Archive for 'women, men and more'
No longer invisible: caregivers speak out
Posted on September 4, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, HIV/AIDS, culture, human rights, media, violence, women, men and more.
Guest blogger: Glenda Muzenda, Care Work Manager at Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA)
I just attended the Grassroots Women’s International Academy on Home Based Care in Johannesburg, South Africa.
It was a mixed bag of fun meeting women from all walks and works of life from Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia, Ghana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
Caregiving in Mozambique. Photo: Janine Morna
The Huairou Commission and the Land Access Movement of South Africa brought us together to share experiences of home-based care.
It is fascinating how in Malawi the care givers alliance has moved forward. Victoria Kalomba, of the Malawi Group of Women Living with HIV and AIDS told us that the ministry of health and social development had spearheaded a campaign to raise awareness about people infected and affected by HIV.
The process had the ministry informing the support groups of individuals who had tested positive after visiting clinics so they could be reached and helped.
I am worried about this way of outing positive people even in the aim of mobilizing support groups. I feel that it is a human right violation to have to give information of someone’s HIV status.
109 Comments
Runner Caster Semenya: gender, sex and discrimination
Posted on August 26, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, adolescents, culture, health, human rights, media, stereotypes, women, men and more.
Open letter by South African gender activists
Courtesy of Zapiro, Mail & Guardian
Some of those championing Caster Semenya’s cause accuse those wanting to sex-test Caster of imperialism and racism (as well as sexism). Others plead to wait before reaching a verdict, arguing that the realities of sex testing are enormously complex
Firstly to address the issue of terminology, over which there seems to be confusion. Gender is the dominant society’s views on how women and men should look, behave, what roles they should play in society, how they should perform and frequently what rewards they receive – hence gender inequity. This has usually led to lower status and discrimination against girls/women but has increasingly been seen as limiting the options and potentially harming boys/men too.
Gender is not a politically correct term for sex. Sex testing would be just that - establishing whether a person is biologically female or male. So gender testing is not the term that should be used this case, but sex testing. (more…)
108 Comments
Whose pleasure? Notes about male circumcision and female sexuality
Posted on August 24, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, HIV/AIDS, culture, health, media, women, men and more.
Guest blogger: Pierre Brouard, Deputy Director, Centre for the Study of Aids, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Hard task: defining sexual pleasure. Photo: M. Sayagues
So what headlines have grabbed you lately about male circumcision in South Africa? These caught my eye:
“The death toll in the Eastern Cape’s winter circumcision season has risen to 31”
“Circumcision ’scam’ probed”
“Two on run after initiate dies”
As alarming and distressing as these headlines are – and the sad, desperate and greedy subtexts embedded in them – they don’t say much about the other big debate that is raging across southern Africa: the value of male circumcision to prevent HIV acquisition in heterosexual men, and what’s in it for women. (more…)
95 Comments
Rubbing it the wrong way: condom-grabbing tourists
Posted on August 20, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, HIV/AIDS, health, media, stereotypes, women, men and more.
A Femidom demo. Photo: M. Sayagues/Irin
In a contest for irresponsible tourism, taking the last two female condoms at a Botswana border post as a souvenir would run neck-and-neck with littering the Central Kalahari Game Reserve with soda cans. Hey, spare a thought for a sister: a local woman might need them. I mean the condoms, not the soda cans.
Journalist Bridget Hilton-Barber writes, in the South African weekly Mail & Guardian, about the female condom’s popularity among Batswana women. (Femidoms rub the right way, 14 August). Then she plucked the last ones at the border post, as a souvenir, to lie in her office drawer.
Well, their popularity is a very good reason to leave the condoms in the box for someone who wants to use them.
Correction: Someone who needs to use them.
An average of three out of ten pregnant women at public antenatal clinics in Botswana are HIV-positive. This is an improvement over ten years ago, when four or five out of ten pregnant women were HIV-positive. Condoms helped achieve this drop. (Read about AIDS in Botswana here) (more…)
105 Comments
Getting the UN into GEAR!
Posted on August 17, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, human rights, media, politics, women, men and more.
By Sharon Bhagwan Rolls, founding coordinator, femLINKPACIFIC
Contributing blogger
Sharon Bhagwan Rolls
Getting into GEAR! What does this really mean in a Pacific Island state, surrounded by an ocean rising rather too quickly, that some of us are thinking about getting into gear before it becomes a sink or swim situation?
Does it mean we switch from paddling our own canoes at the pace known as “Pacific time” to powering our way into the future with the assistance of fuel guzzling outboard engines?
And as we rapidly negotiate our way through the waters, will we be protected by life jackets should there be any mishaps along the way?
5,325 Comments
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
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…)
