Women Rights
The persecution of the Uighur people shows we have not learnt the lessons from genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia – Olivia Marks-Woldman
A video is currently circulating in British media which appears to show people with shaved heads, blindfolded, surrounded by armed guards and waiting to be put on a train. The overwhelming evidence suggests these are Uighur (or Uyghur) people, a Muslim group based in China’s Xinjiang region.
This is not the first report of its kind. Over the last couple of years we at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) have been deeply concerned hearing evidence of people being separated from their families and disappearing, being forced into “re-education camps” by armed guards, and children being taken away to be taught outside of their culture and religion. A recent shipment of human hair which arrived in the US is suspected to be from Uighur people held in these camps. This all follows a long history of prejudice and persecution.
The evidence is all there. We can see what is happening. Despite the challenges facing journalists trying to report from the region, the information which we are seeing is clear, and the world knows what is taking place. But is this knowledge enough to prompt international action?
Over 100 days in 1994, the genocide in Rwanda took place. As the genocide began, United Nations forces were withdrawn from the area. The international community knew what was happening and the UN Security Council debated whether to act. While they did so, whole families were slaughtered in their homes, on their streets, and in churches where they sheltered. The response was too late. Approximately one million Tutsis were murdered. Today, many Rwandans are still asking why the international community failed to step in, leaving whole communities to be murdered.
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Also Read: ‘If They Hadn’t Tortured My Husband, He Wouldn’t Have Fallen Into a Coma’
A French official announced on Saturday a plan to assist domestic abuse victims during the coronavirus crisis. It includes paying for 20,000 hotel bookings, contributing 1 million euros (roughly $1.1 million) to organizations that fight domestic abuse and setting up assistance points at supermarkets and pharmacies across the country.
Marlène Schiappa is the secretary of state for equality between women and men. When Schiappa was named to French President Emmanuel Macron’s administration in 2017, she was, at age 34, the youngest member of his cabinet and an outspoken author and blogger. In an interview with NPR at the time, she said she wanted to make it a crime for men to harass women on the street. Now, in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown, she’s turned her primary attention to the burgeoning problem behind closed doors.
In the official press announcement of the plan, her office wrote that confinement at home, such as citizens of France and other countries are experiencing, “can unfortunately generate fertile ground for domestic violence.”
During an interview that the French television news channel BFM TV conducted with Schiappa Tuesday, the channel said that France’s anonymous hotline number for domestic abuse, 3919, has seen a 30% rise in calls since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. Schiappa’s plan will also provide support to the 3919 number. Read more
Also Read: Arizona Cop With History Of Racism Fired After Stopping A Black Man Over An Air Freshener
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Life Care Centers of America, Inc. Settles Pregnancy Discrimination Suit for $170K
Life Care Centers of America, Inc., along with its affiliate, South Hill Operations, LLC recently agreed to pay $170,000 to settle a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit with a former employee. The suit itself was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and argued that the employee was working “as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) for Life Care Centers in Puyallup, Washington” when she became pregnant.
During the employee’s pregnancy, Life Care “refused to accommodate her request not to lift anything heavier than 15lbs. for the last part of her pregnancy.” At the time, the company said it “only provided light duty to employees injured on the job.” As a result, the employee was placed on involuntary, unpaid leave. To make matters worse, the suit alleged “Life Care supervisors told her to reapply for a CNA job once she was ready to return to unrestricted duty, which she understood to mean that she was fired.”
Life Care Centers of America, Inc., along with its affiliate, South Hill Operations, LLC recently agreed to pay $170,000 to settle a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit with a former employee. The suit itself was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and argued that the employee was working “as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) for Life Care Centers in Puyallup, Washington” when she became pregnant. During the employee’s pregnancy, Life Care “refused to accommodate her request not to lift anything heavier than 15lbs. for the last part of her pregnancy.” At the time, the company said it “only provided light duty to employees injured on the job.” As a result, the employee was placed on involuntary, unpaid leave. To make matters worse, the suit alleged “Life Care supervisors told her to reapply for a CNA job once she was ready to return to unrestricted duty, which she understood to mean that she was fired.”
Pregnant Muslim woman bashed inside a café during a ‘random racist attack’ says she fears for her children’s future growing up in Australia
A pregnant Muslim woman who was randomly targeted and stomped on while sitting in a cafe fears for the world her children will grow up in if racism is not addressed.
The 31-year-old woman, who is 38 weeks pregnant, was with friends at Bay Vista cafe on Church Street, Parramatta, at 10.30pm on Wednesday when she was set upon by a man who she did not know.
Police have arrested 43-year-old Stipe Lozina and charged him with affray and assault occasioning actual bodily harm since the attack.
While the woman has chosen to remain anonymous, she released a statement through a friend thanking Australia for rallying behind her.
A pregnant Muslim woman who was randomly targeted and stomped on while sitting in a cafe fears for the world her children will grow up in if racism is not addressed. The 31-year-old woman, who is 38 weeks pregnant, was with friends at Bay Vista cafe on Church Street, Parramatta, at 10.30pm on Wednesday when she was set upon by a man who she did not know. Police have arrested 43-year-old Stipe Lozina and charged him with affray and assault occasioning actual bodily harm since the attack. While the woman has chosen to remain anonymous, she released a statement through a friend thanking Australia for rallying behind her.
Preventing maternal mortality: We have to address the racism first
Preventing maternal mortality: We have to address the racism first
New standards to address the maternal mortality crisis will go into effect July 2020 and aim to improve how hospitals prevent, identify, and treat maternal hemorrhage and severe pre-eclampsia. Journalists from USA Today and ProPublica have documented this crisis and its impact on every day women.
Even famous women like Beyonce and Serena Williams survived serious complications with their recent pregnancies, preeclampsia and a pulmonary embolism respectively.
Shalon Irving, a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Corps, died three weeks after the birth of her daughter from complications from high blood pressure.
WOMEN LESS OFTEN APPROACHED BY JOB RECRUITERS THAN MEN, EVEN WITH WIDESPREAD STAFF SHORTAGES
WOMEN LESS OFTEN APPROACHED BY JOB RECRUITERS THAN MEN, EVEN WITH WIDESPREAD STAFF SHORTAGES
Women are approached much less often by recruiters looking for staff than men, even with the tightness on the labor market and staff shortages in multiple sectors. The same holds true for sectors in which many women work, such as healthcare, Financieele Dagblad reports based on a study it commissioned from Intelligence Group.
Intelligence Group keeps track of how often employees, students and unemployed people are approached with an offer of a job. 43 percent of men said they are approached at least once a quarter, compared to 31 percent of women. “We don’t know why that is”, researcher Geert-Jan Waasdorp said to the newspaper.
ANN ARBOR, MI – While many were focused on Hillary Clinton’s response to the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump in her visit to the University of Michigan, the former Democratic presidential nominee was interested in tackling subjects that spanned the globe.
Clinton returned to Ann Arbor for the second time since her 2016 presidential election defeat to Donald Trump Thursday, Oct. 10.
In the nearly 90-minute discussion inside Rackham Auditorium, Clinton touched on many topics, including women’s rights to the United States’ lack of response to the protests and unrest in Hong Kong.
Here are five additional highlights expanding on Clinton’s visit to UM Thursday via the Weiser Diplomacy Center. Read more…
Women Share Pregnancy Discrimination Stories in Support of Elizabeth Warren
Women Share Pregnancy Discrimination Stories in Support of Elizabeth Warren
Women are sharing their stories on social media of pregnancy discrimination in support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who came under attack from conservative outlets this week over her claim that she was fired for being pregnant, NBC News reports.
“[I]f you don’t understand what this furor over the Elizabeth Warren pregnancy firing story is about, ask pretty much any woman in your life over 35,” culture writer Anne Helen Petersen wrote on Twitter, prompting some to respond with their personal experiences.
A flurry of blogs and online outlets also came to Warren’s defense, posting stories such as “Elizabeth Warren’s critics forgot: Pregnancy lasts for nine months,” “If You Think Elizabeth Warren Is Lying, You’ve Never Been a Woman in the Workplace,” and “Elizabeth Warren’s Pregnancy Story Is All Too Common. We Know Because We Live It.”
Women are sharing their stories on social media of pregnancy discrimination in support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who came under attack from conservative outlets this week over her claim that she was fired for being pregnant, NBC News reports. “[I]f you don’t understand what this furor over the Elizabeth Warren pregnancy firing story is about, ask pretty much any woman in your life over 35,” culture writer Anne Helen Petersen wrote on Twitter, prompting some to respond with their personal experiences. A flurry of blogs and online outlets also came to Warren’s defense, posting stories such as “Elizabeth Warren’s critics forgot: Pregnancy lasts for nine months,” “If You Think Elizabeth Warren Is Lying, You’ve Never Been a Woman in the Workplace,” and “Elizabeth Warren’s Pregnancy Story Is All Too Common. We Know Because We Live It.” We Know Because We Live It.
CAN YOU judge a nation by the company it keeps?
President Trump’s administration spearheaded a declaration at the United Nations this week calling for the elimination of allegedly “ambiguous” expressions in the body’s documents — primarily, “sexual and reproductive health.” These terms are often used to promote pro-abortion policies, the officials claimed, and “there is no international right to an abortion.” Joining the land of the free? Some of the least-free nations on the planet, from Russia to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and 12 more.
This, evidently, is what the anti-globalist “America First” philosophy the president hawked at this week’s U.N. General Assembly looks like: This country standing not only among but also in front of a pantheon of human rights offenders.
The move is dispiriting but not surprising. The administration has been on a crusade to replace science-based approaches to women’s health with a focus to “defend life and family.” The State Department’s annual human rights reports have scrapped statistics on the rates of contraceptive access and maternal mortality worldwide. (Those statistics showed, among other things, that 8 percent of such deaths result from unsafe abortion.) The administration has massively expanded the gag rule that prevents organizations from receiving federal funds if they even mention abortion to clients, and it has imposed a similar stricture on providers at home.Read more…
Iranian officials have warned that posting video footage of women removing their mandatory headscarves in public could lead to up 10 years imprisonment, according to media reports yesterday.
The announcement specifically named the US-based social media platform of Masih Alinejad, which since 2014 has been inviting Iranian women to post pictures of themselves without the hijab.
Ms Alinejad has been accused by the Iranian regime of working as an agent of the US government over the website, known as My Stealthy Freedom.
“As Masih Alinejad has a contract with the Americans, all those women who send the video footages of removing their hijab to her will be sentenced between one to 10 years of jail according to the article 508 of the Islamic Criminal Justice Act,” the head of Tehran’s Court of Revolution cleric Mousa Ghazanfarabadi told Fars news.
Earlier this year Ms Alinejad met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who “thanked her for her bravery and continued dedication to the cause of freedom for Iranian women”.
In recent days the morality police in Iran has reacted to a number of incidents in which its vigilantees have been attacked in Tehran metro while “advising” women not to remove their hijab. She has denied working for any foreign governments.
Asked by the Fars news agency if sending video clips to an individual in US amounts to a criminal act, Mr Ghazanfarabadi has said: “My understanding of the law is that three types of video recordings are criminal acts; to film our military installations; to record private life of another citizen and the third case is to record a film with the aim of working with an enemy government”.
