(WOMENSENEWS)--

Cheers

Female police officers from India deployed as United Nations peacekeepers in Liberia since January have been awarded Peacekeeping Medals for their work in emergency situations and crime prevention. Alan Doss, a special representative for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, told the women's force, "Your presence is an encouragement for Liberian women to come forward and help rebuild their country by participating in the forces of law and order."

Also, at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Aug. 13, the secretary-general inducted 12 women into the U.N.'s first all-female class of recruits for the U.N.'s security force. The U.N. General Assembly has set a goal of building a security staff that is 50 percent female.

More News to Cheer This Week:

• Between 77 and 90 percent of girls in Australian secondary schools have received the HPV vaccine Gardasil, the Melbourne Herald reported Aug. 17. The government has funded free vaccines for the next two years for women aged 18 to 26. Gardasil is 100 percent effective in stopping two strains of HPV that cause about 70 percent of cervical cancer cases.
• Half of the 18 judicial appointments made by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Aug. 20 were women, a substantial increase from the eight out of 26 women named to Superior Court judgeships in June, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Aug. 21. Seventy-three percent of California's judges are men.
• Aug. 24 marked the first anniversary of over-the-counter availability of Plan B emergency contraception to women 18 and older.
• India will launch its Department of Women and Child Development Nov. 14 to handle women's issues and child protection and justice services, the Hindu reported Aug. 21. The new department will control 31 agencies. Meanwhile, the Bharuch state government is recruiting female employees for the first time to patrol dense woods and forests to catch poachers and timber smugglers.
• Dr. Pauleen Lane, former mayor of Trafford in Manchester, England, won a discrimination case over being banned from breastfeeding her newborn son in the mayoral vehicle during her term in 2005, the BBC reported Aug. 23. Lane had decided to breastfeed her son for a year but was asked to take her own car, despite being on official duty, whenever her baby accompanied her. Lane will donate the $14,000 settlement to charity.
• Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy, two-time Olympic soccer gold medalists and teammates, will be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in New York on Aug. 26, the Associated Press reported. "One of the things we took tremendous pride in when we were playing is that they now had role models, unlike us," said Foudy, who was part of the inaugural Women's World Cup team in 1991 with Hamm. This year's competition will be held from Sept. 10 to 30 in China.

Jeers

An Aug. 20 report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights detailed the rapes of Darfur women by soldiers and government militias and said the government of Sudan failed to investigate the crimes, the News.com.au Web site reported. Women and daughters were raped in front of their family members and were forced to cook and to serve food to their abductors but could only eat leftovers.

The report urges the Sudanese government to protect women and children from gender-based violence, which is rampant in the war-torn region. More than 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict and 2.5 million have been displaced.

In an attack on the village of Deribat in December, for example, militiamen subjected about 50 women to multiple rapes and abducted children; 36 civilians were also killed in their homes, the report found.

The report called for an independent investigative body to look into the crimes.

More News to Jeer This Week:

• Twenty percent of 1,114 women in the U.S. Air Force show at least one major symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder after deployment in Iraq, U.S. News and World Report reported Aug. 14. A University of Michigan study linked PTSD to family-work conflict; women who experience higher levels of conflict had more symptoms of anxiety and depression.
• Muslim women who cover their heads or faces with the veil face difficulties finding jobs, Reuters reported Aug. 21. In Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia women with the niqab, which reveals only the eyes, rarely find jobs, whereas women who wear only a headscarf fare better. In Turkey, secular laws bar head coverings in the workplace. And in the United States, women with the niqab are generally not welcomed in the workplace, even though laws do not prohibit the veil.
• A Ugandan government survey found that 70 percent of women and about 60 percent of men believe it is sometimes justified for a man to beat his wife, the New Vision newspaper reported Aug 19. In the same survey, it was found that 60 percent of maternal deaths occur within six weeks of delivery but less than one-quarter of mothers receive postpartum care within the critical first two days. Of deliveries, 42 percent are attended by a skilled provider and 23 percent by a traditional healer.
• Three Pakistani women die from pregnancy-related complications every hour, the Gulf Times reported Aug. 18. The three leading causes of maternal mortality are hemorrhage, hypertension and infection, and over 80 percent of women deliver their children in the presence of unskilled labor attendants, a report from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Pakistan concluded.
• Two U.S. filmmakers, Michealene Risley and Lauren Carara, both of San Mateo, Calif., were arrested in Zimbabwe and deported from the country while they were working on a documentary about rape, Voice of America reported Aug. 23. The film, "Silent Bravery," focuses on violence against women and girls.
• The South African Commission on Gender Equality issued a statement Aug. 23 to express its concern that it will be phased out and women's issues will not receive the attention they deserve as a result, the Mail and Guardian reported. The government has proposed creating an umbrella commission for all human rights issues. "International experience shows that when there are 'one-stop' commissions catering for all human rights issues, gender inequality acquires a lower status," said chair Joyce Piliso-Seroke.
• Adult women are twice as likely to know how much they weighed in high school as they are to know their current cholesterol number, although 63 percent of the women surveyed said they were concerned and aware of the risks associated with about high cholesterol, the Washington-based Society for Women's Health reported Aug. 21.

Noted:

More minority women are needed for the "Sister Study," a 10-year breast cancer study that will focus on 50,000 women whose sisters had breast cancer, the Detroit Free Press reported Aug. 17. Minority women now comprise 12 percent of the 39,000 women recruited. The study, conducted by the North Carolina-based National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, aims to find breast cancer causes and variations among ethnic groups.

In Memoriam:

Activist and feminist author Grace Paley, 84, died of breast cancer in Thetford, Vt., on Aug. 22. Her stories explored the daily lives, joys and frustrations of women.

"Every woman writing in these years has had to swim in the feminist wave," she wrote. "No matter what she thinks of it, even if she bravely swims against it, she has been supported by it--the buoyancy, the noise, the saltiness."

Paley taught at Sarah Lawrence College and helped found the Women's Pentagon Action, Feminist Press and the PEN Women's Committee, among others. In 2003, she wrote an essay called "Why Peace is (More Than Ever) a Feminist Issue," excerpted in Ms. Magazine, where she was one of the original 53 signers of the 1972 "We Had Abortions" petition.

Florence Howe, publisher of the Feminist Press who worked with Paley for more than 35 years at the press, recalled that every time Paley gave a speech before a large audience, she would announce: "This is what a feminist looks like." Howe described fondly the impression she made, as a "little plump Jewish lady, with her hair in a bun, kind of frumpy. No one could resist her."

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

For more information:

"Liberia's Market Women Test President's Promise":
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3025/

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Aug. 20 Sudan report
[Adobe PDF format]:
http://www.ohchr.org/english/press/docs/Deribat_report_20Aug07.pdf

War Resisters League, Interview with Grace Paley:
http://www.warresisters.org/nva0300-4.htm

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