create a world where women can walk ANYWHERE, EVERYWHERE

In the UK women buy more than three billion disposable sanitary products every year. It’s something we take for granted.

But millions of women in Zimbabwe go without these basic products. As a result many are suffering from infection, depression and, in some serious cases, infertility. There have also been examples of women being beaten by their husbands who wrongly attribute their infection to infidelity.

As Robert Mugabe’s leadership plunges Zimbabwe deeper into crisis – basic goods like sanitary products are becoming a luxury item only available to the rich.

Thabitha Khumalo from the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions is angry about the lack of sanitary wear for women, which she says not only threatens women’s health but also their dignity.

“Ordinary women cannot afford sanitary wear. We are inserting old pieces of cloth or newspapers, but the ink from the newspaper is causing infections, and there is no medication to cure this. It’s immoral for the leadership to deny us our biological rights.” she says.

Working in solidarity with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Action for Southern Africa has launched a campaign to raise funds to ensure that they can buy large quantities of sanitary products in South Africa, and distribute them free of charge to Zimbabwean Women. Thabitha and her colleagues are asking you to help the women of her country take back their dignity.

She urges you to donate generously. Your gift will make a huge difference now, and for many months to come, and provide the support that will improve women’s lives.

Together we can lessen this serious and devastating problem in Zimbabwe.

Visit the goal “Campaign for access to sanitary products for women in Zimbabwe” for more information on what you can do to help.

A woman airman in the US Air Force who was allegedly raped by three of her male counterparts is being charged with indecent acts, according to an AP report. If convicted, the woman could face a year in prison, a pay cut, a bad-conduct discharge, and would even be registered as a sex offender, the woman’s defense lawyers told the AP.

Cassandra Hernandez, who was stationed with the Air Force in North Carolina, was allegedly assaulted six months ago while in another airman’s room; she fled partially clothed, she said. After reporting the attack she received a medical examination, but declined to testify after she was allegedly interrogated by an Air Force defense attorney without her lawyer present. “The pressure of the judicial process was too much for me, and I felt like no one was looking out for my interests,” Hernandez wrote to the AP. She was subsequently charged with one count of consuming alcohol as a minor (she admittedly was drinking the night in question) and one count of committing indecent acts.

The Air Force Public Affairs division said that its investigation did not find sufficient evidence to support the woman’s claims of sexual assault, reported KVUE, a Houston television station. The accused men were granted immunity from the sexual assault charges for their testimony against Hernandez in the US Air Force’s case against her, KVUE further reported.

Hernandez worries that the handling of her case will impact others in the Air Force as well. “Will other women come forward after a rape when they hear that this is how they may be treated?” she wrote in a letters to the US Congress and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, according to KVUE. “The process has almost been as painful as the rape.”

Hernandez is scheduled to begin court marshal on September 24.

Media Resources: Associated Press 8/7/07; KVUE 8/1/07

Male lecturers and schoolteachers in Nigeria routinely pressure girls for sex in return for passing grades, reports the Washington Post.

When Nigeria’s education minister faced an audience of 1,000 schoolchildren, she expected to hear complaints of crowded classrooms and lack of equipment. Instead, girl after girl spoke up about being pressured for sex by teachers in exchange for better grades. One girl was just 11 years old.

“I was shocked,” said the minister, Obiageli Ezekwesili, who has several children herself. “I asked – was it that prevalent? And they all chorused ‘yes.’”

Most of the victims of this particular brand of sexual harassment, however, are university students. The Post interviews one 22 year old who has been prevented from graduating for three years, because she will not have sex with a political science lecturer. In one survey carried out by a student, 80% of female students said they had been blackmailed for sex in this way.

Only now is the government starting to act, which it horrendous in itself, and no doubt points to wider problems.

“We’ve had cases where the girls have complained and the heads of their department have called them and said, ‘Give him what he wants.’”

Article from a blog post at The F Word.

Original Article Link

YAOUNDE, 28 June (PLUSNEWS) – Activists in Cameroon have begun breaking the silence about ‘breast ironing’, widely used to protect young women from being noticed by men.

Rarely mentioned, especially to men, the ‘ironing’ involves massaging the growing breasts of young girls to make them disappear, usually by using a stone, a hammer or a spatula that has been heated over coals.

Now a campaign launched by the German cooperation agency, GTZ, and a local nongovernmental organisation that supports young mothers, the Network of Aunties (RENATA), has warned that using the practice to retard natural physical development is dangerous as well as ineffective.

According to a national survey conducted by GTZ, 24 percent of young girls in Cameroon, and up to 53 percent in the coastal Littoral province in the southeast, where the country’s main port, Douala, is situated, admit to having had their breasts ‘ironed’. The research also showed that 3.8 million young people could be at risk of exposure to the practice.

Flavien Ndonko, an anthropologist with GTZ’s German-Cameroon HIV/AIDS health programme, noted that this painful form of mutilation could not only have negative health consequences for the girls, but was also a futile form of sex education.

“Many of the RENATA girls, who are young mothers, say they were subjected to ‘ironing’, and this clearly proves that it does not work [as pregnancy prevention] and that it is a futile and traumatic experience imposed on them,” said Ndonko.

Young people make up most of the 5.5 percent of the population living with HIV, and teenage pregnancy is a growing concern. One-third of the 20 to 30 percent of girls with unwanted pregnancies are between 13 and 25 years of age, with more than half of them having fallen pregnant after their first sexual encounter, according to GTZ.

Addressing the general lack of information about sex in the family ran counter to acceptable social norms, GTZ and RENATA pointed out.

“For the parents, it is very difficult to talk of sexuality due to modesty or for cultural reasons … So they prefer to get rid of the bodily signs of sexuality in this way,” Ndonko commented. “However, the onset of adolescence is exactly the right time to start this discussion.”

Because the topic of sex was taboo, young girls remained ignorant of how to protect themselves from HIV infection and were even more vulnerable to the virus, said Bessem Arrey Ebanga Bisong, executive secretary of RENATA.

A mother, who asked not be named, admitted that ‘breast ironing’ was “not a good solution. I did it to my first two daughters out of ignorance, but what must I do with the third one?”

One of her neighbours suggested a solution: “She said I must speak to her [the daughter] and teach her about sexuality. We do not have a dialogue with our children; we don’t have the courage to do so. However, we do need to explain to them so they know what it is that they are doing.”

According to Ndoko, the newly launched awareness campaign has generated a lot of discussion, and the practice is now being openly talked about.

“This is a good way to resolve the problem: people talk about it and ask why it is being done,” said Ndoko. “As there is no way to justify it, they realise that it is a futile practice and, hopefully, they will stop doing it.”

A woman in India was beaten ans stabbed by a mob who accused her of practicing witchcraft.

Article in Zee News

A woman from Niger overstayed her student visa. In her absence, her family married her off to an elderly man with multiple wives. If she returns to her home town, she must have a female circumcision before she can live with her “husband.” She is fighting for asylum.

Article in the Virginia Pilot

Children are being raped in Zimbabwe on the advice of witch doctors who say the act can cure AIDS. 70 percent of children who are raped in Zimbabwe contract an STD. 1000 children a month contract HIV.

Article in The Zimbabwean

From the Guardian. A few things I found interesting here:

“A Saudi woman in public relations said anything that brings women closer to cars is seen as a threat by conservatives, who think female driving will open the way for women’s emancipation.

Ruqiya al-Duwaighry, in a letter to the opinion page of Al-Watan, wrote that driving “strips women of their femininity” and puts them in situations that might violate the ban on the sexes mixing.

Driving “may subject her to give up the veil or mix with strange men, such as workers at gas stations or security men at checkpoints,” she wrote. “Women, by nature, cannot cope with such hard work.”

Uh… I manage to cope with ‘such hard work’ every day. And please – “seen as a threat by conservatives, who think female driving will open the way for women’s emancipation”? Is women’s freedom really something to be feared?!

Please take five minutes to sign a petition to PM Tony Blair, asking him to support victims of rape and sexual violence by ensuring more rapists are convicted.

We request HM government to:

• Provide central government funding for rape crisis centres to support victims.

• Create specially trained CPS and police teams to prosecute sexual offences.

• End unnecessary cross examination of rape victims and allow all juries to hear evidence of previous convictions of defendants and of previous similar allegations against defendants.

A recent story I found on Digg, from ABC News. An 18-year-old McDonald’s employee was forced by her supervisor and the supervisor’s fiancé to strip, humiliated, beaten and then forced to perform a sexual act in the back office, during her work day – all on the instruction of a telephone caller masquerading as a police officer.

The full story and the surveillance camera video can be found here – warning, the video is probably not safe for work, and both are pretty disturbing.

I am more than angry, I’m incredulous. A lot of questions, I’m just bowled over by this story.

How could the supervisor think that this was an appropriate way to treat an employee, regardless of whether or not she was ‘suspected of theft’?

More ridiculous, how could the fiancé possibly have thought the ‘policeman’ was legitimate even after he was asked to spank the girl (for ten minutes, leaving red welts) and then make her perform a sexual act?

Was he, perhaps, enjoying the power he was given so much that he didn’t bother to question the legitimacy of the caller?

If the final employee was intelligent enough to realise that something was not right with the caller, what does that say about the intelligence of the supervisor and her fiancé?

Are Americans so ‘under the thumb’ of the police that they will blindly follow what they are told without questioning it?

Would the supervisor and the fiancé have been so quick to do these things had it been an 18-year-old male employee?

Especially in the case of the fiancé, do you think the fact that both he and the ‘officer’ were male made it feel (to him) more reasonable to do what he was doing?

WHY is it acceptable to make this video public?

WHY is it acceptable to talk about people’s ‘compliance’ and ‘obedience’ but not look into the sexism and male privilege which allowed this to happen in the first place?

So many questions. It makes me sick that we even have to ask.