There have been numerous stories about how GPS enabled phones can sometimes endanger women by making it easy for their abusers to stalk them and track them down, but as this report from MobileActive demonstrates, cellphone technology can also help to improve women’s safety.

For women in Egypt, sexual harassment is an unwelcome but all too common part of life. In 2008, the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights released statistics stating that 83% of Egyptian women and 98% of foreign women in Egypt reported exposure to sexual harassment. HarassMap, a project based in Cairo, plans to give women an outlet to report instances of harassment.

Combining FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi’s mapping platform, HarassMap aims to be a voice for women…

…Unfortunately, although a law against sexual harassment was proposed in 2008, it was never voted on and there are currently no laws against sexual harassment in Egypt (although according to The National, a new law was recently drafted). The goal of HarassMap is to once again draw attention to the problem of sexual harassment in order to bring the issue back to light, and hopefully push the government to pass laws that give women more legal recourse against their harassers. According to Chiao, it’s very difficult for women to report sexual harassment to the police; they can, but it’s a difficult process and often futile. In fact, some police forces have taken an active part in street harassment at times. Strict anti-harassment laws would hopefully give women more leverage to report problems.

To learn more about the technology involved, click here.

Despite this oh so balanced graphic, only 7 of the Daily Beast’s list of 25 Top Liberal Journalists are women.

According to Tunku Varadarajan who compiled the list, it

distills responses canvassed from about 75 academics, politicians, journalists, and denizens of corporate America.

One wonders about the male/female ration of those canvassed…

H/t to Feministe for catching this latest example of male fail journalism.

For those of you in Louisville, KY, Feminist Peace Network Director Lucinda Marshall will be participating in a panel discussion at Spalding University on February 24th about women and media where she’ll be discussing  the systemic trivializing and marginalizing of women in the media and what we can do about it:

• The Spalding University School of Liberal Studies is pleased to announce the 2010 BASEHEART LECTURE:
• “Women in the Media,” a panel featuring Elizabeth Kramer (WFPL Arts Reporter); Cameron Lawrence (Writer/Producer); and Lucinda Marshall (Director, Feminist Peace Network).
• Weds., February 24th
• 7 PM
• Egan Leadership Center Lectorium

This morning I received an email asking for my help in publicizing a new HBO documentary film about New York Times columnist Nick Kristof.  Here is my response:

(Update–in a very strange request from someone who is trying to drum up pr, after posting this, I was asked to remove the gentleman’s name from my response. According to his letter, he represents Attention for HBO and began by saying that he was writing on behalf of HBO Documentary Films. I have several queries out as to a reasonable explanation. The film’s producer says that they are not aware of this marketing effort. I have an inquiry in to HBO as well. More when I hear further. For the time being the name is removed.)

Dear *****,

While I admire much of Mr. Kristof’s work, I am going to decline your request for several reasons.  As admirable as it is that he uses his very valuable media real estate to draw attention to human rights issues and especially violence against women, the reality is that much of what he talks about are issues that women have been trying to publicize for a very long time.

As important as it is for there to be men working to raise awareness about these atrocities, the Feminist Peace Network blog is dedicated to providing a space for women’s voices and my experience is that our male allies tend to get plenty of publicity for their work and when it is given by blogs such as this, it is rarely reciprocated.

What is needed, desperately needed, is for outlets such as HBO to showcase women’s work for social justice.  Imagine if instead you were to show Abigail Disney’s, “Pray The Devil Back To Hell” about the brave actions of women in Liberia to end violence in their country.  Or a movie showcasing Naomi Klein’s  analysis of economics or Riane Eisler’s work on the value of caring and partnership. Or you could even take a look at how few women there are on OpEd pages or whose movies get shown on major cable outlets like HBO.  These are just a few of the many possibilities.

I will be happy to discuss this further and to help you put together an advisory board of women in media and in social justice to address these issues.

Sincerely,

Lucinda Marshall, Director
Feminist Peace Network

The only thing that would have made this better is if Samantha Bee had used The Daily Show, with it’s 80%+ male guest  and correspondent list as an example:

And then there’s this (via Common Dreams):

To help address this, Republican National Committee co-chair Jan Larimer is committed to recruiting more women candidates to run under the party’s banner. It seems, however, that Larimer is running into a little trouble.

“Women sometimes need a little more handholding, or they need their friends to help them make a decision. And by our going in and talking to them and recruiting and educating and training them to either get involved in a campaign or become a candidate, we’re giving them the tools so that they can do that on their own,” Larimer added [emphasis added].

On a related note, right-wing radio host and Republican powerhouse Rush Limbaugh told Fox News this morning, “I’m a huge supporter of women…. I don’t know where all this got started. I love the women’s movement — especially when walking behind it.”