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Sunday, March 21, 2010 20:42 GMT

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LATIN AMERICA: Still a Long Way to Go, for Black Women
By Patricia Grogg*
HAVANA - At the age of 17, Meybelin Bernárdez is clear about the future: "When I finish my studies, I'll return to help my community get on its feet," the young Garifuna woman from Honduras, who is studying medicine in Cuba, says without hesitation.
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ECONOMY-SENEGAL: 'Only The Rich Get Loans'
By Koffigan E. Adigbli
DAKAR - Despite the financial sector boom in Senegal, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs), which represent over 90 percent of the industrial fabric of the country, struggle to access funding for their development, their representatives claim.
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HEALTH-US: Maternal Deaths on the Rise
By William Fisher
NEW YORK - Despite the fact that the United States spends more on maternal health than any other country in the world, deaths in childbirth among U.S. women are on the rise and already surpass the morbidity rates in most developed countries.
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CLIMATE CHANGE: The U.N.'s Boys' Club
By Selina Rust
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's decision to appoint a 19-member, all-male high-level advisory group on Climate Change Financing (CCF) has triggered strong protests from women's groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) outraged by the composition of the panel.
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Q&A: Tapping Women's Enterprise to Topple Rural Poverty
Paul Virgo interviews YUKIKO OMURA, new vice president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development
ROME - Employees at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) may have cause to fear for their jobs after Yukiko Omura was appointed vice president of the United Nations' rural poverty agency in February.
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POLITICS-RWANDA: Woman Vies for Top Job
By Stanley Kwenda
KIGALI - On average women constitute 18.8 percent of representatives in parliaments across the world according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). This gender imbalance has been subject to much feminist criticism and many campaigns for change have been staged to address the status quo. The situation is however different in Rwanda.
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PAKISTAN: In More Ways Than One, Bollywood Dancing Creates Waves
By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan - Saleha Firdaus, a mother of two teenage children, has been moving to the Bollywood beat at a dance studio for over a year now and "loves every moment" of this personal time. For her part, 22-year-old Maheen Jafri was a "bedroom dancer" until she discovered a Bollywood and hip-hop dance studio and "shed my inhibitions totally."
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JAMAICA: The Other Side of Paradise
By Kathy Barrett
NEGRIL - It's just before midnight, and the music pulsates through the massive speakers perched under the ceiling, scantily clad girls in their five-inch heels moving closer to the iron poles.
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RIGHTS-BAHRAIN: Weak Laws Let Rapists Off the Hook
By Suad Hamada
MANAMA - Cunning rapists in Bahrain can avoid victimising virgins so they could escape the maximum penalty provided by law, and those who force themselves on young girls can evade punishment by promising to marry their victims.
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DEVELOPMENT-KENYA: Rapid Population Growth Threatens Development
By Susan Anyangu-Amu
NAIROBI - Margaret Atieno, a 38-year-old mother of six, says she wanted to avoid her last pregnancy. But consistent stock-outs of contraceptive devices at her health care centre in rural Siaya, western Kenya, gave her no choice but to fall pregnant once again, albeit the fact that she did not want another child.
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RIGHTS: Gender Confab Marked by Political Uncertainties
By Thalif Deen and Anna Shen*
UNITED NATIONS - When a two-week meeting on gender empowerment concluded at U.N. headquarters Friday, there were several lingering questions crying out for answers.
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POLITICS-NIGERIA: In the Shadows of Men: Women’s Political Marginalisation
By Mustapha Muhammad
KANO - Ten years after Nigeria returned to civil rule women still play second fiddle in the male-dominated politics of Africa’s most populous nation, women politicians and activists say.
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DEVELOPMENT-CAMEROON: Are Women the Magic Bullet for "Electoral Apathy"?
By Mohamadou Houmfa
YAOUNDE - A support network for women's political participation, is challenging head-on what it calls "electoral apathy", after noting a growing trend in electoral abstention.
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PHILIPPINES: Reproductive Health Tests Candidates’ Political Guts
By Kara Santos
MANILA - Filipino voters who have yet to make up their minds about their choice for their next president are being advised: look at each aspirant’s stance on reproductive health to help them gauge the candidate’s leadership mettle and political guts.
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IRAQ: Women Miss Saddam
By Abdu Rahman and Dahr Jamail*
BAGHDAD - Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year's maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do.
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EGYPT: Population Growth Overtakes Literacy Rise
By Cam McGrath
LUXOR - Literacy programmes are teaching millions of Egyptians to read, but are struggling to keep up with the country's high population growth.
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KENYA: Proposed Constitutional Amendment Sets Back Women’s Rights
By Susan Anyangu-Amu
NAIROBI - Lillian Mutuku, a 34-year-old mother of three, describes her home in Katine area, in Kenya’s Eastern province Tala, as a harsh place to live. The soil is poor, she says, the sun beats down mercilessly and vegetation is sparse.
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Q&A: Equality Is Feminism
Sabina Zaccaro interviews Nobel Peace Laureate SHIRIN EBADI*
UNITED NATIONS - "I think that Islam has been misinterpreted. No Islamic law says violate women's rights and repress women," says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. "Democracy, human rights and women leadership are absolutely not hostile to the Islamic doctrine." And women in Iran are well aware of that, she says.
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RIGHTS: Africa's Success Stories in Gender Empowerment
By Thalif Deen*
UNITED NATIONS - Whenever gender empowerment is a vibrant topic of discussion internationally, some of the countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America are invariably singled out for their success stories in politics, education, health care or civil liberties even as Africa is mostly left out of political reckoning - and wrongly so.
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EDUCATION-TANZANIA: Pregnant Teens Forced Out of School
By Arnaud Bébien
DAR-ES-SALAAM - Pregnancy is the leading cause of dropouts for school girls in Tanzania. And a national law forbidding young mothers to return to school after giving birth did not make it any easier for them to continue their education.
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LATIN AMERICA: Abortion - Still Illegal, Still Killing, Despite Growing Awareness
By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS - Although most of the governments in Latin America today are described as progressive, abortion is only legal in one country, while in five countries it is banned under all circumstances, even when the mother's life is at risk.
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RIGHTS: "Famine Marriages" Just One Byproduct of Climate Change
By Thalif Deen*
UNITED NATIONS - The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men, from higher death rates during natural disasters to heavier household and care burdens.
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NAMIBIA: Female Hip-Hop Artists Challenge Stereotypes
By Servaas van den Bosch
WINDHOEK - African hip-hop prides itself on a more positive portrayal of women, but traditional cultural attitudes towards women still dominate the industry, say Namibian female rappers.
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RIGHTS: Middle East Women Ahead But Not Home
By Sanjay Suri*- IPS/TerraViva
UNITED NATIONS - Male leaders fail to break the Mideast impasse. Enter women from Israel and the Palestinian territories working together. And… it would have been nice to say they succeeded where the men failed.
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MALAWI: Patrilineal Inheritance Prevents Women’s Access to Land
By Claire Ngozo
LILONGWE - Mercy Gondwe, 51, from Rumphi in northern Malawi, was married for 34 years. When her husband died in 2008, she assumed she would inherit the land they had been cultivating together since they got married. But this was not the case.
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RIGHTS: Fewer Jobs, Less Money, Same Old Story
By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS - "What do I get from them? Nothing but bullsh*t," says Nupur Acharya, reflecting about how she is treated by her husband and two grown sons on daily basis.
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CAMBODIA: Rape Victims Need Better Protection from New Penal Code
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - Cambodia’s new penal code, which comes into force later this year, should be accompanied by stronger law enforcement measures if the country’s women and girls are to be better protected from rape, says the global rights lobby Amnesty International (AI).
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DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Water Woes Fall on Women’s Shoulders
By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO - As a wife of a rice farmer and mother of two children aged nine and two, Sanjeevani Bandara’s days are packed with chores. Yet while she used to be able to keep up with all she has to do in a day, this Sri Lankan mother now finds herself struggling to accomplish even the most basic tasks.
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Half the world's population, but not with half the share of wealth, wellbeing and opportunity. And certainly, women do not get half of media attention, or an equal voice in expression - only 22 percent of the voices you hear and read in the news today are women's. In this set of reports IPS gives women and their issues their fair share of voice; not by way of artificial allowance, but as arising naturally in the news of the day.

IPS Communicating MDG3 - Giving voice to gender equiality

International Seminar - Millennium Development Goal 3 and the role of the media

TERRAVIVA Doha:
Financing Gender Equality

The TerraViva Doha magazine features news stories, analyses, ground reports, high-level interviews and columns focusing on the possibility of a more equitable and sustainable development.

Accountability for Gender Equality Commitments Vital
By Inés Alberdi, Executive Director, UNIFEM
Since 2000, gender equality and women’s rights advocates have been saying that progress on normative frameworks and agreements has been steady, but that implementation has lagged far behind. Today, 15 years after Beijing, women are still outnumbered 4 to 1 in legislatures around the world; the proportion of women’s work in vulnerable employment is increasing in almost all parts of the developing world, reaching 85 percent in some regions; women’s wages still lag behind those of men; and millions of women endure some form of gender-based violence, often on a daily basis.

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WOMEN'S HEALTH - A SMART INVESTMENT IN TROUBLED TIMES
By Thoraya Ahmed Obaid
The financial crisis that started in rich countries has deepened into a global economic crisis that threatens to reverse hard-won gains in education and health in developing countries, and women and children are among those hardest hit. That is why the theme of this year's World Population Day, 11 July, focuses on increased investments for girls and women to boost economic recovery and long-term equitable growth, writes Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

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WORLD MUST KEEP UP PRESSURE ON AFGHAN LAW AGAINST WOMEN
By Emma Bonino
The new Shi'ite Personal Status Law recently passed in Afghanistan legalises rape within marriage and officially relegates women to second class citizens; it is a barefaced denial of human rights that needs to be condemned loudly, unequivocally and universally, writes Emma Bonino, vice-president of the Italian Senate.

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GLOBAL CRISIS: WOMEN WORKERS WILL BE HIT HARDEST
By Supachai Panitchpakdi
As the global economic crisis continues to unfold, it is having severe effects on international trade. UNCTAD estimates that merchandise exports from developing countries could decline by 15.5% this year. At the regional level, we expect export growth to shrink by 16.8% in Asia, 12.5% in Africa, and 10% in Latin America, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

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RETIREMENT ITALIAN STYLE - WOMEN AND THE PENSION TABOO
By Emma Bonino
The difference in retirement age between men and women -65 and 60, respectively- in Italy lies at the intersection of two major national problems: pension reform and the unequal treatment of women in the labour market.

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HEALTH-SWAZILAND: 'Role Models in the Community'
Mantoe Phakathi interviews SYLVIA KHUZWAYO, expert client

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GLOBAL HEALTH SYSTEM IN STATE OF ALARM
By Margaret Chan
The current economic crisis poses an enormous challenge to global health but also offers opportunities to lay the foundations for more equitable and effective health systems in the future, and to rationalise and improve the way that international organisations work for the health of people throughout the world.

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Q&A: 'Women Are Not Equals in Our Society'
Mel Frykberg interviews MASHOOR BASISSY, director of the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Women's Affairs (MOWA).

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Q&A: Women's Special Water Needs Find Voice
Hilmi Toros interviews JOKE MUYLWIJK, executive director of Gender and Water Alliance
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DEVELOPMENT FINANCING CONFERENCE: THE INEQUALITY-POVERTY NEXUS
By Cecilia Alemany and Anne Schoenstein

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A LIFE FREE OF VIOLENCE IS EVERY WOMAN'S RIGHT
By Nicole Kidman

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FINANCING GENDER EQUALITY: A CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE
by Ines Alberdi

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INDIA : PUSHING FOR CHANGE
Syeda Hameed

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UNIFEM
U.N. Instraw
30 YEARS - United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women - CEDAW
Equality Now
U.N. Women Watch
Earthscan
International Women’s Day
International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics
WEF Global Gender Gap 2009

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This page includes independent IPS news coverage financed through the Dutch Government's MDG3 Fund: Investing in Equality, and through the United Nations Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM.