Female Child Abusers 'Often Unreported'. [Australia] Women who sexually abuse children can have a devastating impact on their victims, yet the problem is largely ignored by society, an Australian researcher says. Psychologist Rebecca Deering, of Melbourne's Deakin University, studied the issue as part of her PhD, finding victims frequently suffer ongoing sexual problems and depression. She said the impact was similar to that experienced by victims of male sex abusers. But Dr Deering said sex abuse by women was often viewed, even by some health professionals, as less significant than that perpetrated by men. "My study found health professionals were less likely to believe a child's allegation if it was a female perpetrator compared to if it was a male," she said in an interview. "They also believed that the impact would be less serious if the perpetrator was a female.

Abbott Rejects Aid for Overseas Abortion Training. [Australia] Health Minister Tony Abbott has backed maintaining a ban on using Australian aid money to train abortion doctors in poor nations. A cross-party group of MPs is campaigning to overturn the ban, in a bid to save up to 70,000 women who die each year from botched terminations in the developing world. But Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who oversees the aid budget, has rejected calls for a policy change. Mr Abbott, who campaigned unsuccessfully to stop the abortion pill RU486 being made available in Australia earlier this year, yesterday said he was "comfortable with the existing policy". Pressed over the deaths of tens of thousands of women as a consequence of wealthy nations refusing aid for abortion training, he argued that the Australian aid budget would not change such tragedies.

Female Officer Details Navy Abuse Claims. [Australia] The Federal Opposition has called for a full judicial inquiry after yet more claims of bullying within the Defence Force. One of the Navy's most senior female officers last night told the 7.30 Report she had endured years of mistreatment and verbal abuse. Lieutenant Commander Robyn Fahy was the second-in-command at HMAS Stirling in Perth, Australia's largest operational navy base. But six years ago she was stood down after a Navy-appointed doctor wrongly diagnosed her as having a serious mental illness. Although she has just been offered another position, Lieutenant Commander Fahy says she could never go back to a military workplace after what she has been through. The picture Lieutenant Commander Fahy paints of her last six years in the military is not a happy one. "At one time they threatened to crucify me and I couldn't, I suppose, conceptualise an organisation that talked about loyalty and integrity and then matched that up with the manner with which they were behaving - not just towards myself but towards my family," she said. She told the 7.30 Report about her long battle for justice after being stood down from the military in 2000. Back then, she was wrongly diagnosed by a naval base doctor of having a serious mental illness. "And I found this to be the most frightening, I suppose, concept to deal with and it's taken me quite a lot of time to actually get over that," she said. After five and a half years of fighting with the military, Lieutenant Commander Fahy has now been declared fully fit and has been offered a new position by the Navy. But she says she would find it impossible to go back into a military workplace after everything she has been through.

Defence Lessons for Homeless Women. [Australia] Young homeless women in Adelaide are being taught self-defence in a program seeking to protect them from sexual assault and other crimes. Program founder Leonie Karlsson said homeless women were particularly vulnerable to sexual and physical assault. "Being homeless puts them in often risky situations and locations, many have drug and alcohol issues which add to their vulnerability, and they often suffer low self-esteem," she said. The program also encourages women to report sexual assault to police or other authorities. Ms Karlsson said few homeless women reported assaults for fear of further victimisation or because they did not feel comfortable around authorities. "As a result, they can end up blaming themselves or feeling acute anger and distress, and that can lead to self-harm, lashing out and other destructive behaviour," she said. "We want to help them learn coping behaviours that enable them to move forward."

Super Idea for Female Workers. [Australia] Women should not be taxed on their superannuation contributions to even the score with higher-earning men in retirement, a major fund administrator says. Superpartners has urged the Federal Government to scrap the 15 per cent super contribution tax for female workers to compensate them for a lifetime of lower earnings. Chief executive Frank Gullone said women earned an average 84 per cent of the male wage for doing the same job. A Newspoll survey showed half as many women as men expected their superannuation to provide all or most of their retirement income, at 6 per cent compared with 12 per cent, he said. And 60 per cent more women expected to rely on the age pension in retirement, nominated by 15 per cent of women and 9 per cent of men. "These findings reflect the broken working patterns, predominance of casual and part-time work and generally lower salary levels experienced by women," Mr Gullone said.

Huge Anti-Porn Rally in Jakarta. [Indonesia] Tens of thousands of conservative Muslims rallied in the Indonesian capital Sunday in support of a proposed anti-pornography bill that critics say would chip away at the country's secular traditions. The protesters, who arrived in buses organized by mosques and conservative Islamic groups, urged parliament to immediately pass the bill, that in its current form would ban kissing in public -- as well as erotic poetry, dancing, drawing, writing, photos and film. Organizers said 1 million people would attend the demonstration. Turnout appeared far less than that, perhaps 100,000, but it was still one of the largest shows of force by conservative Islam in recent years. "Pornography is part of the culture of the West and the unbelievers," said demonstrator Choirul Hassan. "They are exporting this to Indonesia to destroy a whole generation of Muslim youth. They must be stopped."

Korea 27th in OECD Female Employment Ranking. [Korea] South Korea ranked 27th among the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in female employment, showing that women remain as the country's most under-utilized resource. Korea's female employment for women between between 15 and 64 stood at 53.9 percent in 2004, lower than the 60.1 percent OECD average, the Ministry of Finance and Economy (MOFE) said Monday, citing the OECD data. Women's participation in Korea's labor market has been growing over the past 15 years, albeit slowly. Female employment rate rose to 52.8 percent in 2003 from 49.9 percent in 1990. Despite a relatively low female employment rate, the number of female workers is growing as Korean girls are increasingly doing better than boys at school, more women are getting university degrees than men and females are filling most new jobs. Among OECD member economies, only Italy, Mexico and Turkey had lower participation by women in the labor market. ``In developed countries, there are many cases where women who are responsible for the bulk of chores in their homes and childcare have part-time paid employment,'' said Lee Ho-seung, MOFE director of Human Resources Development Division. ``Such trend is forecast to spread wide in Korea as well,'' he said. Greater participation by women in the labor market would help boost social welfare and national income, offseting the negative effects of rapid aging and a shrinking population, Lee noted.

Wie Cuts Through Big Golf Barrier. [Korea] Sixteen-year-old Michelle Wie on Friday became the first women to make the cut in a major men's tour event for 61 years at Incheon, South Korea. Wie fired four birdies on her way to a three-under 69 in the second round of the Asian Tour's SK Telecom Open to put at her at five under. The last woman to make the final two rounds of a senior men's event was Babe Zaharias at the 1945 Los Angeles Open. The Hawaiian schoolgirl had been bidding to make her first halfway cut in eight appearances against the men. "I still can't believe that I made the cut," Wie told reporters. "I will be even happier tonight when it all sinks in." Wie, who was particularly happy with her putting, said she was aiming for a solid finish in the tournament and that she was looking forward to playing against the men in the U.S.

Female Students Go on Dangerous Diets. [Korea] More and more people, especially women, are engaging in excessive dieting and exercise regimes to become slimmer without paying much attention to their health. The zeal to lose weight is getting stronger among young Korean women, with a recent study showing South Korean female university students trying to lose weight are more enthusiastic in the endeavor than students in 22 other countries. About 43 percent of female Korean university students believe they are overweight, according to a survey of 18,512 university students in 22 countries by the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London. Also, 77 percent said they make an effort to lose weight and become slim through diet or exercise. The ratio was the highest among the surveyed nations, followed by 70 percent among Japanese woman students, 64 percent in Poland, and 59 percent for the U.S. In the case of Korean male students, about 14 percent think they are overweight, and 23 percent said they are trying to lose weight. However, the study showed Korean women who are obsessed with weight loss are usually not overweight, with their average body mass index (BMI) remaining at a normal level.

Mothers Vanquish a Killer of Children. [Nepal] As dusk descended on this medieval walled city and its dirt lanes filled with horses cantering home from the mountains, the piercing voice of a woman could be heard over the pounding hooves. "Come for the measles vaccination tomorrow!" Deki Gurung shouted to a neighbor. Across the impoverished kingdom of Nepal, 50,000 mothers like Mrs. Gurung, most of them illiterate, are foot soldiers in one of the great unfolding public health triumphs of modern times: the global push to slash the number of children who die from complications of measles. Nepal's first national measles vaccination campaign last year cut by 90 percent the country's measles-related deaths, usually about 5,000 per year, the United Nations Children's Fund estimates. But remarkable as it is, that tremendous success is overshadowed by the grievous toll measles continues to take in neighboring India. Experts estimate that more than 100,000 children a year still die there from complications of measles for want of a 15 cent vaccine. The strategy, first used in Latin America in 1994, eliminated measles from the Western Hemisphere by 2002. In Africa, the approach has more than halved measles-related deaths in just four years. Measles weakens children's immune systems, making them vulnerable to fatal complications from diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. Nepal used the same plan, but several other things went right here. Not only has Nepal's measles effort been unburdened by competition from polio, which was wiped out six years ago, but also for more than a decade Nepal has used a highly organized network of volunteer mothers to deliver simple health services in the lanes around their homes.

Glamour at a Price. [Thailand] Neighbors gawk and children yell, "ghost!" The manager of the restaurant where Panya Boonchun worked simply told her she was fired. The cream that she applied to her face and neck was supposed to transform her into a white-skinned beauty, the kind she saw on page after page in women's magazines and on television. But rather than lighten her complexion, the illegally produced lotion she bought in a local grocery store near this village in southeastern Thailand disfigured her skin into an unsightly patchwork of albino pink and dark brown, a condition that doctors say might be irreversible. At a time when whiter skin is being aggressively marketed across Asia as beautiful and healthy, Panya's case illustrates the lengths that some women will go to change their complexions - and the dangers that this sometimes entails. The vast selections of skin-whitening creams on supermarket and pharmacy shelves are testament to an industry that has flourished over the past decade, with 4 out of 10 women in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan now using a skin-whitening cream, a survey conducted by Synovate, a market research company, found. The skin-whitening craze, which runs parallel to the global trend of cosmetic surgery and botox injections, is not just for the face. It includes creams that whiten darker patches of skin in armpits and "pink nipple" lotions that bleach away brown-colored pigment. Women buy sunscreen creams to wear to the office in case they are struck by stray rays while commuting, the modern equivalent of the huge parasols that servants once carried to shield their masters from the intense Asian sun. And while many if not most skin-whitening creams are safe, doctors, consumer groups and government officials are reporting dangerous consequences of the white-is- beautiful trend: Instead of treating blemishes, women are applying potent creams in large and harmful doses.

Facing Death, Women Unite. [Vietnam] The neighbors know what is going on when they hear peals of laughter coming from the house of Pham Thi Hue. The dying women have gotten together again. Crammed onto a couch and little chairs, they shout and clap as they talk about the city's shortage of shrouds or about the dying man with the bloated stomach who slept under a bridge. Mostly women, they are members of a support group for people infected with HIV in a society where they are widely shunned, where drugs are scarce and treatment is expensive and where a diagnosis of infection is still, for most people, a sentence of death. On a recent Saturday in this big port city near Hanoi, 15 women and one man - many of whom had not told their families of their infection - gathered to offer each other companionship and the relief of laughter from lives of poverty, illness and dread. In the face of discrimination and in the absence of adequate health care, they are for the most part one another's only support. This is a country teetering on the brink of a serious epidemic, with more than 250,000 people infected with HIV and with only 10 percent of those who fall ill receiving the treatment they need. The disease is spreading fast from its core population of intravenous drug users, and one of the chief barriers to prevention and treatment is the stigma that makes outcasts of those who carry the virus.