Gender Across Borders

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Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivers a stirring speech on sexism in the Australian parliament, calling the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, a misogynist.

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Help us out by taking this short survey on international feminism: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GABFemsurvey

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A note from the GAB team about this site.

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A common counterattack on women’s assumption of agency as feminists— on behalf of gender and nation—has been to discredit feminists, and feminism, by branding them Western agents of colonialism. The charge of derivative feminism, a reductive and agency-depriving mode of thinking, still lingers. Some narrators of the history of Egyptian feminism imprison it in a frame story of Western colonialism, ironically sustaining a colonialist scripting they abhor by according it overarching explanatory power. A corollary pursuit has been to apply an East-West litmus test to Egyptian feminists. East equals authentic and good;West equals alien and bad. Such a reduction obscures the complexity of cultures—especially in a country like Egypt at the crossroads of three continents—and forecloses the notion of hybridity. What surfaces is an essentialized notion of some “pure” Eastern or Western culture perpetuating the polarization and politics of difference that colonialism constructed. In countries that were not colonized, such as Turkey and states in the Arabian Peninsula, feminism is not attacked for being Western.

Margot Badran - Feminists, Islam, and Nation (via egyptiansoapbox)

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Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions.. for safety on the streets… for child care, for social welfare… for rape crisis centers, women’s refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says ‘Oh, I’m not a feminist,’ I ask ‘Why? What’s your problem?”

Dale Splendor, 1985

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Women were expecting a new society to be built on egalitarianism and real equality. But everything that they suffered through during the revolution – after all that – they are now being pointed at as the culprits. It’s as if it was the woman who was responsible for the unemployment, for the unrest, for all the social ills. Everything has gone back [for women], it’s been retrogression.

Activist Khouloud Mahdhaoui, from Tunisia, on the situation for women in her country, after the Arab Spring

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Has the Arab Spring failed women?

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Somali women escape to the gym

"Every morning in a building in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, women can be found pumping iron, pounding running machines and spinning furiously on exercise bikes.

Unlike in the bullet-scarred streets outside, where suicide bombers are a constant threat, these women are not completely covered in veils and robes. They are wearing track suits and T-shirts.

The BBC's Mohamed Dhore in Mogadishu says the women-only workout sessions at the gym are becoming increasingly popular - an indication that things are changing in the city."

-Mary Harper, BBC News

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From woman, man is born; within woman, man is conceived; to woman he is engaged and married. Woman becomes his friend; through woman, the future generations come. When his woman dies, he seeks another woman; to woman he is bound. So why call her bad? From her, kings are born. From woman, woman is born; without woman, there would be no one at all.

- Guru Nanak Dev Ji

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A Vatican investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an umbrella group representing 80 percent of Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States, found serious theological errors in statements by members, widespread dissent on the church’s teaching on sexuality and 'radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith' a church report released Wednesday stated.

Elizabeth Tenety, "Vatican: U.S. Catholic sisters, nuns making serious theological errors," published in the Washington Post

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A lack of infrastructure, missing teachers and poor quality of education in government schools keep many parents from sending their children to school, especially girls. In rural Rajasthan, only 1 in 100 girls makes it to class 12 and only 15% of children can read a simple story. In her presentation Educate Girls founder Safeena Husain will demonstrate with practical, first-hand experience how she creates a sustainable environment for empowerment within the communities that will thus lead to systemic change in the Indian educational scenario.

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UNESCO Bangkok’s new Advocacy Brief on Empowering Girls and Women through Physical Education and Sport explores barriers to participation in the Asia Pacific region. Download it from the New On The Shelf section. 

Picture by Christine, 17, Sri Lanka.