As a child I lived on a beautiful island called Tanegashima, or flower seed island, which is located close to the south most part of the Kyushu island. I was brought up there with lots of other relatives and led a serene and happy childhood even though my parents worked hard as farmers and we were economically not as rich as people in the big cities in Japan.

Today I am a photographer and author and even though I live in Shinjuku, which is one of the biggest and busiest areas in Tokyo, I use my work is to capture my memories of the small farm. I want to bring to the big city the intimacy of a close-knit community that I experienced on the island..

How do I do this as a photographer and a woman? To thrive in Japanese culture that is male-dominated I take the stance that a working woman must not push the gender issue on to people’s faces because I could create hostility. So, my photography brings important social issues through the so called “softer” themes such as art and food. My new book, “Food Jobs”, is on the popular theme of eating healthy and cheaply but more important it is about protecting local community through food. That means, I write and take photographs of menus served in small cafes and restaurants in Shinjuku that have been in business for several decades but are now winding-up because of tough competition from posh restaurants owned by rich companies that can afford the expensive rents in the shiny new buildings. I am greatly disturbed by this kind of modernization which is making urban space utterly materialistic.

By shooting nostalgic dishes and aging chefs who have served cheap and healthy dishes for a lifetime, I want to convey the deeper message, which is, lets protect our vanishing communities. Now if I took this theme and brought it out as a feminist activity, I face the risk of being ignored, to say the least, in Japan. The real fact is, that couched in art, I am attacking current policies made by men holding powerful leadership positions. They are taking decisions to turn our cities turning into anonymous skyscrapers.. Its really ironic, but recently my photographs have started a citizens protest campaign to stop this kind of cruel infrastructure. People have collected 15,000 signatures so far and we will keep going. I might be a hero if we can fight to stop the bigwigs up there!

Yet another landmark in my work is my photographs of the homeless people in Shinjuku, a project I began almost a decade ago. In this project, I not only convey the voices of the homeless who are treated as outcasts by mainstream society but also focus on the beauty of building close relationships between people, something that is missing in the big cities. In my book I record the time I spent developing trust with the homeless people before I started taking their photographs. Human relationships in Tokyo have dwindled to materialistic exchanges and it is common practice to pay a few cents to the homeless to take their photos and then simply forget them. I want to change this by showing people, through my photographs, certain beautiful aspects of the homeless and how these people taught me important lessons As usual, I took the artistic approach by photographing the unique art displayed on the cardboard boxes that are their homes. When I started this work, my friends told me a young woman should not mix with rough jobless male laborers because she would get a reputation as being strange. But, in fact, it was the opposite. I found the homeless, who are overwhelmingly male, totally devoid of gender discrimination. I spent hours with them before I started taking photographs of their homes and not once did they make me feel like a woman such as talking down to me as is common with Japanese men. I think this is because they felt they were not part of mainstream society and therefore could engage with people free of social biases. It was a wonderful experience.

Mi pregunta fue por qué en algunos países se llama femicidio y en otros feminicidio al asesinato de mujeres por razón de su sexo. Las feministas reunidas en San Salvador, en un taller organizado por el Comité de América Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer (Cladem), me mostraron que no era cuestión de una palabra u otra, sino una polémica no zanjada.

La palabra proviene del inglés “femicide”, concebido por feministas estadounidenses para referirse a los asesinatos de mujeres que forman parte del amplio esquema de la violencia de género. Pero su traducción simple a “femicidio” omite esas dimensiones, según la antropóloga y política mexicana Marcela Lagarde.

Lagarde acuñó e introdujo el feminicidio como delito en el Código Penal y la Ley General de Acceso de las Mujeres a Una Vida Libre de Violencia, vigente en México desde febrero de 2007, bajo la forma de “violencia feminicida”.

Dice la versión española del último glosario de género de IPS:

Se trata del asesinato de la mujer en razón de su género, por odio hacia las mujeres, por rechazo a su autonomía y su valor como persona o por razones de demostración de poder machista o sexista. El feminicidio incluye una connotación de genocidio contra las mujeres. Por esta razón se prefiere feminicidio a femicidio, un término que hace referencia a todos los homicidios que tienen como víctima a una mujer, sin implicar una causa de género.

Pero, desafortunadamente, la discusión no se termina allí. En Costa Rica se tipificó el delito de femicidio. En Chile se habla de hacer algo similar.

Las autoras de “Femicidio en Costa Rica 1990-1999”, Ana Carcedo y Montserrat Sagot, hablan de este crimen en su país y señalan:

“La muerte de mujeres a manos de sus esposos, amantes, padres, novios, pretendientes, conocidos o desconocidos no es el producto de casos inexplicables o de conducta desviada o patológica. Por el contrario, es el producto de un sistema estructural de opresión. Estas muertes son femicidios, la forma más extrema de terrorismo sexista, motivado, mayoritariamente, por un sentido de posesión y control sobre las mujeres”.

Y agregan que el término femicidio “remueve el velo oscurecedor con el que cubren términos ‘neutrales’ como homicidio o asesinato”. Más aún, dicen, el femicidio ha sido definido “como una forma de pena capital que cumple la función de controlar a las mujeres como género… una expresión directa de una política sexual que pretende obligar a las mujeres a aceptar las reglas masculinas y, por lo tanto, preservar el statu quo genérico”. Sí, suena como genocidio, genocidio de mujeres.

En este punto, a la gente de a pie se nos complica entender los matices entre uno y otro término. Y ya no sabemos si vale la pena la discusión.

Lo dijeron varias activistas en el taller de Cladem: no perdamos más tiempo en las sutilezas.

En Chile es una muerta por semana, en Uruguay, una por mes, y en Perú se registran 12 cada 30 días. En un solo lugar de México, la norteña ciudad de Juárez, unas 800 mujeres cayeron víctimas de crímenes machistas de inusitada saña, desde 1993. Así se convirtieron en emblema, aunque las cifras empalidecen ante Guatemala: más de 3.500 feminicidios en cinco años, unos 700 por año, más de uno al día… ¿Necesitamos una o muchas palabras, para ponerles fin?

peace parade. New York. May 2010

by Toshiko Hamamako

Thank you for asking me to write about myself. I am happy to share my experiences.
Actually, it is only recently that I have begun to talk about my life as an atomic bomb survivor from Nagasaki.  I am now 66 years old but I got the courage to talk to others only about two years ago. Till then I have kept the fact that I am an atomic bomb survivor just within my family.

There are reasons why I have kept silent. The most important reason is fear of stigma and discrimination. For the public there is the image that we are dangerous to others because we are contaminated with radiation. Therefore, my mother never told me I was a survivor. She also never talked about the fact that she was also affected by the bomb and so was my older sister. So I never knew that I was exposed to radiation from the bomb when I was just one year old. I was sleeping when Nagasaki was bombed and therefore I do not have any recollection of what happened. It was only when I was in my twenties that my mother told me to apply for the government Hibakusha identity card which allows me free medical care. It was only then that I knew. I was married by then and had to tell my husband. He told me not to tell anyone else.

One of the biggest fears among hibakusha is not being able to get married. Normal Japanese do not want to marry us because they fear our children will not be healthy. This is a stigma that we, especially women, want to avoid.

I am considered one of the “young” generation atomic bomb survivors. This group is comprised of people in their sixties who were infants or very young children so we do not have strong memories of the physical suffering that our parents went through. We also were not told about our status and we rarely discussed with our parents about the atomic bomb. Therefore, we represent a generation who hardly understand the tragic history of that period. This ignorance was stark to me when I went to New York in May to participate in the Nuclear nonproliferation Treaty conference in the United Nations. There I was questioned by the American audience. A particularly difficult question for me to answer was whether I was angry with the Americans for dropping the bomb on Nagasaki. It may sound strange to foreign audience but really, I do not harbour hatred towards the Americans nor am I seeking an apology. I believe strongly that my mission is to work with the Americans and the rest of the world towards stopping the proliferation of nuclear-weapons. This is my dream and this is the reason why I decided I have to speak out finally.

Today, I feel a strong responsibility to work towards this goal and as a atomic bomb survivor, I know my role is special. We represent the tragic testimony to the nightmare of nuclear weapons. I want the public to know and understand the human catastrophe caused by nuclear weapons. The uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki wiped out tens of thousands of people, injured many more, and causes suffering even 65 years after those fateful days. Why should people have to suffer for the mistakes made by irresponsible politicians. This nightmare must never be repeated.

I am deeply grateful to U.S. President Obama who has pledged to make a nuclear-weapon free world. The visit of the American ambassador to Hiroshima on August 6th has brought much hope to us. So has the visit of U.N. chief, Ban Ki Moon. His presence and specch in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wonderful. We must all work together now towards our goal.

I have a daughter who is 44 years and married. She, too, is identified as a second generation hibakusha and carries with her an identity card. Compared to the embarrassment and shame I have gone through, I find that my daughter is not plagued with the same doubts. She reacted to my explanation to her quite matter-of-factly. I thought she is very brave and represents the young generation of Japanese today who are eager to learn about the past. Japanese text books hardly discuss these important issues objectively and youth have to learn more. This is why I will keep devoted to my work which is to continue to talk about my experience. I know my testimony is contributing to peace because people listen to us because we are the living proof of the horror of a nuclear war.

Thank you again for listening to my story.

Editors note. The atomic bomb was dropped by the United States on Hiroshima on August 6. 1945 and later on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
“Hibakusha” is the Japanese name for atomic bomb survivor.

By Junko Fukazawa

As a women`s rights activist the fight for equal rights for women alongside men in Japan has been a rocky road. But today I must say, we have come a long way towards achieving our goal. Let me explain by telling the readers about progress made on eradicating domestic violence.

This problem has been dormant in Japan for decades. For instance, till the mid- eighties the term, “ domestic violence” was not even known among the public and government officials. Instead, people talked about middle-aged divorce or depression rates among married women. Nobody really linked these issues to violence against wives in the family.

The term domestic violence raised its profile from the nineties. I see this development as a landmark in the women’s rights movement in Japan. There two very important reasons on why we have achieved this. First was, of course, international pressure on Japan. Japanese feminists received a huge boost with the United Nations focusing on this problem and showing how wife beating ruins the lives of women and families all over the world.

This international spotlight helped feminists, the second reason for moving ahead, to highlight the issue in Japan where thousands of women were suffering from physical and verbal abuse by their husbands. The worst part was they had no one to turn to for help as domestic violence was not recognized socially.

The conservative approach, prevalent at that time,was husbands must do their duty as bread winners and if they fulfill this, then it is fine to hit their wives. This thinking had to be changed. How did we do this?.

I think what helped us were international statistics that showed how domestic violence affects the whole family. Affected children suffer mentally leading to poor study habits or react violently themselves towards others. Also families break up when husbands beat their wives. There are deaths and suicides recorded.

We started showing the public how the breakdown of the family has negative consequences for the country. This approach is working. Today the national government and local municipal offices are funding programmes that seek to stop domestic violence such as building shelters for survivors.

My organization is one such recipient. We run the Community Café based in central Tokyo which is a place that offers counseling and a sympathetic ear to women who gather there. Our counselors provide women who have often suffered for years in silence and find that, the first time, their stories are taken seriously rather than being told to stop complaining about their husbands.

Sometimes, we meet with the violent husbands themselves who say they did not realize the damage they were causing to their families. I think the very fact that men accompany their wives—while still very few in numbers—is an indication that Japan`s strict gender divide is weakening. I am deeply encouraged to carry on with my work even though the signs may look still piecemeal in comparison to other countries.

I would like to end with these thoughts. There are now more Japanese women working for both economical reasons and also because they want to. I think their financial power is leading them to depend less on their husbands and this trend illustrates a break away from mainstream gender role playing that was the norm till just a decade ago. Yet another landmark for the feminist movement in Japan is the growing number of single women, most of them with good careers. This shows more women are making their own decisions about their lives and not viewing marriage as the only choice they have as women.

Thank you. Junko.

Editor`s note: Japan passed first Domestic Violence Prevention Law in 2001 and amended it in 2007 to include non-married couples.

Rajini and Japanese trainer.

Rajini, 32, lives in a one room tin shack with her mother, younger sister and a mentally handicapped younger brother. Hailing from Jaffna, Sri Lanka`s northern peninsula that was the centre of the now ended thirty-year old ethnic war in the country, the young woman symbolizes both the suffering of innocent civilians during conflict as well as the other amazing side of destruction—enduring courage and determination to survive despite all odds.

I met Rajini in Trincomalee, a beautiful historical port city on the north east coast of Sri Lanka and home for all major ethnicities—the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil, and Muslim populations that comprise the island’s national mosaic. She appeared before me wearing a flared well-cut mid-calf pink skirt and a pressed white blouse. Her long hair ,a symbol of traditional feminine beauty, was combed back and enclosed in a long plait. Her sister, 22, a much larger woman who giggles easily, was　with her. Both women had come to meet me not for a charitable hand out but to find out how they could earn an income that they desperately needed. Rajini, the eldest daughter, knew she was destined to be main breadwinner for her family that barely managed to find enough money to feed themselves three meals a day. All she had to offer was her sewing skills that she had learned when she attended workshops conducted by foreign funded local non-governmental organizations that provided relief programmes for civilians during the short breaks in the war. Rajini, who could not complete her education and apply for university, took the classes, a decision she says that kept her spirits up when her three homes that she and her mother acquired, were destroyed in the villages they had taken refuge when they were forced to flee from the fighting.

Standing under the burning hot sun that afternoon, Rajini clutched a file that contained her sewing samples. I opened the thick book. Inside were pages pasted with various types of splendidly embroidered fabric. The colours were brilliant and the stitching followed her sketches so tiny and minute that her final work appeared delicate and lovely like a bevy of gossamer dreams that beckoned the viewer enticingly to keep turning the pages. The inside spread on two pages took my breath away—almost two dozen blood-red roses spilling out of a canopy of rainbow hued ribbons floating upward on a white background. Yet another fabric that touched my heart was the embroidered group of plump ducklings waddling behind their mother, the grand dame standing on a bed of green weeds. Rajini had sewn the ducks on the bosom of a light blue baby frock. Perhaps she was thinking of her own little babies, a family that she still had not found because of poverty and war.

Now, showing off her skills and asking for a job, Rajini was ready to go ahead with her life. I knew that when I returned the book to her and looked into her eyes. She was asking for an opportunity and not charity. I did not hesitate a moment. Rajini would take the position of head teacher in the sewing class and shop that I had decided to open in Trincomalee along with a group of Japanese women who were my friends. We had collected the funds between us—our own personal donations as well as from our well-wishers. Joining hands with Rajini and her eight other counterparts, all of them struggling to rebuild their lives after they had survived the fighting, were women from Japan who were on the other side of the world and leading totally different lives—they were safe and secure in an industrialized world. But the two sides were embarking on a unique experience for they would start to work together. This was what we wanted and this is what Rajini and her friends in Trincomalee wanted. This month we celebrate together three years since we began to pursue this dream, and, needless to say, despite the ups and downs that have appeared and disappeared for there was never a question of giving-up, we are doing really well. A sign of the huge success this year is that products made by the women are ready to be sold in the international market. Bravo, Rajini.!

The 2010 World Cup in South Africa gave me a chance to review my stand. Before the start of the World Cup, I was one of a few journalist invited by Oxfam GB to watch players from the English football team, Liverpool FC coach women’s football team in Soweto.

When I arrived in Meadowlands I was struck by the Soweto Ladies Football Club. The team has 32 players ranging from 10 to 23 years. Far from teaching the players to be “good girls” the team’s coach Fikile Sithole encourages the players to be disciplined and focused -both on and off the field. She also discourages the girls from getting involved in destructive behaviours. Sithole tells the players to focus on their education because that is one thing that will guarantee them success in life.

Before the start of the World Cup, Oxfam GB and the Fair Play coalition teamed up with Liverpool FC to promote a positive message to the South African youth about health issues like HIV and Aids and Xenophobia. The team travelled around South Africa to coach small soccer teams.

Zukiswa Zimela

Nicole Johnston the Regional Media and Communications Coordinator for Oxfam GB said that it was important to use the impetus from the World Cup to promote development issues.

One of the players, 15 year old Prudence Kubayi, says that being a part of the team has taught her to be a better person. Before joining the team she admits to running wild in the township streets, smoking and gambling. Now she is no longer part of that group of friends and focuses all her energy in improving her soccer skills.
Sithole was very proud of the group of young women saying when most of the players join the team they were drinkers and smokers. Now, she boasts, not a single one of her players drink or smoke.

Johnston was very excited about the team because she believes that part of the coaching is building confidence and building self esteem in the players because women who are more confident and empowered are less likely to fall victims of crime and various other forms of abuses.

Soccer is a stretch from playing house and learning how to sweep my makeshift house under my grandmother’s acorn tree. It’s grittier and tougher and the lessons learnt from it prepare the players for tougher and grittier life situations. I do wish I had spent less time baking and more time kicking a ball.

Life is frail in Mozambique. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues

Guest blogger Mercedes Sayagues

The health page was laid out late at night last week. I had a headache so I went home around 7 pm to lie down. Around 9:30 the editor called: our turn for layout.

It was unbearably hot and humid. The newsroom is in the basement of an old house. The proofreader was sitting on the steps to the garden. “Catching fresh air?” I asked.

Usually the health page is laid out in the afternoon and the proofreader comes in the evening so I had seen Leopoldo Fernandes only a couple times: a small, gaunt man with a balding head and a greying ponytail.

Ponytailed men in their fifties usually have a hippie, musical or artistic past, so I made a mental note to chat to him one day.

Tonight Leopoldo was coughing badly. He pulled out an inhaler from his pocket, like Benicio del Toro in the Che Guevara film.

“I am very sick,” he gasped between coughs. “I have emphysema.”  He lit up a cigarette.

Indeed he was sick. He walked back into the newsroom as if every step was a command he gave to his body. He stared at the computer as if words were vanishing. He had been proofreading the health page when he stepped out and left it open without saving. Someone else used the computer; his work was lost. He cursed and started again. I sat next to him quietly, patiently.

I felt his energy ebbing away word by word but he was set on completing the job. Several times a fit of coughs made him go out again.

At last he finished the health story. I gave it a final read, gently pointed out missed typos and got up. I touched his shoulder: pure bones. “Get well soon,” I said. He looked up and acknowledged. He was too sick to smile. Our gaze locked. Good night.

He died on Saturday. His obit told of an actor and singer, a rebel, a bohemian, “a friend to friends”. Back in 1977, he was sent to a re-education camp - a feature of the post-colonial Marxist regime - to no avail. He was “one of those guys who cannot be re-educated. Luckily some of these exist.” Leo got 50 lashes for smoking pot, fled to the bush, avoided leopards, and returned to the capital to continue a prodigious consumption of pot, tobacco, alcohol and women, said the obit.

I learned of his death on Monday. He was my age.

That Monday, around 7 pm, the reporter I was working with answered her cellphone. Her one-month-old nephew had died. Cause: unknown, she said. Another colleague who sits next to me was teary-eyed: her cousin, aged 28 and just graduated in pharmacy, had died over the weekend. Cause: unknown.  Must have been some bacteria she analysed at work in the hospital. The cousin, she said, “had been weeping tears of blood.”

The way language deals with disease in Africa can be quite poetic. “She had smoke in the lungs,” a fisherman told me, describing his wife’s death. I figured out she had TB. I cannot fathom the blood tears, though.

The following day, I am working with another reporter. “I have to go early for a funeral”, he says. Who died? “Some irresponsible person performed an abortion on my neighbour who was seven months pregnant. The baby lived for a few hours, she died overnight.”

The previous Monday, on the way to a slum to do a story on sanitation, I asked another reporter how was her weekend. “Tiresome,’ she said. Her in-laws had sent an urgent request for medicines for a five-year-old boy. They live in Inhambane province, 800 kms away.  By the time they put together a parcel and found a traveller to take it, the child had died. Would it have been more efficient to send money? The relatives don’t have a bank account and live far from town. What was in the parcel? Vitamins and fortified food. Cause of death? Unknown.

Last year I interviewed an anthropologist who works in a remote valley of the Venda territory in South Africa. The Venda people are known for spirituality, superstition and witchcraft. The anthropologist explained the Venda seldom name a cause of death.  The words may bring the disease or suggest you had something to do with the death.

We kept on chatting. The reporter had fired her new nanny, who is 18, four-months pregnant and feeling unwell.  I thought that was callous until I learned the background. The previous nanny, a sister to this one, was 20 years old and seven months pregnant. She had not told anyone. In December she had a miscarriage in the sitting room, in front of the reporter’s toddler. Her husband came from work to the gory scene. And the problems: finding a car to go to hospital, finding someone to clean the mess.

No wonder my colleague did not want another pregnant nanny in her house.

We arrived in the slum. It was hot, 38 Celsius, and humid. I felt dizzy and nauseous. I sat on the floor and did yoga breathing. My hands went numb, fingers bent into a fist.  I couldn’t open them. I thought I was having a stroke.

I remembered Jean Dominique Bauby, of the Diving Suit and the Butterfly, dictating stories letter-by-letter, blink-by-blink. No, please, no. We dashed to the Heart Institute - the topic of our first story. Hyperventilating, numb hands. I was so scared.

Bless that story and bless the Institute. The director was by chance at the emergency gate and took me straight to the heart unit. Ironically, it was the same area where we did our story, only now I am in a wheelchair. Turned out to be high blood pressure, plus dehydration and anxiety. The doctors gave me pills and left me in observation until 5 pm.

“I will never tell you a sad story again,” said my colleague and squeezed my hand, the one without a drip. She was going back to the slum finish the story. “It made you sick.”

“This is why I am here,” I replied. “This is what we do: we report on health and health care.”

Life is so frail in Mozambique, and death is so much part of life.

Mercedes Sayagues is a Knight Health Journalism Fellow with the weekly Savana, in Mozambique

With the 10th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 coming up in October, the UN is under a lot of pressure to implement the resolution.

UNSCR 1325 calls on States to put an end to impunity and prosecute perpetrators of sexual and other violence on women and girls; increased participation of women in peace process; the protection and respect of women and girls post-conflict; and a framework for engendering peace negotiations, peacekeeping, planning of refugee camps and reconstruction.

The Security Council proposed penalties for perpetrators in the form of prosecution and targetted sanctions as well as strengthening the mandates of peacekeeping operations to prevent sexual gender based violence and to remind parties to conflict of their responsibility to protect women.

But very little progress has been made in protecting women and girls from rape in armed conflict. We have already celebrated many times over the fact that it UNSCR 1325 is a landmark resolution that recognises sexual gender based violence as a weapon of war. But beyond that, implementation has been so poor its not clear what we will be celebrating come October other than a statement of intent backed by more recent statements of intent in the form of resolutions 1888 and 1889 adopted in September 2009.

Resolution 1888 mandates peacekeeping missions to protect women and girls from sexual violence in armed conflict. Resolution 1889  reaffirms resolution 1325 and “condemns continuing sexual violence against women in conflict and post-conflict situations”. It urges Member States, United Nations bodies, donors and civil society to ensure that women’s protection and empowerment is taken into account during post-conflict needs assessment and planning, and factored into subsequent funding and programming.

Approximately 20 000 women were raped during the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina in the early 1990s and violations continue around the world with the most well-known case being the Democratic Republic of Congo where it is estimated that up to 500,000 women and children have been raped during the 14 year long war. Human Rights Watch and other rights and humanitarian organisations have reported sexual gender based violence in numerous other conflicts, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire,  Liberia, Peru, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Chechnya/Russian Federation and Uganda.

Efforts at remedying the situation in DRC by training police and government forces to protect women are limited by the fact that the government forces are amongst the worst perpetrators of sexual gender based violence. The  Security Council is due to conduct a visit to the DRC from 14th to 21st May mainly to negotiate the gradual withdrawal of the the UN’s 20,000-strong peacekeeping force in that country. But it has already been criticised for its failure to include anything on women in its terms of reference for the visit. The TORS do, however, specifically mention children and “other affected civilian groups”.

The International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo’s visit to Kenya to investigate the country’s post election violence will also need to be watched closely. In Kenya this week, Ocampo says he will speak with victims and government officials. Many of those victims are the women who were raped, beaten and had their homes burnt down. Ocampo’s mission should target them as a specific group and aim to deliver the justice that has so far evaded them and many other female victims of sexual gender based violence in conflict. As long as women affected by conflict continue to be lumped in the group “civilians” we are unlikely to ever give them the particular attention or action they need or address the fact that the rape of women in armed conflict is a very specific method of warfare meant to humiliate, terrorize, punish and dominate the enemy.

Meanwhile, the Ugandan rebel group, the Lords Resistance Army, continues to operate with impunity, extending their murderous campaign and abductions of women and children into DRC.  Clearly the resolutions have had little impact on governments and armed groups and failed to act as a deterrent. It is also obvious that 1325’s call for the inclusion of women in peace processes is not being taken seriously. Women continue to be excluded from negotiating tables.

My collection. Photo credit: Trevor Davies

As I struggled to find something interesting or at least a bit fun to write about this week while using little distractions to avoid the inevitable putting of pen to paper, something landed in my email in box that made me go “aha!”.  ‘How deep is your love for you?’ the email questioned and offered to provide the answers in a one day self help seminar.  Here was another opportunity at self improvement that many of us are fascinated with and possibly even addicted to at the moment.

Reading through the email I nodded away in agreement as it described what sounded exactly like my relationship with myself and others. And I must say the inclusion of a neck and back massage in the seminar package seemed like a real deal clincher. Who doesn’t need to better understand and improve themselves and de-stress (or is that distress) a little at the same time?

I’ve not been to one of these seminars/motivational talks, but I have spend at least a year going through the gamut of magazine articles, books, talk shows and dvds like ‘The Secret’. I have found tidbits of enlightenment but mostly I realise they’ve  been telling me things I already know and may be fueling my own insecurities that I don’t have the right life. Not to mention the large amounts of cash I’ve  contributed to the industry.

I am aware my new-found cynicism is due to a book I’m reading that has forced me to re-think even my fascination and deep admiration for Deepak Chopra.  In ‘How mumbo jumbo conquered the world’, Francis Wheen tears to pieces pretty much the entire self help section of the biggest and most comprehensive bookstore you could imagine and ridicules as desperate our desires to transform our lives in X easy steps, our growing love for public displays of emotion and the culture of celebrity that has gripped us in the last few decades.

What really made me wince is the chapter where he questions our undying  adoration of Princess Diana. The world was captivated by Di and I admit the press-fueled fascination did not pass me by. When she died my husband woke me in the middle of the night to tell me the news and like many others around the world I stayed up all night flicking through the 24-hour news channels to catch any further developments on the death of the woman Wheen describes as a “pampered princess”. I should mention here that after telling me the news, my husband sensibly went to bed. Did we get carried away with our grief? Wheen certainly thinks so and while I did not shed tears, the spectacle drew me in more than was necessary and I suspect this may be the case with the self help revolution too.

Fortunately, reading Wheen’s book has brought me to recognise the pitfalls of getting totally sucked in — even by Wheen. It seems natural to me that we always strive to improve ourselves and expand our world view. So I’ve not sworn off the self help literature forever. However, I will  approach it with the happy knowledge that I already have a life that’s quite alright and the latest 12-point plan is not going to totally transform it as some of the literature claims to be able to. A neck and back massage might do that though — at least for a few hours.

In sub-Saharan Africa, married women are at high risk of contracting HIV. Photo credit: Petr Kratochvil www.publicdomainpictures.net

A good friend sent me an interesting academic article last week that got me quite excited. Entitled ‘Shona Womanhood: Rethinking Social Identities in the Face of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe’, the article really hit home on an issue that we all know is out there for most African women; the cultural definition of a “good woman” as a married woman with children, and the impact this has at a time when the highest HIV infection rates are among married women, for well known reasons related to definitions of masculinity in our cultural contexts.

The author, Pascah Mugwini, writing in The Journal of Pan African Studies (vol.2 no.4, June 2008), points out that Shona women outside marriage are much safer from infection than those within because “there are no constricting cultural norms barring her from negotiating safer sex once she decides to have it”. He also points out that there is more stigma now in having been widowed as a result of HIV than there is in being a single woman.

For a long time we have joked about how it doesn’t matter how many degrees you’ve got or whether you’ve got an amazing career, business, or are doing very well financially as a woman. Ultimately your aunt or whoever will ask, “but when are you getting married”. If you clearly have no prospects and they’ve given up on that one, they will come with “but at least you should have some children”.

The pressures are real and I believe this is one of the reasons we continue to have a high incidence of pregnancies among college students who you would think are using condoms. I’m singling out this particular group because we would expect them to have all the information about protective sex and a level of maturity that enables them to avoid the risk of contracting HIV and the pitfalls of early pregnancy. It is likely that for many of these young women these pregnancies are a way of meeting these social expectations.

Young women in tertiary institutions that I’ve interviewed in the past told me straight that getting a husband while you are still at university or college is key. The idea being to have a husband and one who is similarly educated and with career prospects. To guarantee marriage, some choose to conceive.

I’m impressed with Mugwini for bringing up the topic and at the same puzzled that this critical discussion that we should have started talking about a long time ago has been put on the table by an academic and not the myriad of gender empowerment and HIV and AIDS organisations out there who should be tackling it up-front.

Marriage being the primary site of patriarchy would make it very challenging to address this issue and perhaps this is where gender equality and HIV and AIDS organisations are struggling.

Then there is the simple fact that most women do want to get married, have a stable partnership and start a family. So encouraging women to remain single and childless is certainly not the answer either.

Mugwini says parents are beginning to register concern for their daughters’ health and safety as the value of female children grows in families that have come to realise that daughters are more likely to responsibly care for their parents in old age than sons. If what Mugwini says is true of many parents, could this be an entry point to social change?

Not to dump it squarely at the feet of HIV and AIDS social marketing organisations, but I would love to see a campaign that really tackles this issue; that deals with cultural and religious leaders to help us overcome this concern. A lot of work is being done by male-led gender equality organisations that are tackling issues of masculinities but they need much more support.

If there was ever an area where it has to be emphasised and re-emphasised that gender is about both women and men and we are responsible for each other, this is it. Something of a cultural revolution needs to take place so we can get over this hurdle that is killing women.