrest, and they still do not have more information about them.

Continuation of Oppressing Women

The three women who were arrested by the Taliban group; were the first group of female protesters who were imprisoned in 2023.

Afghan protesting women say that the arrest of these three women is a sign of the continuation of the Taliban group’s policy of oppression against women.

One of the protesting women, told a news reporter that “Taliban are afraid of women’s street protests, and that is why they suppress these protests with absolute violence.”

The journalist added that they had started their demonstration by observing the full hijab and in a completely peaceful manner.

Another female protester also says that Afghan women have been deprived of all their rights under the rule of the Taliban group for more than a year and a half.

She says that “Our girls are in a bad mental state and live in their homes like a prisoner.”

According to what she says, they will not be “stopped” by oppression and violence. If such a policy could have stopped them, their protests would not have continued for the past year and a half.

Request for the immediate release of the detainees

By publishing leaflets, demonstrators say that they are worried about the fate of the 3 women that are now in the custody of the Taliban group and want them to be released immediately.

Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur for human rights of the United Nations in Afghanistan, also called for the immediate release of the women who have been arrested by Taliban.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Afghanistan has called for the “immediate” and “unconditional” release of the 3 women.

Human rights organizations call the policy of the Taliban group towards women “sexual apartheid” and demand its recognition by the international community.

These institutions say that the international community should practically stand by the women of Afghanistan and not limit themselves to issuing declarations in response to the Taliban’s misogynistic policies.

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EuropeSociety

NEW; No Reward For Leaning in-The Workplace Toll of Emotional Labor

by Narges Mohammadi

OPINION/Women are expected to play an impossible game in workplace: show compassion and submission while being assertive and confident

When Devin McNalley, a Michigan native, landed a job in marketing at a large legacy automotive company in her 20s, she couldn’t wait to prove her worth. Her university degree in communications and a self-starter attitude that had transformed a server job into a PR one made her believe she could do good work, get noticed, and even start to meaningfully climb the corporate ladder.

The Story

Devin was entering a male-dominated industry, but she didn’t blink at it. Her mother was among the first generation of women to enter white-collar industries en masse in the second half of the 20th century. The figure of a corporate woman was normal to her, and she had good reason to believe her qualifications, combined with her natural intelligence, charm, and assertiveness, would work in her favor as she sought to get ahead.

Only a few years prior, in 2010, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s then-COO, delivered a viral Ted Talk titled Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders, followed by a 2013 bestselling book, Lean In. Her insight promised younger women like Devin the tools to do what few women of older generations had managed: climb the corporate ladder and thrive.

Sandberg called on women to act as if they belonged in positions of power and be as self-assured as the men who didn’t hesitate to center themselves and their ideas. She posited that women tended to lean out in professional settings, where they needed to lean in. Sandberg’s message was clear and empowering: with the right kind of individual attitude, personal life choices, and toning down of apologetic feminine behaviors, women could finally move forward, and up. Her ideas hit a nerve with women in America and beyond.

The cherry on the cake came when one of her male directors told her she ‘came across as really abrasive for a woman’

Devin, entering the workforce just as this worldwide cultural phenomenon was taking place, knew that if anyone was unafraid of grabbing a seat at the table, leaning in, and making their voice heard when they knew their stuff, it was her.

Soon enough, an opportunity arose.

Invited into an all-male marketing meeting on tactics for “reaching millennials”, which was then the largest young generation over 18, she remembers listening dumbfounded as the men in the room proposed a strategy focused on the use of print magazines for advertising. There was no mention of social media, let alone any inquiring as to the degree young people read physical magazines.

It was instantly clear to her that this would not work. Her insight crystallized even further when meeting attendees proposed – to widespread approval – a “sticker” idea, which would involve free stickers in these print magazines that could be peeled out and stuck on objects. The idea could not have seemed more out of touch to a member of a generation that receives most of its information online.

Devin thought this strategy would not resonate with any of her contemporaries, let alone reach them. As a member of the marketing team as well as a member of the millennial group the whole meeting was about, she believed the point was worth sharing.

She recalls enunciating, “This is a really bad idea,” before going into a clear explanation of the problems with the proposed ideas. The room froze.

This is how Devin had witnessed the men in the meeting talk to one another, regardless of status or age. She was simply interacting with them the way she had observed them interacting with each other. But for a woman, this kind of behavior carried penalties, she learned.

Her lean-in moment, alas, did not carry any rewards. Quite the contrary.

A male colleague from another team turned to her and asked whether she shouldn’t be quiet and take notes. After the meeting, well-meaning older women, who had heard of the incident, sought her out. She thought she might receive sympathy or shared shock. Instead, she received a reprimand. “They told me the only way you are going to get ahead in the corporate world is to boost the male egos around you” – a form of emotional labor, making male colleagues and superiors feel good, specifically tied to affirming their power. It rang like a metaphorical constant kissing of the ring. The cherry on the cake came when one of her male directors chimed in in an email, telling her she “came across as really abrasive for a woman”.

In particular, the use of the word “abrasive” was a trigger point for Devin. Men around her were allowed to be just as direct, if not more, but she was being penalized with an adjective that was deeply gendered: a double standard in emotion expression requirements that seemed grossly unfair. She had never witnessed a man being told off for objecting to an idea, however bluntly, let alone being told they were abrasive. And yet word got around and everyone in the company knew about her comments in the meeting and what they meant about Devin.

Devin talked to her mother, who told her to finesse her tone and learn how to adapt to some of the cultures, which felt hard to swallow. “I entered the workforce sort of naïve.  Expecting competition. I knew there was a pay inequality issue I needed to be aware of, but I didn’t expect this.”

What Happened?

It only became worse. Her female boss suggested, among other tips, that she add smileys to emails. Even digitally, she had to present as upbeat and non-threatening.

In all communications, she was expected to do the emotional labor of making sure she made people feel good, as a priority over and indeed a prerequisite to the actual requirements of her job.

Devin’s lesson was a harsh one, but growing bodies of research show that her experience was somewhat predictable. One paper from 2018 posed the question of why, despite shrinking differences in career aspirations between genders, women were still a minority in leadership positions. Zooming in on 236 engineers at a big multinational company, 23% of them women, the study surveyed engineers on their self-perceptions and also asked colleagues and superiors to assess them.

The authors found that competent engineers were perceived as equally confident and ambitious, regardless of gender. But this “confidence appearance” was linked to gender-based differences when it came to workers’ likelihood of then getting ahead.

Men

For men, being perceived as competent and confident were the two ingredients that led them to gain influence and rise. Do well and act like you know what you are doing: a simple recipe.

But for women, these two attributes were insufficient for career advancement. If women wanted to gain influence in the same way as their male counterparts, they needed to also possess and display what is known in organizational psychology as “prosocial orientation”. Prosocial orientation consists of those communal attributes often associated with the female gender: being other-oriented, concerned, and considerate of others’ interests, as well as the company’s interests, being sweet, caring, nurturing, and expressing thoughtfulness. Performing comforting stereotypes of womanhood was found to be an additional, implicit requirement for women to achieve success.

In other words, doing their job was not enough. There was an extra layer of work required of them: they had to perform emotional labor.

Emotional Labor

For a lot of female workers, this is a catch-22. If you must be seen to be extremely considerate of other people’s needs and sensitivities to advance, it can be difficult to also present as assertive and confident.

Much as sexual harassment makes women feel a lack of power, forcing women to exhibit supportive, caring, and submissive traits acts as a way of reinforcing women’s support-act role. The same applies to men of color, particularly Black men, expected to engage in constant communication and presentation of self-policing and submissive expressions to avoid racist stereotypes and penalties.

Of course, that is part of what Sandberg understood when she told generations of female workers to lean in: to rid themselves of secondary-citizen status and behave like winners. But this cannot be done until we recognize the uneven emotional labor requirements.

Micro & Macro Injustices

These micro and macro injustices are given life through the deployment of a backlash effect, threatening individuals straying from gender norms with not just social penalties but economic penalties too. This is made possible as people across genders engage in policing of others and of themselves, conspiring – intentionally or not – to maintain rigid stereotypes. For women, expected constantly to be displaying nurturing, altruistic qualities, taking on what is called “agentic” behavior – dominant, assertive, competitive – to ascend professionally causes backlash.

To modulate the backlash, and not be seen as too hungry for power or too eager to get ahead, women have to play a game of compensation. As they assert themselves as competent and confident, they must also dole out doses of reassuring emotional labor. Because these two sets of character traits are often cast in opposition to each other – as expressions of domination and submission rather than as complementary – conveying both can feel impossible. This becomes even more of a burden for anyone who veers from traditional, heteronormative behavioral scripts, particularly for those of us whose brains process social situations differently, whether because of neurodivergence or any other unseen reason.

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