Monthly Archives: January 2012

Egypt political groups refuse women’s rights, end death penalty, says rights group

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Source: http://bikyamasr.comAuthor: Joseph MaytonPulsihed Time: 24 January 2012

CAIRO: Egypt’s political groups have professed a claim to uphold human rights in the country, but are failing on ensuring women’s rights and ending the use of the death penalty in the country, said Amnesty International on Monday.
The London-based rights group said that although most of the large political parties in the country claim to have committed to human rights reforms during the transitional phase in Egypt, they are giving “mixed signals” and even refusing to protect women’s rights and abolish the death penalty.
Amnesty had called on political parties ahead of voting last November to sign a “human rights manifesto” to ensure “meaningful human rights reform” in the country, but now, three months later and the first session of parliament being held, women’s issues remain on the outside for most political groups.
The Freedom and Justice Party, which won the most seats in the new People’s Assembly, “was one of three parties that did not respond substantively, despite considerable efforts by Amnesty International to seek its views,” the organization said in a statement.
“With the first session of the new parliament sitting this week, it is encouraging that so many of the major parties engaged with us and were prepared to sign up to ambitious pledges for change on combating torture, protecting slum residents’ rights and ensuring fair trials,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s interim Middle East and North Africa director.
“But it is disturbing that a number of parties refused to commit to equal rights for women. With a handful of women taking up seats in the new parliament, there remain huge obstacles to women playing a full role in Egyptian political life.
“We challenge the new parliament to use the opportunity of drafting the new constitution to guarantee all of these rights for all people in Egypt. The cornerstone must be non-discrimination and gender equality.”
The rights group has called on political leaders to act “if they want to create a truly equal society– for women and for men,” said Sanjeev Bery, advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa in Washington.
“Women stood side-by-side with men in the protests, and they must be equal partners in the creation of a new government. All Egyptians must benefit from laws ensuring equal treatment and dignity.”
Women’s issues have been increasingly pushed aside in recent months by both activists and political leaders in favor of what they have called “universal human rights.” A number of activists have argued that to push women’s issues directly would be “divisive” and split the unity of the revolution.
Nehad Abu Komsan of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), in a previous interview with Bikyamasr.com, said that women’s rights must be pushed harder by political groups and activists alike. She echoed Amnesty’s argument that women were vital to the uprising last year and said her organization was determined to ensure women’s rights are on the agenda.
“We will continue to push for greater women’s freedom and justice in the country because now is the time when women can have a voice for change and can create a better life in Egypt,” she said.
But as conservative groups take control of parliament, their are worries still that the future for women in Egypt could be hit hard by new legislation that could restrict their movement and freedom.
The ultra-conservative Salafist al-Nour Party has already said it would like to see the veil a requirement for all women in the country and has repeatedly called for bikinis to be banned from beaches.
This has left many wondering where Egypt is heading.
“The real test for political parties will be to translate these pledges into initiatives in parliament to abolish repressive Mubarak-era laws, reform the police and security services, and pass laws which protect human rights and break with the legacy of abuse,” said Luther. “One of the first measures should be the lifting of the much-decried state of emergency.

Chinese Women’s Rights

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Source: http://library.thinkquest.org Author: Pulsihed Time: 2012-1-24 email Print this article

Confucian thoughts have greatly influenced the minds of China. During the Han dynasty, Confucianism became a part of the official education, which helped spread it across China. In later dynasties, male authority was enforced which brought a woman’s status down. In the Confucian society, women were to hold a lower position than men. Women could only obtain power by becoming a mother. They had the task of producing son and it was frowned upon if they birthed girls. Their nature was expected to be passive and to revolve around their husbands and their family. Other Confucian ideas taught many that women were the cause of disorder. It was also taught that women should not rule and that people were not to concern themselves with women’s ideas. Many of these ideas still influence the way Chinese women are treated today.
Even though a law has been promoted to protect women’s rights, women are still discriminated. It’s hard for women to get jobs even if they have degrees. Most good jobs are open only to men. Women aren’t offered many nice jobs that pay fair. Men and women work equally but women get paid 78% of the pay the men get. Chinese women make up one-third of workers in the fields of trade, industry, finance, and communication. They also make up almost half of the workers in education and health. Women’s federations have created programs in rural areas to develop courtyard economies. Women work to weave household accessories out of maize husks. Young women get hired at embroidery factories so that they can continue to have babies but be able to work at home. Many rural girls aren’t being sent to school. Many rural parents don’t want to “waste” their money on a girl who will end up being married off to another family. Over 70% of school dropouts are girls and over 70% of about 220 million who are semiliterate or illiterate in China are women. In 1990, about 200,000 women were university graduates. This made up about one-third of the college graduates in China. Another factor of why there are women enrolled in higher education is because some universities openly express the fact that they discriminate against girls. This happens even if girls score equally as high or higher than boys in exams.
The government made a gender equality law in 1949 but discrimination against women continues. In 2005, the Chinese government released a white paper to mark the 10th anniversary of the Fourth UN World Conference on Women. This law promotes equality between women and men in nine aspects including politics and family life. The white paper points out that the government is doing what they can to eliminate discrimination in education. The white paper also acknowledges the fact that the gender equality problems have not been resolved. Not many women play an important part in the government. The Central Committee is the highest ring of the Communist party in China. Only 22 members are women in the Central Committee of 192 people. Women’s political influence has increased over the passed 50 years but it still remains low.
It is very common in China for women to get abused. It is found acceptable in some parts of China for men to abuse their wives. There are not any laws to protect women from domestic abuse. Many authorities don’t report abuse because they think that wife abuse is a family matter. Most domestic abuse is found in urban areas. Many women don’t like to report abuse or get divorces because they are pressured to maintain a family. Women that suffer from abuse have no way of escaping because there aren’t any shelters that they can go to.
Abduction and Trafficking of Women
Women have been the primary targets of abduction, illegal imprisonment, physical and sexual assault, and sale. This remains a serious problem in China. Mainly only rural parts of China conduct trafficking. There are women that are being sold as brides in the black market. Men who have purchased women don’t get arrested meaning that the trade of women is still active. Usually when victims try to escape, they get brutally beaten, imprisoned, and possibly murdered. Even if a woman escapes, law enforcement officers recapture her. This happens because some officials say that the man who purchased the woman is the owner. Many women that are bought are also given marriage licenses to prove that they are married to the buyer. As China’s economy falls, more and more women are voluntarily. This happens because some of the women are being convinced by traders that if they are sold, they will get better opportunities. The government wants to stop the trade of women, but some officials are involved. Women can only be saved if they make a complaint or if their family makes a complaint.
Protection of Chinese Women’s Rights
Chinese women have trouble getting their laws enforced and many of them don’t know their rights and need to be informed of them. There are many organizations that deal with these problems. Many Women Organizations report women’s problems to authorities and suggest solutions. They also stress the fact that women want equality. Notices have been put up to stop trafficking women Fudan University has a union that calls women (mainly women that work) to remind them of their rights. Notices have been put up to remind people of women’s rights. China set up an All-China Women’s Foundation to protect and preserve the rights of women. The Constitution also enforces rights of women in political, economic, cultural and family life.

The Path of the Women’s Rights Movement in U.S

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Source: http://www.ibiblio.orgAuthor: Pulsihed Time: 2012-1-24email Print this article

A Timeline of the Women’s Rights Movement 1848 – 1998
1848 The world’s first women’s rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, NY, July 19-20. A Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions is debated and signed by 68 women and 32 men, setting the agenda for the women’s rights movement that followed.
1849 Elizabeth Smith Miller appears on the streets of Seneca Falls, NY, in “turkish trousers,” soon to be known as “bloomers.”
1849 Amelia Jenks Bloomer publishes and edits Lily the first prominent women’s rights newspaper.
1850 Quaker physicians establish the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, PA to give women a chance to learn medicine. The first women graduated under police guard.
1855 Lucy Stone becomes first woman on record to keep her own name after marriage, setting a trend among women who are consequently known as “Lucy Stoners.”
1855 The University of Iowa becomes the first state school to admit women.
1855 In Missouri v. Celia, a Black slave is declared property without right to defense against a master’s act of rape.
1859 American Medical Association announces opposition to abortion. In 1860, Connecticut is the first state to prohibit all abortions, both before and after quickening.
1859 The birth rate continues its downward spiral as reliable condoms become available. By the late 1900s, women will raise an average of only two or three children.
1860 Of 2,225,086 Black women, 1,971,135 are held in slavery. In San Francisco, about 85% of Chinese women are essentially enslaved as prostitutes.
1866 14th Amendment is passed by Congress (ratified by the states in 1868), the first time “citizens” and “voters” are defined as “male” in the Constitution.
1866 The American Equal Rights Association is founded, the first organization in the US to advocate women’s suffrage.
1868 The National Labor Union supports equal pay for equal work.
1868 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony begin publishing The Revolution, an important women’s movement periodical.
1870 For the first time in the history of jurisprudence, women serve on juries in the Wyoming Territory.
1870 Iowa is the first state to admit a woman to the bar: Arabella Mansfield.
1870 The 15th Amendment receives final ratification. By its text, women are not specifically excluded from the vote. During the next two years, approximately 150 women will attempt to vote in almost a dozen different jurisdictions from Delaware to California.
1872 Through the efforts of lawyer Belva Lockwood, Congress passes a law to give women federal employees equal pay for equal work.
1872 Charlotte E. Ray, Howard University law school graduate, becomes first African-American woman admitted to the US bar.
1873 Bradwell v. Illinois: Supreme Court affirms that states can restrict women from the practice of any profession to uphold the law of the Creator.
1873 Congress passes the Comstock Law, defining contraceptive information as “obscene material.”
1877 Helen Magill is the first woman to receive a Ph.D. at a US school, a doctorate in Greek from Boston University.
1878 The Susan B. Anthony Amendment, to grant women the vote, is first introduced in the US Congress.
1884 Belva Lockwood, presidential candidate of the National Equal Rights Party, is the first woman to receive votes in a presidential election (appx. 4,000 in six states).
1887 For the first and only time in this century, the US Senate votes on woman suffrage. It loses, 34 to 16. Twenty-five Senators do not bother to participate.
1899 National Consumers League is formed with Florence Kelley as its president. The League organizes women to use their power as consumers to push for better working conditions and protective laws for women workers.
1900 Two-thirds of divorce cases are initiated by the wife; a century earlier, most women lacked the right to sue and were hopelessly locked into bad marriages.
1909 Women garment workers strike in New York for better wages and working conditions in the Uprising of the 20,000. Over 300 shops eventually sign union contracts.
1912 Juliette Gordon Low founds first American group of Girl Guides, in Atlanta, Georgia. Later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA, the organization brings girls into the outdoors, encourages their self-reliance and resourcefulness, and prepares them for varied roles as adult women.
1913 Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organize the Congressional Union, which later becomes the National Women’s Party. Members picket the White House and engage in other forms of civil disobedience, drawing public attention to the suffrage cause.
1914 Margaret Sanger calls for legalization of contraceptives in her new, feminist publication, The Woman Rebel, which the Post Office bans from the mails.
1917 During WWI women move into many jobs working in heavy industry in mining, chemical manufacturing, automobile and railway plants. They also run street cars, conduct trains, direct traffic, and deliver mail.
1917 Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the US Congress.
1919 The House of Representatives passes the women’s suffrage amendment, 304 to 89; the Senate passes it with just two votes to spare, 56 to 25.
1921 Margaret Sanger organizes the American Birth Control League, which becomes Federation of Planned Parenthood in 1942.
1923 Supreme Court strikes down a 1918 minimum-wage law for District of Columbia women because, with the vote, women are considered equal to men. This ruling cancels all state minimum wage laws.
1933 Frances Perkins, the first woman in a Presidential cabinet, serves as Secretary of Labor during the entire Roosevelt presidency.
1941 A massive government and industry media campaign persuades women to take jobs during the war. Almost 7 million women respond, 2 million as industrial “Rosie the Riveters” and 400,000 join the military.
1945 Women industrial workers begin to lose their jobs in large numbers to returning service men, although surveys show 80% want to continue working.
1957 The number of women and men voting is approximately equal for the first time.
1960 The Food and Drug Administration approves birth control pills.
1960 Women now earn only 60 cents for every dollar earned by men, a decline since 1955. Women of color earn only 42 cents.
1963 The Equal Pay Act, proposed twenty years earlier, establishes equal pay for men and women performing the same job duties. It does not cover domestics, agricultural workers, executives, administrators or professionals.
1963 Betty Friedan’s best-seller, The Feminine Mystique, detailed the “problem that has no name.” Five million copies are sold by 1970, laying the groundwork for the modern feminist movement.
1964 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars employment discrimination by private employers, employment agencies, and unions based on race, sex, and other grounds. To investigate complaints and enforce penalties, it establishes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which receives 50,000 complaints of gender discrimination in its first five years.
1966 In response to EEOC inaction on employment discrimination complaints, twenty-eight women found the National Organization for Women to function as a civil rights organization for women.
1968 New York Radical Women garner media attention to the women’s movement when they protest the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City.
1968 The first national women’s liberation conference is held in Chicago.
1968 The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) is founded.
1968 National Welfare Rights Organization is formed by activists such as Johnnie Tillmon and Etta Horm. They have 22,000 members by 1969, but are unable to survive as an organization past 1975.
1968 Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) is first Black woman elected to the US Congress.
1970 Women’s wages fall to 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. Although nonwhite women earn even less, the gap is closing between white women and women of color.
1970 The Equal Rights Amendment is reintroduced into Congress.
1973 Billie Jean King scores an enormous victory for female athletes when she beats Bobby Riggs in “The tennis tournament watched by nearly 48,000,000 people.”
1973 The first battered women’s shelters open in the US, in Tucson, Arizona and St. Paul, Minnesota.
1973 In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court establishes a woman’s right to abortion, effectively canceling the anti-abortion laws of 46 states.
1974 MANA, the Mexican-American Women’s National Association, organizes as feminist activist organization. By 1990, MANA chapters operate in 16 states; members in 36.
1974 Hundreds of colleges are offering women’s studies courses. Additionally, 230 women’s centers on college campuses provide support services for women students.
1975 The first women’s bank opens, in New York City.
1978 For the first time in history, more women than men enter college.
1981 At the request of women’s organizations, President Carter proclaims the first “National Women’s History Week,” incorporating March 8, International Women’s Day.
1981 Sandra Day O’Connor is the first woman ever appointed to the US Supreme Court. In 1993, she is joined by Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
1984 Geraldine Ferraro is the first woman vice-presidential candidate of a major political party (Democratic Party).
1990 The number of Black women in elective office has increased from 131 in 1970 to 1,950 in 1990.
1992 Women are now paid 71 cents for every dollar paid to men. The range is from 64 cents for working-class women to 77 cents for professional women with doctorates. Black women earned 65 cents, Latinas 54 cents.
1993 Take Our Daughters to Work Day debuts, designed to build girls self-esteem and open their eyes to a variety of careers.
1996 US women’s spectacular success in the Summer Olympics (19 gold medals, 10 silver, 9 bronze) is the result of large numbers of girls and women active in sports since the passage of Title IX.

Egypt political groups refuse women’s rights, end death penalty, says rights groupEgypt political groups refuse women’s rights, end death penalty, says rights group

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Egyptian women face uphill battle.
CAIRO: Egypt’s political groups have professed a claim to uphold human rights in the country, but are failing on ensuring women’s rights and ending the use of the death penalty in the country, said Amnesty International on Monday.
The London-based rights group said that although most of the large political parties in the country claim to have committed to human rights reforms during the transitional phase in Egypt, they are giving “mixed signals” and even refusing to protect women’s rights and abolish the death penalty.
Amnesty had called on political parties ahead of voting last November to sign a “human rights manifesto” to ensure “meaningful human rights reform” in the country, but now, three months later and the first session of parliament being held, women’s issues remain on the outside for most political groups.
The Freedom and Justice Party, which won the most seats in the new People’s Assembly, “was one of three parties that did not respond substantively, despite considerable efforts by Amnesty International to seek its views,” the organization said in a statement.
“With the first session of the new parliament sitting this week, it is encouraging that so many of the major parties engaged with us and were prepared to sign up to ambitious pledges for change on combating torture, protecting slum residents’ rights and ensuring fair trials,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s interim Middle East and North Africa director.
“But it is disturbing that a number of parties refused to commit to equal rights for women. With a handful of women taking up seats in the new parliament, there remain huge obstacles to women playing a full role in Egyptian political life.
“We challenge the new parliament to use the opportunity of drafting the new constitution to guarantee all of these rights for all people in Egypt. The cornerstone must be non-discrimination and gender equality.”
The rights group has called on political leaders to act “if they want to create a truly equal society– for women and for men,” said Sanjeev Bery, advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa in Washington.
“Women stood side-by-side with men in the protests, and they must be equal partners in the creation of a new government. All Egyptians must benefit from laws ensuring equal treatment and dignity.”
Women’s issues have been increasingly pushed aside in recent months by both activists and political leaders in favor of what they have called “universal human rights.” A number of activists have argued that to push women’s issues directly would be “divisive” and split the unity of the revolution.
Nehad Abu Komsan of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), in a previous interview with Bikyamasr.com, said that women’s rights must be pushed harder by political groups and activists alike. She echoed Amnesty’s argument that women were vital to the uprising last year and said her organization was determined to ensure women’s rights are on the agenda.
“We will continue to push for greater women’s freedom and justice in the country because now is the time when women can have a voice for change and can create a better life in Egypt,” she said.
But as conservative groups take control of parliament, their are worries still that the future for women in Egypt could be hit hard by new legislation that could restrict their movement and freedom.
The ultra-conservative Salafist al-Nour Party has already said it would like to see the veil a requirement for all women in the country and has repeatedly called for bikinis to be banned from beaches.
This has left many wondering where Egypt is heading.
“The real test for political parties will be to translate these pledges into initiatives in parliament to abolish repressive Mubarak-era laws, reform the police and security services, and pass laws which protect human rights and break with the legacy of abuse,” said Luther. “One of the first measures should be the lifting of the much-decried state of emergency.

The Path of the Women’s Rights Movement in U.S.The Path of the Women’s Rights Movement in U.S.

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A Timeline of the Women’s Rights Movement 1848 – 1998
1848 The world’s first women’s rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, NY, July 19-20. A Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions is debated and signed by 68 women and 32 men, setting the agenda for the women’s rights movement that followed.
1849 Elizabeth Smith Miller appears on the streets of Seneca Falls, NY, in “turkish trousers,” soon to be known as “bloomers.”
1849 Amelia Jenks Bloomer publishes and edits Lily the first prominent women’s rights newspaper.
1850 Quaker physicians establish the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, PA to give women a chance to learn medicine. The first women graduated under police guard.
1855 Lucy Stone becomes first woman on record to keep her own name after marriage, setting a trend among women who are consequently known as “Lucy Stoners.”
1855 The University of Iowa becomes the first state school to admit women.
1855 In Missouri v. Celia, a Black slave is declared property without right to defense against a master’s act of rape.
1859 American Medical Association announces opposition to abortion. In 1860, Connecticut is the first state to prohibit all abortions, both before and after quickening.
1859 The birth rate continues its downward spiral as reliable condoms become available. By the late 1900s, women will raise an average of only two or three children.
1860 Of 2,225,086 Black women, 1,971,135 are held in slavery. In San Francisco, about 85% of Chinese women are essentially enslaved as prostitutes.
1866 14th Amendment is passed by Congress (ratified by the states in 1868), the first time “citizens” and “voters” are defined as “male” in the Constitution.
1866 The American Equal Rights Association is founded, the first organization in the US to advocate women’s suffrage.
1868 The National Labor Union supports equal pay for equal work.
1868 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony begin publishing The Revolution, an important women’s movement periodical.
1870 For the first time in the history of jurisprudence, women serve on juries in the Wyoming Territory.
1870 Iowa is the first state to admit a woman to the bar: Arabella Mansfield.
1870 The 15th Amendment receives final ratification. By its text, women are not specifically excluded from the vote. During the next two years, approximately 150 women will attempt to vote in almost a dozen different jurisdictions from Delaware to California.
1872 Through the efforts of lawyer Belva Lockwood, Congress passes a law to give women federal employees equal pay for equal work.
1872 Charlotte E. Ray, Howard University law school graduate, becomes first African-American woman admitted to the US bar.
1873  Bradwell v. Illinois: Supreme Court affirms that states can restrict women from the practice of any profession to uphold the law of the Creator.
1873 Congress passes the Comstock Law, defining contraceptive information as “obscene material.”
1877 Helen Magill is the first woman to receive a Ph.D. at a US school, a doctorate in Greek from Boston University.
1878 The Susan B. Anthony Amendment, to grant women the vote, is first introduced in the US Congress.
1884 Belva Lockwood, presidential candidate of the National Equal Rights Party, is the first woman to receive votes in a presidential election (appx. 4,000 in six states).
1887 For the first and only time in this century, the US Senate votes on woman suffrage. It loses, 34 to 16. Twenty-five Senators do not bother to participate.
1899 National Consumers League is formed with Florence Kelley as its president. The League organizes women to use their power as consumers to push for better working conditions and protective laws for women workers.
1900 Two-thirds of divorce cases are initiated by the wife; a century earlier, most women lacked the right to sue and were hopelessly locked into bad marriages.
1909 Women garment workers strike in New York for better wages and working conditions in the Uprising of the 20,000. Over 300 shops eventually sign union contracts.
1912 Juliette Gordon Low founds first American group of Girl Guides, in Atlanta, Georgia. Later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA, the organization brings girls into the outdoors, encourages their self-reliance and resourcefulness, and prepares them for varied roles as adult women.
1913 Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organize the Congressional Union, which later becomes the National Women’s Party. Members picket the White House and engage in other forms of civil disobedience, drawing public attention to the suffrage cause.
1914 Margaret Sanger calls for legalization of contraceptives in her new, feminist publication, The Woman Rebel, which the Post Office bans from the mails.
1917 During WWI women move into many jobs working in heavy industry in mining, chemical manufacturing, automobile and railway plants. They also run street cars, conduct trains, direct traffic, and deliver mail.
1917 Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the US Congress.
1919 The House of Representatives passes the women’s suffrage amendment, 304 to 89; the Senate passes it with just two votes to spare, 56 to 25.
1921 Margaret Sanger organizes the American Birth Control League, which becomes Federation of Planned Parenthood in 1942.
1923 Supreme Court strikes down a 1918 minimum-wage law for District of Columbia women because, with the vote, women are considered equal to men. This ruling cancels all state minimum wage laws.
1933 Frances Perkins, the first woman in a Presidential cabinet, serves as Secretary of Labor during the entire Roosevelt presidency.
1941 A massive government and industry media campaign persuades women to take jobs during the war. Almost 7 million women respond, 2 million as industrial “Rosie the Riveters” and 400,000 join the military.
1945 Women industrial workers begin to lose their jobs in large numbers to returning service men, although surveys show 80% want to continue working.
1957 The number of women and men voting is approximately equal for the first time.
1960 The Food and Drug Administration approves birth control pills.
1960 Women now earn only 60 cents for every dollar earned by men, a decline since 1955. Women of color earn only 42 cents.
1963 The Equal Pay Act, proposed twenty years earlier, establishes equal pay for men and women performing the same job duties. It does not cover domestics, agricultural workers, executives, administrators or professionals.
1963 Betty Friedan’s best-seller, The Feminine Mystique, detailed the “problem that has no name.” Five million copies are sold by 1970, laying the groundwork for the modern feminist movement.
1964 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act bars employment discrimination by private employers, employment agencies, and unions based on race, sex, and other grounds. To investigate complaints and enforce penalties, it establishes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which receives 50,000 complaints of gender discrimination in its first five years.
1966 In response to EEOC inaction on employment discrimination complaints, twenty-eight women found the National Organization for Women to function as a civil rights organization for women.
1968 New York Radical Women garner media attention to the women’s movement when they protest the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City.
1968 The first national women’s liberation conference is held in Chicago.
1968 The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) is founded.
1968 National Welfare Rights Organization is formed by activists such as Johnnie Tillmon and Etta Horm. They have 22,000 members by 1969, but are unable to survive as an organization past 1975.
1968 Shirley Chisholm (D-NY) is first Black woman elected to the US Congress.
1970 Women’s wages fall to 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. Although nonwhite women earn even less, the gap is closing between white women and women of color.
1970 The Equal Rights Amendment is reintroduced into Congress.
1973 Billie Jean King scores an enormous victory for female athletes when she beats Bobby Riggs in “The tennis tournament watched by nearly 48,000,000 people.”
1973 The first battered women’s shelters open in the US, in Tucson, Arizona and St. Paul, Minnesota.
1973 In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court establishes a woman’s right to abortion, effectively canceling the anti-abortion laws of 46 states.
1974 MANA, the Mexican-American Women’s National Association, organizes as feminist activist organization. By 1990, MANA chapters operate in 16 states; members in 36.
1974 Hundreds of colleges are offering women’s studies courses. Additionally, 230 women’s centers on college campuses provide support services for women students.
1975 The first women’s bank opens, in New York City.
1978 For the first time in history, more women than men enter college.
1981 At the request of women’s organizations, President Carter proclaims the first “National Women’s History Week,” incorporating March 8, International Women’s Day.
1981 Sandra Day O’Connor is the first woman ever appointed to the US Supreme Court. In 1993, she is joined by Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
1984 Geraldine Ferraro is the first woman vice-presidential candidate of a major political party (Democratic Party).
1990 The number of Black women in elective office has increased from 131 in 1970 to 1,950 in 1990.
1992 Women are now paid 71 cents for every dollar paid to men. The range is from 64 cents for working-class women to 77 cents for professional women with doctorates. Black women earned 65 cents, Latinas 54 cents.
1993 Take Our Daughters to Work Day debuts, designed to build girls self-esteem and open their eyes to a variety of careers.
1996 US women’s spectacular success in the Summer Olympics (19 gold medals, 10 silver, 9 bronze) is the result of large numbers of girls and women active in sports since the passage of Title IX.

Chinese Women’s RightsChinese Women’s Rights

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Confucian Ideas about Women
Confucian thoughts have greatly influenced the minds of China. During the Han dynasty, Confucianism became a part of the official education, which helped spread it across China. In later dynasties, male authority was enforced which brought a woman’s status down. In the Confucian society, women were to hold a lower position than men. Women could only obtain power by becoming a mother. They had the task of producing son and it was frowned upon if they birthed girls. Their nature was expected to be passive and to revolve around their husbands and their family. Other Confucian ideas taught many that women were the cause of disorder. It was also taught that women should not rule and that people were not to concern themselves with women’s ideas. Many of these ideas still influence the way Chinese women are treated today.
 
Discrimination in Education and Employment
Even though a law has been promoted to protect women’s rights, women are still discriminated. It’s hard for women to get jobs even if they have degrees. Most good jobs are open only to men. Women aren’t offered many nice jobs that pay fair. Men and women work equally but women get paid 78% of the pay the men get. Chinese women make up one-third of workers in the fields of trade, industry, finance, and communication. They also make up almost half of the workers in education and health. Women’s federations have created programs in rural areas to develop courtyard economies. Women work to weave household accessories out of maize husks. Young women get hired at embroidery factories so that they can continue to have babies but be able to work at home. Many rural girls aren’t being sent to school. Many rural parents don’t want to “waste” their money on a girl who will end up being married off to another family. Over 70% of school dropouts are girls and over 70% of about 220 million who are semiliterate or illiterate in China are women. In 1990, about 200,000 women were university graduates. This made up about one-third of the college graduates in China. Another factor of why there are women enrolled in higher education is because some universities openly express the fact that they discriminate against girls. This happens even if girls score equally as high or higher than boys in exams.
Women and the Government
The government made a gender equality law in 1949 but discrimination against women continues. In 2005, the Chinese government released a white paper to mark the 10th anniversary of the Fourth UN World Conference on Women. This law promotes equality between women and men in nine aspects including politics and family life. The white paper points out that the government is doing what they can to eliminate discrimination in education. The white paper also acknowledges the fact that the gender equality problems have not been resolved. Not many women play an important part in the government. The Central Committee is the highest ring of the Communist party in China. Only 22 members are women in the Central Committee of 192 people. Women’s political influence has increased over the passed 50 years but it still remains low.
 
Violence Against Women
It is very common in China for women to get abused. It is found acceptable in some parts of China for men to abuse their wives. There are not any laws to protect women from domestic abuse. Many authorities don’t report abuse because they think that wife abuse is a family matter. Most domestic abuse is found in urban areas. Many women don’t like to report abuse or get divorces because they are pressured to maintain a family. Women that suffer from abuse have no way of escaping because there aren’t any shelters that they can go to.
Abduction and Trafficking of Women
Women have been the primary targets of abduction, illegal imprisonment, physical and sexual assault, and sale. This remains a serious problem in China. Mainly only rural parts of China conduct trafficking. There are women that are being sold as brides in the black market. Men who have purchased women don’t get arrested meaning that the trade of women is still active. Usually when victims try to escape, they get brutally beaten, imprisoned, and possibly murdered. Even if a woman escapes, law enforcement officers recapture her. This happens because some officials say that the man who purchased the woman is the owner. Many women that are bought are also given marriage licenses to prove that they are married to the buyer. As China’s economy falls, more and more women are voluntarily. This happens because some of the women are being convinced by traders that if they are sold, they will get better opportunities. The government wants to stop the trade of women, but some officials are involved. Women can only be saved if they make a complaint or if their family makes a complaint.
Protection of Chinese Women’s Rights
Chinese women have trouble getting their laws enforced and many of them don’t know their rights and need to be informed of them. There are many organizations that deal with these problems. Many Women Organizations report women’s problems to authorities and suggest solutions. They also stress the fact that women want equality. Notices have been put up to stop trafficking women Fudan University has a union that calls women (mainly women that work) to remind them of their rights. Notices have been put up to remind people of women’s rights. China set up an All-China Women’s Foundation to protect and preserve the rights of women. The Constitution also enforces rights of women in political, economic, cultural and family life.

Downtown statue honors leader of women’s rights, Populist movement

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Source: The Wichita Eagle Author: Beccy Tanner Pulsihed Time: Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012,email Print this article

The sculpture of Mary Elizabeth Lease stands between Century II and the Wichita Public Library. It was paid for by the Hypatia Club, which wanted to honor the Wichita woman who started it with a classified ad in the Wichita Eagle. Lease went on to become one of the formidable leaders of the 1890s Populist movement.
What would Mary Elizabeth Lease think?
In the heart of Wichita, a statue of the famed 19-century Populist leader has been placed where crowds are sure to pass, compliments of the club she started.
The statue was placed in the summer by the Hypatia Club, the state’s oldest women’s club. Members of the club paid $65,000 to have local sculptor Babs Mellor create a likeness of Lease.
“We started out with another sculptor but she wanted to do something that was far out — you had to use your imagination for what it was. And, we decided we liked the real thing better,” said Josephine Brown, the club president.
The group has been working on the sculpture project for a year and a half. It is expected to be dedicated this spring. It’s been placed between Century II and the Wichita Public Library .
No doubt, Lease would have found a certain irony in the sculpture praising her efforts exactly 126 years after she moved mindsets as to what women could do, if they wanted.
In the beginning it would have been easy to give up.
In January of 1886 she raised the ire of Wichita Eagle publisher Marshall Murdock when she took out an ad in his newspaper.
Her ad in the Jan. 21, 1886, Eagle read: “We would most earnestly invite the intelligent women of Wichita, the artists, the musicians, teachers, actors, lecturers, and all women having the advancement of their sex in view, to meet Saturday, Jan. 23 at 3 o’clock at the residence of Mrs. Harry Hill, 321 Topeka Avenue.”
Murdock wrote an editorial urging husbands to keep their wives at home. The idea was simply unheard of in a Victorian society in which women catered to their men and, at best, only met to exchange recipes and for quilting bees. Lease wanted more.
In the beginning, it was as if God himself conspired against her and the club.
On the day of the meeting, temperatures were bitterly cold and a blizzard was raging as nine women banded together to form the Hypatia Club. The women named themselves after Hypatia, a fifth-century Greek female philosopher and educator who was persecuted and killed for her belief in open thought and discussion. Lease later went on to become a forceful national spokeswoman for the Populist Party during the 1890s and eventually moved from Wichita.
But the club and the ideals that she and the eight original members had established flourished.
By 1934, the Hypatia Club had grown so much — with so many of Wichita’s most prominent women as its members — that they bought a house on North Broadway as a place to have meetings.
The prairie square house at 1215 N. Broadway was designed and built in 1897 by Ulysses Grant Charles, a noted Wichita architect.
By the 1980s, the house — which still maintains many of its original windows, mirrors and plumbing fixtures — was in disrepair. The porches were falling off, the gutters hadn’t been cleaned out in years and water was beginning to enter the house through the rotting wood walls.
Club members applied for and were able to get the house nominated and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the mid-1990s. They have since sold it and used a portion of the proceeds from the house to buy the statue. Helene Fuller Mitchell, a past president of the club who championed the efforts to get the statue, said she did so because “I feel like we are a part of Kansas history.”
“She (Lease) was an incredible role model when she couldn’t even vote,” said club member Jackie Nagel. The 19th Amendment, allowing women the right to vote, was not ratified until Aug. 26, 1920.
Still, Lease and the women of Hypatia did what they could to make lives better.
A plaque at the memorial reads:
“The memorial is dedicated to the memory of Mary Elizabeth Lease and the nine women who drove their horses and buggies through the snow blizzard of 1886 to meet and set a new direction for women in the prairie city of Wichita … It is a memorial to what the Hypatia women have accomplished to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community.”
As a group, the women of Hypatia were able to:
• Start the first formal welfare agency in 1887.
• Start the first garbage pickup service in Wichita in 1901.
• Help two club members became the first women to be elected to Wichita’s school board in 1913.
Their members, which have remained some of the most prominent family names in Wichita, have through the decades contributed significantly to local museums and the arts.
Lease championed women’s rights, helping establish the Wichita Equal Suffrage Association.
In 1890, Lease embarked on a speaking tour for the Populist Party, campaigning primarily against Sen. John J. Ingalls, the Republican incumbent. He lost the election.
It was a time when mortgage foreclosures and sheriff’s sales filled the newspapers. “Wall Street owns the country,” lamented Lease.
“Kansas had better stop raising corn and begin raising hell,” she told farmers.
She was called the “People’s Joan of Arc,” because of her efforts to rally and build the Populist movement.
And now, 126 years after her club was started, what would Mary Elizabeth Lease think of the statue that’s been placed in the heart of Wichita, which is a short distance away from where Occupy Wichita has held signs of protest?
“What would Mary Elizabeth Lease think? I think she would say you’ve come a long way, baby,” said Brown, the Hypatia Club president. “Would she be happy? Well, we are still supporting some of the things she supported.”

Downtown statue honors leader of women’s rights, Populist movementDowntown statue honors leader of women’s rights, Populist movement

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Fernando Salazar/The Wichita Eagle
Mary Elizabeth Lease
Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society/
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2012/01/23/2186252/downtown-statue-honors-leader.html#storylink=cpy
The sculpture of Mary Elizabeth Lease stands between Century II and the Wichita Public Library. It was paid for by the Hypatia Club, which wanted to honor the Wichita woman who started it with a classified ad in the Wichita Eagle. Lease went on to become one of the formidable leaders of the 1890s Populist movement.
What would Mary Elizabeth Lease think?
In the heart of Wichita, a statue of the famed 19-century Populist leader has been placed where crowds are sure to pass, compliments of the club she started.
The statue was placed in the summer by the Hypatia Club, the state’s oldest women’s club. Members of the club paid $65,000 to have local sculptor Babs Mellor create a likeness of Lease.
“We started out with another sculptor but she wanted to do something that was far out — you had to use your imagination for what it was. And, we decided we liked the real thing better,” said Josephine Brown, the club president.
The group has been working on the sculpture project for a year and a half. It is expected to be dedicated this spring. It’s been placed between Century II and the Wichita Public Library .
No doubt, Lease would have found a certain irony in the sculpture praising her efforts exactly 126 years after she moved mindsets as to what women could do, if they wanted.
In the beginning it would have been easy to give up.
In January of 1886 she raised the ire of Wichita Eagle publisher Marshall Murdock when she took out an ad in his newspaper.
Her ad in the Jan. 21, 1886, Eagle read: “We would most earnestly invite the intelligent women of Wichita, the artists, the musicians, teachers, actors, lecturers, and all women having the advancement of their sex in view, to meet Saturday, Jan. 23 at 3 o’clock at the residence of Mrs. Harry Hill, 321 Topeka Avenue.”
Murdock wrote an editorial urging husbands to keep their wives at home. The idea was simply unheard of in a Victorian society in which women catered to their men and, at best, only met to exchange recipes and for quilting bees. Lease wanted more.
In the beginning, it was as if God himself conspired against her and the club.
On the day of the meeting, temperatures were bitterly cold and a blizzard was raging as nine women banded together to form the Hypatia Club. The women named themselves after Hypatia, a fifth-century Greek female philosopher and educator who was persecuted and killed for her belief in open thought and discussion. Lease later went on to become a forceful national spokeswoman for the Populist Party during the 1890s and eventually moved from Wichita.
But the club and the ideals that she and the eight original members had established flourished.
By 1934, the Hypatia Club had grown so much — with so many of Wichita’s most prominent women as its members — that they bought a house on North Broadway as a place to have meetings.
The prairie square house at 1215 N. Broadway was designed and built in 1897 by Ulysses Grant Charles, a noted Wichita architect.
By the 1980s, the house — which still maintains many of its original windows, mirrors and plumbing fixtures — was in disrepair. The porches were falling off, the gutters hadn’t been cleaned out in years and water was beginning to enter the house through the rotting wood walls.
Club members applied for and were able to get the house nominated and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the mid-1990s. They have since sold it and used a portion of the proceeds from the house to buy the statue. Helene Fuller Mitchell, a past president of the club who championed the efforts to get the statue, said she did so because “I feel like we are a part of Kansas history.”
“She (Lease) was an incredible role model when she couldn’t even vote,” said club member Jackie Nagel. The 19th Amendment, allowing women the right to vote, was not ratified until Aug. 26, 1920.
Still, Lease and the women of Hypatia did what they could to make lives better.
A plaque at the memorial reads:
“The memorial is dedicated to the memory of Mary Elizabeth Lease and the nine women who drove their horses and buggies through the snow blizzard of 1886 to meet and set a new direction for women in the prairie city of Wichita … It is a memorial to what the Hypatia women have accomplished to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community.”
As a group, the women of Hypatia were able to:
•  Start the first formal welfare agency in 1887.
•  Start the first garbage pickup service in Wichita in 1901.
•  Help two club members became the first women to be elected to Wichita’s school board in 1913.
Their members, which have remained some of the most prominent family names in Wichita, have through the decades contributed significantly to local museums and the arts.
Lease championed women’s rights, helping establish the Wichita Equal Suffrage Association.
In 1890, Lease embarked on a speaking tour for the Populist Party, campaigning primarily against Sen. John J. Ingalls, the Republican incumbent. He lost the election.
It was a time when mortgage foreclosures and sheriff’s sales filled the newspapers. “Wall Street owns the country,” lamented Lease.
“Kansas had better stop raising corn and begin raising hell,” she told farmers.
She was called the “People’s Joan of Arc,” because of her efforts to rally and build the Populist movement.
And now, 126 years after her club was started, what would Mary Elizabeth Lease think of the statue that’s been placed in the heart of Wichita, which is a short distance away from where Occupy Wichita has held signs of protest?
“What would Mary Elizabeth Lease think? I think she would say you’ve come a long way, baby,” said Brown, the Hypatia Club president. “Would she be happy? Well, we are still supporting some of the things she supported.”

Roe v. Wade Turns 39: Top 5 Threats to Women’s Right to ChooseRoe v. Wade Turns 39: Top 5 Threats to Women’s Right to Choose

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Roe v. Wade turns 39 today, but the number of threats to women’s right to choose has balloned in recent years.
In 2011, a record high of more than 1,100 anti-abortion provisions were introduced in the country’s state legislatures, representing a sharp increase over 2010, which saw 950 such provisions introduced according to a Guttmacher Institute study.
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(Photo: REUTERS)
Roe v. Wade turns 39 today, but the number of threats to women’s right to choose has grown in recent years.
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MappingOurRights.org has made a map available that ranks states according to how much a women’s right to choose is currently endangered.
Of the 1,100-plus proposals nationwide, 36 states successfully enacted new restrictions on women’s right to choose in 2011, according to The Huffington Post.
Here’s the top 5 threats facing abortion rights today:
1. Mississippi’s push for a “personhood” constitutional amendment – The “personhood” proposal, which entered the national spotlight last year as the most restrictive such restriction proposed in the country, would have declared fetuses, or unborn children, as full “persons,” granting them full rights to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” according to the Personhood USA advocacy group. The group is taking the Personhood movement nationwide, hoping to get such amendments added to state constitutions from Mississippi to Florida.
“A person, simply put, is a human being. This fact should be enough,” Personhood USA’s website reads. “The intrinsic humanity of unborn children, by definition, makes them persons, and should, therefore, guarantee their protection under the law.”
The implications of such a change to Mississippi’s constitution would be monumental. Some critics contend that it would make abortion a crime equal to murder of a full-grown adult.
2. Ohio’s “heartbeat” bill – This legislation would outlaw abortion as soon as a doctor can detect the first fetal heartbeat.
The first heartbeat can often be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, meaning that many women won’t even know she was pregnant by the time she would be unable to lawfully get an abortion. The Ohio bill allows no exception for incest, rape or mental health issues.
The pro-choice movement has mobilized against the legislation, saying it unfairly endangers women and limits their right to choose.
As Think Progress has reported, a Cleveland obstetrician named Dr. Lisa Perriera, who opposes the bill, told Senate Republicans that “lawmakers do not belong in the consultation room with me and my patients,” adding that, “Banning abortion has never stopped abortion from happening. It has only made abortion unsafe or more difficult to obtain.”
3. TRAP laws – Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers laws impose requirements on doctors on abortion providers that go beyond those imposed on other medical practices. Some such laws require further expensive and sophisticated facilities, some allow unannounced state inspections of facilities.
A number of states, from Kentucky to North Dakota have enacted such laws, which ReproductiveRights.org has come out hard against.
“These excessive and unnecessary government regulations – an ever-growing trend among state legislatures – increase the cost and scarcity of abortion services, harming women’s health and inhibiting their reproductive choices,” the ReproductiveRights.org website says about TRAP laws.
4. Laws mandating parental involvement – Laws that require parents to either approve or otherwise be involved in minors’ reproductive rights decisions are some of the most common abortion-restricting laws in the nation
These laws make it more difficult for minor females to make their own decisions about their reproductive health, and have even led to situations in which young women have been forced to make a choice between either getting an illegal abortion or giving birth to a child conceived via rape or incest.
The Center for Reproductive Rights calls such laws a major threat to the right to choose, and wrote in 2009 that more than 35 states mandate parental consent or parental notification before minors can obtain abortions.
“In their efforts to make inaccessible to as many women as possible, anti-choice forces have focused on burdening minors’ access to abortion,” the center wrote.
5. Mandatory and biased counseling laws – Laws mandating women obtain counseling before obtaining an abortion are one more restriction on choice that abortion-rights groups to which have been strongly opposed
Even worse, such groups say, are “biased” counseling laws, which require that such counseling be state-provided information that encourages carrying the pregnancy rather than getting an abortion.
The Center for Productive Rights has pushed hard to stop such laws from being passed, and wrote a major critique of them in 2010:
“The information is designed to persuade women to carry their pregnancies to term, and it generally includes descriptions of fetal development, adoption programs, and state laws requiring fathers to pay child support,” the center wrote. “In some states, this information must be provided to the woman orally, often by the physician, and in other states the information is contained in written materials prepared by the state.”

Fed Up Vermont rallies for women’s rights

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Source: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.           Author: Pulsihed Time: Jan. 21, 2012

 

Kristin Nelson (right) leads a chant as Fed Up Vermont marches from Bailey Howe Library at the University of Vermont to City Hall in Burlington on Saturday. / SHANE BUFANO, for the Free Press
Hayley Mason of Fed Up Vermont, a “grass-roots feminist coalition” formed in June, said a rally Saturday was the kickoff of a campaign to “eradicate sexism” on the University of Vermont campus, in the broader community and “eventually everywhere.”
Mason, 24, of Burlington, said the incident in December involving the UVM fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon, which was shut down after distributing a survey to members asking whom they would like to rape, was only part of the reason for Saturday’s rally.
“Rape culture is bigger than one frat,” Mason said. “(Sigma Phi Epsilon) only embodied what we all want to fight against, oppressive inequality and a division between men and women.”
About 50 people braved the cold Saturday for the march that began at the Bailey Howe Library at UVM and ended at City Hall. Mason and another Fed Up member, Marni Salerno, led the crowd in chants with a bullhorn, saying, “Tell me what a feminist looks like!” to the answer, “This is what a feminist looks like!” from the marchers.
Another refrain went, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, rape culture has to go!,” and “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!”
As the group made its way down Main Street, a sprinkling of passing cars and trucks honked in support, with one driver giving the “thumbs up” through his window.
Once the marchers reached Church Street, they marched up and down the length of the pedestrian mall, chanting as they went. Some shoppers stopped to listen, others shot video of the rally with their smartphones, and still others ignored the entire affair.
Thomas Grace, 28, of Burlington said he joined the march to show support for women.
“The attacks on women in this country and around the world need to be fought against,” Grace said. “It needs to be men and women together.”
Once the marchers reached City Hall, the rally convened in the Council Chambers for three speeches from local activists, and “speak-outs” by anyone who wanted to address the audience.
Acting as master of ceremonies, Mason began by outlining the demands being made of UVM by Fed Up Vermont and other organizations including Vermont Workers’ Center, Peace and Justice Center, Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, Occupy VT Burlington and more.
Mason said UVM:
• Must institute mandatory women and gender studies courses for all students.
• Must invest more resources into the women and gender studies department and make gender studies a Spire of Excellence.
• Must provide full transparency about sexual harassment, rape and gender violence in the UVM community and regularly report statistics about the occurrences.
• Must develop leadership bodies which reflect the gender composition of the UVM community and project the role of women as leaders.
The first speaker, Peggy Luhrs, was a co-founder of Fed Up Vermont and has been involved in women’s rights issues in Burlington since the early 1970s. Luhrs said when she first got involved in the movement there was very little protection for abused women from society in general, with no shelters for battered women, and no training for police involved in domestic disputes, but “there were women’s centers starting to spring up.”
The next speaker, Nancy Welch, is an English professor at UVM who also teaches courses in women’s studies. Welch said the UVM campus had long been entrenched in “racism, sexism and corporate cronyism,” and that while the situation had improved over the years, she told rally participants that “everything you are doing to take on sexism on campus is hugely important.”
The final speaker was another member of Fed Up Vermont, Emily Eck, who said sexism and “rape culture” must be “attacked.” Eck said there were several steps people could take in this regard, including watching their language, not denigrating women, and not blaming rape victims for their own rapes.
“Don’t make rape jokes. Joking about rape is never harmless,” Eck said. “The last thing you can do is organize to overthrow social ills that have been festering for a long time.”

Communist Party appoints land rights protester its village head (B)

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Women’s Rights in China Volunteer                                    2012-01-18

 

A protest leader in Wukan, the southern Chinese village that drove out the authorities in a row over land grabs, has been appointed its new Communist Party secretary. Residents applauded Lin Zuluan’s new role as another positive step in their struggle with local officials.

 

Unrest prompted by the seizure of farmland and accusations of electoral fraud by village heads escalated in December after Xue Jinbo, who had been negotiating with authorities, died in custody. Provincial leaders stepped in and offered concessions 10 days after police and party officials fled the village in Guangdong province. Residents welcomed the intervention but remained concerned that they could still face retribution and the pledges would not be delivered fully. They cheered the appointment of 67-year-old Mr Lin, announced at a meeting of party members on Sunday, as a good sign. He will also lead the team arranging another vote to elect a new village committee. Provincial investigators declared the last race invalid. ”It is a good thing indeed. Most villagers are very happy about this,” resident Yang Shimao said. ”Lin Zuluan was the actual leader of our previous rights protection movement. With this new position he will consider our village’s interests and our people’s interests. ”We didn’t expect the authorities to agree to us choosing Mr Lin. After all, we are rebels. This is the first ever case where a man on the government’s wanted list has become the party secretary of a village.” But Mr Yang warned Mr Lin would probably face ”slander from vested interest groups”. ”Our village will still face difficulties in the future since vested interest groups will definitely find all kinds of ways to obstruct,” Mr Yang said.

 

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After several days the demonstrations, the woman took the children to the streets in the sun. (Photo by WRIC Reporter)After several days the demonstrations, the woman took the children to the streets in the sun. (Photo by WRIC )

 

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A villager told the state-run English-language daily Global Times he hoped the new party committee would bring a satisfactory conclusion to the investigation into the land seizures. Last week, Singapore’s The Straits Times reported a villager killed himself after repeated phone calls from local authorities telling him to turn himself in for involvement in the protests. One relative said every household had received repeated calls. State news agency Xinhua has reported the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, stressed the need for farmers’ land rights to be protected in an article for the Communist Party journal Seeking Truth. Land seizures are one of the biggest sources of unrest in China.

 

 

Fed Up Vermont rallies for women’s rightsFed Up Vermont rallies for women’s rights

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Kristin Nelson (right) leads a chant as Fed Up Vermont marches from Bailey Howe Library at the University of Vermont to City Hall in Burlington on Saturday. / SHANE BUFANO, for the Free Press
Hayley Mason of Fed Up Vermont, a “grass-roots feminist coalition” formed in June, said a rally Saturday was the kickoff of a campaign to “eradicate sexism” on the University of Vermont campus, in the broader community and “eventually everywhere.”
Mason, 24, of Burlington, said the incident in December involving the UVM fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon, which was shut down after distributing a survey to members asking whom they would like to rape, was only part of the reason for Saturday’s rally.
“Rape culture is bigger than one frat,” Mason said. “(Sigma Phi Epsilon) only embodied what we all want to fight against, oppressive inequality and a division between men and women.”
About 50 people braved the cold Saturday for the march that began at the Bailey Howe Library at UVM and ended at City Hall. Mason and another Fed Up member, Marni Salerno, led the crowd in chants with a bullhorn, saying, “Tell me what a feminist looks like!” to the answer, “This is what a feminist looks like!” from the marchers.
Another refrain went, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, rape culture has to go!,” and “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!”
As the group made its way down Main Street, a sprinkling of passing cars and trucks honked in support, with one driver giving the “thumbs up” through his window.
Once the marchers reached Church Street, they marched up and down the length of the pedestrian mall, chanting as they went. Some shoppers stopped to listen, others shot video of the rally with their smartphones, and still others ignored the entire affair.
Thomas Grace, 28, of Burlington said he joined the march to show support for women.
“The attacks on women in this country and around the world need to be fought against,” Grace said. “It needs to be men and women together.”
Once the marchers reached City Hall, the rally convened in the Council Chambers for three speeches from local activists, and “speak-outs” by anyone who wanted to address the audience.
Acting as master of ceremonies, Mason began by outlining the demands being made of UVM by Fed Up Vermont and other organizations including Vermont Workers’ Center, Peace and Justice Center, Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, Occupy VT Burlington and more.
Mason said UVM:
• Must institute mandatory women and gender studies courses for all students.
• Must invest more resources into the women and gender studies department and make gender studies a Spire of Excellence.
• Must provide full transparency about sexual harassment, rape and gender violence in the UVM community and regularly report statistics about the occurrences.
• Must develop leadership bodies which reflect the gender composition of the UVM community and project the role of women as leaders.
The first speaker, Peggy Luhrs, was a co-founder of Fed Up Vermont and has been involved in women’s rights issues in Burlington since the early 1970s. Luhrs said when she first got involved in the movement there was very little protection for abused women from society in general, with no shelters for battered women, and no training for police involved in domestic disputes, but “there were women’s centers starting to spring up.”
The next speaker, Nancy Welch, is an English professor at UVM who also teaches courses in women’s studies.
Welch said the UVM campus had long been entrenched in “racism, sexism and corporate cronyism,” and that while the situation had improved over the years, she told rally participants that “everything you are doing to take on sexism on campus is hugely important.”
The final speaker was another member of Fed Up Vermont, Emily Eck, who said sexism and “rape culture” must be “attacked.” Eck said there were several steps people could take in this regard, including watching their language, not denigrating women, and not blaming rape victims for their own rapes.
“Don’t make rape jokes. Joking about rape is never harmless,” Eck said. “The last thing you can do is organize to overthrow social ills that have been festering for a long time.”

Commission on Status of Women Still Needed

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Source: http://www.capradio.orgAuthor: Pulsihed Time: 2012-1-20 email Print this article

Governor Brown says the California Commission on the Status of Women should be eliminated. State Senator Noreen Evans is chair of the Legislative Woman’s Caucus, and she disagrees.
Recently, the Governor proposed eliminating the Commission on the Status of Women-the only state agency overseeing issues impacting women.
Women have made progress in the 47 years since the first Governor Brown established the Commission, but we have a long way to go. Women are over half of the state population, but only 28% of California legislators are women. Only one Fortune 500 company in California has a woman CEO.
More than one-third of households headed by women with children have an income below the poverty level. Compared to men, California women earn 84 cents on the dollar; African American women earn 68 cents and Latinas 59 cents. At the same time the state has been slashing services upon which women and children rely.
Now, more than ever, women need a voice in our government.
Decisions we make to balance our budget disproportionately impact women. Programs serving primarily women and children have been decimated. Most jobs in education, health care, and child care are held by women. These jobs are disappearing because of budget cuts. And, women are often hit by reductions in more than one service.
The Commission on the Status of Women is the official voice of California women and advises the administration on gender equity issues.
When decision-makers understand how their actions impact men and women differently, they are better prepared to make sound choices. Our government exists for the people and by the people, yet over half of the people have been historically underrepresented, undervalued, and denied.
That history can’t be eliminated and neither should the Commission on the Status of Women.

Fighting AIDS, One ‘Friend’ At A Time HHS is determined to build on his legacy

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Source: through social mediaAuthor: By Jack B. Winn Pulsihed Time: Jan 20 2012, 05:45 AMemail Print this article

By all accounts, Dr. Mark Colomb was an outlier in his community. Throughout his 45 years of life, the Ridgeland, Mississippi resident advanced rapidly through the ranks of the medical establishment, first as a graduate assistant at Jackson State University, then as a staff administrator at the college, managing over a half-dozen projects for the school. During his five year tenure, he raised over 9 million in federal grants for various projects targeting everything from heart disease to obesity, diabetes to prostate cancer.
He’d later have the honor of consulting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during its Minority AIDS Initiative. Colomb would use the opportunity to advocate on behalf of the black community, speaking out on controversial issues such as HIV/AIDS at every turn.
Colomb–who was gay– died last year, but the Department of Health and Human Services is determined to build on his legacy–through social media.
According to blog.aids.gov, the website–a subset of HHS– is scheduled to attend the 9th annual National African American MSM Leadership Conference on HIV/AIDS and Other Health Disparities in New Orleans, Louisiana.
During the Jan. 19-22nd conference, researchers, officials and community will gather–not to talk viral loads and white cell counts–but Twitter mentions, friend requests, YouTube channels, and other social media topics–all in an effort to reach out to gay and lesbians in the black community.
In addition, aids.gov will host workshops on social media strategy, new media, AIDS outreach and other issues.
According to the CDC, African Americans account for 44 percent of new HIV/AIDS cases in 2009–a disproportionate amount to the general population. Urban areas such as Atlanta and Miami are at high risk too–over 80 percent of Atlanta’s majority black residents are HIV positive, while blacks comprise 55 percent of new AIDS cases in Miami-Dade County.
Nonprofits such as Columb’s My Brother’s Keeper are stepping in to fill the outreach gap. One project–the Center for Community-based Programs–aims at spreading word of the disease to heterosexual and homosexual youth in the black community.
The Road to AIDS is fighting the good fight too. The nonprofit is kicking off it’s tour of the US this January, hosting a series of town halls in New Orleans, Atlanta, Ft. Lauderdale, Baltimore, and 11 other locations in advance of the XIX International AIDS Conference in D.C. this summer.

Habitat for Humanity aids veteran while launching new program

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Source: Daily Herald Author: Cathy Allred Pulsihed Time: Friday, January 20, 2012 email Print this article

James Roth watches as volunteers from Home Depot and Habitat for Humanity build a wheelchair ramp in his garage Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
Habitat for Humanity, Utah County
The Home Depot partnered with Habitat for Humanity on Thursday in launching the nonprofit’s new program in Utah County.
“Last year we expanded our mission to neighborhood revitalization and critical home repair,” said Nancy Mickiewicz from Habitat for Humanity in Utah County. “This is our opportunity to partner with Home Depot and help a veteran, which we are just honored to do.”
Northern Utah County resident Jim Roth was treated for Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a young man. The radiation and chemotherapy gave him another 20-year lease on life.
The cancer went into recession, but the radiation left lasting side effects of hardening arteries and nerve damage that remained dormant until 2010. Daily, he suffers from chronic, agonizing sharp pain and burning sensations in his lower spine, hips and legs.
Largely wheelchair bound — his legs are in danger of atrophying from poor circulation — he needed a way to get into and out of his house.
“The doctor told me that within the next five years I will lose a leg,” Roth said. “I don’t think I’d be alive today if I hadn’t gotten treatment. I was lucky to catch it early.”
He served 12 years in the military in infantry. His commander is the one who nagged him to get treatment.
“I was in denial,” Roth said. “The survival rate for me would have dropped down to zero if it wasn’t for the military.”
At about 9 a.m. Thursday, the fleet of vans and cars pulled up to his home and men unloaded the wood and other items to construct an entry ramp in the garage of the home.
The project was the first critical home repair sponsored by Habitat for Humanity in Utah County. The volunteers completed the ramp and also installed a water softener and water filter for Roth’s health, since he has just one kidney left.
Roth’s father-in-law, Cliff Ewell, works at The Home Depot and has known about his son-in-law’s need for about a year. His company provided a $5,000 grant for the project.
“Excited, I’m excited about it,” Ewell said. “He’s a good kid. I just love him to death.”

Major drop in HIV infections expected in SA

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Source: Sapa-AFPAuthor: Pulsihed Time: 20 January, 2012 email Print this article

Image by: LUIS GALDAMEZ / REUTERS
South Africa, home to the highest number of HIV cases in the world, should see a massive reduction in infections by the end of the decade after a change in government policy, a UNAids official said yesterday.
“It now has more people with HIV infections than any [other] country – 5.6 million. That is due to a lack of political commitment before,” said Sheila Tlou, UNAids regional director for East and Southern Africa.
“However, there is a turnaround in President Jacob Zuma’s government, which is committed in its fight against HIV and Aids,” she said.
“By 2020 there will be massive reductions in South Africa.”
Zuma, who has dramatically expanded the country’s Aids treatment programme since taking office in 2009, last month unveiled a plan to halve the number of HIV infections over the next five years.
The five-year plan is the first that has been drafted since the 2008 ousting of President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
Tlou said east and southern Africa were known as “the centre of the epidemic” because, of the world’s 34million people living with HIV, almost three-quarters lived there.
“One of our targets is to reduce new infections by 50% by 2015,” she said.
But Tlou noted that fading commitment by the Global Fund to Fight Aids to combating tuberculosis and malaria could have a negative effect on the fight against the disease.
“There has been quite a lot of progress since 1997, with a 25% reduction in new infections in our region,” she said.
Steve Kraus, UNAids director for Asia and the Pacific, said important progress had been made in big countries such as China, India and Indonesia, and in smaller countries such as Fiji and Samoa.
Kraus said China had adopted a policy of zero tolerance of HIV.
This was later adopted by the 10 ASEAN nations.
“China is increasingly funding its national response [to HIV] and added $1-billion last year,” he said.

Should adult film actors be forced to wear condoms?

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The “no glove, no love” principle may soon be made law for adult film actors in Los Angeles, where roughly 90 per cent of U.S. pornographic films are made.
The measure is currently before Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and a statement from his aide suggests he is supportive of the condom requirement. On Tuesday, city council approved an ordinance that would deny film permits to producers who do not mandate the use of condoms on set.
A committee of police, city and health officials may be created to plot enforcement mechanisms.
Industry players are not taking the news lying down. Many have decried the measure as an unneeded exercise in political correctness that cannot be enforced in the city known as the porn capital of the country.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how in fact they do try to enforce it and who’s going to fund it, and all of the time and effort they’re going to spend,” said Steven Hirsch, co-founder and co-chairman of Los Angeles-based Vivid, one of the largest makers of erotic movies.
Adult film purveyors also argue that:
Consumers complain that condoms are distracting and ruin the fantasy.
Filmmakers will just stop shooting in the city of Los Angeles, thereby dispersing an industry that produces an estimated $8 billion US a year in revenue.
The new law would be bad for business at a time when free internet pornography and recession pains have cut into profits.
Testing is the local norm, as actors are tested for sexually transmitted diseases a minimum of every 30 days when they are working.
Defenders of the ordinance argue the industry is not doing enough to police itself.
Ged Kenslea, spokesman for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said filmmakers have long ignored state health laws mandating the use of condoms when workers are exposed to blood-borne pathogens.
“Let’s make one thing clear: condom use on adult film sets is, and has been, the law in California under blood-borne pathogens regulations,” he said. “It is just a law that has not been uniformly enforced or followed.”
Veteran adult film actress and producer Tabitha Stevens, who has worked with and without condoms, counters that the choice should be left up to the performers and not mandated by a government agency.
“If you want to wear them, wear them. If you don’t, don’t. That’s up to the talent to decide. It shouldn’t be up to the government to decide,” she said.

Report: Americans curbing behaviors that lead to AIDS

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Source: Washington Times Author: By Cheryl Wetzstein-The Pulsihed Time: Thursday, January 19, 2012email Print this article

President Obama announces a renewed American commitment to making HIV treatment available in the United States and around the world during a speech Dec. 1, 2011, on World AIDS Day at George Washington University in Washington. (Associated Press)
By Cheryl Wetzstein-The Washington Times Thursday, January 19, 2012 President Obama announces a renewed American commitment to making HIV treatment available in the United States and around the world during a speech Dec. 1, 2011, on World AIDS Day at George Washington University in Washington. (Associated Press)
Fewer Americans are engaging in behaviors that raise their risk for HIV/AIDS, primarily because men and women are changing their sexual activities, according to an extensive new federal report released Thursday.
The decline should raise hopes that “the messages of the public-health community have gotten through,” said Anjani Chandra, a health scientist and lead researcher of the National Center for Health Statistics report.
The report – which stems from private answers given by nearly 23,000 people – found that 10 percent of men and 8 percent of women, or 11.4 million Americans, engaged in at least one “risk behavior” that could lead to exposure to HIV/AIDS in 2006 through 2010.
Those numbers were down from 13 percent and 11 percent, respectively, or 14.4 million persons, who in 2002 reported engaging in at least one risky behavior.
The data come from two cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), a massive, in-person survey taken of people between the ages of 15 and 44. To promote honesty among respondents, the NSFG uses laptops and head phones for questions about personal sexual and drug activity; only the person taking the survey knows what is being asked and answered.
The questions are about 10 HIV-risk-related behaviors a person may have engaged in over the previous 12 months.
Several categories saw no significant change: The percentage of men having sex with men stayed the same (2.1 percent), as did the number of those reporting “five or more opposite-sex sex partners” (3.9 percent for men, 1.8 percent for women.)
On the positive side, men and women reported fewer instances of sex with a “partner who injects drugs” – this figure fell to less than 1 percent for both genders – and both reported fewer episodes of “sex in exchange for money or drugs” (1.3 percent for men, 0.7 percent for women).
Women reported fewer instances of sex with “male partners who had sex with other males” – this fell from 2.3 percent to 1.4 percent – and men reported a decline in “crack cocaine use,” which fell from 1.8 percent to 0.8 percent.
Overall, though, a gender gap in HIV-risk behaviors remains, with men more often engaging in activities that could lead to infection.
“We do see that there’s lower levels of risk behaviors reported by women, compared to men,” said Ms. Chandra, noting that 8.4 percent of men reported at least one risky sex or drug abuse episode, compared to just 4.6 percent of women.
Moreover, one of the 10 “risk” factors – treatment for a sexually transmitted disease – could be seen in a positive light. Women significantly increased their reports of STD treatment, rising from 3.4 percent in 2002 to 4.1 percent in 2006 to 2010.
The results, along with recent evidence showing more regular condom use, heartened Pam Collins, program coordinator at Positive Efforts, which fights HIV/AIDS in Houston’s minority communities.
“I think women are becoming more responsible in the bedroom,” Ms. Collins said. “We teach women to have their own condoms. We teach them to be more responsible for their own bodies. So it makes me smile. I think some of our prevention messages are beginning to resonate.”

A Commitment To Caring For Women And Children

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Caring for the health of a mother is the most direct way to improve the life of her entire family. In resource-challenged countries where many people never see a doctor in their lifetimes, the benefit of focusing on the needs of mothers is immediate and exponential: Invest in one safe pregnancy, and two people survive. Teach one midwife to revive a newborn struggling to take that first breath of life, and the number saved will continue to grow. Help a group of women with HIV understand ways they can prevent their babies from being born with the virus, and a generation free from AIDS begins to seem possible.
In 2010, Johnson & Johnson continued its long-standing legacy with a five-year commitment in response to the United Nations’ call to action to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of reducing mortality in women and children by 2015. The commitment aims to help as many as 120 million women each year, reaching 50 countries through our philanthropic programs. The MDG commitment includes research and development efforts to bring forward new treatments for HIV and tuberculosis; 200 million doses annually of mebendazole, a treatment for intestinal worms in children; extended support for a variety of safe birth programs; and a significant expansion of mobile health initiatives in countries with high infant mortality rates and high mobile penetration, such as Bangladesh, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa.
“We have a responsibility to share our resources and bring the latest knowledge, technology and medicine to improve the lives of women and children,” says Sharon D’Agostino, Vice President, Worldwide Corporate Contributions, Johnson & Johnson.
Sarah Omega in Kenya, Yu Haixia in China and Megan Johnson in the United States are examples of women, and mothers, who have been touched by the network of community-based partners of Johnson & Johnson, working together to better health and save and improve lives.
Sarah Omega suffered 12 years of incontinence and social rejection because of fistula, an injury resulting from prolonged childbirth. The UNFPA, supported by Johnson & Johnson, and key hospitals such as Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia and Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, work to prevent and treat fistula and help survivors, like Sarah, rebuild their lives. When Yu Haixia’s son, Song Xiaoyan, was born, he could not breathe on his own. Through China’s Neonatal Resuscitation Program, a joint effort by Johnson & Johnson, the Chinese Ministry of Health and the American Academy of Pediatrics to address birth asphyxia, nurses performed life-giving resuscitation and he was able to take his first breath.
Megan Johnson’s second pregnancy seemed much harder on her than her first, until the Middletown, Conn., mom started using text4baby, a free mobile service that offers health information for expectant mothers and through a baby’s first year of life via text messages.
As an extension of the MDG commitment, Johnson & Johnson has formed a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is supported by the United Nations Foundation, mHealth Alliance and BabyCenter LLC. This partnership, Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), will harness the power of mobile technology to deliver vital health information to new and expectant mothers. Over the next three years, the partnership will work across an initial set of three countries, Bangladesh, India and South Africa, to help coordinate and increase the impact of existing mobile health programs to improve maternal health.
“The impact we have on people’s lives is a vitally important aspect of our giving and caring as a company,” says D’Agostino. “Equally important is the support we provide to our community-based partners. We provide strategic guidance as well as financial support, working with these organizations to measure their results and ensure that programs are having the desired effect.”
In the last decade, Johnson & Johnson and its operating companies have provided more than $4.3 billion in grants, product donations and patient assistance, touching lives around the world.

Los Angeles council requires condoms in porn films

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Source: Associated PressAuthor: Pulsihed Time: January 18, 2012email Print this article

In this photo taken by AP Images for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, advocates from AHF bestowed the ‘SkinFlynt’ Award on porn mogul Larry Flynt at a protest at the XBIZ Adult Film Awards on Tuesday Jan 10, 2012 in Santa Monica Calif. The protest came after an historic vote by L.A. City Counsel to adopt an ordinance requiring porn producers to use condoms in their films as a condition of getting a film permit from the city and Flynt’s refusal to follow California laws requiring condom use in porn. / Joe Kohen/AP Images for AIDS Healthcare Foundation
John Rogers
LOS ANGELES — Some of the most prominent purveyors of porn say they’ll start packing up their sex toys and abandoning the nation’s Porn Capital if authorities really do carry through with a nascent effort to police their movie sets and order that every actor be outfitted with a condom.
That effort took a serious leap forward Tuesday when the Los Angeles City Council voted 9-1 to grant final approval to an ordinance that would deny film permits to producers who do not comply with the condom requirement. The measure now goes to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for approval.
Before the measure can take effect, however, the council has called for the creation of a committee made up of police officials, the city attorney, state health officials and others to determine how it might be enforced.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how in fact they do try to enforce it and whose going to fund it and all of the time and effort they’re going to spend,” said Steven Hirsch, co-founder and co-chairman of Los Angeles-based Vivid, one of the largest makers of erotic movies.
“Ultimately I think what they will find is people will just stop shooting in the city of Los Angeles,” added Hirsch. “That’s a given.”
His company, founded in 1984, would be among those that would consider leaving, he said.
Other industry officials condemned the measure as an unneeded exercise in political correctness that cannot be enforced in the city known in the industry as the Porn Capital of the country.
“The only thing that the city could potentially achieve is losing some film permit money and driving some productions away, but you can’t actually compel an industry to create a product that the market doesn’t want,” said Christian Mann, general manager of Evil Angel, another of the industry’s largest production companies.
The ordinance would require filmmakers pay a permit fee, the amount of which is still to be determined. The money would be used to pay for surprise inspections at film shoots. Who would carry out those inspections is to be determined by the committee the City Council is setting up.
Mann said smaller productions involving only a handful of people can probably fly under the radar and just ignore the permitting requirement. Larger ones, he said, will likely just leave town.
Approximately 90 percent of U.S. porn films are made in Los Angeles, almost all of them in the city’s San Fernando Valley, said Mark Kernes, senior editor of Adult Video News. When films, Internet downloads, sex toys and admission to dance clubs are counted, Kernes said, it’s an industry that produces about $8 billion a year in revenue.
It has been battered in recent years, however, by the recession and the increased popularity of free Internet porn, and Kernes and others say requiring condoms would further erode business.
They say consumers, particularly those overseas, have made it clear they won’t watch films when the actors use condoms, complaining that it is distracting and ruins the fantasy.
Ged Kenslea, spokesman for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said the measure is needed because the industry has failed to properly police itself. For years, he said, filmmakers have ignored state health laws mandating the use of condoms when workers are exposed to blood borne pathogens.
“Let’s make one thing clear: Condom use on adult film sets is and has been the law in California under blood borne pathogens regulations,” he said. “It is just a law that has not been uniformly enforced or followed. This film permit ordinance that the City Council approved today provides another enforcement mechanism to make sure that adult film producers are complying with existing California law.”
The council’s second and final vote to approve the law was taken without public discussion on a day when most of the porn industry’s major players were in Las Vegas preparing for Wednesday’s opening of the Adult Entertainment Expo, their industry’s largest trade event. They said they weren’t surprised to hear the news, however.
The ordinance will not affect unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, but Kenslea noted his organization is gathering petition signatures for a ballot initiative that would require condoms on porn films shot throughout the entire county. The City Council passed its condom ordinance after his group gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in Los Angeles.
If condoms are required on film shoots throughout the county, several filmmakers said they’ll likely just go to neighboring counties. The Los Angeles bedroom community of Simi Valley, for example, is in Ventura County but only a 10-minute drive from the west San Fernando Valley, where many porn films are now made.
Condoms aren’t needed, filmmakers say, because the industry already polices itself. Production companies require that actors be tested for sexually transmitted diseases a minimum of every 30 days when they are working.
Industry officials say no cases of HIV have been directly linked to porn films since 2004, adding they fear if the industry scatters to areas outside of Los Angeles that testing could fall by the wayside, exposing performers to more risk.
“If someone is going to catch an STD it’s usually out of the business because we are tested so often,” said veteran porn actress and producer Tabitha Stevens.
In her 17 years in the business, Stevens said, she has worked both with and without condoms. Although she prefers to use condoms, acknowledging they do increase safety, she said the choice should be left up to the performers and not mandated by a government agency.
“If you want to wear them, wear them. If you don’t, don’t. That’s up to the talent to decide. It shouldn’t be up to the government to decide,” she said.

Ministry defends progress on human rights

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Source: China DailAuthor: Cheng GuangjinPulsihed Time: 2012-01-18 

BEIJING – China objects to other countries’ interference in its internal affairs and the violation of China’s judicial sovereignty by making an issue of human rights, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.
In response to US Ambassador Gary Locke’s latest criticism of China’s human rights record, spokesman Liu Weimin said the progress of China’s human rights is obvious to all.
According to AFP, Locke claimed on Monday that China’s human rights record was deteriorating.
“The human rights climate has always ebbed and flowed in China, up and down, but we seem to be in a down period and it’s getting worse,” Locke told The Charlie Rose Show on US public television late on Monday, said AFP.
Locke claimed that the Chinese government had detained dissidents, lawyers and other perceived critics since the onset of unrest in North Africa and West Asia which toppled leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia last year, according to AFP.
Liu told reporters at a regular news conference what Locke said is “not the truth”.
“China has attached great importance to promoting and safeguarding the basic rights of the Chinese people, including the freedom of belief and speech,” Liu said. “China’s progress in human rights is obvious to all”.
Liu cited a survey that shows 86 percent of the Chinese people are satisfied with the country’s development.
Liu admitted that China faces more challenges in its social development, which is natural as “we have a population of 1.3 billion and we spent only 30 years in finishing a path that took the Western world 300 years”.
Liu said China is working very hard to solve such problems and is willing to enhance dialogue and cooperation with the international community on human rights.
“But we object to interference in China’s internal affairs and the violation of China’s judicial sovereignty by making an issue of human rights,” said Liu.
Liu said it’s wrong to take a certain individual’s views as mainstream opinion in China.
“As for some individuals that have been punished by law, I don’t think it means their freedom of speech or religion is suppressed, but because they violated Chinese laws,” said Liu.
Locke was back in Washington for consultations ahead of a visit by Vice-President Xi Jinping, according to AFP.
Locke acknowledged that China, while supporting previous United Nations sanctions on Iran, has yet to be convinced of the need for further punitive measures.
“The United States government is most concerned about Iran’s nuclear capability, and we really feel that more pressure must be put on Iran,” Locke said.
Liu said China has maintained normal relations with Iran, like many other countries.
“The development of bilateral relations in trade and culture does not affect China’s stance on the Iran issue,” said Liu.
China always opposes one country placing its domestic law above international law and imposing unilateral sanctions on other countries, and called for dialogue and negotiations to solve the Iranian nuclear issue, Liu said earlier.

Zhu Yufu, China activist, charged with subversion

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Source: New York Times Author: Michael Wines  Pulsihed Time: January 18, 2012

Beijing –The Chinese authorities have charged another veteran human rights activist with attempting to subvert the state, the latest in a series of indictments or trials of well-known dissidents that have drawn unusually stiff prison sentences and widespread condemnation abroad.
In the latest case, Zhu Yufu, 58, a writer and democracy advocate, was charged with subversion in Hangzhou for writing a poem in which he urged citizens to gather to defend their freedoms.
Contacted by telephone Tuesday, Zhu’s lawyer, Li Dunyong, said that a date for Zhu’s trial had not been set. Reuters quoted Li as saying his client was in good condition.
He said Zhu had written the poem early last year, as a series of uprisings in the Middle East led a small number of activists outside China to issue an Internet call for a “Jasmine Revolution.” The Chinese authorities have responded by dramatically intensifying a crackdown on rights activists that dated from December 2008, when writer and intellectual Liu Xiaobo was detained after helping write the Charter 08 democracy manifesto.
Liu was convicted of subversion in December 2009, and in 2010, while serving an 11-year prison sentence, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In March, a court in Sichuan province sentenced another activist, Liu Xianbin, to 10 years in prison on subversion charges, and another prominent rights activist in Sichuan, Chen Wei, drew a nine-year subversion sentence in December. On Dec. 26, a Guizhou province court sentenced, Chen Xi, to 10 years for subversion.
Human rights experts say most of the sentences exceed those imposed for similar crimes in years past. In part, that may reflect the fact that those convicted have previous prison records for rights activism, many stretching back to their involvement in the Tiananmen Square student protests in 1989.
Zhu spent seven years in prison for subversion after being convicted in 1999 for helping to found an opposition political group, the China Democracy Party, during former President Bill Clinton’s June 1998 state visit to China.
In 2007, a year after being released, he was again detained and later sentenced to more than two years in prison after pushing a police officer while being arrested.
The poem at the heart of the indictment, “It’s Time,” appears to have drawn the authorities’ attention for its timing around the Jasmine Revolution controversy. By one translation, it states, in part,
It’s time
It’s time, Chinese people!
It’s time,
The square is ours,
The feet are ours,
It’s time to use our feet to go to
the square and make a choice.

Communist Party appoints land rights protester its village head

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Author: Tania Branigan   Pulsihed Time: January 18, 2012

Lin Zuluan
BEIJING: A protest leader in Wukan, the southern Chinese village that drove out the authorities in a row over land grabs, has been appointed its new Communist Party secretary.
Residents applauded Lin Zuluan’s new role as another positive step in their struggle with local officials.
Unrest prompted by the seizure of farmland and accusations of electoral fraud by village heads escalated in December after Xue Jinbo, who had been negotiating with authorities, died in custody.
Provincial leaders stepped in and offered concessions 10 days after police and party officials fled the village in Guangdong province. Residents welcomed the intervention but remained concerned that they could still face retribution and the pledges would not be delivered fully.
They cheered the appointment of 67-year-old Mr Lin, announced at a meeting of party members on Sunday, as a good sign. He will also lead the team arranging another vote to elect a new village committee. Provincial investigators declared the last race invalid.
”It is a good thing indeed. Most villagers are very happy about this,” resident Yang Shimao said. ”Lin Zuluan was the actual leader of our previous rights protection movement. With this new position he will consider our village’s interests and our people’s interests.
”We didn’t expect the authorities to agree to us choosing Mr Lin. After all, we are rebels. This is the first ever case where a man on the government’s wanted list has become the party secretary of a village.”
But Mr Yang warned Mr Lin would probably face ”slander from vested interest groups”. ”Our village will still face difficulties in the future since vested interest groups will definitely find all kinds of ways to obstruct,” Mr Yang said.
A villager told the state-run English-language daily Global Times he hoped the new party committee would bring a satisfactory conclusion to the investigation into the land seizures.
Last week, Singapore’s The Straits Times reported a villager killed himself after repeated phone calls from local authorities telling him to turn himself in for involvement in the protests. One relative said every household had received repeated calls.
State news agency Xinhua has reported the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, stressed the need for farmers’ land rights to be protected in an article for the Communist Party journal Seeking Truth. Land seizures are one of the biggest sources of unrest in China.
Guardian News & Media; Telegraph, London

Wukan Protests: Two Worlds, Uneasy Co-Existence (A)

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Women’s Rights in China Volunteer                                 2011-12-22

 

Journalists working for wrchina.org reports that Local authorities in Shanwei, China has ended the blockade of Wukan, the village which had been in open rebellion in the last few weeks. On December 22nd, WRChina reporters saw an eerie scene of silent confrontation. Red banners in the streets proclaim “Enthusiastic Welcome to Provincial Working Group Visiting Our Village” and “Support the Communist Party, Support the Party Leadership”. While notices issued by the village self-governing committee, “Corrupt Officials Must Pay for Destruction of Our Land” and “Remember Wukan Hero Xue Jinbo” remain. The contrast symbolized the chilly confrontation behind two days of peace after the blockade was lifted.

22未命名

Rebel Chinese village of Wukan ‘has food for ten days’. (photo from online)

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Wukan people were talking about the election . (PHOTOS BY WRIC)

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Elected female cadres Chen Suzhuan.(Photo by WRIC)

At 4pm on December 22nd, Deputy Provincial Party Chairman Zhu Mingguo visited the village for a brief tour. Before his departure, he declared that the government would not seek to prosecute participants or organizers of the rioting. The government’s resolution of events in Wukan would satisfy the village residents. One villager who had been under arrest had been releases.

 

However, village residents have told WRChina reporters that two other arrested villagers still remain in detention. The body of Xue Jinbo had not been returned. The government promised to “release the prisoners, return the body, acknowledge village election results and return the land” by the 23rd. If the promise is not kept, villagers plan to continue their protest.

 

Villagers watched reports on their protests on Phoenix Satellite Television by nightfall. Groups gathered to discuss recent developments, focusing on possible government retributions in the future. Wukan residents have been very friendly to outside visitors. Several stores resumed operations in the village, although most remain shuttered.

 

 

 

 Pan Hui is a little girl with a cleft lip.

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Translator by  WRIC Sandra Lam

 

Even with a cleft lip, this little girl named Pan Hui is still beautiful—she has a round face and soft fair skin. Yet she feels scrutinized and insecure, that her beauty is scarred and besmirched by this cleft lip.

 

When the sun rose on January 5, 2000, a Buddhist nun from Anqing city went to the temple to light incense. At the foot of the gates she found a newborn infant, swaddled with 1000 RMB and two pouches of powdered milk. The baby’s umbilical cord was still hanging, and upper lip split open. Since the baby was just born, the nun didn’t know what to do. She had no prior experience with infants, so she called a Buddhist believer to be the temporary guardian.

They were unable to correct the condition at a plastic surgery hospital in Anqing. Later they tried again at the Drum Tower Hospital at Nanjing,but was told that the procedure was not possible—the baby’s frontal lobe was not fully formed yet. As of now it looks like the girl will never be able to speak properly.

We want to find an American hospital that can perform this surgery. We hope that our friends in the U.S. and elsewhere might help this little girl find her beauty again.