Killing in the name

A woman called Busaina Abu-Ganem was shot to death in Israel this week in an alleged “honor killing” case.  She’s the tenth woman in the horrible Abu-Ganem family to be murdered since the year 2000. The reason for this heinous act is yet unclear. what we do know is that she and her husband recently separated, leaving her with their six children. In an act of courage, Busaina decided to go back to school and get her diploma. a week after she completed her studies, she was murdered.

other women who have been brutally murdered by Abu-Ganem male family members include:

Rim Abu-Ganem who was murdered by her brothers for refusing to marry a man they were forcing her to wed. after they killed her they drowned her body.

Sherihan Abu-Ganem was 16 when her brother murdered her because of ‘jealousy’

Hamda Abu-Ganem was killed by her brothers who were indicted for the murder based on a female cousin’s testimony. this female cousin ‘disappeared’ after the trial, and it’s believed her body is buried in the West Bank, in an area outside the jurisdiction of Israeli authorities.

These women are victims twice over. first they were victims of a family that sees females as chattel with little value beyond that of a reproductive agent. secondly, they were victims of a discriminatory society that ‘others’  Muslim minorities and ultimately discourages the Jewish authorities from seeking justice.

gender based violence is pervasive. it’s important to remember that women are abused to the point of death everyday across the globe; that this isn’t tied to one religion, race of region. but regardless of location, violence against women and girls stems from very similar origins – unequal power relations. simply put – men use violence or the threat of violence to maintain their sense of power / control over women. this is not to say that all men are violent or oppose the equality of women. not at all. however, some men pick up on social and cultural cues that tell them women are not as valuable or as important as men, they can and should be hurt in order to maintain male authority, and that their existence is merely a reflection of a man’s achievement.

these are the kinds of messages that must be tackled through behavior change communications, awareness raising campaigns, legislative and policy reforms, community outreach and a strong coordinated and functional social protection system. in the absence of honest determination, leadership and political support, the root causes of ‘honor killings’ will never be fully addressed. and because this is seen so much as a ‘woman’s issue’ to be discussed about and exclaimed over by feminist organizations, but never to be acknowledged as a hard-line concern such as terrorism, security and border control, it will probably never rally enough interest and support to truly be eradicated. any progress we make, will always be incremental, and hard to measure. but the chance of stopping another senseless murder before it is carried out must motivate us to continue the good fight.

For more resources on gender based violence go to: http://www.endvawnow.org/

Support the International Violence Against Women Act (USA): http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/women-s-rights/violence-against-women/international-violence-against-women-act

Take action on Global Orange Day: http://www.un.org/en/women/endviolence/orangeday.shtml

Support the White Ribbon Campaign in your country: http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/international

Check out some of the leading global initiatives to end violence against women: http://www.endvawnow.org/en/leading-initiatives

Do ‘girl ads’ detract from girls’ empowerment?

This excellent blog post summarizing the discussion at the NY Technology Salon the past week really hits on a number of critical issues relating girls and/in the media.

I think that one of the issues not brought up directly, but alluded to in this discussion, is the co-opting of feminist ideas. The appeal of the feminist movement is predicated on the nagging sense all women have that something isn’t right, that boys and men are getting a better deal. on a very basic level, this is universal enough to appeal to a broad audience. Consumer product marketing mavericks took this notion, and they basically used it to make their product seem ‘feminist’. Of course, this is what we would call ‘lipstick feminism’ or  in other words, taking the feminist ideals of power with/to/within and removing the political sting, so all you’re left with are hallowed out terms that can easily be adopted by a campaign for a beauty product.

Not to get too deeply into the issues of cause marketing (which are vast), the very idea of linking the feminist notion of the commodification of female bodies which serves patriarchal systems to keep women subjugated, fractured and busy with what Naomi Wolf called ‘the third shift’, and adopting it to sell body lotion and deodorant, is nothing short of mind boggling. this paradox could only ever exist and succeed in a society that conflates political participation with purchasing products. and i think in the face of this consumer driven onslaught, feminism is going to lose.

Because selling a product is so much easier than explaining the heterosexual matrix. and because our attention spans are getting ever shorter, the odds of someone not enrolled in a women’s studies program ever taking the time to really understand these powerful concepts, is highly unlikely. and so you get things like this. because young women think feminism is unnecessary, but the same girls think the Dove campaign for ‘real beauty’ is powerful. and that Nicki Minaj is a role model.

Do ‘girl ads’ detract from girls’ empowerment?.

Sustainable Development Goals

The work around the next MDGs or ‘Post 2015’ as it is most commonly known, has been going on for a number of years now. considering the amount of flack the old Development Goals got back in the day, it might seem surprising that the draft version of the new SDGs (are we calling them that?) look so much like the MDGs.

Although, the MDGs did a good job of rallying governments, and it’s hard to deny that significant progress has been made on targets such as education and reducing the levels of extreme poverty. Some argue that this is a result of a general increase in economic prosperity over the past 20-30 years. maybe. but it seems like the MDGs did the impossible, which was, to be aspirational and concrete at the same time. that’s a tricky balance, and for the most part they got it right. so what now?

taking a look at the Zero draft it seems like the UN is learning from mistakes, and taking steps to ensure the SDGs are more comprehensive and nuanced. This is, I should hope, the influence of CSO’s and coalitions which has taken part in wide ranging consultations. the process isn’t over yet, there’s still time for the UN governing bodies to backtrack and buckle under pressure from member states, making the next 18 months of advocacy work critical.

thank god Civicus published an Advocacy and the Post 2015 for Dummies toolkit.

Seriously though, if you’re a Civil Society Organization involved in UN level work and you need this toolkit to explain ‘What is Advocacy?’, you’re in the wrong business. I’m not sure who this is supposed to help, but it does provide a useful breakdown of the UN decision making process around the SDGs.

and it’s enough to make you want to cut yourself. I mean, seriously. It’s the most complicated process ever developed in the history of complicated processes. trust the UN to come up with something so ridiculously unwieldy, it requires it’s own manual, and even that makes little sense unless you’re already involved in the meetings. It’s like road signs in Israel, they are there to confirm what you already know rather than point you in the right direction. If you trust the signs, you’ll never get to where you need to go.

So I guess the next 18 months or so are for CSO’s to ensure the more controversial sections of the draft, that didn’t make into the first set of gaols, actually make it through this time. And maybe harden some of the language too?

I mean, ‘promote the availability of gender disaggragated data’ is: A. ridiculous, data should be disaggregated by sex, how the fuck do you analyze data according to social norms? and B. a sorry excuse for a target. Data must be disagregated by sex and age. anything else is a waste of time and money. there – that’s what the target should say.

I’m also interested in seeing what kind of indicators will be included in the target on  reducing gender based violence – which I suspect will be very tricky. and fingers crossed the mention of the ICPD platform won’t be dropped – it’s the most critical gap that currently exists in development efforts. women’s sexual and reproductive health rights are under constant attack from a variety of conservative forces and it will show the UN’s true leadership if they manage to get everyone signed off on this.

Here’s hoping the SDGs really do usher in a new development era…as the Girl Effect once said: It’s no big deal, just the future of humanity.

 

 

 

How the media failed women

The media has never been kind towards women. They are ultimately trying to sell us something and as agents of the beauty industry have good reason to keep us dissatisfied with ourselves and obsessed with images of airbrushed women. We are stereotyped in movies, advertisements and glossy magazines, and are made to believe we can only digest the evening news if it’s presented by a very pretty woman.

We are aware of this. Men and women who find these images appalling and oppressive, speak out where possible. Yet the industry remains undisturbed; and every once in a while they come up with things like this:

Let’s break down this image shall we? A woman is held down by force by a man while thrusting her pelvise suggestively at another three men who are standing around awaiting their turn and watching. Four men and one woman? Where have i heard this story before?

oh, that’s right. Delhi, India, December 2012. A young woman is gang raped by six men and subsequently dies from the assault. This sort of violence seems completely at odds with this glossy shot, and yet the imagery obviously suggests that dominating women en mass is cool, sexy and acceptable.

Violence against women isn’t created in a vacuum. It’s cultivated, sustained, sanctioned and disseminated in subtle ways, online and offline, through images and words.

In a video by Dove’s “campaign for real beauty” (which is just another consumer ploy, let’s be honest, from the same company which produces racist products such as Fair and Lovely. puke.) a girl is bombarded with images reminiscent of the famous scene from ‘Clockwork Orange’ and finally the words flashing across the screen advise mothers to educate their daughters before the beauty industry does.

In this instance, the self-hate propagated by these images can lead to self-harm, another form of violence, which girls inflict upon themselves in despair once they realize (at the age of 10) that they will never look like any of the young women they see on screen and in magazines. and apparently it’s your fault, mother, for not shielding your daughter from such images. hello? maybe Unilever would like to step up and take responsibility for the stick-figure, scantily clad women they use in their ads?

Comparing a woman to pot noodle? Really Unilever?

how about this:

Turning women into objects is the first step towards justifying violence against women. In other words – they’re not really people, so it’s okay to beat the crap out of them. Kate Moss is simply a prop, much like a tripod in fact, for holding up a desirable camera.

whatever sells, right?

How else has media failed women in 2013? a short recap in this video by Miss Representation.

Just when you thought it was safe to be a conscious feminist, the media does it again. and again. and again.

Tomorrow is the last day of the 16 days of activism to end violence against women. it’s important to talk about these issues, and write about them, and nag about them, all year round. Because they are here all the time, and they are not confined to news reports of rape in third world countries. Violence is spoon fed to us all the time by those who would keep us powerless, occupied with thinking about our looks, instead of thinking about equality.

Don’t let them win.