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education

From Our Mailbox: Advancing MDG3

Posted on November 1, 2011, by aprille, under Gender Masala, children, gender.

Advancing gender equality means a shift in thinking — from seeing boys and men as part of the problem, to including boys and men as part of the solution. (Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS)

Dear Editors,

Thanks for the story on working with males and females on gender equality.

You may also be interested in work that ICRW has done in this area. We developed and evaluated a program called “Gender Equity Movement in Schools” that is now being scaled up to 250 schools in Mumbai. Additionally, the project team has traveled to Vietnam for discussion on adapting the program to the Vietnamese setting.

Ellen Weiss
Senior Technical Advisor
Research Utilization and Development
International Center for Research on Women

We love hearing from you! Send us your comments, questions, examples and ideas for making the world more gender equitable: mdg3 [at] ips [dot] org.

61 Comments

A Babel of Jargon

Posted on December 31, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, media, stereotypes.

Photo by Beralpo, Wikimedia Commons

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…)

61 Comments

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CEDAW!

Posted on December 18, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, 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)

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.

(more…)

82 Comments

Living a woman’s life

Posted on December 4, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, 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.

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…)

153 Comments

Watchdog citizen journalism against gender violence

Posted on November 27, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, harmful practices, human rights, media, politics, stereotypes, violence, women, men and more.

The sisters can do it by themselves. By A. Vilanculos

The sisters can do it by themselves. By A. Vilanculos

The buzz in Mozambique during the recent elections was not the TV debate among presidential candidates debate (there is none) or their programs  (all vague).

What had tongues wagging was citizen’s journalism, dispatches by ordinary folk about electoral irregularities from the Rovuma to the Maputo rivers.

Good stuff: government cars illegally used for campaigning, with cellphone pics of their registration plates (until officials wised up and started covering up plates and ministry logos with party posters). Reports of youth tearing downs other party’s posters, fistfights, intimidation, and police lack of impartiality.  (more…)

22 Comments

A spiritual gift

Posted on November 23, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, arts, children, culture, human rights, religion, stereotypes, violence, women, men and more.

Patriarchal in all senses. By M. Sayagues

Patriarchal in all senses. By M. Sayagues

What drives a 17-year-old girl to enter a monastery? Today she is 30, and still happy about her choice. Her eyes sparkle and her laughter comes easy. She exudes peace.

I will call her Gabra (gift, in Amharic), for our conversation was private. I met her at a monastery near Lalibela, the mystical city of rock-hewn churches in northern Ethiopia.

Monastic life has a long tradition and prestige in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The oldest monastery dates from the 6th century. A monastic renaissance between the 13th and 16th century brought great moral and political authority to clergy.

Custodians of tradition

Custodians of tradition

Gabra’s rock-hewn monastery dates from the 12th century. Her room is excavated in the pink tufa rock. Two built-in-the-rock platforms, covered with a thin mattress, do as couch and bed. An old cupboard holds a few plates and cooking utensils, three of the long green robes worn by Ethiopian peasants, the white headscarves that nuns wear, and two pairs of sandals.

(more…)

140 Comments

Family health managers

Posted on November 20, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, children, culture, health, women, men and more.

Women are the agents of family health in Ethiopia. By M. Sayagues

Women manage family health in Ethiopia.

...on top of all their other duties. By M. Sayagues

Pics by M. Sayagues

98 Comments

Being male was the cameraman’s bad luck

Posted on November 3, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, human rights, media, stereotypes, women, men and more.

Guest blogger: Suad Hamada, IPS correspondent in Bahrain

Shall we talk about it?

Shall we talk about it?

A Saudi woman journalist escaped punishment last week but her cameraman wasn’t so lucky.

Rozana Al-Yami, 22, was pardoned by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah after the court sentenced her to 60 lashes for her work at the talk show  Red Line in LBC, a Lebanese satellite TV.

She made international news. He didn’t. No one mentioned that he has to serve a two-month jail term.  His name remains anonymous  in press reports.

Some would call this positive discrimination in favour of women but to me iit s a general bias. Women have been striving all over the world for equality,  not favoritism. (more…)

13 Comments

Beauty as an optical illusion

Posted on October 12, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, adolescents, arts, children, culture, media, stereotypes, women, men and more.

Fashion models in ads are optical illusions and the award-winning  video Evolution of Beauty, from the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty proves the point eloquently. Watch it at:

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.ca/bblank.asp?id=6895

Digital cosmetic surgery - nip-and-tuck, botox and liposuction, on the screen, with a click - render these models picture-perfect (excuse the pun) and thoroughly unreal.

There is no way a non-photoshopped  woman can attain that perfection. Hey, we are human. We have flaws.

(more…)

108 Comments

Putting a value on our work

Posted on September 24, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, media, women, men and more.

Guest blogger: Miren Gutierrez, IPS editor-in-chief

Seven PM at the supermarket. After a long day at the office, she is standing in line to pay for groceries to make dinner, stealing glances at her watch, grappling with two young kids who want her to buy some chewing gum…

Unequal sharing of the work pie. M. Sayagues

Unequal sharing of the work pie. M. Sayagues

Does this picture ring a bell? Survey after survey across the world report that women put in between 20 and 30 hours a week of domestic and family work. Unseen, unsung and unpaid, yes, but not insignificant.

Unpaid work in the home, done mainly by women, is estimated at approximately 50 percent of all productive activity even in industrial countries, and as much as 60-70 percent in many developing countries,” says Hazel Henderson in an interview with IPS.  (more…)

77 Comments

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