When migrant labour hurts families
Posted on
February 8, 2010 .
Tess Bacalla
How does one tell a child that it is for his own future that his mother has to go offshore in search of the proverbial ‘greener pastures’, leaving behind a family that has never known the meaning of separation?
Just what does that assurance mean to a child anyway whose notion of a secure tomorrow could simply be waking up each morning with his mother by his side.
(more…)
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Feminizing resistance to mainstream politics
Posted on
February 1, 2010 .
Paula Fray, IPS Africa Director
Guest Blogger: Paula Fray, IPS Africa Director
Early in January, I joined project managers from around the world at UNIFEM’s “Women Deepening Democracy: Transforming Politics for Gender Equality” workshop in India. Its apt that the workshop was held there. With over 714 million voters, India is arguable the world’s largest democracy with a long record of women in all levels of politics.
One such woman, Brinda Karat, Raj Sabha Member for the Communist Party of India, touched a nerve when she wondered whether we really want women to be part of the mainstream politics or whether women should reclaim the subversive role they have played in history.
Surely women do not want to be part of the mainstream – they want to change it?
(more…)
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Women’s bodies: A quick way to ascendancy?
Posted on
January 18, 2010 .
I’ve been dreading this point at which I have to post my first blog for the Gender Masala. It’s a tough job trying to fill the shoes of Mercedes Sayagues who started the blog and, together with a band of other contributors, kept it an inspired, lively and engaging space for readers to return to again and again and also make their contributions. But the fact is that sooner or later I would have to jump right in and this is it. I’m excited about this blog and I hope that we will be able to keep it engaging. By we, I mean myself, Kudzai Makombe in Harare, Tess Bacalla in Manila, Estrella Gutierrez in Caracas and Diana Cariboni in Montevideo. Mercedes is not completely off the hook. She will still be contributing from her new home in Maputo. There will also be posts from other contributors. (more…)
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A New Year for Gender Masala
Posted on
January 2, 2010 .
This is truly a New Year in many ways: Gender Masala and I are in transition in 2010.
I am moving to Maputo, Mozambique, to work in health reporting. Gender Masala will remain in the IPS Gender Portal with a more collective identity, infused by several IPS writers.
Passenger in transit: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust. Pic by Claudio Corallo.
I like the word transitions: it evokes change, birth, adaptation, growth.
This has been an exciting journey of discovery of a new medium. As the philosopher George Santayana wrote: “There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar; it keeps the mind nimble; it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.”
Over seven months, , the pictures got bigger, the voices varied, my style freer. It was intellectually rewarding to look every week at the rich variety of IPS stories on gender and be inspired by them to write a new blog.
I will miss the weekly postings on gender, although I will continue blogging on health issues in Mozambique here:
http://knight.icfj.org/OurFellows/FromtheFieldFellowBlogs/
I want to thank my fellow bloggers, you, the readers, and, most importantly, IPS, for this opportunity to add a spicy mix to the MDG3 Gender Portal. I enjoyed it immensely and I hope you did too.
Peace in 2010.
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A Babel of Jargon
Posted on
December 31, 2009 .
A collective indigestion of jargon. Photo by Beralpo, Wikimedia Commons
My friend is looking for a job. He finds an ad of the US-based Mercy Corps and calls me for a translation. The ad is in English - sort of - but he can’t figure out what it is about:
“Invitation for a consultancy in conducting a training on enhancing facilitation skills of development practitioners of livelihood enhancement programs.”
What does this text mean exactly, except that we have a collective indigestion of development jargon from NGOs and the UN, from academics and politicians, and that the media is complicit in this masquerading of long words as substance? (more…)
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Out of darkness: facing breast cancer
Posted on
December 28, 2009 .
Guest blogger: Paola Rolletta, IPS stringer in Mozambique.
I feel neither more “good” nor more “patient”. I am a hard-headed woman, as always. Attached to life, as ever!
Paola Rolletta by Luis Abelard
The day when my friend Pigi, my oncologist, told me that I had breast cancer, I cried desperately. The first thing I did was to phone my partner to tell him this piece of news, of which I had had some premonition. And I understood that premonition really exists.
Curiously, I did not wonder “Why me?” My reaction was: “This cursed disease has hit me too!” (more…)
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Fabrications around AIDS in 2010
Posted on
December 26, 2009 .
By Mary Crewe and Pierre Brouard
Center for the Study of AIDS, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Fabrications is the theme of the 2010 calendar produced by the Center for the Study of AIDS. The gorgeous images are digitally manipulated African textiles.
The notion of “fabrications” was inspired by the many stories of the AIDS quilts – designed to tell a story about someone who had died of AIDS, to honour them and to create a memorial to them that could be used as part of the fabric of people’s daily lives.
A fabrication is in this sense both a physical construction of fabrics, but also a psychological and social construction, the story of a life.
We need to tell people’s stories but we also need to acknowledge that we use stories to make sense of AIDS, to cope with it, to fashion it into something bearable, to give it meaning. (more…)
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Famous and infamous births
Posted on
December 21, 2009 .
By Paula Modersohn Becker
When is a photo of a woman giving birth considered pornographic? Take your pick:
A. When it is shown in a pornographic magazine, film or website.
B. Never.
C. When it is emailed to government officials urging action to improve public health.
One could argue about A and B but this blog is about C.
Earlier this year, in Zambia, Chansa Kabwela, news editor at the feisty opposition newspaper The Post, was charged with circulating pornography with intent to corrupt public morals. (more…)
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CEDAW!
Posted on
December 18, 2009 .
Ask the woman sitting next to you in the bus, train, plane, taxi-brousse or donkey cart what is CEDAW, and most probably you will draw a blank look. C’est quoi?
Yet CEDAW - Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women - has likely impacted on her life and her daughters, if she has any, in many ways, from pension and inheritance rights to the passport they hold.
Quilt made by women of Kyrgztan. (Unifem)
CEDAW, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly 30 years ago today, is the global Bill of Rights for Women, the first international human rights treaty devoted to gender equality.
Through its 30 articles, CEDAW has boosted women’s rights worldwide in many ways.
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Women human rights defenders under attack
Posted on
December 10, 2009 .
Let’s do a quick review of women and violence in the news in the last weeks.
What's in the news on Human Rights Day?
Why today? Because it’s the last of the 16 Days against Violence against Women, arguably the best known global campaign of the women’s movement, and also Human Rights Day.
Today, Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar starts her fourth week of hunger strike at Lanzarote airport in the Canary Islands. She is so weak she has to be transported to court by wheelchair or stretcher. Last week, the head of UNHCR called on Spain and Morocco to resolve her issue on humanitarian grounds.
The award-winning Haidar is known as the Sahrawi Gandhi for her non-violent protests for the independence of her desert country, the Western Sahara, ruled by Morocco since 1975. (more…)
