Taking Action for Women this Earth Day

Earth Day is right around the corner this month - are you ready? Here at FMF, we think the environment is a feminist issue. If you haven't already planned an event for campus, have no fear, there's still time. Get started by taking a minute to check out FMF's Women and Climate Change Campaign!

According to experts, water will be the first resource majorly impacted by climate change. Though we all feel the effects, the world's poorest populations have to face the stark reality of our environmental crisis on a daily basis.

Did you know that women are disproportionately affected by lack of water access? Because many water-related tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry fall to women in the developing world, lack of access to water or poor water quality have negative impacts on women first. Environmental factors like water-borne illnesses and drought contribute to keeping the world's poorest populations trapped in a cycle of poverty and inequity.

So What Can You Do?

This Earth Day, take the opportunity to make sure your community is educated and taking action. A great way to focus your activism is to concentrate on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Call or write your lawmakers and ask them to support a renewed commitment to meeting the MDGs by 2015. While all the goals need to be a priority, here's some key talking points on a few of them in case you aren't familiar:

• Goal #3 promotes gender equality and empower women
• Goal #5 would improve maternal health - a critical need today. Check out our new global materials about maternal mortality for more information!
• Goal #7 ensures environmental sustainability, access to safe, potable drinking water and sanitation.

Our Women & Climate Change action ideas (available on the web and in PDF) pamphlet has some fun ways that you can call attention to climate change and put a feminist spin to it. Here's a few highlights:

• Use a poster campaign near water sources to remind people how much we take for granted our access to water! A simple sign like: "The average woman walks 6-9 miles to get to water. And then has to carry it back." by the drinking fountain will make people think twice.
• Walk for Water Access – Have people physically walk and carry water (or an equivalent weight) a representative distance on campus. To make it more fun and interactive, host a race and challenge people. See how long it takes them to make the trek and subtract points for water lost en route.
• On-Campus Conservation – Start a campaign on campus to conserve water and get your campus to “go green.” Meet with administrators and different offices on campus with specific goals and develop a plan for meeting them!

Again, for more suggestions on how to bring an Earth Day event to your campus, check out the whole list of action ideas. Contact your campus organizer if you need help planning your event, and let us know how it went! We'd love to get your feedback.

photo courtesy of wwworks on flickr.

This article was featured in our April 2010 monthly Choices eZine. Sign up for our alerts to stay up-to-date with the latest feminist news and to receive the monthly eZine!

Maintaining Momentum: Shaping Global Reproductive Health Campaigns Post V-Day Events

For the month of February, many feminist groups work hard to put together V-Day events and productions of the Vagina Monologues. These are examples of cultural feminism on campus that can really bring critical issues to light and open important feminist conversations on campus about the oppression women face and the damaging implications of patriarchy. They awaken people to those realities and get them fired up.

But now it's March, and following the V-Day events, we hear from numerous student groups that they run into difficulty capitalizing on the momentum that V-Day can generate. Here at FMF, we've found that a really great way to catapult your group's activism into the stratosphere is through transforming that energy toward a campaign with political ramifications.

An example of a simple way to do this is to plan an event or initiative on campus for global women's reproductive health in the next few weeks. We've got some great campaign materials, and an upcoming webinar, that can help you! Because V-Day has a global focus and often global philanthrophy, it can be nice to follow that up with similarly themed activities to propel your group forward.

The key with this type of campaign is to refine the conversation. With something like V-Day, you've expanded your audience into the community and sparked their interest.

For organizers, the task remains to shift from a presentation of how things ARE for women at home and around the world, to a discussion of a student's role in affecting change for those very women. Armed with both renewed passion and enthusiasm AND the tools to really make a difference, your feminist group will benefit from the arrival of a crop of fantastic feminist activists.

Here's a Step by Step:

1) Select a focus for your campaign - maternal mortality, CEDAW, and International Family Planning are all good examples of some broad-reaching political campaigns that can bring some weight to what you're doing on campus.

2) Gather resources - Contact your Campus Organizer, and we can help! We also have some resources we could send your way - fact sheets, DVDs, and toolkits that could help you get started.

3) Call in backup - the cast, crew, and supporters of your V-Day events obviously care about feminism, so bring them back out! Get them involved and give them responsibilities so that they're invested in your campaign, too.

4) Design an Action Component - in addition to raising awareness, you should provide a mechanism for students to take action. Involve decisionmakers as best you can; either through call-in days to the Hill or district offices, letter writing, petitions, or visits. You could think big, too, and plan rallies and demonstrations.

5) Get press or media coverage - To add another level of pressure, place op-eds or letters to the editor, or get feminist press members to cover what you're doing in both campus and community outlets.

6) Kick off your campaign! - Ready, Set, Go! Launch on campus with a bang. Advertise and get started. At every event, be SURE to include that action component - it's what will set your events apart and make students keep coming back.

These are some of the basics, but if you have any questions, definitely get in touch with your campus organizer or email us at campusteam@feminist.org and we'd be happy to help you plan a Global Reproductive Health and Rights or similar campaign on your campus.

This article was featured in our March 2010 monthly Choices eZine. Sign up for our alerts to stay up-to-date with the latest feminist news and to receive the monthly eZine.

PEPFAR Returns to Common Sense HIV Prevention

Good news! On World AIDS Day we wrote about the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has long relied on the ineffective ABC (abstinence, be faithful, and as a last resort use condoms) program as a means to prevent HIV and AIDS. Thanks to the tireless work of human rights activists around the world, the State Department announced major positive changes to PEPFAR this week!

This new plan includes a shift away from ABC and towards scientific, common sense methods, integrating "HIV prevention, care and support, and treatment services with family planning and reproductive health services, so that women living with HIV can access necessary care, and so that all women know how to protect themselves from HIV infection." PEPFAR will now emphasize condom distribution and safe sex, a proven method of HIV prevention.

This is tremendous news for feminists everywhere, as women make up approximately half of all people living with HIV worldwide. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women make up an estimated 57% of adults living with HIV, and three quarters of young people living with disease there are young women aged 15-24.

As you observe International Human Rights Day on December 10, celebrate this victory! There is always more work to be done and we thank you for your tireless efforts in support of women around the world.

The F!ght for Equality in Sweden

I've spent this semester in Sweden taking a number of courses, including one about the role of women in Swedish society. I'm currently wrapping up my final paper about the Feminist Initiative (F!), and it's all so incredibly interesting that I thought I'd share a little bit with you all.

For those of you who do not know, F! is the feminist political party in Sweden. It was founded in 2005 and has participated in several elections. While Sweden has had a history of progressive policy with regards to gender, this party feels that the country needs a party that puts women and feminism first.



Don't you just get shivers thinking about it? I mean, Jane Fonda and Eve Ensler publicly supported it. Well, hold your horses. While F! was predicted to fare well in their first election, they fell short receiving significantly less than the 4% of the votes necessary to win a seat in the Parliament. Many feel that the internal struggles and negative coverage from the media hurt their chances. It also led to several of the founding members leaving the party.

I was really interested in looking at the party because the thought of a strong political party that is dedicated to feminism sounds absolutely wonderful to me. It just seems like such a giant step forward. But, as I have read articles and looked at the reactions to F! in Sweden it only increased my awareness of the overwhelming pervasiveness of misogyny and anti-feminist sentiment in the world, however subtle it may be. I would encourage everyone to learn more about the party because in doing so, I have learned a lot not only about the current feminist movement in Sweden but also about activism and the long road ahead.

UN takes a stance on defining gender, expands trans' travel rights

These past months have lead to some interesting gains and losses for civil rights based on gender-identification, due to the seemingly unrelated debate on travel and border security.

On August 15th, the transgendered community and its allies felt pushed aside when the Transportation Security Administration put out new travelling requirements that required passengers to provide full name, date of birth and gender when booking flights. Transgendered people found themselves in an uncomfortable situation, having categorize themselves in concrete terms without any options directly applicable to them. It's disgusting how this either/ or policy oozes with a lack of sympathy. It does not take into consideration the difficulties and uneasiness a person goes through trying to match past federal documents with current self-identification.

A couple of months later, strides have been made. The UN and Rapporteur Martin Scheinin made their opinion known in the recent "Protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism" report. The UN made sure to take a conscious, sensitive and realistic approach by defining the security issues without being biased in religion, race, sexuality and gender. The report contained this purposefully vague definition of gender:

"Gender is not synonymous with women but rather encompasses the social constructions that underlie how women's and men's roles, functions and responsibilities, including in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, are defined and understood. This report will therefore identify the gendered impact of counter-terrorism measures both on women and men, as well as the rights of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. As a social construct, gender is also informed by, and intersects with, various other means by which roles, functions and responsibilities are perceived and practiced, such as race, ethnicity, culture, religion and class. Consequently, gender is not static; it is changeable over time and across contexts.Understanding gender as a social and shifting construct rather than as a biological and fixed category is important because it helps to identify the complex and inter-related gender-based human rights violations caused by counter terrorism measures; to understand the underlying causes of these violations; and to design strategies for countering terrorism that are truly non-discriminatory and inclusive of all actors."

Thankfully, the UN has exposed the usually hushed gender-travel links and their disproportionately effects to a person's safety. The studies reveal the disgusting scrutiny innocent transgendered people face when crossing boarders. Many transwomen are subject to tougher indentity documentation clearances and face harassment due to a history of men dressing up as women to attempt to escape a heavy bomb/weapon search.

Critics, like that of Fox News, say that the UN over analysed political correctness and minorities' security (those of women, gay, trans, intersex, etc...) by unnecessarily forcing a progressive definition of gender on the public.

However, here at FMF, we know far too well the reality of humiliation and harassment that "minority" populations face due to security policy. Those least protected under the law are (shock!) those who are most vulnerable to civil rights violations at checkpoints.

We are so proud that the UN could look past previous gender-biases and honestly work towards ensuring safe travel for ALL.

photocredit: transguyjay from flickr.com

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai

Hey all! The forecast for this weekend predicts thunderstorms, so if you’re hanging out and looking for a good movie, check out Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. I recently saw the film as part of the American University Human Rights Film Festival and thought it was incredibly well done.

Some background- Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her political and environmental activism in Kenya. The film depicts her journey as an advocate and the beginning of the revolutionary Green Belt Movement, as well as the stories of the women she empowers along the way.

Wangari is a woman whose husband divorced her because she was too “self-sufficient” and “strong-minded,” leaving her to raise their children alone AND inspire and create some of the most significant environmental and political change Kenya has ever seen. She was beaten, slandered, and detained by the Kenyan government, and not once did she give in. I could go on for days about how amazing she is and what her work has done to change the lives of so many, not just those in Kenya, but I’ll let you find out for yourselves.

Photocredit: flicker.com

Women Held Captive on Turkish "Reality" Show

I know this is a little late, and you've probably heard about it already, but better late than, never, right? Last Monday, nine Turkish women finally left a villa in Istanbul where they had been “filming” what they thought was a reality show, similar to the U.S. show Big Brother. (For those who do not watch a lot of reality TV, the show is just as Orwellian as the name sounds; participants are isolated with only one another as companions and filmed 24/7).

Essentially, the women were held hostage. “Producers” told them that if they wanted to leave the villa and break their contracts they would be fined 50,000 Turkish Lira (equivalent to $33,000 US dollars).

Pictures of the women exercising and posing in bathing suits were posted online through a website that allowed users to vote on their favorite woman and look at pictures of all the women, for a fee. The “producers” claim the women were not forcibly held. Subsequently, eight out of the nine women formally complained they were held against their will.

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I’ve delayed in posting because I struggled with how to form my opinion about this matter. Clearly these women were held against their will, which is unacceptable. But what I grappled with is, why they would sign up to begin with. The mother of one of the women, who declined to be named, is quoted as saying: “ We were not after the money, but we thought our daughter could have the chance of becoming famous if she took part in the contest.” Why does everyone have to be famous? This incident is the perfect example of a larger cultural issue: reality TV and women. A lot has been said about the way women are portrayed in the media (think Hillary’s “cleavage” incident), and the stereotypes we have to wrestle with.

I’ll admit I used to watch the occasional episode of The Hills, but then it really started to bother me. The women/girls were constantly portrayed as back stabbing, selfish, whiny, and promiscuous. Then I began to notice a trend – think about the show Real World- the cast always includes a 'skanky girl,' an 'airhead,' a 'b****,' etc. Like Miranda complains in the Sex In The City movie, “There are only two choices for women- witch or sexy kitten.” Reality shows, at least in my opinion, really seem to perpetuate negative stereotypes of women; it always comes down to either the witch or the kitten. (Ex. Jon & Kate Plus 8, Laguna Beach etc).

In reality, women can be both strong and sexy; the “witch,” the “kitten,” neither, or both. We should be allowed to love our bodies AND flaunt them!

What are your thoughts?

Photocredit: flickr.com/angelravelor

Humanitarian Funding FAIL

According to commondreams.org, on Tuesday, the UN reported a large gap in their humanitarian funding. A $4.8 billion gap, which is less than half of what it had asked for. The areas most impacted by this shortfall include Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and Pakistan.

This gap in funding comes from an increased need for help in Pakistan and economic problems in many countries. While there seems to be less money available, there is an increasing need for relief to help people find clean water, food, shelter, and the other basic needs for survival.

Women desperately need aid because of their role in the family and their direct connection to their environment. Women are often the people who go to get water for their families, and so they are often the first hit by water-bourne infections and diseases. There's also a great need for improved maternal and women's healthcare in the world.

In order to help these women, and their families, there needs to be an increased focus on the important issues in their lives and a corresponding change in policy and funding. These are the lives of millions of real people.

Photo courtesy of www.flickr/lukeredmond

Dealing with the Aftermath of Maternal Mortality

One of the biggest issues facing women globally is maternal mortality. The New York Times has had a three part series on death in Tanzania, and has focused on maternal morality. Their first piece was about death in childbirth, and the second was about the high rates of unsafe abortions in the country. Their final piece is about the thousands of children who are orphaned and how one orphanage is trying to help these children.

According to the article, very little is known about orphan care and how poor nations are dealing with the large numbers of children whose mothers die in childbirth or due to botched abortions. Fathers cannot provide the nourishment an infant needs, and so the baby is often sent off to orphanages.

In the majority of orphanages, children can wait for years for someone to come and adopt them, which does not provide them with the emotional stability and care that is provided by a family. Research has shown that children who do not recieve enough physical touching or care form attachment problems.

In the orphanage in Berega, they want to do more than just provide their children with physical nourishment, so the children are cared for by teenage girls until they are old enough to be sent to their families. While this orphanage offers a solution for helping the millions of children who are motherless and stuggling to survive, there needs to be more work done to prevent maternal mortality.

The issue of maternal mortality is not only devastating to the women and families in the developing world, but it also undermines other international development efforts.

World Economic Forum: Progress Across Africa Depends on Girls

This month girls were the focus at the World Economic Forum on Africa to highlight what is working in the region and what still needs drastic improvement. Girls make up more than 75% of HIV positive youth in Africa and those numbers are not decreasing. Young girls face tremendous challenges throughout childhood and adolescence with high drop out rates, early marriage, early pregnancy, and minimal access to medical care.

While staggering statistics and painful stories are often the images sent out of Africa, I was delighted to hear that the international community is acknowledging and discussing the crucial role girls play in economic development! Finally, influential people with the power to make real change are talking solutions to some of the world's biggest problems and they are finally focusing on girls.

The panelists highlighted the importance of investing in "The Girl Effect" which is no new news. The research documents that investing in girls provides exponential returns - girls will do more with the resources offered to them and invest more into the health and education of their family and community.

The forum emphasized that...

• Investing in girls is smart economically
  
• Economic solutions are often masked by culture
• Girls must be reached before age 12 to have an impact
  
• Girls won't count until we count them
• A little bit of support is not enough

I just got back from a semester abroad in Kenya (the girls in the photo are from my village in Bodo, Kenya!) and I feel that the forum is right on with focusing on these issues but I often struggle with serious questions surrounding foreign aid and assistance coming from the West: how can we truly empower young girls and women if the solutions are derived outside of the country and outside of the context?

Of course there are critical impacts we can make from the West in terms of our top-down aid and supportive policy, but I would like to see increased support of more homegrown, or bottom-up responses that encourage girls to come up with their own solutions to the problems that directly impact their lives - they are our greatest resource for information and implementation.

Poverty, illness and women's role in both, are entirely cyclical and trying to combat the cycle at only one juncture is simply illogical. We need a multifaceted approach that is solidly based in evidence and has clear pathways for evaluation and accountability.

The cost of an education in Afghanistan

Since 1996 the Feminist Majority Foundation has worked to create awareness and action in response to the conditions of women and girls in Afghanistan. As we have known for many years, the conditions for all in Afghanistan, especially women and girls, have greatly deteriorated and demand a return to outrage and calls for action.

I am particularly disgusted by the attacks on young Afghan girls who seek an education. In addition to endless intimidation and threats, extremists have resorted to acid attacks and, most recently poisoning of 61 girls yesterday and an additional 84 young Afghan school girls today.

During the rule of the Taliban regime, Afghan girls were not allowed to attend school to receive an education, resulting in generations of illiteracy and lost promise. A recent Newsweek article tells of the great danger that has come with this new found opportunity.

The Afghanistan Ministry of Education says that 458 government schools (mostly in the south) are closed due to threats of violence, leaving 400,000 boys and girls at home. In the 2008 school year alone—from March 2008 to March 2009—22 students and teachers were injured (including a November acid attack that left 15 girls and teachers scarred in Kandahar province). Another 33 were killed, a ministry spokesperson reports.

In Home-Schooling, Sadiqa Basiri Saleem, a young Afghan woman, tells of her seven-year struggle to create schools for young girls in rural Afghanistan. Despite the dangers for all, students and teachers continue to come to the make-shift schools in the homes of private citizens with hopes of a brighter future for all of Afghanistan. I can only hope that it is a future that values the contributions and worth of women and girls.

Photo credit: Newsweek, Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Newsday Tuesday, May 5th Edition

The Cool:
The US Senate starts us off on a good note, reintroducing the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act which would include crimes committed on the basis sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, and disability as hate crimes under federal law. The House gave the OK to the bill, passing it on a 249-175 bipartisan vote. Thanks for saying no to hate, Congress!

We have the Senate to thank for the next tidbit, too - former Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius (photo at right) was confirmed as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, rounding out President Obama's new cabinet.

Finally, a big cheer for the 8 year-old Saudi Arabia girl who won a divorce from a 47 year-old man.

The UnCool:
The Missouri State House approved restrictions to Emergency Contraception in the Show Me State by passing an amendment to allow pharmacies to refuse to stock EC, also known as the morning-after pill or Plan B. The California Supreme Court also refused to hear an appeal in a sexual orientation expulsion case from a Lutheran high school.

On the global scene, human rights violations against juveniles are continuing in Iran, with the execution of Delara Darabi as the most recent example. In Afghanistan, there is rising concern about potential voting fraud for Afghan women as the August election approaches.

NYWLC's Day Two’s Opening Plenary, Feminism Without Borders, Just Wrapped

Day two’s opening plenary, Feminism Without Borders, here at the National Young Women’s Leadership Conference has just wrapped. With increased economic globalization there is an increasing need for women worldwide to come together to fight for the rights of all our sisters.

The plenary speakers did a wonderful job of explaining the historical context of the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international treaty aims to give women equal legal standing according to the laws of each nation, and the current situation of Afghan women and girls with the first hand accounts of courageous Afghan activists of various ages.

Did you know? Even though Americans helped to author CEDAW, they are among a handful of nations worldwide including Sudan, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia that have not ratified the treaty. We need to push now for the Senate to ratify this treaty!

We were also shocked to learn that 1 in 6 women in Afghanistan die during childbirth compared to 1 in 2,500 in the US. Afghan women have had acid thrown in their faces while trying to go to school and dozens of schools have been destroyed to prevent women and girls from attending, all while about 85% of the country’s women can not read or write.

The daily atrocities faced by women both domestically and internationally cannot be addressed unless women step up and speak out for themselves. Plenary speaker Mavis Leno summed it up very well by saying, “If women don’t speak up for women, no one speaks up for women. It’s us or no one!”

We will be continuing to blog from the conference and tweeting. Make sure to follow us on the conference twitter widget; we will be using the hash tag #nywlc for all conference-related tweets.

Be FREE! International Women's Day at UCLA

This was written by Myra Duran - FMF West Coast intern and UCLA Bruin Feminist for Equality:

The month of March - Women’s History Month, and home of International Women’s Day - is the month when feminists around the world can commemorate years of activism and celebrate our achievements in the name of women’s equality. From taking action against the war in the Congo, to the oppression of women in Afghanistan and Iran, women all over the world are mobilizing to establish solidarity against sexism, racism, homophobia, gender inequality, and sexual violence.

Since the recognition of International Women’s Day in 1900, it has been a global day of recognition and celebration across developed and developing countries alike. These days, more and more college students are taking on more responsible roles, showing they care about international women’s issues, and are not afraid to express their political ideology on campus.

I am currently involved with a student group at UCLA called Bruin Feminists for Equality. We are a group that seeks to develop bold, new strategies, and programs to advance the social, political and economic equality of all people. Most importantly, we try to focus on the empowerment of women and girls in all sectors of society. So, when March rolled around we decided that we had to put on an event that would embody the true essence of what International Women’s Day is.

If you have been a part of any student group where many different minds, opinions, and thoughts all come together, then you will agree that hosting an event that is supposed to capture a global mindset can be a trying feat to accomplish. We finally settled on a theme we felt confident in: “Taking Back What’s Ours”. It was set to include three workshops: one on women’s self defense, one on gender and sexuality in the workplace, and the last on transnational feminism, with a keynote speaker to close. Through these workshops, our goal was to draw attention to the various ways women can reclaim their rights against patriarchy, violence, homophobia, and other forms of oppression.

Stress and panic arose when two weeks before our event we still didn’t have a keynote speaker. We didn’t just want anyone to speak; we wanted someone who has really made true strides and accomplishments in transnational feminism. One woman stood out for us: world-renowned Chicana poet, playwright, and writer: Cherrie Moraga. In the words of one of my women’s studies classmates, “Cherrie is Chicana feminism - it’s like Shakespeare for English literature. Cherrie Moraga is the definition of what Chicana feminist writing is.” We only hoped that she would want to come out from her Stanford abode and honor us with her presence.

Did we get Cherrie or did we not?……….Yes, we did! We were E-C-S-T-A-T-I-C that this true pioneer for women of color was actually going to speak at our event. All of our hard work paid off when we heard Cherrie was coming, and we knew our event would genuinely embody what International Women’s Day is all about. We knew the event was a great success when over 80 students came to listen to her speak! Listening to Cherrie’s inspirational words and picking her brain for ideas on how we, as young adults, can become the new revolutionaries of our generation was the highlight of the day and her words are still flying in my mind. In the words of Cherrie, “you can only feel joy if you are free, so be FREE!”

Intern Update!

Spring 2009 as an intern at the FMF has been pretty amazing so far. I have done some really cool research so far. I was working on a proposal concerning women's menstrual hygiene in Southeast Asia. It was really interesting and reading some of the information about the lives of these women, and how as a Western woman I take for granted something as simple as menstrual products. Menstruation is a taboo in this part of the world, and women suffer because of it. Women use rags during menstruation and when they need to rewash them at night (becasue of the taboo) they run the risk of being raped. Something that I found interesting was that women in Southeast Asia find recycling extremely important. A middle class woman uses about 15,000 pads or tampons in her lifetime. Imagine the waste that creates, if there was a way to recycle or have re useable menstrual products, women all over the world would be much better off. Women in Southeast Asia don't have the luxury to just throw away used menstrual products, finding a way to recycle them is imperative. Doing research such as this has really opened my eyes.

On a lighter note, the other interns are working on lots of projects. We are all super excited about the National Young Women's Leadership Conference!! It is going to be a great time with all the amazing speakers and topics that are to be discussed. Ah! Super exciting! Everyone should sign up and volunteering is appreciated :)