Instrumental Activities of Daily Living

In Different Information

Worldwide

A vicious anti-feminist backlash stuns South Korea:

The nation, which positioned 102nd on the planet when it comes to gender parity in a World Financial Discussion board rating, has recorded the most important gender pay hole within the OECD for many years, at the moment standing at 32 per cent. Almost 70 per cent of publicly listed corporations haven’t any feminine government, and girls account for 19 per cent of the seats within the Nationwide Meeting, virtually on par with North Korea. Sexual harassment and misconduct are rife, particularly the spycam porn crimes the place girls are secretly filmed, together with at bathrooms, workplaces and colleges. Whereas the nation, largely free from weapons, is thought to be one of many most secure locations on the planet, almost 90 per cent of victims of violent crimes are girls, with their abuse or killings by intimate companions making each day headlines. However girls have pushed again. 

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The backlash reached a fever pitch final 12 months when males’s rights activists waged a battle towards the picture of pinching fingers, typically used to point one thing small, claiming it ridiculed the scale of male genitalia. In a marketing campaign many referred to as a weird, McCarthyian witch-hunt, high corporations and state establishments that used such pictures apologized for hurting the lads’s emotions and eliminated the photographs from their promotional supplies.

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The wedding of right-wing politics and anti-feminism is a well-recognized story worldwide, from Spain to the U.S., with feminist actions typically marked by a step ahead adopted by two steps again, a modicum of progress adopted by years of backlash. However the ferocity of the animosity towards feminism – and the poisonous political local weather it created – has left many in South Korea surprised. They might be surprised, however they don’t seem to be immobilized. 

Human Rights Watch: Chile’s New President-Elect Sets out a Feminist Government: Guarantees Ought to Be Realized, and Extra:

Final Friday, Chile’s new president-elect, Gabriel Boric, who ran on a progressive feminist platform, introduced his first cupboard. Fourteen of the 24 ministers are girls. This isn’t the one signal of Boric conserving his promise. Key political posts resembling ministers of the inside, justice, and protection are to be occupied by girls and, for the primary time, the Ministry of Girls and Gender Fairness will likely be a part of the federal government’s core “political workforce.”

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There will definitely be challenges. A feminist authorities will first need to deal with probably the most marginalized girls. Chile’s feminine workforce participation has lagged for years and with the Covid-19 pandemic it dropped to lower than 50 %. The variety of girls working in casual sectors, quite the opposite, elevated. Racism creates extra limitations for Indigenous and migrant girls, and intercourse staff are largely invisible in public insurance policies, regardless of the violence and stigma they face. Boric’s program and cupboard are a superb begin. Subsequent, they’ll have to take motion to ship on their feminist guarantees.

January 24: Pakistan’s first woman Supreme Court judge sworn in:

Pakistan has sworn in Ayesha Malik as its first feminine Supreme Court docket choose, a landmark event in a nation the place activists say the legislation is commonly wielded towards girls.

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Final 12 months, she outlawed a deeply invasive and medically discredited virginity test used on girls who reported being raped or sexually assaulted.

Girls in Pakistan wrestle for justice in rape and sexual assault instances and the check was seen as a method for investigating authorities to discredit victims by casting aspersion on their character.

Afghanistan: Threatened and Beaten, Afghan Women Defy Taliban With Protests

The dismissal of feminine staff is considered one of many indignities which have prompted small bands of ladies like Ms. Elham to take to the streets in protest, risking beatings or arrest. Taliban gunmen have pointed weapons on the demonstrators, sprayed them with pepper spray and referred to as them ‘whores’ and ‘puppets of the West,’ Human Rights Watch stated. Bearing placards and elevating their fists, the ladies have resisted persistent makes an attempt to erase them from public life.

The protests hardly ever final for lengthy. Taliban enforcers have roughed up girls, crushed them and sprayed them with chemical irritants, activists say. Ms. Elham and others say they’ve acquired threatening cellphone calls from intelligence officers, warning them to remain silent or face unspecified ‘penalties.’

‘He requested me if I knew they’d prisons for individuals like me,’ Ms. Elham stated of a Taliban intelligence officer who ordered her to finish the demonstrations she has helped to arrange.

(If you’re one of many idiots wailing & moaning about “oppression” and “persecution” due to science-based public well being measures like masks and vaccine mandates, you may have completely no #$@!ing clue what REAL oppression and persecution is and you’re pissing us off!)

Poland: Polish lady dies after being forced to carry dead fetus for every week. The Polish authorities “has blood on its palms”. 

India: For a republic where women matter: Mrinal Pande writes: The state must take step one in direction of inspecting girls’s precise experiences within the contexts of unequal pay, allocation of inferior work and denial of rights over their minds and our bodies:

When all is alleged and carried out, actuality will not be fabricated from legal guidelines and information, however the precise experiences of human beings. Actual-life tales of ladies surfacing sometimes in our republic reveal how regardless of constitutional ensures of equality, the state has seldom, if ever, intervened systematically to make sure that girls are handled equally. We’ve a really progressive Structure on paper. Article 14 ensures equality earlier than legislation to all of the nation’s residents. Article 15 prohibits discrimination on numerous grounds, together with faith, caste, race and gender. Article 16 offers for equality of alternative and equal pay for equal work to all in issues of public employment. However our legal guidelines have by no means severely improved the unequal phrases of male entitlement over girls’s labour and/or their our bodies.
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Did we, the ladies, ever give our consent to be dominated by a poisonous model of masculinity that might deal with us as merely a vote financial institution and/or second-class residents? We could sometimes be handed crumbs of progressive or revised laws, however what do they matter? Just like the native princes of Raja Gangadhar’s period, within the title of loyalty to the queen or Hindu Rashtra, we’re nonetheless largely denied our important standing as impartial and equal residents. A feminist principle of state has barely been formed a lot much less articulated. However, as Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, each reform was as soon as an opinion.

Honduras: Can the first female President usher in a brand new period for girls?

Worldwide Cats:

Violence

 After an intensive manhunt and $250,000 reward, a transient man with a prolonged felony historical past was charged with murder for fatally stabbing 24-year-old Brianna Kupfer at her job in a Los Angeles furnishings retailer on January 17. The story made nationwide headlines, prompting Los Angeles Times columnist Erika Smith to ask why the January 7 deadly capturing of Tioni Theus — a 16-year-old Black lady and potential intercourse trafficking sufferer whose physique was left at a 110-Freeway on-ramp — didn’t get related ranges of consideration… On January 25, L.A. metropolis & county will contemplate a mixed $60,000 reward for info resulting in the the arrest and prosecution of the killer.

The identical day Kupfer was killed, in an unrelated murder at a downtown Los Angeles bus cease, Sandra Shells, a 70-year-old Black nurse on her approach to LA County-USC Medical Heart’s Emergency Division, the place she’d labored for 38 years, was struck within the face by an allegedly unhoused man, knocked down, suffered a fracture cranium and died 5 days later. The person, 48, arrested the identical day, was charged with homicide and is being held on $2 million bail.

The documentary We Need to Talk About Cosby grapples with the cognitive dissonance of “America’s Dad” being a predator.

Trafficking

Schools across the US are studying to show concerning the dangers and warning indicators of human trafficking, which incorporates being compelled into home servitude, industrial labor or intercourse work. In accordance with 2019 information gathered by the Polaris Project – a nonprofit that fights human trafficking, together with intercourse trafficking – 24% of survivors reported that they have been first trafficked earlier than they turned 18. 

In 2017, California grew to become the primary state to require human trafficking training for college kids and academics.  Tennessee, Florida and Virginia now require faculty employees to have formal coaching supposed to cease human trafficking.

Really useful objectives for colleges: 

1. Create a secure haven. 
2. Take note of triggers. 
3. Be inclusive. 
4. Dispel misconceptions and stereotypes. 
5. Use applicable contact and tone — don’t contact with out permission!

Particulars on the hyperlink in daring above. 

Banning Books

Book-banning In early February, Oklahoma state legislature will contemplate a invoice to ban publicly funded colleges and college libraries from having or selling any books that “handle the examine of intercourse, sexual preferences, sexual exercise, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identification, gender identification, or books with sexual content material that oldsters or guardians would possibly need to vet “earlier than their youngster is uncovered to it.” Mother and father or guardians might request the elimination of any title they really feel the availability covers, and workers failing to take away the ebook inside 30 days threat being fired. 

Oklahoma will not be alone. Different states contemplating bans — on books discussing race along with gender — embody Arkansas, Texas, and Virginia. 

Physicians fear how these insurance policies would have an effect on each intercourse training and illustration, significantly for LGBTQ+ youth. Some are calling on healthcare suppliers to fill in gaps within the intercourse training of their younger sufferers. Good luck with that. 

Perhaps we must always use these legal guidelines to ban books exhibiting males and/or whites in energy. That may make the discussions extra fascinating! Let youngsters learn solely Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. And naturally cat books. See how these “conservatives” like that. 

Poverty

In America about 1 in 3 youngster care staff go hungry AND the sunsetting of the kid tax credit score growth might depart extra households with out sufficient meals on the desk: 

In Washington state and Texas, one examine discovered 42% of kid care staff skilled meals insecurity, with 20% of child care workers experiencing very excessive meals insecurity. Excessive meals insecurity is when an individual experiences diminished high quality and number of weight loss program. Very excessive meals insecurity happens when an individual experiences disrupted consuming patterns and reduced food intake.

One other examine in Arkansas discovered that 40% of child care workers experienced food insecurity.

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Almost all U.S. youngster care staff are women, and half are people of color. This workforce is central to offering high-quality early childhood education to youngsters as much as 5 years outdated.

Well being (Or Not) 

In a single medscape article three horrific experiences of misogynistic gross medical negligence. One of many three concerned a number of victims of an ob/gyn investigated by the state Medical Board a number of time throughout 22 years due to infants completely harmed and deaths of sufferers and/or their infants throughout supply, but he was allowed to go on “training” medication. Now, having surrendered his license, he will not be compelled to face earlier than a choose, and might be eligible to regain his license after 2 years, altho’ his medical workplace stated he is determined to retire. Good for him, no justice for his victims & their households, it seems. The opposite 2 instances every contain trials, one gained altho’ the sufferer/plaintiff stays harmed, and one pending, however the latter sufferer/plaintiff could not win any justice if earlier than then the most cancers that the physician & his employees uncared for takes her life.

Copy/Abortion

Sure, these are associated: To soundly reproduce, we’d like abortion entry. 

California: Plans for California to change into a nationwide reproductive care “sanctuary” for these in search of reproductive care would possibly embody overlaying prices of journey, lodging, and procedures for individuals from different states. Anti-abortion organizations are combating all pro-abortion laws launched within the nation’s most populous state. 

(And I’m betting they’ll attempt to anger Californians that “our” tax {dollars} would fund a lot for “outsiders”. After all, really a lot of the cash would go to CA healthcare staff and lodgers and such.)

Georgia: Republican Home Speaker David Ralston of Blue Ridge said disinterest in additional abortion laws till the SCOTUS guidelines on Mississippi’s problem to Roe v. Wade, however State Sen. Bruce Thompson, of White, Georgia (an precise place there) — who’s operating statewide for labor commissioner — has launched a invoice cosponsored by 23 different GOP senators, reacting to the recent FDA ruling  by introducing a invoice to outlaw by-mail supply of abortion tablets, require a physician go to with ultrasound exams, a protracted consent type, after which coming again 24 hours afterward to obtain the tablets. It could additionally develop abortion reporting necessities, make doctor noncompliance a state crime, enable civil fines of at the least $100,000 per violation, threaten the doctor’s license, and justify malpractice fits even when girls endure no bodily hurt. All for the sake of how dangerous abortion-by-mail is to “females”.

At an abortion proper information convention selling a legislative decision going the wrong way, reaffirming abortion availability in Georgia, state Rep. Park Cannon, an Atlanta Democrat stated “Entry to abortion in Georgia is supported by 70% of voters and the elected officers are taking part in video games with well being care throughout a pandemic.”

Roula AbiSambra of the abortion rights group Amplify Georgia stated the invoice’s necessities are “demise by a thousand cuts” that might deter physicians from providing abortions altogether. If the invoice have been to move, Georgia would be a part of greater than a dozen Republican-led states with related measures, suggesting a well-coordinated nationwide effort by anti-abortion pursuits. (No matter what state populations really need.)

Reporting abortions to the state? Misogynist Large Brother is watching you. 

Illinois: More out of state girls coming to Illinois for abortion.

In accordance with the newest Illinois Division of Public Well being information obtainable, almost 9,700 out-of-state girls terminated a being pregnant in Illinois in 2020 in comparison with simply over 7,500 in 2019, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Advocates on each side of the talk over abortion stated the rise was anticipated, largely as a result of close by states have been enacting new legal guidelines to make it harder to an abortion and put extra laws on clinics.

These numbers might climb even greater, relying on what the U.S. Supreme Court docket decides on one of the vital important abortion case in years, that of Dobbs v. Jackson, a Mississippi legislation that prohibits abortion previous 15 weeks gestation. If the courtroom upholds the legislation, one thing many specialists anticipate to occur, it might decide the destiny of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that established the appropriate to terminate a being pregnant nationwide.

Montana: “For the protection of Montana girls,” state Lawyer Common Austin Knudsen filed a brief Jan 20 asking the state Supreme Court docket to overturn their 1999 opinion that the state structure’s proper to privateness ensures a lady’s entry to an abortion — the opinion Deliberate Parenthood is utilizing to problem three new abortion legal guidelines from Montana’s 2021 legislative session.

The legal guidelines being challenged would ban abortion after 20 weeks of being pregnant, prohibit entry to abortion tablets, and require abortion suppliers to ask sufferers in the event that they wish to view an ultrasound or hear the fetal heartbeat.

ERA

Christian Publish (surprisingly even-handed, contemplating the supply): Feminist groups push for ERA’s addition to Constitution as pro-life groups insist it’s dead:

In an announcement Friday, the Nationwide Group for Girls introduced that it was considered one of a number of feminist organizations taking part in a digital press convention on Thursday, which is the day they argue that the Equal Rights Modification ought to take impact. Thursday marks the second anniversary of Virginia’s ratification of the ERA, which made it the thirty eighth state to approve the modification.

Two Steps Ahead, One Step Again

New research finds that the extra girls enter a given STEM subject, the extra probably persons are to label it as a ‘smooth science’. 

rant

Amy Remeikis: Women’s anger is not dissipating – and politics as regular gained’t remedy it: Edited extract from her new ebook, On Reckoning:

The platitudes and the “that’s horrible, however what can we do” shrugs. The makes an attempt to maneuver on. The pushback and the patronising “when will these emotional girls cease being so emotional” sighs.

There isn’t a lady alive who wouldn’t recognise the indicators. In males, anger, regardless of how unreasonable, is at all times affordable. No less than at first look. In girls, that very same anger is irrational – spurred by emotion, not rationality.

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Anger may be damaging, nevertheless it can be transformative. Used effectively, it could possibly carry a few obligatory readability, stripping again all of the frosting to what lies rotten beneath. In attempting to appease with out providing options, the federal government discovered that anger solely grew. And for these feeling that anger, it was cleaning.

Media

Jesse Watters: Kamala’s VP Struggles Are ‘Typical Female Problem’:

Fox Information host Jesse Watters derided Vice President Kamala Harris Thursday, saying she was having ‘a typical feminine drawback’ as she struggles in Washington, D.C. and that ‘each single article is about her emotions.

Even Watters’ Fake colleagues advised him to cease it! Sounds to me extra like the everyday drawback the media have with highly effective girls. That feminine drawback. 

What Accountable Governance Seems Like

From The Guardian: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern introduced that she had canceled her wedding ceremony as a strict lockdown meant to manage the unfold of Omicron approaches. The brand new lockdown consists of an indoor masks mandate, restrictions on gatherings, and social distancing necessities. “I’m no completely different to, dare I say it, hundreds of different New Zealanders who’ve had rather more devastating impacts felt by the pandemic, probably the most gutting of which is the shortcoming to be with a beloved one generally when they’re gravely unwell,” Ardern stated. She has been engaged to tv host Clarke Gayford since 2019. In 2018, she gave beginning to their daughter.

Excellent news

19-Year-Old Woman Completes Around-the-World Solo Flight: Zara Rutherford flew 28,000 nautical miles of 5 continents to change into the youngest lady to complete a solo international flight

The younger pilot undertook her international flight as a part of an effort to encourage women and girls to think about aviation as a profession. She additionally supported two charities throughout her flight: Girls Who Code, which helps younger girls with pc science, and Dreams Soar, a nonprofit aiding girls and women in STEM (science, know-how, electronics and arithmetic) fields established by pilot and former record-holder Shaesta Waiz, per CNN Journey.

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Along with turning into the youngest lady to circumnavigate the globe, Rutherford is the primary lady to take action in a microlight plane, per BBC Information. The earlier document for youngest lady was set by Waiz in 2017, who was 30 on the time.

Canary Media (as in canary-in-coal-mine): Numerous girls lately are transferring up into key exec positions in local weather tech and sustainable industrial actual property. Please click on for particulars! Every particular person and enterprise title is linked for additional information. Some are very encouraging for potential greening of marginalized American communities: 

As girls be a part of boards, organizations can anticipate to learn…. Listed below are some key takeaways from the report:

• Including only one extra lady to an organization’s board, whereas conserving the board measurement unchanged, produces a return on funding of 8 to 13 foundation factors.
• When girls maintain at the least three seats on a board, this seems to have constructive outcomes for company governance.
• Of the 11 sectors studied, utilities confirmed the most important improve in proportion of corporations (9%) with three or extra girls board administrators, making it the sector most profitable at reaching the extent the report defines as a ​“crucial mass” of ladies on boards.

A ray of excellent information: Biden signs order criminalizing military sexual harassment. 

With more kids becoming eligible for COVID jabs, Nicole Peterson, PA-C, a mom of two sons and doctor assistant at Carle Basis Hospital’s emergency division in Urbana, Illinois, has written, illustrated and printed Francine and the Vaccine to reply the questions that kids like her personal ask and empower them to assist hold themselves and others secure. One hyperlink of many bolded above, for these of you who could like to purchase! 

January 29

On this date in 2008, Mary Margaret Truman Daniel handed away. The one youngster of Bess and President Harry Truman, she was a coloratura soprano, actress and author, amongst many roles. I’ve one of many homicide mysteries she wrote, it’s very pleasant!

Then there was White Home Pets, www.amazon.com/… My form of writer!

Humour

The Guardian: M&M’s have had a ‘progressive’ makeover – could this be feminism’s sweetest victory?:

Little question I communicate for each lady on Earth after I say this: thanks, Mars! Once I was a bit of lady I felt as if I might by no means be my genuine self due to the way in which the inexperienced M&M mascot used to decorate. Each time I noticed her tottering round in commercials sporting white go-go boots and fluttering her lengthy eyelashes, a bit of a part of me would die inside. Though younger, I recognised one thing profound: girls would solely be free when multinationals allowed anthropomorphised chocolate to put on smart sneakers.

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Alas, Fox Information will not be fairly so keen about the truth that chocolate characters that no one with a couple of mind cell offers a rattling about are updating their footwear. “M&Ms won’t be glad till each final cartoon character is deeply unappealing and completely androgynous,” Fox host Tucker Carlson lately railed. “Till the second you wouldn’t need to have a drink with any considered one of them. That’s the objective. If you’re completely turned off, we’ve achieved fairness.”

(If Cucker Tarlson is turned on or off by chocolate cartoons, that does not sound to me just like the supply of his drawback is feminism!)

Take Motion

This Color Of Change petition to Michael Carvajal, the Director of The Federal Bureau of Prisons, addresses the atrocious conditions in women’s prisons due to Covid:

We’re writing to you with nice concern concerning the remedy of ladies incarcerated in Federal Jail Services, particularly FPC Alderson in West Virginia and FCI Danbury in Connecticut.

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Advocates at Coloration Of Change are being advised that girls at Alderson are being denied entry to checks altogether. If individuals report signs, they’re being thrown into an isolation unit with out a constructive check, more likely to hold an infection report numbers decrease than they’re. Girls with energetic infections are nonetheless being compelled to cook dinner meals within the kitchen as a consequence of an absence of employees. Employees will not be sporting correct PPE, and girls are being given 1 masks each few weeks and denied entry to medicines. We’ve even been advised {that a} lady was denied remedy or admission to a hospital earlier than she died.

And this inhumane remedy is not distinctive to Alderson. Coloration Of Change has additionally heard from individuals at Danbury that ALL of the ladies within the Camp are at the moment contaminated, regardless of experiences that say solely half of the ladies are.

One other Coloration Of Change petition: President Biden, #KeepYourPromise and nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court! 

One other merchandise (accompanied by one other petition!)  Boycott Pepsi Calls Grow Over Alleged Donation to Texas GOP After Abortion Ban

And the petition to Pepsi (from UltraViolet): STOP FUNDING ABORTION BANS

Ray-Ban has teamed up with Fb to create “Story glasses” which permit individuals to secretly {photograph} and document others. Along with being creepy, it is a information privateness nightmare and can solely proceed to complement the coffers of Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s a stalker’s dream product, and appears like one thing out of a Black Mirror episode. However these problematic glasses are already on the market, with celebrities like Kylie Jenner promoting them on social media.

us@sumofus.org is circulating a petition to Luxottica, Ray-Ban’s dad or mum firm, to ditch the creepy glasses.

This column is a gaggle effort! Many thanks to mettle fatigue, SandraLLAP, officebss, and Tara (the Delinquent Social Employee) for gadgets with hyperlinks and dialogue!

Please observe: I’ve to care for Mother at bedtime, however will be a part of you after that. Please talk about amongst yourselves! Thanks all!