You were looking for gender and rights

April 1st, 2011

Meet Mauro Cabral

Argentinian historian and philosopher and trans and intersex activist. Mauro Cabral is co-director of GATE (Global Action for Trans Equality) and member of the Latin American Consortium on Intersex Issues (Consorcio Latinoamericano de Trabajo sobre Intersexualidad).

Statistically, situations related to intersexuality have place in one over 2,500 births. Every time a child whose sexual and reproductive anatomy varies from both male and female bodily standards is born, his o her body is forced into surgical and hormonal treatments aimed to ‘normalize’ the appearance of his or her genitals. Among the international frameworks on Human Rights, at present only the not binding Yogyakarta Principles make a specific call for States “to ensure that no child’s body is irreversibly altered by medical procedures in an attempt to impose a gender identity without the full, free and informed consent of the child in accordance with the age and maturity of the child and guided by the principle that in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration”. in their article 18 on “Protection from Medical Abuses”

In what sense is intersex children’s genital mutilation a feminizing procedure?

The majority of the different interventions done to normalize intersex children’s bodies are addressed to create female genitals because from a medical point of view they are technologically easier to make than male genitals.

Is it also a political issue?

In medicine it is basically a technical issue which, from the intersex activism is remitted also to the running of stereotypes that have to do with the fact that sexuality and the male gender are intrinsically dependent on the existence of a functional penis and that it is therefore easier to become a woman than a man if there is not a male body sustaining such masculinity. However, the issue could be seen the other way around and think that masculinity is more fragile because it has more requirements… These are activist interpretations on decisions doctors make without them appearing in an explicit way.

Spanish Version

read more »

CategoryGender issues, Interviews | Comment10 Comments »

Tags:
March 24th, 2011

On sexual and reproductive rights, Meet Jacqueline Sharpe

Jacqueline Sharpe is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist from Trinidad and Tobago and the president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), a global service provider and a leading advocate of sexual and reproductive health and rights working in 150 countries. Its areas of action include abortion, access, adolescents, advocacy and AIDS/HIV.

Although there is an area of over-lap between them, sexual and reproductive rights are two separate issues.

Sexual rights include the right of all people to make free and responsible decisions about all aspects of their own sexuality, including deciding to be sexually active or not and protecting and promoting their reproductive and sexual health; The right to be free from discrimination, coercion and violence in one’s sexual life, and when making sexual decisions; The right to expect and demand equality, full consent, mutual respect and shared responsibility in all sexual relationships and to pursue a satisfying, safe and pleasurable sexual life.

On the other side reproductive rights include the rights of couples and individuals to freely and responsibly decide the number, spacing and timing of their children; The right to have the information, education and means to make the above decisions; The right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health and the right to make decisions free from discrimination, coercion and violence.

Sexual and reproductive rights are included in international conventions such as CEDAW (see blogroll), the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, and the Plan of Action which emerged from the International Conference on Population and Development (El Cairo, 1994).

In the IPPF’s webpage it is stated that “young people (those who are btw 10 and 24 years old) face the barriers of cost, stigma and fear of going to a clinic. The lack of information targeted at their needs and (in many countries) the need for parental consent, limits young people’s  awareness of the issues of sex and sexuality. High rates of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections are powerful evidence that programmes are failing to meet their needs”.

How does IPPF work to meet young people’s needs?

We strongly believe that young people should be aware of their sexual and reproductive life to make decisions. Since we recognize and respect that people have belief systems what we try to do is provide young people with information, education and services and also to have them negotiate their values so that the decisions they make are congruent with themselves.

IPPF works with religious leaders in several countries also to have young people negotiate with them. In the Family Planning Association of Trinidad and Tobago, for instance, we have a specific project on youth sexuality in the context of preventing HIV and we have been working with the Anglican church. We started with one priest and now have several church communities wanting to participate in our programme. I think it is something that has to be done project by project and place by place.

In addition to provide services to young people we also want to encourage them to participate in the organization. At the moment 20 percent of the board directors of IPPF are people under the age of 25.

read more »

CategoryGender issues, Interviews | Comment8 Comments »

Tags:
March 1st, 2011

Between sexuality, gender and rights: A story from Sub-Saharan Africa

Both the majority of worlwide countries  (38 out of 76) criminalizing same-sex sexual activities and the one with the first constitution in the world to explicitly prohibit unfair discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (South Africa) belong to the African continent.

Last month the first ever African Same Sex Sexualities and Gender Diversity (ASSGD) conference took place in Pretoria, South Africa. A country that in these matters has carried out some other legal steps that constitute records world-wide. In 2006 it became the fifth country in the world –and the first in the continent- to legalise same-sex marriages and it is one of the few countries where it is explicitly permitted to change gender on official documents (the others are Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Argentina).

“The reality on the ground is very different from the laws”, says He-Jin Kim, the representative at the conference of GenderDynamiX, a South African Human Rights organisation dedicated to promoting the rights of transgender people and one of the organizers of the event.

read more »

CategoryGender issues | Comment8 Comments »

Tags:
February 8th, 2011

Gender inequality, a HIV social driver

Worldwide fewer people are becoming infected from HIV and fewer are dying from AIDS. Deaths among children younger than 15 years of age are also declining. What remains is discrimination and lack of universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. Two thirds of the 15 million people who would need treatment do not receive it. 

According to the UNAIDS (UN programme on HIV/AIDS) 2010 report 22.5 out of around 33.3 million people globally living with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, where young women between 15 and 24 years old are 8 times more likely than men to be HIV positive. 80% of the women living with HIV worldwide live in the region.

Gender inequality remains one of the main HIV social drivers. According to the UNAIDS report the HIV epidemics and sex and reproductive health are intertwined. HIV related causes contribute to at least 20% of maternal deaths and countries with high HIV rates also have high teenage pregnancy and unsafe abortion rates while very few countries involve men in reproductive health programmes. Violence and HIV rates are also often associated.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia are the only regions where the number of people living with HIV has almost tripled since 2000. The proportion of women living with HIV is also growing. Female sex workers, people who inject drugs and men who have sex with men, whom remain often underserved in HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, account for most of the new infections both in these regions and worldwide.

Nafis Sadik is Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General and UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. As former head of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) she became the first woman, in the history of the United Nations, to lead one of its major voluntarily funded programmes. She is an expert on international maternal and child health, reproductive and sexual health, including family planning, on population and development and gender and development. She was born in Pakistan and lives in the United States.

read more »

CategoryGender issues | Comment7 Comments »

Tags:
February 2nd, 2011

The invisible barriers

At the end of 2010 the European Union officially ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, becoming the first intergovernmental group to sign on to an international human rights treaty. According to the Convention, which entered into force on January 22, 2011 persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments “which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”. In the European Union they represent 15% of the residents from the 27 countries (more than 80 million people). One in six has a disability that ranges from mild to severe while over one third of people aged over 75 have disabilities that restrict them to some extent and the number is set to rise as the EU population grows progressively older. Eighty per cent of the 650 million persons with disabilities worldwide live in developing countries.

The convention has been signed by 147 states worldwide including all 27 EU Member States and ratified by 97 states (16 of them in the EU).  Ratifying countries should take action in access to education, employment, transport, infrastructures and buildings open to the public, granting the right to vote, improving political participation and ensuring full legal capacity of all people with disabilities. A Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities will monitor all the measures taken to give effect to the obligations under the Convention and  follow up the progress made in that regard.

Equality between men and women stands out as one of the conventions’ general principles while one of its articles is dedicated to ‘women with disabilities’. The same text recognizes in fact that “women and girls with disabilities are subject to multiple discrimination and in this regard States Members shall take measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment by them of all human rights and fundamental freedoms”.

The first thing that comes to my mind while reading the Convention text is the theatre play of Dones no Estàndards (non-standard women) I have recently seen in Barcelona. “La discapacitat, discrimina o sedueix?” (Does disability discriminates or does it seduce?), a fierce criticism towards the lack of respect of the health, sexual and reproductive rights of women with disabilities and a claim to the unspoken gender-violence they receive. The moment to know more about it has come.

read more »

CategoryGender issues | CommentNo Comments »

Tags:
December 5th, 2010

Meet Tamara Adrián

Lawyer and professor of commercial law at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB) and at Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), in 2004 Adrián was the first Venezuelan citizen appealing to the Constitutional Assembly for the recognition of her identity. In spite of having a gender reassignment surgery in 2002 in Thailand she still legally has a male’s name, the name she was born with. Until today she has not received any answer on her petition yet. On 18 October 2010 Adrián postulated as judge of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice with the side objective of also “claiming transsexuals’ rights and testing the tolerance of a country with homophobic institutions”. The resolution on her postulation (she has already passed the first selection phase) will probably be public by the end of the year. She is a lesbian, a feminist, a member of the Latin American and Caribbean Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA-LAC board) and the founder of the DIVERLEX association (Difference and Equality through the Law) working for the implementation of legal measures protecting sex and gender related human rights.

From a legal point of view what is the situation of transsexuals and transgender in Venezuela?

We simply don’t exist. There exist no public politics for the recognition of one’s identity, nor for medical treatment or protection against discrimination in all fields: labour, studies, etc.

You underwent sex-reassignment surgery in 2002 but your ID still says you have a male’s name. What does this mean in your daily life?

For some day-to-day activities, like the gym or the grocery store, I use a fake ID, always letting civil servants know it is and that they can denounce me if they want to, which until now no one has. Anyway, my transsexuality is not visible so also when using my real ID people generally think that there is some mistake behind the name they see. At the same time I am a well known person in my country and that makes everything easier. But for the majority of the transsexuals in Venezuela daily life is not easy at all, that is why I am carrying out this struggle, for civil responsibility and for the respect of human rights, so other people in the future can achieve their constitutional right to the ‘self-determination’ more easily.

read more »

CategoryGender issues, Interviews | Comment19 Comments »

Tags:
November 25th, 2010

November 25 reflections

The sentences in the drawing came out of a three days European and Spanish forum against gender-based violences that took place last weekend in Barcelona. I thought I would only dedicate this post to it so to have for this International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against women more datas, rational analysis and facts to contribute to an understanding of the issue. Then I thought that maybe, if I really wanted –as I do- to do my small part to keep changing things- that for once I would also express my feelings, something ‘women’ are often not taken into account for doing and ‘men’ are better avoiding.

When do I myself feel I receive violence for being considered a woman?
Anytime I am scared to walk alone at night. Anytime I am treated as a possession, a doll to dress and undress, a everlasting kid or ‘condemned’ as a witch, a slut, a hysterical if I rebel. Anytime I hear a male-chauvinist comment or someone calls me whistling in the streets like if I were a dog. Anytime I receive the message that I would do better hiding my intelligence. Anytime I see that inspite of the immense cultural, social, economic, sex and gender orientational factors (that make it impossible to reduce it all to men and women and least at a global level) the basic message of the patriarchy is one, common and mostly accepted and I don’t know how to fight against it. Anytime I hear some high school student I am working on gender issues through theatre with that it has always been like this and it will always be. Anytime my will of doing well my job and to have a child collide with a system that desperately need them both but doesn’t allow them to be possible unless I am willing to fight it all in an uneven game. Anytime I need a 25 November.
And I am undoubtedly a lucky woman.

Here goes the original post:
A three-days space “to break the silence towards violence against women thanks to active participation, sharing of experiences, reflection on the causes and mechanisms that allow, justify and perpetrate it and to express the necessity that we, as members of society, have to maintain other kinds of relationship, until the day that it won’t matter which sex or gender we belong to”, Montserrat Vilà says. “And, of course, an event to sensitize public awareness and so to prevent such violence”.

read more »

CategoryGender issues | Comment4 Comments »

Tags:
November 16th, 2010

Meet Haleh Esfandiari

Haleh Esfandiari is the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. She is an expert on women’s issues and democracy in the Middle East, as well as contemporary Iranian politics, and she has also worked as a journalist. A dual citizen of Iran and the United States, in 2007 she spent 105 days in Tehran’s Evin Prison, accused by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence with espionage and “endangering national security through propaganda against the system.” In My Prison, My Home: One Women’s Story of Captivity in Iran (2009, Ecco Press), Esfandiari recounts her experience while setting it within the context of Iran’s recent history.

What is it that you think you’ll never forget about those months in prison?
Prison leaves its marks forever and little things keep triggering your memory. For example, if I see the moon I always remember that the third time I saw it from the bars of my cell I knew that I had been in jail for three months or every time I see a butterfly I remember that one day, when I was walking on the small terrace of the women’s ward, I saw a white butterfly and I thought to myself ‘I am stuck here, what are you doing here?’ I will never forget being blindfolded during my interrogation for days and weeks and months, I will never forget being interrogated for eight, nine hours a day, I will never forget the day I was released, I will never forget the day my mother passed away and I wasn’t there.

read more »

CategoryInterviews | Comment4 Comments »

Tags:
October 16th, 2010

The gender of the news

On 10 November 2009, an ‘ordinary’ day of almost one year ago, teams of volunteers belonging to universities, media research centers and civil society organizations in 108 countries around the world monitored 1,365 newspapers, radio and television newscasts and internet news websites with the objective to find out what was the world portrayed in the media from a gender perspective point of view. They analyzed 17,795 news stories and 38,253 people in those stories.

“The idea of the Global Media Monitoring Project was mooted at the conference ‘Women empowering communication’ the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) organized in Bangkok in 1994 in collaboration with the International Women’s Tribune Centre (based in New York) and Isis-Manila conference”, remembers Sarah Macharia, Programme Manager for Media and Gender Justice at WACC. “Several months after the first Gender Media Monitoring Project (February 1995), coordinated by the Canadian NGO Media Watch, media monitoring was officially recognized as a tool for change towards gender equality in the Beijing Platform for Action. WACC took up the challenge to coordinate all subsequent GMMPs, which fall well within the organisation’s overall goal to promote communication rights, in particular the rights of marginalized groups”.

read more »

CategoryGender issues | Comment10 Comments »

Tags:
October 8th, 2010

Meet Suraya Pakzad

We shall prepare the path for you and your children

We shall fight now so that you shall survive

We shall die now so that you shall live.

Suraya Pakzad

Suraya Pakzad grew up during the years of armed resistance against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. Fearing for their teenage daughter’s future, her parents arranged for her to marry at the age of 14. At 15, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter. Her father and her husband were both educated men, and neither of them stopped her from studying. But she hid her marriage from classmates and teachers, since school rules prohibited wives from studying alongside unmarried students.

By the time she earned her literature degree at Kabul University in 1992, Suraya already had three daughters. In 1998 she began to help Afghan women in Kabul by setting up covert schools for girls under the oppressive rule of Taliban. She started in her home in defiance of them, who banned females going to school or being educated.  Pakzad was the first to register a woman NGO in the post-Taliban era and quickly got the attention of international donors for her work. “Then I never looked back and was able to build a core team of not highly qualified but dedicated people that helped me a lot to support vulnerable women and families”.

read more »

CategoryInterviews | Comment10 Comments »

Tags:
« Older Entries