Nov 22, 09
Will Women's Voices be Heard in Copenhagen?
from The Worldwatch Institute, a Lead Author of the United Nations Population Fund's State of the World Population 2009 Report finds that women will be most affected by climate change but remain noticeably absent from Copenhagen agenda Washington, D.C.-Women will bear the greatest burden of a changing climate but so far have received little attention from negotiators working toward a new global climate deal, according to the 2009 edition of the United Nations Population Fund's State of...
Population control is not what makes climate change a feminist issue
Women contribute less to global warming yet will be hit harder by its effects. Reproductive justice is a separate issue Last week Mary Fitzgerald argued that climate change is a feminist issue on the basis that population control is a way to prevent the situation spiralling out of control. And, she posited, this could be achieved by giving more women more autonomy over their own bodies, through improved access to contraception and abortion.I'm not going to get into the arguments around...
Shamo Thar: Creating an Action-Based Model for Teaching
Nominated by Catlin Powers and Scot Frank Shamo Thar is one of the driving forces of sustainable change and female empowerment in western China. She established the development studies program at Qinghai Normal University. As a teacher there, she has nurtured many young people — especially women — to become social, environmental, and educational leaders in their communities. Yet, her lessons go far beyond the classroom. Each year, Shamo Thar spends her free time writing grants for her...
Baba Wamé: Award-Winning Work to End Human Trafficking
Nominated by Laurent Haug I can say I have seen my share of great ideas and people in the past four years, with close to 200 speakers attending Lift. One guy stands out when I think of someone I want to send a bit of spotlight to: Baba Wamé. I found him when I stumbled on his thesis on the impact of dating websites on Camerounese society. He is from a country where men pile up on boats to escape –- with the tragic consequences we know –- while some women, supported and encouraged by...
Bearing Children: Not Always a Woman's Choice
Many women throughout the rural deserts of Jordan do not control the timing of their own pregnancies, according to a recent survey. Women regularly discuss family planning with their husbands, yet only 54 percent said they had a choice in the frequency of child births, the Integration Health and Empowerment of Women in the South Region Project reported last month. "Women in the south region of Jordan...need to be empowered in terms of [their] ability to make the appropriate decision...
Interview: Kavita Ramdas, Global Fund for Women
By Britt Bravo "I think there are many different ways in which you define leadership. As a feminist, and as a feminine feminist, I truly believe that we don't do a very good job in the United States of believing that you can lead by serving, and I think the United States needs to think deeply about being in service of the rest of the world." -Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO, Global Fund for Women. Kavita Ramdas is the President and CEO of the nonprofit, the Global Fund for Women. She has...
More Choice for Women Means More Sustainability
from the Worldwatch Institute Washington, D.C.- Unwanted childbearing is a greater demographic force than the desire for large families, and may have been for centuries, suggests Robert Engelman, Vice President at the Worldwatch Institute, in his new book More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want. Expanding the capacity of all women to choose when to bear children is thus the surest route to achieving an environmentally sustainable population. In countries that make effective personal...
African Women and Domestic Violence
By Takyiwaa Manuh The experience of using law to address the issue of domestic violence in Africa contains both positive and negative lessons for gender-equality campaigners, says Takyiwaa Manuh. The annual mobilisation of women around the world around the theme of "16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence" from 25 November - 10 December 2007 represents a tremendous global effort to increase awareness of violence against women in all its forms. In light of the 2007 theme - demanding...
"Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories" by Katha Pollitt
In These Times has just published a rave review of Katha Pollitt's latest book that makes me want to run out and buy it right away. In "Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories," Pollitt applies her sharply-honed feminist eye to the complexities of her personal life. It includes an essay that ran in The New Yorker a few years ago, in which Pollitt juxtaposed the infidelity of her long-time boyfriend with finally learning to drive a car. The boyfriend was a fellow devoted Marxist, but that...
Peak Oil and Gender
Kurt Cobb at Energy Bulletin wonders whether peak oil is a gender issue or, as he says, a "guy thing." (Thanks to Paul Robbins for the pointer.) For the men the answer was as confrontational as necessary. By this they meant speaking directly and forcefully at public meetings and gatherings about the need for an urgent response to an approaching peak. It meant dispelling notions that 1) the fixes would be easy and 2) once these fixes were complete, we would be able to return to business as...
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