Archive for 'culture'
Is it ever okay for a woman to exercise her sexuality to gain political power?
Posted on February 15, 2010, by Kudzai, under General, arts, human rights, politics, stereotypes, women, men and more.
Kudzai Makombe
Queen Elizabeth I kept a reign on power by becoming "The Virgin Queen" Credit www.PDImages.com
This question has been puzzling me since a late-night, noisy get together with friends where we got talking (some might say gossiping) about the alleged cross-party sexual politics taking place in our government. The men, it was said, were using sex as a strategy to silence the women from the opposite camps. The woman targeted loses her standing once she’s been seduced as it quickly becomes general knowledge among other politicians.
“Once you see that so and so who used to be so vocal has gone quite then you know they’ve been had,” said one friend. Much like the boarding school strategy employed by male students to remove the top performing girl student’s ranking as number one in class I’m told. But, never having been to boarding school, much less a co-educational school, I am not aware.
As much as this dirty trick is an age-old male strategy to silence female opponents, women throughout history have used their sexuality, that is — whom one has sex with (or not), in what ways, why, under what circumstances, and with what outcomes — as a strategy to gain power. (more…)
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Sherezade y el sultán, en el siglo XXI
Posted on February 12, 2010, by Kudzai, under General, arts, culture, media, stereotypes.
Diana Cariboni
Espero entre indignada y divertida el próximo 8 de marzo, Día Internacional de la Mujer… El anterior me deparó una pasmosa sorpresa. Sobre mi escritorio había una enorme rosa de pétalos amarillos y bordes rojos y una tarjeta dirigida a las mujeres del siglo XXI, en su día. (more…)
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A New Year for Gender Masala
Posted on January 2, 2010, by mercedes, under General, culture, media, stereotypes, women, men and more.
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, by mercedes, under General, culture, media, stereotypes.
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, by mercedes, under General, culture, health, media, women, men and more.
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 mercedes, under General, HIV/AIDS, arts, culture, health, media.
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 mercedes, under General, arts, children, culture, health, human rights, media, politics, religion, reproductive health, stereotypes, violence, women, men and more.
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, by mercedes, under General, culture, harmful practices, health, human rights, politics, religion, reproductive health, violence, women, men and more.
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, by mercedes, under General, culture, human rights, media, violence, war rape, women, men and more.
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…)
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Living a woman’s life
Posted on December 4, 2009, by mercedes, under General, adolescents, culture, health, media, politics, women, men and more.
Today at noon my daughter graduated from high school. In the afternoon, the email brought news about very dear friends.
Motherhood, sisterhood, friendship.
In Paris, the Chilean researcher, novelist and feminist Ana (Nicha) Vazquez Bronfman had died, aged 71. She was a beacon for a generation of Latin American women for her insights on identity and gender. One concept she elaborated specially was “transculturation” - the permanent construction of identities in this world of global migration. In 2006 she wrote superbly about sexuality among the elderly – transgressions and secrets, she called it.
In Rome, my friend and fellow journalist Paola Rolletta underwent the next to last chemotherapy session against breast cancer. She was jubilant to see the end of the chemical bombardment. Like antiretrovirals, chemo saves lives but is no picnic. (more…)
