| Co-Habiting 'Makes Women Fatter'.
[Australia] Women tend
to put on weight and
eat more unhealthily when they move in with a
boyfriend, a study suggests. But Newcastle
University dieticians said, in a review
of seven studies, that men seemed to become more healthy after they began
co-habiting. The study in Complete Nutrition suggested women's diets tended to
increase in fat and sugar after they began living with a partner. The team said diets
change because each partner tries to please the other. |
Married
Women Vulnerable on Money. [Australia
] It's a common act by women - to relinquish the
family's financial decision making to their spouse - but nothing makes you more
vulnerable, financial planners warn. Sydney chapter
chair of the
Financial Planning
Association of Australia Louise Woodger said although times have changed since our
mother's generation, married women still hand over the financial reins to their husbands.
"Many women don't have a clue as to what's coming in and what's going out, leaving
them vulnerable in many aspects of their lives," she said. Ms Woodger recommends both
partners attend meetings with insurance agents, accountants, financial planners and
lawyers. Women should also look over monthly bank statements and credit card bills. |
| Female Artists Get a Room of
Their Own. [China] Growing
up, Li Wenzi thought of herself as a good girl. "I was
very obedient. I was a good wife, a good daughter, a good sister," she said. But at
31, after watching her marriage crumble and her mother die of cancer, she had an
awakening. While pursuing a graduate degree in communications at the New York Institute of
Technology, Li took an elective class on feminist art. "I started understanding
Western feminism," she said. "After that, I began to learn more about Chinese
feminist art." Today Li, 37, is the owner of the Three Quarters Art Gallery, an airy,
open space that is the only gallery in China
dedicated to female artists. In a country
where women often struggle to be heard, the gallery is a platform for
China's female
artists, whose work often gets marginalized by their flashier and more famous male
counterparts. Since opening the gallery a year and a half ago, Li has held 12 exhibits.
They include work from artists like Cui Xiuwen, whose paintings of a wounded schoolgirl in
the Forbidden City scratch at themes of innocence and tradition, to the feminist artist
and writer Li Hong, who explores female sexuality and desire in a series of softly painted
orchids titled "Design and Color." She gathered a group of Tibetan artists
together in a show called "Wind in Tibet." The gallery's name, Three Quarters,
is based on a famous Mao quote: Women hold up half the sky. "Women hold up one half,
and men the other half," Li explained. "But half of the male - one quarter of
the whole - reflects women." In fact, Li originally wanted to name the gallery
Bluestocking, in honor of the 18th-century British women's literary movement, "but
she thought it would be too special, too unusual," said Gu Yaping, a student at the
Beijing Film Academy who recently finished filming a documentary about Li. Gu, whose film
explored Li's relationships and conflicts with female artists, feels China's female
artists are often marginalized. "I was inspired to make the film because women
artists don't get a lot of publicity in China," she said. "They're not in the
mainstream." |
| Now, Women Get to
Study Women, Earn Degree. [China] Woman,
you see, is an object of such a kind that
study it as much as you will, it is always quite new. So said 19th century Russian
novelist and philosopher Leo Tolstoy. In 21st century China, something quite new is being
attempted with Women's Studies becoming a college major for the first time. Women's
Studies is described as interdisciplinary research that puts women and gender at the
centre of inquiry. Beijing-based China Women's University announced last week that with
the approval of the Ministry of Education, it would admit undergraduates who would major
in the subject. "I'm really glad that the study has finally gained public
recognition," said Han Henan, the university's professor on Women's Studies who had
been doing research on the topic for about 20 years. She told China Daily that teaching of
the subject began in the United States in the early 1970s, and it has developed so rapidly
that in the late 1990s, more than 600 colleges were offering about 30,000 courses. |
Shanghai Strips
Billboards of Sex. [China] Scantily clad women and other images that might cause offence
will be stripped from Shanghai billboards, as
citizens of China's largest metropolis
demand less sexy advertising, Xinhua news agency said on Thursday. Following complaints
over an advertisement displaying a bare thigh of a Hong Kong pop star endorsing skin
products, city officials are setting up a council of industry representatives, lawyers and
residents to weed out offensive and misleading advertisements, Xinhua said. "It's
sometimes difficult to decide whether ad content is improper because different people have
different standards," Miao Jun, an official within an advertising regulation agency,
was quoted as saying in the Shanghai Daily. State regulations demand that female images
used in advertising must be "healthy and positive" and help foster sound morals
among young people, Xinhua reported. |
Women 'Need Bigger Bras'.
[China]
Bra producers have been forced to offer bigger cup sizes in
China
because improved
nutrition means women are busting previous chest measurements. The Beijing Institute of
Clothing Technology said the average chest size of Chinese women had increased by nearly
1cm in the past decade. Measurements were taken from nearly 3,000 women over six years. In
response, some underwear companies have created sub-brands specialising in larger bra
sizes. "It is so different from the past when most young women would wear A- or B-cup
bras," Triumph brand saleswoman Zhang Jing told the Shanghai Daily. The clothing
technology institute released a report last week saying the average chest circumference of
Chinese women has risen by nearly 1cm to 83.53cm (32.89 inches) since the early 1990s.
This phenomenon, it said, was due to women eating more nutritiously and taking part in
more sport. |
Muslim
Hardliners Attack
Playboy Building.
[Indonesia] About 300
hardline Indonesian Muslims
vandalized a building housing the office of Playboy magazine on Wednesday in a protest
against its publication in the world's most populous Muslim nation. Clad in white shirts
and skull caps the protesters threw rocks at the front lobby, breaking the windows of the
building in the south of Jakarta several days after the magazine
hit news-stands for the
first time. Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), the protesters also
ripped apart several copies of the Indonesian Playboy, which unlike the U.S. original does
not show any nudity. Despite being a much tamer version, the magazine sold out very
quickly, partly thanks to controversy surrounding its publication and protests from some
Muslim groups. Apart from Playboy, Indonesia already
had its own versions of men's
magazines Maxim and FHM, as well as homegrown publications, which feature color pictures
of women in minimal clothing. |
| Solidarity Against Female Genital
Mutilation. [Japan]
When Hiroko Hashizume, 66, first heard of female genital
mutilation (FGM) in some Muslim countries in Africa, she was deeply shocked and, later,
overwhelmed by a desire to do something to stop the cruel custom. "I had never heard
of FGM and could not believe that young girls were forced to undergo this practice. Even
though Africa is far away from Japan,
I felt
a deep solidarity with African female victims
of FGM and wanted to contribute and help activists," said Hashizume who was, till
recently, a volunteer at Women's Action Against FGM (WAAF), a grassroots organisation.
Hashizume's is a remarkable story in Japan,
where the issue of women's reproductive health
rights has remained simmering on the back burner. Said Yumiko Yanagisawa, who founded the
organisation in 1996: "FGM is an issue that is shocking for the Japanese who do not
have a tradition that resembles this practice. Yet there is a lot of support when women
here find out because they believe in the need for women to be able to make their choices
and want more support towards this." |
Women Hail Divorce Ruling.
[Nepal] Women's
rights activists in Nepal
have hailed a Supreme Court's ruling to scrap a
law that allowed men to seek divorce if their partner was infertile. Under the 43-year-old
law, men were able to file for divorce if they could prove through a doctor their wives
were unable to conceive for 10 years. Activists said the court verdict was a milestone
towards scrapping laws that were discriminatory towards women. The court has issued a
number of rulings on women's rights recently. The latest ruling was made on Thursday, a
year after a case was filed by a Kathmandu-based women's rights group. The group said that
the law did not consider the fact that men can also be responsible for a couple not being
able to have children. The court said the provision in the divorce law allowing men to
divorce their partners on grounds of infertility was against the spirit of the country's
constitution and international law. The court asked the government to scrap the law, and
bring in a new one to avoid inconsistencies. |
| The Sad Decline of
Arroyo. [Philippines] Filipinos
thought
they had put an end to electoral chicanery and
governmental intimidation when they overthrew the Marcos dictatorship two decades ago.
Unfortunately, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has completely lost touch with the ideals
that inspired that 1986 "people power" movement. Arroyo is no Ferdinand Marcos,
at least not yet. But this onetime reformer is reviving bad memories of crony corruption,
presidential vote- rigging and intimidation of critical journalists. Unless the Philippine
Congress and courts find ways to rein in her increasingly authoritarian tendencies,
democracy itself may be in danger. This was not the outcome people expected five years ago
when Arroyo, then the vice president, was swept into power on a wave of popular discontent
with her discredited predecessor, Joseph Estrada. In those days, Arroyo, a professional
economist, was seen as an earnest reformer. She won further credit by pledging not to run
for a new six-year term in 2004. But then she changed her mind, and her style of
government as well. Her narrow re-election victory became tainted after a tape revealed
her discussing her vote totals with an election commissioner while ballots were still
being counted. She survived an impeachment attempt over that incident. But she was forced
to send her husband into exile over charges that he took bribes from gambling syndicates. |
|
Women
Lack Political Voice. [Thailand]
As election approaches, new report calls for urgent
action to break male dominance in Thai Government. Thai women face major prejudice in
politics and stark under-representation in the upper tiers of the Government, according to
a timely new report launched in Bangkok today
by the Women for Democratic Development
Foundation (WDDF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Holding one
Ministerial post out of 36, with one Governor out of 76, and only 10 percent of
parliamentary seats, women are strikingly under-represented in
positions of power in Thailand,
says the report, entitled Women's Right to a Political Voice in Thailand. The
report’s detailed account of this deep-seated inequality comes at a pivotal moment in
Thai politics, with only three days to go before the country’s 2 April elections, for
which 17 percent of all election candidates, and 10 percent of candidates from the leading
Thai Rak Thai party, are women. |