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Burmese Women Expose Rapes by Military Regime. [Burma] Women who have fled Burma to escape what they describe as systematic violence against
women by the military have banded together to help other survivors. Last week, their work was recognized by the Peter
Gruber Foundation, which awarded them $200,000 and the 2005 International Women's Rights
Prize. The award was given jointly to the Shan
Women's Action Network and the Women's League of Burma. In
2002, women in this activist network issued "License to Rape"--a report whose
findings were echoed by a subsequent State Department investigation-detailing over a
five-year period 173 incidents of rape and sexual violence involving 625 girls and women
in Shan, a state in northeastern Burma. Multiple women
were raped in some incidents. An update to
that report, conducted by the network and other Burmese women's groups, has documented
another 188 rapes as an officially sanctioned "strategy of war" during the past
three years. Twenty-five percent of the rapes
resulted in death and 61 percent were gang rapes, with women in some cases detained and
raped repeatedly for up to four months, the report found. "There
appears to be a concerted strategy by the Burmese army troops to rape Shan women as part
of their anti-insurgency activities," the report said. |
| Koizumi Invites More
Women to the Party. [Japan] Koizumi has suggested that more women run
for office in Japan's election Sept. 11. Among industrialized nations, Japan has the lowest level of female participation in
politics. It also has the lowest level of women in executive suites. Males dominate in
this nation of 127 million, and it is an economic problem.
Politicians do not seem to realize that tapping only half of the country's
labor pool is holding back growth. Japan hardly has a monopoly on sexism in the workplace,
yet how often does the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development urge other
developed nations to provide women more opportunities to help lift the economy? |
| Go Forth and Multiply. [Korea] South Korea has long had a habit of thinking ahead and
investing heavily in the future. So its latest
goal of driving up its birth rate is a signal to other countries in the region to consider
the consequences of present fertility trends.
Japan and much of Europe should do the same; they fret about their own
woeful fertility but either take refuge in technical fixes to pension challenges or do
nothing. They decline to penalize those who
expect a pension but do not contribute to the workforce of the future. For now, South Korea's population is still much younger than
Japan's, which started its demographic transition a
decade earlier. But unless its procreation
campaign succeeds, it will be in the same position as Japan, or worse, by 2035.
Japan's population is already in decline. Could it be that after centuries of being
oppressed, women in these newly industrialized Confucian societies have finally acquired
economic independence and are rebelling against tradition?
It may not be mere coincidence that Japan and Korea, countries where the
subservient role of women
has long been most apparent, now have by far the lowest fertility rates, the city-states
excluded. In
East Asia, educated women in
Singapore
are showing a marked reluctance
to marry. The same applies in
Hong Kong, which imports brides from the
mainland, and Taiwan, which imports them from
Vietnam
and elsewhere.
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An Itsy-Bitsy
Definition of a
Korean 'Amenity'. [
Korea
]
It seemed like a good idea, a surefire way
to catapult this beach
into the ranks of
Bali and Waikiki:
a 10 percent discount for anyone in a bikini. It all started back in 2003 when
local officials
here, racking their brains over how to lure visitors to this stretch on
South Korea's rural west coast, decided that
a name change
was due.
Byeonsan
Beach
was reborn, with "
Bikini" in its
name. |
|
Nina
Wang to Inherit Her Husband's Empire.
[Hong Kong
] Hong
Kong's richest
woman won an eight-year legal battle Friday when the city's highest court
ruled that she - not her father-in-law - should inherit her late husband's
business empire. Nina Wang was chairwoman of Chinachem
Group as it
grew into a property powerhouse.
Forbes
magazine estimates her net worth at $3.1 billion.
Nicknamed
"Little Sweetie," she is known for wearing her hair
in pigtails and dressing in
girlish outfits. |
|
Nepal Dreams of Nobel Prize for Its
Women. [
Nepal
] The State media in
Nepal is throwing the spotlight on the nine women
from the kingdom
who are in the fray for the Nobel Peace Prize as the countdown begins for
announcement of
the winner October 14.
The nine women, nominated as part of the "1,000 Women for the
Nobel Peace Prize 2005" from 153
countries, are as diverse as Nepali society itself.
The oldest, 78-year-old Sahana
Pradhan, is one of
Nepal's
veteran communist leaders.
A
politburo member of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist
Leninist, Pradhan is also president of the Women's Security Pressure Group
that lobbies for women's socio-political rights.
At the other end of the spectrum
is 25-year-old Jhamak Ghimire, who was born with a congenital disability and
cannot speak, move or use her hands.
Though without any formal education, Ghimire uses her feet to
write.
A
columnist with Nepal's
largest daily Kantipur, she
has
enriched
Nepal's
literary world with hundreds of poems,
songs, stories and essays. |