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Women's Rights: Are Violence and Discrimination Against Women

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Women's Rights: Are Violence and Discrimination Against Women MAY 2008 VOLUME 2, NUMBER 5 PAGES 115-147 WWW.GLOBALRESEARCHER.COM Women’s Rights ARE VIOLENCE AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN DECLINING? omen around the world have made significant gains in the past decade, but tens of millions still face significant and often appalling hardship. Most governments now have gender-equality commissions, electoral gender quotas and laws to protect women against violence. But progress has been mixed. A record number of women now serve in parliaments, but only 14 of the world’sW 193 countries currently have elected female leaders. Globalization has produced more jobs for women, but they still constitute 70 percent of the world’s poorest inhabitants and 64 percent of the illiterate. Spousal abuse, female infanticide, genital mutilation, forced abortions, bride-burnings, acid attacks and sexual slavery remain pervasive in some countries, and rape and sexual mutilation have reached epic proportions in the war- torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. Experts say without greater economic, po- litical and educational equality, the plight of women will not improve, and society will continue suffering the consequences. Hiding her face in shame, 18-year-old Nonmume Alitteee is one of hundreds of thousands of women and girls who have been raped, sexually mutilated or forced into sexual slavery during the brutal, ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. PUBLISHED BY CQ PRESS, A DIVISION OF CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. WWW.CQPRESS.COM WOMEN’S RIGHTS THE ISSUES SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS • Has globalization been Only Four Countries Offer 117 good for women? 118 Total Equality for Women May 2008 • Should governments im- Costa Rica, Cuba, Sweden Volume 2, Number 5 pose electoral quotas for and Norway offer parity. MANAGING EDITOR: Kathy Koch women? [email protected] • Do international treaties 119 Women’s Suffering Is improve women’s rights? Widespread CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: Thomas J. Colin Discrimination and violence [email protected] persist. BACKGROUND CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Brian Beary, Peter Behr, Roland Flamini, Karen Foerstel, ‘Structural Defects’ 120 Negative Attitudes Toward Sarah Glazer, Colin Woodard 129 Misogyny is not new. Women Are Pervasive They persist among both DESIGN/PRODUCTION EDITOR: Olu B. Davis women and men. Push for Protections ASSISTANT EDITOR: Darrell Dela Rosa 129 WEB EDITOR: Andrew Boney Various treaties have aimed Female Peacekeepers to protect women’s rights. 122 Fill Vital Roles Women approach conflict Women’s ‘Bill of Rights’ resolution differently. 130 The U.N. adopted an anti- discrimination treaty in 1979. Few Women Head World 124 Governments Beijing and Beyond Only 14 women are elected A Division of 133 Women made historic gains heads of government. Congressional Quarterly Inc. in the 1990s. SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER: Chronology John A. Jenkins 131 Key events since 1792. CURRENT SITUATION DIRECTOR, LIBRARY PUBLISHING: 132 Women Suffer Most in Alix Buffon Vance Rise of Fundamentalism Natural Disasters CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. 134 Religious conservatism is Climate change will make CHAIRMAN: Paul C. Tash limiting women’s rights. matters worse. VICE CHAIRMAN: Andrew P. Corty At Issue Evolving Gender Policies RESIDENT/ DITOR IN HIEF: 136 139 Should sex-selective abortions P E C Robert W. Merry Countries are enacting laws be outlawed? to improve women’s status. Copyright © 2008 CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc. (CQ). CQ re- Voices From Abroad Political Prospects 147 Headlines and editorials from serves all copyright and other rights herein, 137 Women are nowhere near around the world. unless previously specified in writing. No part political parity. of this publication may be reproduced elec- tronically or otherwise, without prior written Impunity for Violence FOR FURTHER RESEARCH permission. Unauthorized reproduction or 138 transmission of CQ copyrighted material is a Dismissive attitudes allow violation of federal law carrying civil fines of violence to continue. For More Information 144 Organizations to contact. up to $100,000. CQ Global Researcher is published monthly OUTLOOK Bibliography online in PDF and HTML format by CQ 145 Selected sources used. Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Economic Integration Inc. Annual full-service electronic subscrip- 140 The Next Step tions start at $500. For pricing, call 1-800- Without greater economic 146 Additional articles. equality, societies will 834-9020, ext. 1906. To purchase CQ Glob- al Researcher electronic rights, visit www. continue to suffer. Citing CQ Global Researcher cqpress.com or call 866-427-7737. 146 Sample bibliography formats. Cover: Getty Images/Per-Anders Pettersson 116 CQ Global Researcher Women’s Rights BY KAREN FOERSTEL million females are “missing” from the population — the THE ISSUES result of sex-selective abor- he was 17 years old. tions, infanticide or neglect. The blurry video shows And since the 1990s some S her lying in a dusty road, African countries have seen blood streaming down her dramatic upsurges in rapes of face, as several men kick and very young girls by men who throw rocks at her. At one believe having sex with a vir- point she struggles to sit up, gin will protect or cure them but a man kicks her in the from HIV-AIDS. After a 70- face forcing her back to the year-old man allegedly raped ground. Another slams a large, a 3-year-old girl in northern concrete block down onto Nigeria’s commercial hub city her head. Scores of onlook- of Kano, Deputy Police Chief ers cheer as the blood streams Suleiman Abba told reporters from her battered head. 1 in January, “Child rape is be- The April 7, 2007, video coming rampant in Kano.” In was taken in the Kurdish the last six months of 2007, AFP/Getty Images area of northern Iraq on a Iraqi teenager Du’a Khalil Aswad lies mortally wounded after her he said, 54 cases of child mobile phone. It shows what “honor killing” by a mob in the Kurdish region of Iraq. No one rape had been reported. “In appear to be several uni- has been prosecuted for the April 2007 murder, even though a some cases the victims are formed police officers stand- cell-phone video of the incident was posted on the Internet. gang-raped.” 7 ing on the edge of the Aswad’s male relatives are believed to have arranged her Epidemics of sexual vio- ritualistic execution because she had dated a boy from crowd, watching while oth- outside her religious sect. The United Nations estimates lence commonly break out ers film the violent assault that 5,000 women and girls are murdered in in countries torn apart by war, on their phones. honor killings around the globe each year. when perpetrators appear to The brutal, public mur- have no fear of prosecution. der of Du’a Khalil Aswad Today, in Africa, for instance, reportedly was organized as an “honor But honor killings are only one type UNICEF says there is now a “license to killing” by members of her family — of what the international community rape” in eastern regions of the Demo- and her uncles and a brother al- calls “gender based violence” (GBV). cratic Republic of the Congo, where legedly were among those in the “It is universal,” says Taina Bien-Aimé, some human-rights experts estimate mob who beat her to death. Her executive director of the New York- that up to a quarter of a million women crime? She offended her community based women’s-rights group Equality have been raped and often sexually by falling in love with a man out- Now. “There is not one country in the mutilated with knives, branches or ma- side her religious sect. 2 world where violence against women chetes. 8 Several of the Congolese rapists According to the United Nations, an doesn’t exist.” remorselessly bragged to an American estimated 5,000 women and girls are Thousands of women are murdered filmmaker recently about how many murdered in honor killings each year, or attacked around the world each women they had gang-raped. 9 but it was only when the video of Aswad’s day, frequently with impunity. In “The sexual violence in Congo is the murder was posted on the Internet that Guatemala, where an estimated 3,000 worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the global media took notice. 3 women have been killed over the past the United Nations under secretary gen- Such killings don’t only happen in seven years, most involving some kind eral for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer remote villages in developing coun- of misogynistic violence, only 1 per- numbers, the wholesale brutality, the tries. Police in the United Kingdom cent of the perpetrators were convict- culture of impunity — it’s appalling.” 10 estimate that up to 17,000 women are ed. 5 In India, the United Nations es- In some cultures, the female vic- subjected to some kind of “honor”-re- timates that five women are burned to tims themselves are punished. A re- lated violence each year, ranging from death each day by husbands upset that port by the Human Rights Commission forced marriages and physical attacks they did not receive sufficient dowries of Pakistan found that a woman is to murder. 4 from their brides. 6 In Asia, nearly 163 gang-raped every eight hours in that Available online: www.globalresearcher.com May 2008 117 WOMEN’S RIGHTS Only Four Countries Offer Total Equality for Women Costa Rica, Cuba, Sweden and Norway receive the highest score (9 points) in an annual survey of women’s economic, political and social rights. Out of the world’s 193 countries, only 26 score 7 points or better, while 28 — predominantly Islamic or Pacific Island countries — score 3 or less. The United States rates 7 points: a perfect 3 on economic rights but only 2 each for political and social rights.
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