Thursday, May 21, 2009
Women's week in politics
Male and female political rights vary across societies; sometimes women acquire legal privileges to vote or to hold a public office later than men. As more countries liberalize their political laws, women are finally emerging into national and international roles, balancing the male-dominated power structure.
On May 17, 2009, Lithuania elected its first female president, Dalia Grybauskaite, the European Union budget commissioner. Her experience in financial policies is expected to help the nation’s economic crisis.
“Lithuania’s economy shrank a preliminary 12.6 percent in the first quarter (of 2009), the most since at least 1995, when the former communist state was emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said the APA on April 28, 2009.
Perhaps more important than her attention to the economy is foreign policy, which is considered the president's main role in Lithuania. Her experience as the EU’s budget commissioner is a primary asset for her new diplomatic position and it enables her to use her economic expertise at home.
"My conscience as a citizen wouldn't let me stay in Brussels,” she told the AFP before the election. “I did what I could from Brussels, criticizing and commenting, but it wasn't effective enough."
Grybauskaite entered the race in February, after the public rioted Lithuania’s deepening economic crisis and distrust in politicians.
Kuwait elected its first four females to the 50-member parliament on May 16, 2009, only four years after women achieved voting rights. Kuwaiti women comprise 54.3 percent of the 385,000 eligible voters.
Sixteen women ran for office this year, but the genesis of Kuwait’s women’s rights movement extends nineteen years ago, according to The Guardian. During Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, for example, Kuwait’s government summoned women out of their domestic lifestyles to help resist enemy forces, partly liberalizing women's political and social rights.
“At the time, many women assumed important responsibilities, volunteering in hospitals to compensate for the lack of medical staff, smuggling food, money, and weapons across military checkpoints,” The Guardian reports.
Massouma al-Mubarak, Salwa al-Jassar, Aseel al-Awadhi, and Rola Dashti all won seats in the Kuwaiti parliament. Although they were all educated in doctorate programs in the United States, the new members represent different social strata.
"Yes all of us are educated, but we also have a woman who won who is married to a non-Kuwaiti, one who is divorced, one who is not yet married, one whose mother is Lebanese," Rola Dashti told Aljazeera News.
Dashti used marital status and ethnicity to differentiate between herself and her new colleagues. But The Guardian distinguished each woman by her profession: al-Mubarak is the first female cabinet minister (appointed in 2005), al-Jassar and al-Awadhi are professors, and Dashti is an economist.
The battle for women’s rights continues: Islamic Sharia law permeates regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, endorsing domestic and sexual oppression of women, and Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times continues his columns about seven-year-old rape victims from Gambia, and other women throughout Africa.
The elections in Lithuania and Kuwait demonstrate that women can overcome patriarchal societies that are plagued with sexism. Political equality is one stepping block for achieving global representation for women. We can protect political rights individually and collectively through awareness, advocacy, and volunteering. All citizens are responsible for lobbying both the government and non-governmental organizations to pressure governments that fail to protect women’s rights.
On May 17, 2009, Lithuania elected its first female president, Dalia Grybauskaite, the European Union budget commissioner. Her experience in financial policies is expected to help the nation’s economic crisis.
“Lithuania’s economy shrank a preliminary 12.6 percent in the first quarter (of 2009), the most since at least 1995, when the former communist state was emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said the APA on April 28, 2009.
Perhaps more important than her attention to the economy is foreign policy, which is considered the president's main role in Lithuania. Her experience as the EU’s budget commissioner is a primary asset for her new diplomatic position and it enables her to use her economic expertise at home.
"My conscience as a citizen wouldn't let me stay in Brussels,” she told the AFP before the election. “I did what I could from Brussels, criticizing and commenting, but it wasn't effective enough."
Grybauskaite entered the race in February, after the public rioted Lithuania’s deepening economic crisis and distrust in politicians.
Kuwait elected its first four females to the 50-member parliament on May 16, 2009, only four years after women achieved voting rights. Kuwaiti women comprise 54.3 percent of the 385,000 eligible voters.
Sixteen women ran for office this year, but the genesis of Kuwait’s women’s rights movement extends nineteen years ago, according to The Guardian. During Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, for example, Kuwait’s government summoned women out of their domestic lifestyles to help resist enemy forces, partly liberalizing women's political and social rights.
“At the time, many women assumed important responsibilities, volunteering in hospitals to compensate for the lack of medical staff, smuggling food, money, and weapons across military checkpoints,” The Guardian reports.
Massouma al-Mubarak, Salwa al-Jassar, Aseel al-Awadhi, and Rola Dashti all won seats in the Kuwaiti parliament. Although they were all educated in doctorate programs in the United States, the new members represent different social strata.
"Yes all of us are educated, but we also have a woman who won who is married to a non-Kuwaiti, one who is divorced, one who is not yet married, one whose mother is Lebanese," Rola Dashti told Aljazeera News.
Dashti used marital status and ethnicity to differentiate between herself and her new colleagues. But The Guardian distinguished each woman by her profession: al-Mubarak is the first female cabinet minister (appointed in 2005), al-Jassar and al-Awadhi are professors, and Dashti is an economist.
The battle for women’s rights continues: Islamic Sharia law permeates regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, endorsing domestic and sexual oppression of women, and Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times continues his columns about seven-year-old rape victims from Gambia, and other women throughout Africa.
The elections in Lithuania and Kuwait demonstrate that women can overcome patriarchal societies that are plagued with sexism. Political equality is one stepping block for achieving global representation for women. We can protect political rights individually and collectively through awareness, advocacy, and volunteering. All citizens are responsible for lobbying both the government and non-governmental organizations to pressure governments that fail to protect women’s rights.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Gallup poll on abortion
A recent Gallup Poll reported that 51% of Americans identify themselves as "Pro-Life," and 49% as "Pro-Choice." But the results do not divide Americans over the legality of abortion as strongly as the poll suggests.
Only 22% of respondents said that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, which shows that the term "Pro-Life" is not synonymous with anti-abortion. Surely most Americans are pro-life, including those who are pro-choice, because human instinct honors the livelihood of its kind.
America's division over abortion is trapped under the semantics of "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice"; the terms force Americans to categorize themselves into benevolent, life-loving protectors, or civil rights-advocating, baby-hating villains. Future polls could identify Americans viewpoints more accurately by omitting misleading terminology.
Due to the ambiguous semantics over individual identification surrounding the abortion issue, it's not surprising that Pro-Choice America's President Nancy Keenan specified that the poll didn't reflect “the voting patterns in the last two elections cycles."
Only 22% of respondents said that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances, which shows that the term "Pro-Life" is not synonymous with anti-abortion. Surely most Americans are pro-life, including those who are pro-choice, because human instinct honors the livelihood of its kind.
America's division over abortion is trapped under the semantics of "Pro-Life" and "Pro-Choice"; the terms force Americans to categorize themselves into benevolent, life-loving protectors, or civil rights-advocating, baby-hating villains. Future polls could identify Americans viewpoints more accurately by omitting misleading terminology.
Due to the ambiguous semantics over individual identification surrounding the abortion issue, it's not surprising that Pro-Choice America's President Nancy Keenan specified that the poll didn't reflect “the voting patterns in the last two elections cycles."
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Jockeys in Jakarta
Get a ride and get a job?
In Jakarta, Indonesia, thousands of car jockeys line the streets to leap into cars that will pay them under $1 to ride with them through the city's high occupancy lanes. In 2006, the rate was 10,000 rupiah, or a little more than a dollar.
Jockeys are usually poor citizens who dream of owning their own cars someday, but mostly want to help their family survive or pay for school. Mothers take their children with them on the streets until the children are about 10 years-old, and can navigate the city alone, and students work as jockeys between classes.
Jockeys enable drives to circumvent traffic through "three-in-one lanes," which run for 20km through Jakarta from 7-10am and 4-7pm. Drivers caught without enough passengers -- babies count -- are given tickets to appear in court where they are usually fined.
Female jockeys are sexually harassed, but many say that they are alert to flirtatious signals from drivers, and hints towards sex; the risk is worth the dollar in a country where half of the population's living expenses don't exceed $2 a day.
In an increasingly jobless nation like America, I am waiting for a car jockey revolution in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco. Surely the drivers would pay much more than a dollar, and the movement would fill the gap of the nation's absent stimulus package.
2006 Mail & Guardian article
2009 New York Times article
In Jakarta, Indonesia, thousands of car jockeys line the streets to leap into cars that will pay them under $1 to ride with them through the city's high occupancy lanes. In 2006, the rate was 10,000 rupiah, or a little more than a dollar.
Jockeys are usually poor citizens who dream of owning their own cars someday, but mostly want to help their family survive or pay for school. Mothers take their children with them on the streets until the children are about 10 years-old, and can navigate the city alone, and students work as jockeys between classes.
Jockeys enable drives to circumvent traffic through "three-in-one lanes," which run for 20km through Jakarta from 7-10am and 4-7pm. Drivers caught without enough passengers -- babies count -- are given tickets to appear in court where they are usually fined.
Female jockeys are sexually harassed, but many say that they are alert to flirtatious signals from drivers, and hints towards sex; the risk is worth the dollar in a country where half of the population's living expenses don't exceed $2 a day.
In an increasingly jobless nation like America, I am waiting for a car jockey revolution in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco. Surely the drivers would pay much more than a dollar, and the movement would fill the gap of the nation's absent stimulus package.
2006 Mail & Guardian article
2009 New York Times article
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Sad Cinco de Mayo
The swine flu caused an outbreak of global paranoia. After its first flu patient arrived from Mexico last week, the Chinese government and health officials began secluding Mexican citizens in China.
"In the predawn hours Saturday morning, a Mexican family with three children, ages 6, 7 and 8, who had flown in on the Shanghai flight for a vacation, were awakened in their hotel rooms in Beijing and ordered by authorities to a quarantine hospital. They were then transferred to a shabby hotel near the Beijing airport, guarded by soldiers."
Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2009
Chinese officials have quartered at least 70 Mexicans as a caution against spreading the swine flu. In some cases, Chinese officials isolated Mexicans who hadn't been in Mexico since the flu outbreak.China has left some of its own citizens in peril too. It canceled all flights from Mexico on Cinco de Mayo, leaving up to 120 Chinese stranded.
Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza condemned the treatments of Mexicans abroad. Calderón called such isolation and quarantine policies repressive and discriminatory, while Espinoza pinned China as subjecting Mexicans to "unacceptable conditions."
Although I think the quarantines are incredulous, China's response to the flu stems from the SARS outbreak of 2003, which began in rural Guangdong Province and later spread killing more than 700 people worldwide. The government was widely criticized for trying to hide the extent of the epidemic from the W.H.O. and for suppressing domestic media coverage.
For the sake of state sovereignty, I want to distinguish China's right to create its own health policies, though it resembles profiling. The New York Times reported:
"Olivia Lawe Davies, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, declined to comment on China’s quarantine measures, although she said that according to WHO guidelines, each country is free to establish its own tactics to combat the virus."
The SARS crisis scarred China's status internationally and branded the nation as less responsible in repelling global viruses. Still, the government overreacted to the singular flu case. Despite its current stigma in contracting the swine flu, hopefully Mexico can enjoy Cinco de Mayo.
"In the predawn hours Saturday morning, a Mexican family with three children, ages 6, 7 and 8, who had flown in on the Shanghai flight for a vacation, were awakened in their hotel rooms in Beijing and ordered by authorities to a quarantine hospital. They were then transferred to a shabby hotel near the Beijing airport, guarded by soldiers."
Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2009
Chinese officials have quartered at least 70 Mexicans as a caution against spreading the swine flu. In some cases, Chinese officials isolated Mexicans who hadn't been in Mexico since the flu outbreak.China has left some of its own citizens in peril too. It canceled all flights from Mexico on Cinco de Mayo, leaving up to 120 Chinese stranded.
Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza condemned the treatments of Mexicans abroad. Calderón called such isolation and quarantine policies repressive and discriminatory, while Espinoza pinned China as subjecting Mexicans to "unacceptable conditions."
Although I think the quarantines are incredulous, China's response to the flu stems from the SARS outbreak of 2003, which began in rural Guangdong Province and later spread killing more than 700 people worldwide. The government was widely criticized for trying to hide the extent of the epidemic from the W.H.O. and for suppressing domestic media coverage.
For the sake of state sovereignty, I want to distinguish China's right to create its own health policies, though it resembles profiling. The New York Times reported:
"Olivia Lawe Davies, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, declined to comment on China’s quarantine measures, although she said that according to WHO guidelines, each country is free to establish its own tactics to combat the virus."
The SARS crisis scarred China's status internationally and branded the nation as less responsible in repelling global viruses. Still, the government overreacted to the singular flu case. Despite its current stigma in contracting the swine flu, hopefully Mexico can enjoy Cinco de Mayo.
Subscribe to Comments [Atom]
