Tag:

womenempowerment

The Wife was the target BUT the Husband got attacked

by Narges Mohammadi October 30, 2022

The house of the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker attacked last Friday

An intruder who attacked the husband of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was searching for the Democratic politician, reports say.

Paul Pelosi, 82, was taken to hospital after a break-in at their California home on Friday morning. The suspect has been identified as a 42-year-old man and is facing criminal charges including attempted homicide. He broke a glass rear door and – after confronting Mr. Pelosi – reportedly shouted: “Where is Nancy?”

Mrs. Pelosi was in Washington, and not at the San Francisco residence, when the incident took place. A spokesman for the senior Democrat said on Friday afternoon that Mr. Pelosi “was attacked at home by an assailant who acted with force, and threatened his life while demanding to see the Speaker”.

He was admitted to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital “where he underwent successful surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands”, the spokesman continued, adding that his doctors expect a full recovery.

In a news conference on Friday, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said officers responded to a call at around 02:27 local time (09:27 GMT) in the city’s wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood. They found Mr. Pelosi and the suspect – named by police as David DePape – both struggling over a hammer, but it was wrestled from Mr. Pelosi’s control by the suspect, who violently assaulted him with it.

The suspect was then tackled and disarmed by officers. He had attempted to tie up Mr. Pelosi “until Nancy got home”, law enforcement sources told CBS News. He is facing charges of assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and several other felonies, Mr. Scott said, adding that the motive for the attack was still unclear.

Mrs Pelosi is one of the most powerful politicians in the country. She was re-elected to a fourth term as Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2021, making her second in line to the presidency after Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The Baltimore native has represented the San Francisco area in Congress since 1987, and typically splits her time between California and Washington. She is currently fundraising and campaigning with Democrats around the country ahead of the midterm elections on 8 November, and was in Washington with her security detail at the time of the attack. Mrs. Pelosi was expected to arrive at the hospital later on Friday, a source told CBS News in San Francisco.

Her husband, the multimillionaire founder of a venture capital firm, resides primarily in San Francisco where he was born and raised. The couple have been married since 1963 and have five children. Their combined net worth, primarily from Mr. Pelosi’s investments, has made the speaker one of the richest members of Congress.

The FBI and the US Capitol Police, which has a field office in California, are assisting San Francisco police with the investigation. The US Capitol Police, which is tasked with protecting congressional leaders, is said to be considering additional protections for families following the attack.

Members of Congress have been on high-alert over security threats since the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021. Mrs Pelosi’s office in the building was ransacked by supporters of then-President Donald Trump during the attack.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that while her husband, Paul, continues to improve following Friday’s violent attack in their San Francisco home, their children and grandchildren “are heartbroken and traumatized.” “Yesterday morning, a violent man broke into our family home, demanded to confront me and brutally attacked my husband Paul,” Pelosi wrote. “Our children, our grandchildren and I are heartbroken and traumatized by the life-threatening attack on our Pop.”

Source: CNN

October 30, 2022 0 comment

Culture North America

Three Books: Julia Boorstin ’00 on Women Who Lead

by Narges Mohammadi October 30, 2022

Julia Boorstin ’00 is the author of When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, How We Can Learn From Them. She is also CNBC’s senior media and tech correspondent and a part of the network’s tech-focused show, Tech Check.

In her new book she tells the stories of dozens of female leaders who have defied the odds, weaving them together with research and studies on the power of these women’s approaches, explaining how everyone can learn from them.

Boorstin suggests some leadership traits that have traditionally been seen as more “female” — empathy, vulnerability, gratitude, and a communal approach — are exactly what everyone needs right now to succeed in business. On her social media, she shared three books about female leaders that truly inspired her.

My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

By Indra Nooyi

Indra Nooyi is a legend – not only one of the most well-respected CEOs of all time, but she was also the first woman of color and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company. She led one of the biggest companies in the world, PepsiCo, with a great sense of gratitude and profound purpose, driving it to be far more environmentally sustainable and focused on healthier products. Her story of courage and grit is amazing and her call on business leaders to prioritize policies that support women and families is compelling and actionable.

Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower

By Alyse Nelson

This beautifully illustrated book celebrates 100 remarkable women from Ruth Bader Ginsberg to Manal Al-Sharif to Tarana Burke. Each woman’s story is paired with a colorful portrait. I leave this book on the table in our family room so my two sons can see the amazing diversity of game-changing women and learn about their journeys. It’s a great gift for families to help kids see this wide variety of women as role models.

Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change

By Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams not only shares her own powerful story, but she also explains the power of being an outsider. This book serves as a roadmap for all people who are outside power structures to help identify their passion and find the courage to fight for change. Abrams’ focus on transforming an outsider status from a disadvantage into a superpower is something I write about in my book When Women Lead, and I have found it is a key way to drive personal growth.

Source: Princeton University Website

October 30, 2022 0 comment

Health North America

Fasting has impacts on women’s reproductive system

by Narges Mohammadi October 30, 2022

New evidence on how intermittent fasting impacts women’s reproductive hormones; read the article as follows

Intermittent fasting has been shown to be an effective way in losing weight; but critics have worried that the practice may have a negative impact on women’s reproductive hormones. Now, a team of University of Illinois Chicago researchers has published a study in Obesity ,that brings new evidence to the table.

The researchers, led by Krista Varady, UIC professor of nutrition; followed a group of pre- and post-menopausal obese women for a period of eight weeks on the “warrior diet” method of intermittent fasting.

The warrior diet prescribes a time-restricted feeding window of four hours per day, during which dieters can eat without counting calories before resuming a water fast until the next day.

They measured the differences in hormone levels, obtained by analyzing blood sample data; in groups of dieters who stuck to four- and six-hour feeding windows against a control group that followed no diet restrictions.

Results

Varady and her team found that levels of sex-binding globulin hormone, a protein that carries reproductive hormones throughout the body; was unchanged in the dieters after eight weeks. The same held true for both testosterone and androstenedione, a steroid hormone that the body uses to produce both testosterone and estrogen.

However, dehydroepiandrosterone or DHEA, a hormone that fertility clinics prescribe to improve ovarian function and egg quality, was significantly lower in both pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women at the end of the trial, dropping by about 14%.

While the drop in DHEA levels was the most significant finding of the study, in both pre- and post-menopausal women, DHEA levels remained within the normal range by the end of the eight-week period.

As an added benefit, since high DHEA has been linked to the risk breast cancer; Varady said a moderate drop in levels might be helpful in reducing that risk for both pre- and post-menopausal women.

The study measured levels of estradiol, estrone and progesterone -; all hormones vital to pregnancy -; as well, but only in post-menopausal women, due to the changing levels of these hormones throughout pre-menopausal women’s menstrual cycles. Among post-menopausal women, there was no change in these hormones at the end of eight weeks.

Women in both the four-hour and six-hour dieting groups experienced weight loss of 3% to 4% of their baseline weight throughout the course of the study; compared with the control group, which had almost no weight loss. The dieters also saw a drop in insulin resistance and in biomarkers of oxidative stress.

Still, Varady said, “I think this is a great first step. We’ve observed thousands of pre- and post-menopausal women through different alternate-day fasting and time-restricted eating strategies. All it’s doing is making people eat less. By shortening that eating window, you’re just naturally cutting calories. Much of the negative information on intermittent fasting reported has come from studies on mice or rats. We need more studies to look at the effects of intermittent fasting on humans.”

Source: news-medical.net

October 30, 2022 0 comment

Europe Politics

Anger at LOW proportion of women in the new UK PM cabinet

by Narges Mohammadi October 27, 2022

Women’s groups have reacted with concern and anger over the low representation of women in the new cabinet.

Rishi Sunak, the new UK prime minister, removed 11 members of his predecessor’s top team on Tuesday as he put together a cabinet that he said “reflects a united party” by showcasing “all the talents”. Under the changes, however, fewer than a quarter of all people – about 23% – able to attend cabinet meetings will be women.

This is down from nearly a third at the start of Liz Truss’s premiership and is lower than under Boris Johnson, at 24%, and Theresa May, at 30%. The figure has been falling since its highest ever rate under Tony Blair in 2006-07, when the proportion of women in cabinet was 36%.

“Women remain significantly underrepresented in parliament where just 34% MPs are women and, while progress has been made, the pace is glacial,” said Amy Whitelock Gibbs, the interim director of policy at the Fawcett Society. “We need to ensure women, from all backgrounds, are not just in the halls of Westminster but also around the cabinet table.”

Gibbs said the presence of female MPs in the rooms of power where decisions were being made had “undoubtedly transformed our laws and policies”, from equal pay to domestic violence legislation.

“That is why, as the cost-of-living crisis intensifies and has a disproportionate impact on women, we were disappointed to see the proportion of women in cabinet drop. We urge the government to put women at the heart of its economic recovery.”

Mandu Reid, the leader of the Women’s Equality party, said the fall in women’s representation showed Sunak had a “massive and deeply concerning blind spot” when it came to the fact that “it is women who hold up our NHS, women who deliver social care and women who are overwhelmingly employed in the childcare sector which enable parents to actually go to work”.

She said that if Sunak was “serious about growth, he has to take an approach to planning the economy that recognises that some of the serious most serious impacts of the crisis that we’re seeing will be gendered”.

“This is not a hypothetical issue,” she added. “Having a cabinet that resembles a golf club lounge more than it does the demographic makeup of our country is really disappointing and a big step backwards, and suggests that this government is set to continue to completely fail women at a time of crisis when women are being hit hardest on lots of different fronts.”

Kemi Badenoch has been given the women and equalities brief by Sunak in addition to her new role as international trade secretary; the former post was dropped from the government by Liz Truss, who had previously held the position herself under Boris Johnson.

But while it was positive to see the role brought back, said Reid, “it’s not good enough that the women and equalities portfolio is an add-on to the really big role of trade secretary, which is going to involve Badenoch travelling around the world. You need a standalone cabinet role to champion that work.”

“Women have so often borne the brunt of austerity measures. While having women in cabinet will not of itself solve these challenges, gender equality at all levels of decision-making is fundamental to the healthy functioning of our democracy, and without it, the government cannot hope to act in the best interests of all its citizens.”

The rate of women’s participation is higher in the devolved legislatures and local government across the UK: 43% members of the Welsh parliament are women, along with 46% of the Scottish parliament and 37% of the Northern Ireland assembly.

About 41% of local authority councilors in England are women; 26% of councilors in Northern Ireland are women, along with 35% in Scotland and 28% in Wales. Fifty-two per cent of members of the London assembly are women.

Source: The Guardian

October 27, 2022 0 comment

Central America Society

RESEARCH; University professor says “Hijab Can Protect Women from Depression”

by Narges Mohammadi October 25, 2022

As the United States has grown more diverse, it has become increasingly common to see Muslim women dressed in traditional attire in public. Indeed, few behaviors are more controversial in contemporary American society than the Islamic practice of hijab, women wearing veils or headscarves. Within the Islamic belief system, many Muslim women above the age of puberty wear the hijab to conform to precepts in the Quran that emphasize the importance of modesty.

Why is wearing a veil controversial? Although various explanations exist, many feminists and other Americans view veiling as an oppressive practice. Like other forms of oppression, veiling is believed to cause detrimental health effects, including elevated levels of depressive symptoms by, for instance, implicitly conveying the message that women are second-class citizens relative to men who are not required to veil.

Muslim women who chose to veil, however, have a different perspective. They tend to view hijab as liberating rather than oppressive. When asked why they veil, Muslim women offer a variety of reasons. Included among these are the belief that hijab represents: an expression of one’s spirituality, a way to convey modesty that fosters an internal sense of respect, a manifestation of one’s identity as a Muslim, a source of female empowerment, an expression of activism and pride, a means to command increased respect from men in social encounters, a mechanism to enhance emotional and physical intimacy in marriage, a source of emancipation or liberation from western fashion standards, a means to reject objectification and sexual exploitation, and an act of rebellion against western media messages.

These are the results of hearing the voices of Muslim Women.

The difference in opinions regarding veiling is not merely academic. The choice to wear or not wear a hijab has real life implications for Muslim women. The general perception that hijab is an unproductive, detrimental practice is widely disseminated by media to the broader society. As a result, women who veil may be viewed as less intelligent or enlightened relative to women who do not veil. Some observers have even called for hijab to be banned in certain public forms such as public schools. Indeed, in France, students are legally prohibited from veiling, or displaying other ostentatiously religious symbols, while in school.

To shed some light on this issue, my colleagues and I examined the relationship between veiling and depression with a diverse sample of Muslim women around the United States. We found no support for the common belief that wearing the hijab is linked to depression. In fact, we found the opposite. Muslims who reported wearing the hijab more frequently exhibited lower levels of depressive symptoms. Put differently, wearing a veil appears to protect Muslim women from depression.

Our results underscore the importance of listening to the voices of Muslim women. Efforts to discourage Muslim women from veiling are a violation of their internationally recognized human rights. Article 18 of United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly recognizes the right of women to express their religious beliefs in public settings. Women who choose to veil are simply expressing this fundamental right.

Source: publichealthpost.org

October 25, 2022 0 comment

Asia Women Pioneers

National SPORTS’ day in Iran©

by Narges Mohammadi October 20, 2022

October 18^th, is registered as national sports day on the Iranian calendar. As media around the world is going on about how Islam limits women athletes and that Iranian female athletes are oppressed, lets have a look at Iranian Muslim women plus a few Muslim women from other nationalities in the world of SPORTS.

Shahrabanou Mansourian

Shahrbanou Mansourian, has several world gold medals in Wushu and is still considered one of the most specialized in this field.

Elaheh Mansourian

The third person is from the Mansourian family. Elaheh, Shahrabanou’s younger sister, has several world and Asian gold medals, also has been fighting in the Chinese league for several years and is considered one of Iran’s prominent female athletes.

Behnaz Shafii

Behnaz Shafii is motorcycle rider who is absolute professional in this field of sports and has recently appeared in many television shows on the Iranian media. Shafii, has been a barrier-breaker in the field of women’s motorcycling.

Nora Naraghi

She is the first Iranian women’s motocross champion. She won the first place in the Iranian Women’s Motocross Championship, which was held on November 8, 2008, in Tehran, and was named the first female Motocross Champion of Iran.

Elaheh Ahmadi

This Iranian woman shooter who won the most medals in the world, achieved the best result in the history of this sport in Iranian competitions. She was also one of the most successful athletes of the entire Iranian delegation in the Asian Games in Guangzhou, where she won a silver and bronze medal.

Elaheh Ahmadi is the only Iranian female athlete who has been able to win the first place in the world ranking of sports federations in the history of Iranian women’s sports. In 2015, after receiving the gold medal in the finals hosted by Munich Germany, and then the runner-up in the Asian Games in New Delhi, in the world ranking of the World Shooting Federation (ISSF) she became first.

Noor Alexandria Abukaram – Cross Country

A young runner living in the United States of America; and in the middle of her seventh cross country race of the season, when the previous six having been run with no objections to her hijab, she was disqualified by the Ohio High School Athletic Association – after beating her personal record for a 5Km.

Indira Kaljo – Basketball

Indira, a top women’s basketball player in high school and college, playing at Tulane University in the early 2000s for eight years. While she didn’t wear hijab during her college playing days and when she played overseas, she started wearing it after and was dismayed to learn of the FIBA ban on headgear. Indira started a Change.org petition and the movement to end the ban, saying at the time of the ban, “I have witnessed sport’s awesome power to transcend barriers, but FIBA wants to keep tme up … if I’m not allowed to wear a hijab, why are some players allowed to display tattoos of their faith without discrepancy?”

Jeri Villarreal – Personal Training/Triathlon

At the age of 44, with three children, Jeri Villarreal has five years of long-distance triathlon racing experience under her belt and was one of the first hijabi triathletes to compete in the Chicago triathlon.

Zahra Lari – Figure Skating

When she was 11, she watched the Disney Film, Ice Princess, and was inspired to try figure skating. After three years of practice, she became serious about her training and became an Emirati figure skater and the first figure skater from the United Arab Emirates to compete internationally and is a five time Emirati national champion!

October 20, 2022 0 comment

Europe Women Pioneers

She’s made 1,750 Wikipedia bios for female scientists who haven’t gotten their due

by Narges Mohammadi October 18, 2022

‘Not only do we not have enough women in science, but we aren’t doing enough to celebrate the ones we have,’ said physicist Jess Wade

While all governmental officials around the world, claim they treasure and promote women in their countries-especially women pioneers- a young female English physicist decides to write biographies of more than 1000 female scientist.

Why? Because they are unknown and less paid attention to.

On a whim, Jess Wade typed out her first Wikipedia page five years ago. It was a biography of Kim Cobb, an American climatologist who — despite earning several scientific accolades — had never been written about on the popular online encyclopedia.

“I met her at a science event, and I was massively impressed,” said Wade, 33, a British physicist, who, after a quick search online, was stunned to see that Cobb had no profile on the public platform.

Wade had stumbled into something she found troubling: Cobb was one of countless deserving women whose names — and lengthy list of achievements — had yet to be chronicled on Wikipedia, the go-to site for an estimated 2 billion people a month who are seeking information about individuals, ideas and topics large and small.

Wikipedia is “used by pretty much everyone,” Wade said. She realized that “despite it being this incredibly important resource, it was suffering from a lack of content, particularly about women, but also about people of color.”

Jess Wade – Research fellow physicist at Imperial College London University

She decided to take matters into her own hands. Since 2017, Wade has written more than 1,750 Wikipedia pages for female and minority scientists and engineers whose accomplishments were not documented on the site.

Wade said there’s still much work to be done. Currently, just 19 percent of English Wikipedia biographies are of women.

“Having people know who you are means you get more opportunities,” Wade said, adding that she wants to “make sure people’s stories were on there and in the public domain.”

These kids ride a ‘bike bus’ to school. Residents line the streets and cheer.

Wade, a research fellow at Imperial College London, centers her work on Raman spectroscopy, a technique often employed in chemistry to identify molecules, among other uses. She has received several awards for her scientific contributions, and her own Wikipedia page is robust with her many achievements.

Wade has made it her mission to correct gender and racial biases in the science community, and advocate for women in STEM, who make up only 28 percent of the workforce. Her activity on Wikipedia has been chronicled in the press, and she has written about her work in various publications.

“Wikipedia is a really powerful way to give credit to people who, for a long time, have been written out of history,” she said. “Not only do we not have enough women in science, but we aren’t doing enough to celebrate the ones we have.”

“We do an awful lot of talking about underrepresentation,” Wade added, “but not enough acting on it.”

Most evenings, Wade sits at her desk for several hours, looking online for inspiring lesser-known scientists. There is no shortage of potential subjects, she said.

“I’ve never sat down and not had someone to write about,” said Wade, who scours archived documents, scientific papers, journals and social media in search of notable people without a Wikipedia page.

These cities turned parks into orchards where anyone can pick for free

She’ll often have 20 internet tabs open at one time, sifting through library archives and institutional sites to scrape together as much information as possible. Each profile takes a few hours to produce.

Since Wikipedia is intended to be an unbiased resource, Wade refrains from writing about anyone she knows personally, and she does not contact her subjects to collect further information.

While it can be a tedious task, it’s also uniquely fulfilling — and educational. “In the process, I actually learn so much science,” she said. “It’s a fun journey.”

About 15 biographies Wade has written have been deleted, including one on Clarice Phelps, a nuclear chemist who is recognized as the first Black woman to be involved with the discovery of a chemical element.

Wade took to social media to vent her frustrations, writing on Twitter:

“thanks to the @Wikipedia editor who spent their Wednesday night tagging the recent biographies I’ve started for #WomenInSTEM as not notable enough to be included in the encyclopedia. it’s really constructive and helpful work.”

Wade fought to get Phelps’s page restored, and ultimately succeeded.

“It’s really hard to get a public profile unless you have a big shiny award,” Wade said. On Wikipedia, which is written collaboratively by self-appointed volunteers around the world, edits are approved or denied by volunteer administrators, who use a set of notability criteria to determine which articles deserve to be published.

“You’re stuck in a spiral where you have to be double exceptional as a woman or person of color to fulfill these requirements,” Wade said.

Wade is not alone in her work to make Wikipedia more equitable. Emily Temple-Wood, 28, has also become known for writing Wikipedia pages about female scientists. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, has taken note of their activism.

“Jess and Emily are among a fantastic group of women having a big impact on the quality of content of Wikipedia,” Wales told The Washington Post. “We are very eager to have a more diverse community and the people who are making that happen are heroes to me.”

Anusha Alikhan, vice president of communications at the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation — which hosts Wikipedia — wrote in an email to The Washington Post that the number of biographies about women is growing, a trend the company favors.

“Through the efforts of Dr. Jess Wade and other volunteer contributors, real progress is being made,” Alikhan said. “In the past three years the percentage of biographies on English Wikipedia that are about women has increased from 15 to 19 percent. That may seem like a small change, yet it represents more than 75,000 new biographies about women.”

This is in part because of Wade writing them, and also in part to her teaching other people how to write and edit them.

He started his career as a ramp agent. Now he’s a pilot.

She holds Wikipedia training workshops and “editathons” at conferences, schools and colleges, and has published papers on inequality in academia, including a recent article on Black physicists and engineers, which she co-authored with a group of scientists. She has also partnered with 500 Women Scientists, a grass-roots organization that promotes inclusivity and accessibility in science. “We need to do more to make the process more transparent and equitable for people,” she said.

What gives her the most joy, she said, is seeing a person’s name whose profile she created go on to earn a fellowship or award. She called it her “happiest thing.”

“I truly love seeing people being recognized and honored,” which, Wade said, is “made more possible by having a public profile on something like Wikipedia.” With every biography she writes, she hopes to tighten the gap a little more.

“I’m a tiny fish in a massive sea,” she said. “But I’ll keep doing everything I can to make science a more accessible and inclusive place to be.”

Source: The Washington Post

October 18, 2022 0 comment

Asia Society

Women in Iran; Pre-Islamic Revolution vs Post-Islamic Revolution©

by Narges Mohammadi October 13, 2022

One of the most important honors and achievements of the Islamic Republic of Iran is giving identity to women who have been able to shine in various fields such as the political area, social area, cultural and sports areas by relying on their own abilities.

Islam gives dignity to women. On this basis, one of the most important honors and achievements of the Islamic Republic of Iran is helping women -who make up half of the population of this country- to gain and achieve more day by day. After the victory of the Islamic revolution, all Iranian women were able to grow and develop in their society under the shadow of this holy system.

Being a female was used in the service of women’s excellence

In this 42 years after the Islamic revolution, unlike the era of the Pahlavi regime, which westernized Iranian woman and only promoted sexual desires towards them, efforts have been made to use the intellectual talent and great potential of a woman for her and the society’s advancement as much as possible. During the Pahlavi ruling, in advertisements, women were only seen in company commercials with erotic appearances; however, today, we see a name of a woman in Iran nearly in any field of specialty.

This matter is primarily considered to strengthen the foundation of family as the basic principle of the excellence of the society; which after the Islamic revolution, the Iranian Muslim woman regained her original position first in the family institution and then the society.

Therefore, in the system of the Islamic Republic, the being a male/female was used in the service of human excellence, not in the service of human degradation and moral decay; as is customary in western societies. The moral, personal, political, social and cultural development of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran is very clear, and the reason for this is the desperate efforts of the enemy’s propaganda apparatuses and their attacks against our country, which use false pretexts to justify the violation of women’s rights, and with them trying to destroy the exalted position of women in Iranian-Islamic society with their complete insolence and shamelessness.

Promotion of female human rights and dignity after the revolution

Fortunately, promoting women’s rights and human dignity and empowering them is one of the prerequisites for the development of the Islamic-Iranian society, which has been mentioned in all relevant institutions and laws. Therefore, the Western attacks and media propaganda have not been able to reduce the status of women in the system of the Islamic Republic of Iran; furthermore, day by day women in Iranian society have shone in various fields of science, politics, social and cultural management.

Female students of Iran in university education from 1971-2014 from “The World Bank”

A quick look at numerous publications like books, including scientific, historical, literary, political, artistic, and all other articles and researches; which are published in the name of Iranian women, indicates the high scientific status and degrees of women. These developments are evident in all fields. The activity of Iranian women in the fields of medicine, technology and science is also very impressive, and women in the fields related to modern sciences have been and are the source of influence and progress.

The statistics related to the successful presence of women in our country after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in various social, scientific, political, economic and sports fields are proof of the positive and impressive role-playing of this influential section of the society. Women who are the secret of success and prosperity of Islamic Iran.

In the book “Rise of Forty Years”, which reviews the achievements of forty years of the Islamic Revolution; According to the published international statistics regarding the progress in the field of women, the reduction of illiteracy among women over 15 years of age compared to the countries of the world and the increase in the ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and university education have been mentioned.

Before the victory of the Islamic Revolution, only 6% of university graduates were women, and this figure has now reached nearly 50%.

In this research, he also emphasized the increase of female professors in universities and also mentioned the activities of women in sports fields as another positive measure of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Before the Islamic Revolution, the share of women in university professorships was about 1%, which has now reached 21%.

In the field of sports, after the revolution, Iranian Muslim women managed to shine in the world arena and international competitions in various sports disciplines by maintaining the beauty of the hijab. Before the revolution, only 5 medals were the share of Iranian women in Asian competitions. Sportswomen who were forced by the oppressive regime to wear hijab to participate in competitions. While now nearly 200 medals in various disciplines belong to Iranian women.

Before the Islamic revolution during the tyrannical period, the life expectancy index among women in Iran reached 57.6%, which has now increased to 77.1%.

The number of female specialist doctors in the field of gynecology increased from 16% to 98% and also resulted in a 90% decrease in maternal mortality during childbirth.

The number of female doctors has increased 50 times from 597 before the Islamic revolution.

The activity of more than 2700 NGO’s related to the field of women

After the Islamic Revolution, women launched many institutions with cultural, educational, entrepreneurial, charitable and even research approaches, which currently number thousands of centers and non-governmental organizations. Before the revolution, there were only 5 non-governmental organizations active in the field of women, and these numbers were also mainly connected to the royal family, but now more than 2700 NGOs related to women’s affairs are active in different provinces of our country.

in the field of publishing and writing; The number of women writers before the revolution was less than 10, but now it has reached more than 4,000. During the Pahlavi regime, there were no female publishers in the country, but now there are nearly 800 female publishers in the country.

Meanwhile, the Vice President of Women and Family Affairs in his latest report on the most important measures taken for women mentioned the right to education and emphasized this fundamental right, which is at the top of citizenship rights, as one of the fundamental measures of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The eradication of illiteracy among women and girls has reached 99.30% in 2016.

In 1350, the number of girls studying in elementary school compared to boys studying at the same level was close to 35%. In 2013, this number reached 50, which shows the balance and establishment of educational justice between boys and girls in the country. This deputy has also depicted political, economic participation, life expectancy, literacy and education in our country.

Prominent roles of women in managerial positions

In the continuation of this report, the role of women and their activity in managerial fields is also mentioned, which indicates that before the Islamic revolution, women managers only comprised more than 6%, but now this managerial role has reached more than 40%.

In the following graph, which compares the ratio of male and female managers in 2019, the increase in the ratio can be seen.

Along with all these developments and effectiveness of women in our country in various fields, the role of women in the sacred defense and its sequels until today is very proud. The wives, mothers and daughters of the martyrs and veterans and survivors are the outstanding men who gave their lives in the way of God and the powerful Iranian women with strong will, firm determination and with great patience humble every human being in front of them.

After the spread of Corona, the role of women in various fields of cooperation and synergy with the men of our country to fight this infamous virus is commendable, whether in the uniform of nurses, doctors and health advocates or in social and family scenes.

The status of women in the system of the Islamic Republic is so high that the Supreme Leader says: “A woman is a prostitute, not a hero”; “The most important responsibility of a woman is being a woman; The meaning of the code of femininity is not service, its meaning is that it makes the family environment a safe, calm and kind environment for the family and for the wife; With his own kindness, with the dignity that is assumed for him at home.

Source: Human Right’s Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran

October 13, 2022 0 comment

Europe Women Pioneers

Women Are Better at Leading Countries Than Men, Survey Respondents Say

by Narges Mohammadi October 11, 2022

India had the largest share of respondents agreeing that countries led by women are better managed, according to a U.S. News survey.

Women serve as elected heads of state or government in only 28 countries, according to the U.N. But a survey suggests the global public might happily welcome many more.

About 70% of queried respondents believe that countries led by women tend to be better managed, according to a U.S. News survey involving more than 17,000 people from 36 countries. Another 90% believe that women deserve equal rights.

The findings are culled from the 2022 Best Countries survey, which was fielded this year from April 30 to July 13 and is used for an annual, perception-based ranking of countries. Those surveyed were asked to state how strongly they agreed with a variety of statements, such as “women should be entitled to the same rights as men” and “countries led by women tend to be better managed.”

About 93% of women and 88% of men say that men and women deserve equal rights. While it may be counterintuitive, the older a person is, the more likely they are to agree that women are entitled to the same rights as men, the survey shows. In the youngest age bracket of 18- to 24-year-olds, 85% agreed with the statement, compared with 94% of people over 55.

In every country polled, a majority of respondents agreed that women are entitled to equal rights. The country with the highest percentage of people agreeing was Argentina, with more than 95% agreement, and the lowest was Egypt, with 75%.

The question of whether or not countries led by women tend to be better managed was somewhat more divisive. Of the nearly 70% who said they agreed with this statement, 32% said they agreed “slightly” and only 15% said they agreed “strongly.” Seventy-six percent of women agreed that countries led by women are better managed, compared with 62% of men.

India, by far, had the largest share of respondents agreeing that countries led by women were better managed. Among survey respondents in India, 85% agreed, while no other country had more than 80% agreement.

Peggy Clark, the CEO and president of the International Center for Research on Women, says that simply may reflect historical precedent. India had a female prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in the 1960s and 1980s, which means that the country’s population already has a model of female leadership. The country has also had two female presidents.

There is strong evidence to suggest that countries led by women are home to better social and economic conditions, according to experts.

Julie Ballington, a policy adviser for U.N. Women – the United Nations agency that works toward gender equality – says women are more likely than men to place issues such as health care, child care and education on the political agenda. Countries with more women in government bring a “different style to politics and different policy focuses than [governments] with very few women in them,” she says.

One example of this, says Clark, is New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “I think most of the world recognizes that New Zealand was one of the countries that responded best to the pandemic,” she says.

While affluent Nordic countries like Sweden or Norway are often pointed to as prime examples of female leadership and gender equality, the link between empowering women and improving a nation’s well-being is evident across the world, including in places like Rwanda and Liberia, Clark says.

“There’s significant evidence that women’s leadership is a pretty critical piece of the puzzle in all of the basic indicator areas for the quality of life,” she says.

Source: USNews.com

October 11, 2022 0 comment

Asia Women Pioneers

Women pioneer green projects in Gaza

by Narges Mohammadi October 9, 2022

Five women were selected to showcase their eco-friendly project at an exhibition in Gaza organized by the Women’s Affairs Center to raise awareness on climate change and the need to protect the environment.

A group of Palestinian women has recently showcased several products they manufactured through waste recycling that are safe for human health and the environment.

Plant nurseries, natural hair and skin care products, natural organic fertilizers, art pieces created from wood residues, and fruits and vegetables that were dried using renewable energy were among the many products presented by the women at the “Environmentally Friendly Women’s Initiatives” exhibition held in Gaza City Sept. 7.

Five women running green, environmentally friendly projects in the Gaza Strip showcased their projects in the exhibition organized by the Women’s Affairs Center in Gaza, in cooperation with several Palestinian institutions, at the Shalehat tourist resort in Gaza City.

The exhibition aimed to bring about positive change to the environment and climate change, through projects that are the source of livelihood of many women in the Gaza Strip, which is reeling under difficult economic conditions.

According to data published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in March, the unemployment rate among women participating in the labor force (both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) reached 43% compared to 22% among men in 2021. Unemployment rates reached 53% among young people with an intermediate diploma or higher — 66% for women compared to 39% for men.

At the exhibition, Noor al-Huda Jaber, 31, who graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza in 2013 with a diploma in psychological and educational counseling, presented her project that she called the “Noor Initiative for Recycling.”

She told Al-Monitor, “The project is based on optimal use of the leftover wood from the furniture industry. Factories normally burn this wood, causing the emission of harmful gases that exacerbate global warming and climate change.”

Jaber said, “Unlike thousands of unemployed graduates in Gaza, I did not wait for a job opportunity that corresponds to my university major. I immediately started thinking about implementing my project that consists of using this leftover wood in a creative and distinctive way, and turn it into a product of real value by carving on it in a customized manner.”

She noted, “I use the leftovers of plywood, beech husks and melamine to make etchings electronically through the AutoCAD program; I use a CNC cutting machine to pierce them, and then carve on them. I made and sold many wooden pieces such as accessories, wedding and occasion gifts, medals and other products.”

Jaber added that she also embroiders leather and plastic to make use of them rather than destroy them in order to promote environmental protection. These projects also constitute her main source of income.

Haneen al-Buraim, 27, called her project “Green Power in the Face of Climate Change,” which consists of an agricultural nursery that she established in 2012 despite the challenges and difficulties she faced, which included the destruction of her nursery by the Israeli forces during the Israeli war on Gaza in 2014.

She told Al-Monitor, “My project is based on practicing environmentally friendly agricultural activities to mitigate the deterioration of the production, agricultural and environmental situation by planting different types of seedlings inside empty plastic bottles and old pots and using them as agricultural basins instead of throwing them away. I also recycle damaged fabric and old clothes and transform them into cement that I pour into molds to create agricultural pots.”

Buraim said she wants to increase the production capacity of her agricultural nursery during the coming period by planting genetically modified natural agricultural seedlings that are highly efficient and safe for human health and the environment and that resist climate change. She noted that this project employs the largest possible number of people in the Gaza Strip and that she would provide these products to the consumer at reasonable prices.

Engineer Hanadi Abu Harbid, 23, is the mind behind the “Solar Food” initiative, which she said is based “on drying fruits, vegetables and herbs using solar thermal technology through an energy-saving and eco-friendly hybrid solar dryer. It controls humidity, heat and the number of operating hours, and it is the first of its kind in Palestine.”

She told Al-Monitor, “The device [that I created] aims to preserve the quality of agricultural products when dried, which are free of chemical additives, dyes and flavors. It is characterized by fast performance compared to other electrical devices, which consume large amounts of energy. The dryer helps in giving up traditional methods that use fossil fuels, which increase the emission of harmful gases to human health and the environment.”

Abu Harbid said, “The dryer allows crops to grow outside their season, since some crops only grow under certain conditions of high heat or extreme cold. Drying them makes them available all year, and the dried products are efficient, high-quality and comply with all food security requirements.”

Coordinator of the exhibition Etimad Washah told Al-Monitor, “The exhibition includes environmentally friendly women’s initiatives to mitigate the phenomenon of climate change, reduce pollution rates and promote environmental awareness, amid the environmental pollution that has affected the soil and air in Gaza following the six Israeli wars.”

She explained, “The initiative featured more than 150 pioneering projects by women. Five of them were selected [for the exhibition] based on several considerations, including the extent to which these initiatives are able to mitigate climate change and how encouraging they are for society to raise awareness of the importance of eco-friendly projects that play a key role in protecting the community and the environment.”

Washah added, “Overpopulation in the Gaza Strip requires a serious quest for projects that save water and recycle waste to reduce carbon emissions.”

Source: Al-Monitor

October 9, 2022 0 comment

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