An Australian women is running 3,000km across 184 countries in support of rape survivors following her own personal attack, Oliver Holmes reports.
Claire McFarlane began the campaign, named Footsteps to Inspire, in July last year in what she hopes will “remove the taboo around rape, support the healing process and ultimately make lasting change”.
“In 1999, I was brutally raped and left for dead on the streets of Paris,” McFarlane said in an email to the Guardian. “What followed was an arduous, long battle to find justice and it only came to an end in October 2015. Through sharing my own story of survival, I’ve become an advocate for survivors of rape.”
McFarlane will run 16km in each country to signify the 16 years it took for her case against a perpetrator to go through the court system.
She has started raising donations for her run, which has taken her from South Africa to India to Papua New Guinea. It will take four years to complete, with McFarlane moving country every week. She ran most recently in Singapore and landed in the Philippines on Monday night. Her next run is on Saturday on the west coast of Luzon, in an area called Zambales.
McFarlane says she is using beach running as a way to tackle the issue of rape in an empowering way. “I’ve chosen to use a very different medium to talk about rape: that is, adventure and sport. Sport unites us and often brings people together to make a stand for something they believe in,” she said.
Funds raised for the cause are donated to local projects or organisations helping rape survivors as well as part of the cost of the trip, in which McFarlane meets with NGOs working to combat sexual violence.
McFarlane will also collect data on survivors of sexual violence in all 184 nations, which she will compile for a research report.
Some readers have been in touch to let me know what they have been, or will be, doing to mark International Women’s Day. Do feel free to contact me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps, or via the comments below.
There was more unwelcome news for Japan ahead of International Women’s Day, reports Justin McCurry from Tokyo, with the release of a report showing that the country ranks 163rd out of 193 countries in female representation in lower houses of parliament.
The defence minister, Tomomi Inada; the leader of the biggest opposition party, Renho Murata; and the governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, are all women, but Japan trails behind all of its G7 counterparts in overall political representation, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The report, released on Wednesday, did note, however, that a record 28 women were elected to Japan’s upper house last July.
Koike, who has criticised the golf venue for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics over its sexist membership policy, is aiming to put a dent in male domination of politics, at least at the local level, by securing a female majority in city assembly elections this July.
“Since I am the governor of this mega-city and hopefully the assembly will have a female majority, that will be a big change,” Koike said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
“Selecting as many women politicians as possible in the local assembly will surely make Tokyo change.”
Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images
In Australia’s capital, the National Press Club hosted Kenyan educator and social activist Kakenya Ntaiya to mark International Women’s Day.
Ntaiya is the founder of the Kakenya Centre for Excellence, a boarding school for girls in Enoosaen. The centre requires as a condition of enrolment that girls are not subjected to genital mutilation or forced marriage.
Ntaiya told the story of bargaining for her education at the age of seven, when she told her father she would submit to female genital mutilation if he would allow her to complete her education:
I went through the cuts and it was a very horrifying experience. There is no anaesthesia when it’s done, there is no medication, I bled, I fainted after that. I’m very lucky that I’m standing here today sharing my story. Many girls die.
I was determined. I went back to school.
She finished her education, won a scholarship to an American university (which involved another round of bargaining with the powerful men of her small Kenyan village), completed a PhD, and in the course of her studies, decided she would open a school in her village for 10 girls
I arrived there and 100 girls showed up. It was not just the girls, it was their parents, it was their grandmothers, it was the people who really thirsted for an education. So my ten became 30.
I have dreamed big. My girls are graduating this year. This year, 26 of them are finishing high school. They are going to university: this is the first time in my village that we are going to be sending 26 girls – not one woman, but 26 of them. That is the future of Kenya.
Think about those girls. Some of them you might meet some day. Think about them as heads of banks. Think of them – that’s their dream. They want to be doctors. Think about them as lawyers. Think about them making change in the whole world.
That’s why we stand here today to celebrate the progress we have made, by pushing ourselves to be bold, to move forward, to say it’s time that women need to be there.
On Monday night, on Australia’s Q&A debate show, Mei Fong, a journalist and author of a book on China’s one-child policy, now based in Washington DC, said the ability to protest was “a great privilege”.
Fong praised the regular protests in America’s capital, “the heart of crazy Trumpland”, adding:
It is protests against the immigration ban, against mistreatment of women, and I bless my heart – it’s so wonderful when I see people chant, holding up signs in the streets.
You guys don’t realise how wonderful it is to be able to get out there and not be tear-gassed.
I often think of the day I was detained in Beijing. On the night of 6 March 2015, the police knocked on my door and took me to the station, where I was questioned nonstop for 24 hours. Later I was sent to a detention centre, where I was held for 37 days …
Two years later, is there any hope for the Chinese feminist movement? Definitely, yes. Since my arrest, there has been both progress and a backlash against women’s rights …
Women are becoming more active in the fight against gender discrimination. When I was released from detention, I faced a tough decision: should I continue my activism, or give up? I chose to continue. What I do is for the rights of women all over the world. But I can’t help but be especially concerned about China. My own experiences, and the experiences of my friends in China, have had a profound effect on me …
Because of China’s two-child policy, abortions are readily available. If you get pregnant with a third child, abortion is compulsory. But I don’t see our free access to abortion as a sign of progress, as reproductive rights only apply to married women. If you are unmarried, it is illegal to give birth and you will face heavy fines. Some NGOs are calling on the government to grant single women their reproductive rights.
Maxine Beneba Clarke, Emily Maguire and two recently deceased authors, Georgia Blain and Cory Taylor, are among six authors shortlisted for the 2016 Stella prize, celebrating female writers in Australia.
The shortlisted books, announced on International Women’s Day, are Between a Wolf and a Dog by Georgia Blain; The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke; Poum and Alexandre by Catherine de Saint Phalle; An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire; The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose; and Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor.
“The 2017 Stella prize shortlist celebrates books that combine extraordinary literary accomplishment with the social and familial reverberations of some of the most significant issues of our time: racism, violence against women, the aftermath of totalitarianism, the place of art in everyday life and the way we confront our individual mortality,” said Brenda Walker, the chair of the judging panel.
Staff at Australia’s Fairfax media are holding a “Fairfax Sausage Fest” to highlight the 23.2% pay gap in newspaper publishing.
Journalists are donning their vintage finery – “retro-grade dress up day” – to tell management to stop living in the past and make women equal to men in terms of pay.
The Korean Women’s Association United is holding its annual Korean Women’s Conference in Seoul today. The association says it is working “for the realisation of a democracy where everyone can enjoy equal basic citizenship rights regardless of gender, sexual orientation, origin or class”.
Despite the rapid economic growth South Korea has enjoyed since the end of the Korean war in 1953, the country’s women still earn far less than their male counterparts.
According to the Women In Work Index 2017 released by PricewaterhouseCoopers last month, the gender pay gap in South Korea was 36%, more than twice the average of 16 percent among OECD countries. That means South Korean women are, on average, paid 36% less than their male counterparts.
The report said that if current pay trends persist, South Korean women will have to wait more than a century before their wages catch up with those of men, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Over 30 women’s organisations in India will march in New Delhi today for the One Billion Rising march. The campaign started five years ago, on Valentine’s day, and spread across 207 countries, as women marched together to end rape and sexual violence against women. In Delhi the march had a particular significance, as the city was still reeling after the horrific gang rape and murder of medical student Jyoti Singh.
In 2012, after the details of Singh’s case emerged, India burst into protest, with candlelight vigils, and protests across the country. The case paved the way for small victories, including a special court to fast-track rape cases in the country, and a greater awareness of the country’s ingrained culture of violence against women.
This year, One Billion Rising’s campaigns are focusing on ending the exploitation of women. More than 1,000 women are expected to gather at the Rajiv Chowk metro station around 11am local time. After the demonstration, a forum to discuss the work of various women’s organisations will be held.
Indian students at a college in Chennai ahead of International Women’s Day. Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images
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