March 07, 2013

"One billion women and men rising... For a better world"

By Ama Biney at Pambazuka News: "In honour of International Women’ Day (8 March), a global examination of the problems and issues facing women in the last few years is presented. In order for these issues to be eradicated, progressive women need to work alongside progressive men for a better world."

"8 March 2013 marks the 102nd anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD), first established by the German socialist and activist, Clara Zetkin in 1911. If she were alive today, what would she make of the conditions and achievements of women around the world? It is unlikely she would hail her compatriot Angela Merkel, Germany’s first female Chancellor, who is zealously committed to neo-liberal capitalism that has created the world’s current financial crisis of which the global working class are paying for. Zetkin sided with the working masses of the world. Zetkin would also have opposed Merkel’s support of the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as her removing barriers to laying off employees in addition to increasing the allowed number of work hours in a week.

International Women’s Day is a time to reflect not only on the achievements and celebrations of women but to focus attention on the remaining challenges facing women and progressive men around the world for a more humane, just, free and equal world between women and men. It is a time to reflect on gender, however, these days most people associate ‘gender’ with ‘women’s issues’ as a sphere that somehow does not affect men but only women. Yet, do men not have mothers, sisters, wives, partners, aunties and grandmothers? A great deal of attention in the use of the term ‘gender’ is focused on women or girls. Yet, there is now a need to consciously rethink how we can refocus this discourse to seriously examine how we socialise and condition our male children specifically and young men generally into notions of becoming an ‘adult male’ and more fundamentally challenging negative notions of ‘masculinity’ in our society. Somehow the present focus on ‘gender’ fails to adequately address these issues.

The focus of this article will hence be on some of the realities facing women around the world today and ways forward for a more humane world.

RAPE OF WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD

In December 2012 there was an international outcry when a 23 year old Indian woman by the name of Jyoti Singh who was studying to qualify as a physiotherapist was violently gang-raped by six men on a bus in India’s capital, New Delhi on 16 December 2012. Such a heinous crime caught the world’s attention for her attackers repeatedly raped her, penetrated her with a metal bar that caused major internal injuries that led to her death two weeks later in a hospital in Singapore. The crime led to a national debate about the treatment of women across the Indian subcontinent and the inability of law enforcement to protect them. The Indian government swiftly established five fast-track courts in the capital to deal with crimes against women. Since the brutal murder of Jyoti Singh other equally brutal murders of women and girls in India have taken place.

Yet, ‘A study by US scientists has concluded that an average of 48 women and girls are raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of Congo."... more

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See also: Reminiscences of Phyllie by Michael Neocosmos.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/phyllis-naidooPhyllis Naidoo (January 5, 1928 - Feb 13, 2013) was an extra-ordinary South African freedom fighter for whom politics meant total commitment to humanity. After ANC came to power she was deeply disappointed by betrayal of the struggle

March 7, 2013: http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/86498