By Sarah Green
Harvard Business Review | October 25, 2013
The World Economic Forum has just come out with their latest data on
global gender equality, and the short version could well be this old
Beatles lyric: “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better. A little better,
all the time. (It can’t get more worse.)”
I talked with Saadia Zahidi, a Senior Director at the WEF and their
Head of Gender Parity and Human Capital. Yes, it’s getting better. Out
of the 110 countries they’ve been tracking since 2006, 95 have improved
and just 14 have fallen behind (a single country, Sweden, has remained
the same). But that’s partly because in some places, there was nowhere
to go but up.
And not everyone has improved at the same rates, or for the same reasons.
For instance, in Latin America, several countries surged ahead as
more women were elected to political office. That was a trend in Europe,
too – much of the improvement in Europe’s scores was due not to women’s
increased workforce participation, but instead to the increasingly
female face of public leadership. Although those numbers are still very
low overall, increasingly women are being appointed (and somewhat more
rarely, elected) to public office. “Looking at eight years worth of
data, a lot of the changes are coming from the political end of the
spectrum, and to some extent the economic one. So much of the
[workforce] talent is now female, you would expect the changes to be on
the economic front but that’s not what’s happening,” said Zahidi.
To read more.....
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Malala Yousafzai and the White Saviour Complex
By Assed Baig
Freelance print and broadcast journalist
Huffington Post - 13/07/2013
When Malala Yusufzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen simply because she wanted to gain an education it sent shockwaves around the world.
Straight away the Western media took up the issue. Western politicians spoke out and soon she found herself in the UK. The way in which the West reacted did make me question the reasons and motives behind why Malala's case was taken up and not so many others.
There is no justifying the brutal actions of the Taliban or the denial of the universal right to education, however there is a deeper more historic narrative that is taking place here.
This is a story of a native girl being saved by the white man. Flown to the UK, the Western world can feel good about itself as they save the native woman from the savage men of her home nation. It is a historic racist narrative that has been institutionalised. Journalists and politicians were falling over themselves to report and comment on the case. The story of an innocent brown child that was shot by savages for demanding an education and along comes the knight in shining armour to save her.
The actions of the West, the bombings, the occupations the wars all seem justified now, "see, we told you, this is why we intervene to save the natives."
To read more....
Freelance print and broadcast journalist
Huffington Post - 13/07/2013
When Malala Yusufzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen simply because she wanted to gain an education it sent shockwaves around the world.
Straight away the Western media took up the issue. Western politicians spoke out and soon she found herself in the UK. The way in which the West reacted did make me question the reasons and motives behind why Malala's case was taken up and not so many others.
There is no justifying the brutal actions of the Taliban or the denial of the universal right to education, however there is a deeper more historic narrative that is taking place here.
This is a story of a native girl being saved by the white man. Flown to the UK, the Western world can feel good about itself as they save the native woman from the savage men of her home nation. It is a historic racist narrative that has been institutionalised. Journalists and politicians were falling over themselves to report and comment on the case. The story of an innocent brown child that was shot by savages for demanding an education and along comes the knight in shining armour to save her.
The actions of the West, the bombings, the occupations the wars all seem justified now, "see, we told you, this is why we intervene to save the natives."
To read more....
Books Available for Review for Human Rights Review
From: Lilian Barria <labarria@eiu.edu>
Date: Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:24 PM
Subject: Books Available for Review for Human Rights Review
To: Melissa Labonte <labonte@fordham.edu>
Dear Colleagues,
As the Book Review Editor for Human Rights Review, I invite you to review a
book for the journal. The list of “Books Available for Review” includes
over one hundred titles and can be found on the Human Rights Review webpage
under FOR AUTHORS AND EDITORS at:
http://www.springer.com/law/journal/12142
If you are interested in doing a "Review Essay," you can select three (3)
books that touch on common themes. There are web links to the publishers of
the books for general information regarding the focus of each book on the
list.
Please CONTACT ME DIRECTLY at labarria@eiu.edu OR hrrbooks@eiu.edu with any
questions and/or to request a book from the current list for review.
Interested reviewers should provide:
(1) A mailing address
(2) An estimated deadline for completion of the review (at this point I
suggest four possible deadlines from which to choose: February 1, 2014;
April 1, 2014; June 1, 2014; or August 1, 2014).
Reviews are generally published in the journal 6-12 months after the review
is received.
Best regards,
Lilian A. Barria, Ph.D.
Book Review Editor, Human Rights Review
Professor
Department of Political Science
Eastern Illinois University
Charleston, IL 61920
USA
Telephone: 1-217-581-2079
Fax: 1-217-581-2926
Email: LABARRIA@EIU.EDU
Date: Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 2:24 PM
Subject: Books Available for Review for Human Rights Review
To: Melissa Labonte <labonte@fordham.edu>
Dear Colleagues,
As the Book Review Editor for Human Rights Review, I invite you to review a
book for the journal. The list of “Books Available for Review” includes
over one hundred titles and can be found on the Human Rights Review webpage
under FOR AUTHORS AND EDITORS at:
http://www.springer.com/law/journal/12142
If you are interested in doing a "Review Essay," you can select three (3)
books that touch on common themes. There are web links to the publishers of
the books for general information regarding the focus of each book on the
list.
Please CONTACT ME DIRECTLY at labarria@eiu.edu OR hrrbooks@eiu.edu with any
questions and/or to request a book from the current list for review.
Interested reviewers should provide:
(1) A mailing address
(2) An estimated deadline for completion of the review (at this point I
suggest four possible deadlines from which to choose: February 1, 2014;
April 1, 2014; June 1, 2014; or August 1, 2014).
Reviews are generally published in the journal 6-12 months after the review
is received.
Best regards,
Lilian A. Barria, Ph.D.
Book Review Editor, Human Rights Review
Professor
Department of Political Science
Eastern Illinois University
Charleston, IL 61920
USA
Telephone: 1-217-581-2079
Fax: 1-217-581-2926
Email: LABARRIA@EIU.EDU
Cfp: "The Human, Human Rights, and the Humanities" Humanities and Western Civilization Program University of Kansas, April 3-4, 2014
Deadline for abstracts: December 6, 2013
This conference offers a venue to critically examine the interrelationship of "the human," human rights, and the purview of the humanities--interpreting human expression. We welcome papers from undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences that explore topics including, but not limited to, the following:
What are the benefits and limits to a notion of universal human rights?
Are there notions of being human that are not encapsulated by a human rights framework?
How do artists and writers engage or critique notions of human rights?
What can we learn about the human experience, and, potentially human rights, from a speculative vantage point, such as that of science fiction?
How do disciplines that challenge normative parameters of human experience such as Queer Studies, Disability Studies, or Animal Studies enrich and/ or complicate notions of human rights?
Please submit 250 word paper abstracts to Dr. Marike Janzen, mjanzen(at)ku.edu, by December 6, 2013.
Marike Janzen
University of Kansas
Humanities and Western Civilization Program
Bailey Hall
1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 308
Lawrence, KS 66045
Email: mjanzen@ku.edu
This conference offers a venue to critically examine the interrelationship of "the human," human rights, and the purview of the humanities--interpreting human expression. We welcome papers from undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences that explore topics including, but not limited to, the following:
What are the benefits and limits to a notion of universal human rights?
Are there notions of being human that are not encapsulated by a human rights framework?
How do artists and writers engage or critique notions of human rights?
What can we learn about the human experience, and, potentially human rights, from a speculative vantage point, such as that of science fiction?
How do disciplines that challenge normative parameters of human experience such as Queer Studies, Disability Studies, or Animal Studies enrich and/ or complicate notions of human rights?
Please submit 250 word paper abstracts to Dr. Marike Janzen, mjanzen(at)ku.edu, by December 6, 2013.
Marike Janzen
University of Kansas
Humanities and Western Civilization Program
Bailey Hall
1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 308
Lawrence, KS 66045
Email: mjanzen@ku.edu
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? By Lila Abu-Lughod
Anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod analyzes the rise of a pervasive literary trope in the West—that of the abused Muslim girl.
The Daily Beast – Women in the World – October 22, 2013
This book seeks answers to the questions that presented themselves to me with such force after 9/11 when popular concern about Muslim women’s rights took off. As an anthropologist who had spent decades living in communities in the Middle East, I was uncomfortable with disjunction between the lives and experiences of Muslim women I had known and the popular media representations I encountered in the Western public sphere, the politically motivated justifications for military intervention on behalf of Muslim women that became common sense, and even the well-meaning humanitarian and rights work intended to relieve global women’s suffering. What worldly effects were these concerns having on different women? And how might we take responsibility for distant women’s circumstances and possibilities in what is clearly an interconnected global world, instead of viewing them as victims of alien cultures? This book is about the ethics and politics of the global circulation of discourses on Muslim women’s rights.
Primed for Moral Crusades
To understand why the new common sense about going to war for women’s rights seems so right despite the flaws I have laid out—whether its reliance on the myth of a homogeneous place called IslamLand or its selective and moralizing imperative to save others far away—we need to look sideways. Two other popular ways of talking about violations of women’s rights that have emerged in the past few decades lend support to the kinds of representations of women’s suffering that writers like these present. On one side is a political and moral enterprise with tremendous legitimacy in our era: international human rights. Women’s rights language and the institutional apparatus that has developed in tandem have been associated with human rights since the 1990s: feminists began to campaign with the slogan “women’s rights are human rights.” Their successes have led some in legal studies to detect the emergence of governance feminism (GF), the domination by radical feminists of legal, bureaucratic, and political institutions around the world. At the center of this set of institutions is a claim to universal values.
To read more....
The Daily Beast – Women in the World – October 22, 2013
This book seeks answers to the questions that presented themselves to me with such force after 9/11 when popular concern about Muslim women’s rights took off. As an anthropologist who had spent decades living in communities in the Middle East, I was uncomfortable with disjunction between the lives and experiences of Muslim women I had known and the popular media representations I encountered in the Western public sphere, the politically motivated justifications for military intervention on behalf of Muslim women that became common sense, and even the well-meaning humanitarian and rights work intended to relieve global women’s suffering. What worldly effects were these concerns having on different women? And how might we take responsibility for distant women’s circumstances and possibilities in what is clearly an interconnected global world, instead of viewing them as victims of alien cultures? This book is about the ethics and politics of the global circulation of discourses on Muslim women’s rights.
Primed for Moral Crusades
To understand why the new common sense about going to war for women’s rights seems so right despite the flaws I have laid out—whether its reliance on the myth of a homogeneous place called IslamLand or its selective and moralizing imperative to save others far away—we need to look sideways. Two other popular ways of talking about violations of women’s rights that have emerged in the past few decades lend support to the kinds of representations of women’s suffering that writers like these present. On one side is a political and moral enterprise with tremendous legitimacy in our era: international human rights. Women’s rights language and the institutional apparatus that has developed in tandem have been associated with human rights since the 1990s: feminists began to campaign with the slogan “women’s rights are human rights.” Their successes have led some in legal studies to detect the emergence of governance feminism (GF), the domination by radical feminists of legal, bureaucratic, and political institutions around the world. At the center of this set of institutions is a claim to universal values.
To read more....
Please tell me, Mr President, why a US drone assassinated my mother
By Rafiq ur Rehman
Momina Bibi was a 65-year-old grandmother and midwife from Waziristan. Yet President Obama tells us drones target terrorists
theguardian.com, Friday 25 October 2013
The last time I saw my mother, Momina Bibi, was the evening before Eid al-Adha. She was preparing my children's clothing and showing them how to make sewaiyaan, a traditional sweet made of milk. She always used to say: the joy of Eid is the excitement it brings to the children.
Last year, she never had that experience. The next day, 24 October 2012, she was dead, killed by a US drone that rained fire down upon her as she tended her garden.
Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day. The media reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 65-year-old grandmother of nine.
My three children – 13-year-old Zubair, nine-year-old Nabila and five-year-old Asma – were playing nearby when their grandmother was killed. All of them were injured and rushed to hospitals. Were these children the "militants" the news reports spoke of? Or perhaps, it was my brother's children? They, too, were there. They are aged three, seven, 12, 14, 15 and 17 years old. The eldest four had just returned from a day at school, not long before the missile struck.
But the United States and its citizens probably do not know this. No one ever asked us who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own government. Nobody has come to investigate nor has anyone been held accountable. Quite simply, nobody seems to care.
I care, though. And so does my family and my community. We want to understand why a 65-year-old grandmother posed a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world. We want to understand how nine children, some playing in the field, some just returned from school, could possibly have threatened the safety of those living a continent and an ocean away.
To read more...
Momina Bibi was a 65-year-old grandmother and midwife from Waziristan. Yet President Obama tells us drones target terrorists
theguardian.com, Friday 25 October 2013
The last time I saw my mother, Momina Bibi, was the evening before Eid al-Adha. She was preparing my children's clothing and showing them how to make sewaiyaan, a traditional sweet made of milk. She always used to say: the joy of Eid is the excitement it brings to the children.
Last year, she never had that experience. The next day, 24 October 2012, she was dead, killed by a US drone that rained fire down upon her as she tended her garden.
Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day. The media reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 65-year-old grandmother of nine.
My three children – 13-year-old Zubair, nine-year-old Nabila and five-year-old Asma – were playing nearby when their grandmother was killed. All of them were injured and rushed to hospitals. Were these children the "militants" the news reports spoke of? Or perhaps, it was my brother's children? They, too, were there. They are aged three, seven, 12, 14, 15 and 17 years old. The eldest four had just returned from a day at school, not long before the missile struck.
But the United States and its citizens probably do not know this. No one ever asked us who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own government. Nobody has come to investigate nor has anyone been held accountable. Quite simply, nobody seems to care.
I care, though. And so does my family and my community. We want to understand why a 65-year-old grandmother posed a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world. We want to understand how nine children, some playing in the field, some just returned from school, could possibly have threatened the safety of those living a continent and an ocean away.
To read more...
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