Via the Iranian journal Mianeh:

Iranian women’s groups and other rights organisations are fighting a much discussed proposed law which they say would encourage polygamy by allowing a man to take a second wife without the permission of the first in certain circumstances.

The proposal comes at a time when the country has been rocked by protests, in which women have played a major part, following the disputed re-election last June of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Although Sharia law permits a man to take up to four wives, polygamy is not widely practiced in Iran and women have enjoyed greater rights and freedoms than in some other Muslim countries. At present, an Iranian man needs his first wife’s permission to take a second.

A so-called Family Protection Law, proposed by the government in 2008, said a man could marry a second wife on condition only that he could afford both wives financially. The parliament dropped that clause following a wave of opposition from women but is now reconsidering a different version of the provision.

The spokesman for the parliament’s Judicial and Legal Commission, Amir Hussein Rahimi, announced recently that the commission had now approved article 23 of the proposed Family Protection Law that said, “A man can marry a second wife under ten conditions.”

The new version still requires the first wife to give permission, though controversially this would not be required under certain conditions, such as if she is mentally ill, or suffers from infertility, a chronic medical condition or drug addiction, in which case the husband can marry another woman. Also if the first wife does not cooperate sexually, the husband can take another wife.

The change is being promoted by conservative members of the parliament as a move that supports Islamic law. A leading conservative deputy, Ali Motahari, said in parliament last year, “Polygamy is Islam’s honour.”

Iranian women still oppose the legalisation of polygamy, saying it weakens their role and status at home and in society.

In this excellent piece, Masum Momaya has put together a look back at women’s rights gains and losses:

In January, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. He quickly revoked the global gag rule, restored funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for access the sexual and reproductive health and, in spite of Pope Benedict’s pronouncement in Africa against the use of condoms, acknowledged the need to rapidly and systematically address the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The same month, more affirmation for sexual and reproductive rights came as Bolivians approved a new constitution with a dedicated chapter to women’s rights.

At the international level, in April, the UN Commission on Population and Development passed a resolution placing an unprecedented emphasis on human rights, including in regard to sexuality. The resolution made a commitment to comprehensive education on sexuality and gender equality, access to male and female condoms, reproductive health services for adolescents, and the importance of sexual and reproductive rights to HIV/AIDS.A few months later, maternal death and illness were finally recognized as pressing human rights concerns by the UN Human Rights Council.

Mexico City decriminalized first-trimester abortions, which triggered a backlash of restrictions as states across Mexico quickly passed anti-abortion legislation. Meanwhile, Nepal enacted a more permissive abortion law, making the procedure more accessible.

Youth activists made significant strides this year, advocating on behalf of the largest generation of youth ever at high-level international conferences, including the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, the Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights, and the NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development as well as the Internet Governance Forum, where they advocated for policies based on agency and consent rather than victimization and repression of sexuality.

You can read the rest of this  informative piece here. Also of interest, IPS interviews Charlotte Bunch, Founder of the Center for Global Women’s Leadership for her thoughts on Obama’s commitment to women’s human rights.  Here are some of her thoughts and you can read the complete interview here:

So far the Obama administration has done pretty well in advancing women’s rights through their foreign policy. The most substantial evidence of this is the increase in money that the State Department is now allocating to women’s concerns.

According to a recent report by Women Thrive Worldwide, the budget for women’s rights has dramatically increased from the Bush years. Their analysis of the State, Foreign Operations budget for FY10 found an increase of 1.66 billion dollars more than FY09 to the tune of nearly 8.0 billion dollars for global development.

Also important to note is the focus on women’s empowerment and gender integration across the foreign aid programmes which will be applied to 16.5 billion dollars in funding. The Congressional bill also included 3.1 million dollars for the newly created Office for Global Women’s Issues at the State Department.

Of course, the State Department budget still pales in comparison to the Defence Department, but the allocation of more dollars does signal clear intention of U.S. foreign policy to empower women and improve their rights…

…As for disappointment, escalating the war in Afghanistan isn’t improving the situation for Afghan women, men or children. And although they have made development in Afghanistan a priority, it still doesn’t balance the damage and destruction that will be wrought from more militarised violence. Similar questions could be raised about continuing U.S. military activity in Iraq and other places…

…Whether or not the Obama administration views women’s rights as a priority in a larger geopolitical and military context is questionable. For example, the White House has talked of working with “moderate” Taliban-despite its abhorrent record of abusing and oppressing women-as acceptable to achieving their objectives in Afghanistan…

…Another measure of how much political capital the Obama administration is going to wage on advancing women’s rights will be whether they are going to pursue the ratification of the Convention the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). There are 186 signatories to the international treaty, but the United States, along with Sudan and Iran, are among the very few countries that have not ratified it.

Not Under The Bus has declared today a day of action to fight for a woman’s right to an abortion.  They have an entire page of things that YOU can do from signing petitions (too many to list here) to writing to your Congressional representative to writing an OpEd for your local paper.

While women’s groups throughout the U.S. are focusing on the abortion issue, it is important to remember that this is not the only aspect of women’s health that is in jeopardy.  The National Partnership for Women and Families has prepared an excellent brief about the proposed wellness provisions that could effectively become a backdoor for rate discrimination against lower income women who are not able to participate in these programs because:

A disproportionate number of women head low-income families and are unable to pursue daily exercise programs when faced with significant caregiver responsibilities at home;

A disproportionate number of women are in low-income families and are unable to access safe areas for physical activity or affordable healthy food choices; and

Many of the most vulnerable women and children who would benefit greatly from assistance in living healthier lives are ill-prepared to sustain the added financial burden that arises from paying significantly more for health insurance under the current “20 percent” standard.

They conclude:

There is no doubt that women want their families and themselves to be healthy.  Every day, women are leading the charge for improving health across the country.  But what women also need is support to achieve healthy lifestyles — not a policy that allows their employer to discriminate against them based on their health status (or a family member’s health status).  This kind of policy undermines the very goals of health reform.  Instead, employers should be encouraged to provide wellness incentives that treat women equitably and respect the challenges they face in meeting the dual demands of work and family.

Gwendolyn Mink and Dorothy Roberts also point to concerns regarding nurse home visitation programs aimed at low-income pregnant women and mothers of young children, saying they are,

concerned that the provision is not aimed at providing health care. Instead, it pledges to advance goals that endanger the reproductive and family freedoms of low income women, conjures stereotypes of low income women of color, and implies that using available public services is a bad thing. The Senate bill contains a similar provision.

They go on to say that,

It is imperative that a government-sponsored home visitation program for low-income women amply and explicitly protects program clients.  Express stipulations to assure that participation is voluntary must be part of the statutory package, along with a guarantee that a decision to participate, or not to, cannot be made a condition of receiving other government assistance.  The aim of nurse home visitation programs should be to provide medical and wellness services;  neither the statutory language nor administrative regulations should permit or encourage monitoring the family and reproductive decisions of individuals, and neither should denigrate low-income mothers for using public assistance.  We should do everything possible to ensure that these programs support the women they are intended to serve rather than using women to advance the interests of government.

Whatever action you decide to take today, be sure make clear that women’s health care  must include not only access to affordable, safe and legal abortion, but also to full reproductive health care and affordable, non-discriminatory overall health care.

__________

Many thanks to Adele Stan for drawing our attention to the wellness program issue.

Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a stirring speech on the importance of women’s human and reproductive rights on the occasion of the 15th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development.  From her remarks (emphasis mine):

Investing in the health of women, adolescents, and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do…

…we have seen that when women and girls have the tools to stay healthy and the opportunity to contribute to their families’ well-being, they flourish and so do the people around them….

…While investing in women lifts many lives, the inverse is also true. In societies where women’s rights and roles are denied, girls are forbidden from attending school or they pay a very heavy price to try to do so. Few have the right to decide whether or when to get married or become mothers. Poverty, political oppression, and even violent extremism often follow…

…These struggles can’t be separated, and neither can their solutions…

…This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way.  The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. That’s the largest allocation in more than a decade – since we last had a Democratic president, I might add.

In addition to new funding, we’ve launched a new program that will be the centerpiece of our foreign policy, the Global Health Initiative, which commits us to spending $63 billion over six years to improve global health by investing in efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality, prevent millions of unintended pregnancies, and avert millions of new HIV infections, among other goals.

Indeed, empowering women is one of the smartest and cost-efficient ways there is  to fight, “Poverty, political oppression, and even violent extremism.” As I noted last spring,

According to UNFPA, the cost of all eight of the Millenium Development Goals would be $64.7 billion dollars. Of that,

The total 2010 costs for sexual and reproductive health, which include family planning and maternal health, are estimated at $27.4 billion; $32.5 billion for HIV/AIDS; and $4.8 billion for basic research, data collection and policy analysis.

Okay, that is a lot of money, but not really if you put it in perspective. It is less than 4% of the $700 billion bailout package and less than 5% of the $664 billion Department of Defense 2010 Budget Request. And it is going to save lives instead of destroying them and is guaranteed not to be spent on golf outings and corporate jets.

It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will carry out Clinton’s financial promises and if so in what form.

In the meantime, our reaction to the Christmas Day airplane incident is predictably machismo, predicated on deflecting accusations (from both the left and the right) of appearing “flaccid” in response to a would be terrorist who literally used his balls to try to blow up a plane.  We seem hell-bent on ignoring the wisdom of empowering women that Clinton spoke of, focusing instead on over-powering and protecting ourselves with an odd combination of Playboy sci-fi vision

meets Madam Sasha.

And there is reason to believe that we are more than willing to spend quite a bit of money on snake oil solutions to  terrorism (a story that broke in of all places, Playboy and has been roundly ignored by the mainstream media). No question, all this scanning of our minds and private parts is going to cost a pretty bundle (with almost 20,000 airports in the U.S. alone with the cost of these scanning  machines estimated to each cost something having 6 figures, you do the math) and in terms of saving lives be a ridiculously inappropriate expenditure of money.

Which brings us to the bad boy country du jour…  In our attempts to address the issue of Yemen as a terrorist training ground, instead of bombing them to smithereens, we might do well to pay attention to the very wise Helen Thomas who had the temerity to ask during a recent press briefing why the Christmas day bombing took place:

Thomas: “And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.”

Brennan: “Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents… They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he’s (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.”

Thomas: “And you’re saying it’s because of religion?”

Brennan: “I’m saying it’s because of an al Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.”

Thomas: “Why?”

Brennan: “I think this is a — long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.”

Thomas: “But you haven’t explained why.”

Why indeed. As I pointed out last week, if you want to cure something, be it breast cancer or terrorism, you need to know what the cause is.  And as Professor Cynthia Enloe has long suggested, to fully address militarism and its harms, you need to look at its impact on women’s lives.  Not surprisingly in Yemen, where a large portion of the population is poor and uneducated, violence against women is a very significant problem,

According to a World Organization Against Torture report published in 2002, one of the first exploratory studies undertaken in Yemen revealed that 46.3% of the women questioned had experienced violence from their spouses or other family members at some point in their lives. Recent studies examining the prevalence of violence against women in Yemen have yielded staggering figures regarding contemporary levels of assault in the nation. Typically, the majority of violent acts against women occur in homes, while the range of what constitutes abuse varies; intimidation, sexual violence, physical force, emotional abuse, and home arrest are all disheartening manifestations of abuse. Research has estimated roughly 50.9% of women suffer from a degree of intimidation on a regular basis, while 54.5% will experience some risk of physical violence at least once in their lifetimes.

Dr. Samir al-Shamiri, a Sociological professor at Aden University, specializing in research of domestic violence in Yemen, has compiled an extensive amount of statistics on the subject in order to increase public awareness of the plight of women. According to his research, 17.3% of women are victims of sexual violence, while 28.2% of women suffer from several restrictions upon their freedom of mobility. Dr. al-Shamiri has further concluded that while 44.5% of women suffer from at least three of the above-mentioned forms of abuse, only 28.2% do not suffer from any form of violence or intimidation. However, there is a distinct possibility that the figure may in actuality be much higher, as it is difficult to acquire a representative polling bases when so many individuals are afraid to discuss their situations.

And in neighboring Saudi Arabia, there are reports that Yemeni women are being used as human shields by Houthi forces.  However, despite Clinton’s rhetoric, empowering Yemeni women is not likely to be an integral part of the U.S. strategy in Yemen, any more than it has been  in Afghanistan or Iraq except as a justification for military action.  However, thanks to organizations such as Rising Voices, Yemeni women are being given opportunities to participate more widely in the political discussion in their country,

Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian of Yemeni Arab descent, has caused much media attention because of his attempted bomb attack on a flight to USA. Another shocking revelation was Abdulmutallab’s conviction that he was trained by AL-Qaeda in Yemen and there are many others in Yemen planning to bring down American jets.

The mainstream media is filled with all these news along with stereotypes but they rarely portray what the common people of Yemen are thinking about. There are not many options to get those perspectives.

With the help of a Rising Voices microgrant, the project “Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques” is teaching blogging to female politicians, activists, and human right workers in Yemen to bring them in global conversation.

There is more on the Rising Voices work in Yemen here.  The U.S. will no doubt spend billions fighting ‘terrorism’ in Yemen with weapons, military personnel and private  contractors (while President Obama has said we won’t send troops, that remains to be seen and does not rule out the use of private contractors), and as it always is, this military response will be detrimental to women’s well-being in Yemen. If anything is done to empower Yemeni women, it will likely be as an afterthought, not in the spirit of Secretary Clinton’s remarks, and that is the true disconnect in regard to women’s human rights, not only for women in Yemen, but throughout the world.

The NYT asks 8 male and 2 female authors  to pick noteworthy events of the last 10 years.

Time says 2 of the top 10 Tweeters are women–Miley and Oprah.

Politico can only come up with 1 woman in its list of 10  ten political Tweeters–Sarah Palin.

Publishers Weekly list of top 10  books–don’t even need any fingers for this one, no women, nada, zip.

Amazon’s Best of 2009 includes 2 books written by women in their list of top 10 books.

Time’s list of 10 Best College Presidents includes only 2 women.

Time’s very bizarre list of Top 10 List of Performing Polilticians (in order):

1. Orrin Hatch
2. Lee Atwater
3. Delay Goes Dancing
4. Bill Clinton
5. John Ashcroft
6. Karl Rove
7. Janet Reno
8. Sarah Palin
9. Richard Nixon
10. Condoleeza Rice

David Sirota’s list of top 10 quotations of the decade.  Apparently women didn’t  say anything.

Excellent commentary on the systemic male fail exclusion of women here and here.