| Muslim Women: Customs
and Conflicts. [Afghanistan]
Masuda Sultan was 16 when her Afghan parents arranged for
her to marry a doctor almost twice her age. She saw him just once before they were
ritually joined, when she was 17, in an Islamic nikkah ceremony that was held in a hotel
in Flushing, Queens. By her account in
her new memoir, "My War At Home"
(Washington Square Press), the marriage was a blunder from the first. Although
Sultan had grown up in New York, before
the wedding night her mother asked her to follow
an old custom: provide the new in-laws with a blood-stained cloth as evidence of her
virginity. Once married, she writes, her husband rarely spoke to her, insisted she
remain subservient and discouraged schooling beyond college. After three years,
feeling despondent to the point of swallowing a bottle of his Valium, she walked away and
returned to her parents' Queens home. And yet, Sultan, in an interview, said she wrote the
book to enlighten outsiders about the virtues of an arranged marriage, like the confidence
newlyweds have in a decision by their elders and the domestic bolstering a wife receives
from her husband's family. "It's upsetting that people see your culture as
backward, who say to me 'You poor victim,'" she said. "I think Westerners
have a simplistic idea about arranged marriage. Mine didn't work out, but that was
not the case for everyone, and it's not necessarily backward to do that." That
contradiction captures how much Sultan, like many immigrants, oscillates between two
worlds, in her case that of a traditional Afghan daughter and an urbane graduate of
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who has ventured to Afghanistan some 10 times to
fight for the rights of women. She has great affection for Afghans, but also
misgivings about some traditions. That conflict is her memoir's recurring leitmotif. |
| NCW Approaches
Government Over Rising Crimes Against Women. [India] In the wake of the murder
of a mother-daughter advocate duo in Delhi,
the National Commission for Women (NCW) on
Monday approached the Centre seeking urgent steps to be taken, that include increasing the
number of women in police and setting up more police helplines. NCW Chairperson
Girija Vyas has written to the UPA Chairperson, the Prime Minister, and the Home Minister
on the need for taking steps to ensure safety of women, especially in
the metros like Delhi,
Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore. The
Commission has
also written to Delhi
Police Commissioner K K Paul in connection with the sensational murder of a mother and
daughter in a posh South Delhi area, seeking an action-taken report in the case within
three days. The NCW Chairperson met UPA chief and Congress President Sonia Gandhi on
Monday, and the issue of growing incidence of crime against women came up for discussion
at the meeting. "We have demanded an increase in the number of women personnel
in the police and asked for steps to be taken to sensitise the force towards women's
issues. Right now, women comprise less than three per cent of the police
force," Vyas said. |
| 40% of AIDS Patients are
Women. [India] Comprising
40 per cent of India's HIV infected
population, women
in the country are gradually becoming more susceptible to the disease, UN experts said
here on Friday. "Women are biologically more susceptible to HIV infection.
Besides, gender disparities, lack of education and trafficking of women are making
the situation worse," said Archana Tamang, chief of the women's human rights and
human security unit, United Nations Development Fund for Women. India has over five
million AIDS / HIV infected people, including over two million women. Tamang said:
"We need to be focussed to create awareness among women between the ages of 15
and 29." |
| ILO Favors
Skill-Based Education for Indian Women. [India] The International Labor
Organization (ILO) Monday called for providing skill-based education to
women in India for
their empowerment. "In the face of distress, women have proved that they are
pillars of strength in a sea of chaos and suffering. But what we need the most is
providing skill-based education to them for independence," said Leyla Tegmo Reddy,
director of ILO India. Reddy said ILO has been working with the affected communities
to contribute to reconstruction of livelihoods, through extension of skills development,
social protection and promoting linkages with local development initiatives. |
| Noted Actress and Former MP
Launches Drive Against Female Foeticide [India] Spearheading a campaign against female
foeticide, noted actress and former Rajya Sabha MP Shabana Azmi has said that more than
introduction of laws, there should be a 'tiered system' in society to bring about an
attitudinal change to tackle the skewered sex-ratio. "Statistics have belied
the notion that education leads to awareness. We see that in supposedly affluent
areas such as South Delhi and South Mumbai, the female sex ratio has dropped
significantly. In an upmarket area like Colaba in South Mumbai, the ratio of girls
to every 1000 boys born has dropped from 913 to 830," she told newspersons at a press
conference on Saturday. |
| Sex Selection Doctor Jailed.
[India]
A doctor in India and his
assistant have been sentenced to two years in
prison for revealing the sex of a foetus and then agreeing to abort it. This is the
first time medical professionals have been jailed in such a case. Under Indian laws,
ultrasound tests on a pregnant woman to determine the gender of the foetus are illegal.
It has been estimated that 10m female foetuses may have been
terminated in India in
the past 20 years. Dr Anil Sabhani and Kartar Singh were caught in a sting operation
in the northern state of Haryana. Government officials sent in three pregnant women
as decoy patients to find out if the clinic would carry out abortions based on sex
selection. |
| Orissa Tribal Women
Take to Protecting State's Forest Cover. [India] The lush greenery surrounding a
remote village in Orissa owes its existence to the blazing dynamism of a small group of
tribal women, a movement that began more than 15 years ago and is today reaping the fruits
of their labour. Balda village, with its mud huts and stone pathways, stands as a
testimony to the unwavering grit of their womenfolk. The docile-looking women, who
roam around the village pathways in their traditional attire, have snatched axes, fought
with the hardened wood mafia and even kept night vigil to save their forest cover.
The movement began in 1995 by Radha Pandia almost by chance. “We did not
have much forest area because very often the mafia were cutting the trees that had
affected the area. Now we protect forest ourselves and are able to earn our
livelihood also from it. We get firewood from the fallen leaves and branches,”
says Pandia. Pandia's group, which has now grown to encompass nearly 100 other tribal
women, educates people on the importance of saving their environment. |
| Streets Turn Smoky as
Women Cook Holy Offering. [India]
Around a million women sat in serpentine
queues around the Attukal Bhagavathi shrine here on Monday, stirring their pots and pans
to cook a holy offering of rice even as the streets filled up with smoke. The unique
occasion was the penultimate day of the 10-day Attukal Pongala festival when women offer a
kind of porridge, traditionally called 'pongala', to the temple goddess in the hope of
receiving her blessings. So popular has the festival become that women from all
walks of life, be it celebrities or housewives, take part in it. Leading heroine
Chippy said she has been coming to the festival ever since she was a student.
"My belief is that each time I come here and take part in the pongala, the
goddess takes care of all our needs till the next pongala." |