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Gabon’s people-friendly hospital
Posted on August 11, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, health, women, men and more.
The Ogooué River seen from Dr. Schweitzer's home. Photo: M. Sayagues
I decided to visit my Nicaraguan friend who stays in a village called Fougamou, in central Gabon. So I looked up the nearest town, Lambaréné. It turned out to have a museum honouring Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who arrived there in 1913, built a hospital, and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.
I had never been interested in him but it seemed like a truly off-the-beaten path museum, just my kind. But what sold me on Lambaréné was the name of its river: Ogooué. I HAD to see a river with such a wondrous name.
So I set off to Lambaréné on my way to Fougamou. Believe me, I was in the green heart of Africa. Green, as in rainforest.
I am glad I went. The river is awesome. The museum is charming. It preserves the old hospital and personal quarters from the 1920s as they were originally. (more…)
123 Comments
Star Trek hopelessly outdated
Posted on August 7, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, media, women, men and more.
Guest posting by Miren Gutierrez, IPS editor-in-chief
So 1960s...Star Trek masters and commanders are all men.
The other day I saw Star Trek. What an uncreative film. Listen, women: in the year 2387, men will still wear the pants and command the ship, while leggy women are busy being ornamental in mini skirts.
I don’t expect films to campaign for human rights, especially films of this nature. Space odysseys just have to be entertaining, surprising, ingenious. But Star Trek was just unimaginative, reproducing the social prejudices of the sixties, when the TV series on which this film is based started. As if nothing had changed…
145 Comments
Re-inventing the Warrior
Posted on August 3, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, media.
Old and new values in contemporary masculinities
Guest post by Trevor Davies, Director, African Fathers Initiative
Strong and caring men. Photo: Trevor Davies
This week I’ve been trying to get to grips with what at first glance seemed a real backward step in the struggle for gender equity.
For a long time, in my work around masculinities based on feminist analysis, I’ve opposed the idea that there was some golden age of manhood when men were strong and women were weak and needed to be looked after.
The premise of much of the mytho-poetic approach in masculinities is that we need to return to male power positive and caring values to cure the ills of our society such as gender-based violence, child abuse and crime.
I have found an intriguing manifestation of this idea in South Africa this week in The Mankind Project and its New Warrior programme. Their intention is twofold:
- To enable men to live lives of integrity, accountability, and connection to feeling.
- To be of service to the community at large, both as individual men with a renewed sense of passion and personal responsibility, and as communities of men working together to build sustainable relationships.
Sounds good!
9,661 Comments
Taboo word out in the open
Posted on July 27, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, adolescents, culture, human rights, women, men and more.
Sometime in this century, a taboo word crept out of the dark, dusty basement of journalists’ lexicon and acquired legitimacy and visibility, both as a word and an issue: menstruation.
Now we can talk about it.
Neither impurity necessitating reclusion nor social blunder, our monthly cycle is now recognized as part of women’s sexual and reproductive needs and an issue of hygiene and dignity.
(…and I wrote “our cycle” on the third edit, it´s still not that easy to be public about it…)
Something similar happened with cancer. As philosopher Susan Sontag noted in her classic essay “Illness as a Metaphor” of 1977, the standard euphemism used in obits was that someone had died after a long illness. Ten years later, she noted “a new candor”, the word cancer uttered more freely.
Regarding menstruation, surprisingly, TV ads did not shy away from comparing pad brands. But the press lagged behind the ad agencies.
119 Comments
Fake watches, artificial limbs and real needs
Posted on July 20, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, human rights, media, violence, women, men and more.
Ads about diamond-and-sapphire studded watches don’t turn me on. But this one gripped me. 
A screw-on hand and the slogan: “Fake watches are for fake people. Be authentic. Buy real.”
The ad is part of a campaign against counterfeiting launched by the Geneva-based Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie last month.
I might have ignored it but the day I saw it in a magazine, I had been interviewing amputees and photographing artificial limbs, not unlike the hand in the ad, for a story.
131 Comments
Soccer, xenophobia and masculinities
Posted on July 13, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, human rights, violence, women, men and more.
When friends ask me about the World Soccer Cup in South Africa in June 2010, I say there is only one if, but a big if.
What if another wave of xenophobic violence unfurled, like the one that shook South Africa to the core a year ago? It left 50 dead and about 150,000 displaced, terrified and destitute immigrants – black, African and foreign. (Click here to see a slideshow)
The army stepped in and the violence subsided. But xenophobia still simmers. In June, IPS reported on yet more murders of Somalis in the Western Cape province. (more…)
94 Comments
Can u Talk? Cellphones and Girls in South Africa
Posted on July 6, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, media, violence, women, men and more.
Guest posting
by Sally-Jean Shackleton, Executive Director, Women’s Net
There has been phenomenal growth in the cellphone industry in Africa. It is clear this technology is essential in a continent with failing land line telephony infrastructure and development.
The opportunities for development that have resulted from this growth is clear. Cellphones are used to communicate HIV information, send market prices to rural small farmers and to collect data in rural health care. (more…)
867 Comments
Women, justice and memory
Posted on June 29, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, arts, human rights, media, truth commissions, violence, war rape.
Remembering in Rwanda. Courtesy Anne Aghion
What happens when the relatives of the murdered confront their murderers? What happens if they have to live with the murderers?
This is the theme of “My neighbour, my killer”, a film about Rwanda’s extraordinary attempt at reconciliation. This documentary by Anne Aghion, which premiered in New York two weeks ago at the Human Rights Watch film festival, follows a gacaca or community court during five years.
Rwanda has set up some 12, 000 gacaca where killers face the relatives of those they killed during the genocide in 1994. (Read an interview with Aghion here).
25 Comments
Wedding hell: child brides
Posted on June 22, 2009, by mercedes, under children, culture, human rights, violence, women, men and more.
In Bissau - too young to carry the burden of marriage. Photo: M.Sayagues
She was a brave little girl, who believed in her right to choose how to live her life. Aged 12, as a minor she remained nameless in the news.
She lived in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, the green, misty mountains along the Mozambican border. On weekends, people dressed in flowing white robes, the men bearded, holding carved wooden canes, gather under the masasa trees. They belong to the Johanne Marange apostolic sect. Peaceful people – with a nasty habit of marrying young girls.
122 Comments
The shutter that shatters gender stereotypes
Posted on June 16, 2009, by mercedes, under media, women, men and more.
Photo: Sudiptorana/WACC
The women paddling in this stunning photo are having fun and a good workout - while breaking cultural barriers. They are competing in a traditional race against men in their village in West Bengal, India, racing against the gender-based division of labour and leisure, paddling energetically into a male space. (more…)
