Today is International Women’s Day. There is much to celebrate when it comes to progress for women throughout the world. There is also much to lament, both in relation to what still needs to be done and where the gains we have made risk going backwards.
Stillbirth, however, is standing still. The incidence of stillbirth is the same today as it has been for decades. Very little money or attention goes into research to reduce or prevent stillbirth.
Why? Stillbirth struggles on two fronts.
One, stillbirth is a thing that happens inside a woman’s body. In a male-dominated world, stillbirth is easily relegated as a private tragedy rather than as a public health matter.
Two, stillbirth is not a cause feminists want to champion. Even though stillbirth is a tragedy for thousands of women each year, most feminists don’t want to talk about the death of a baby inside its mother’s womb. Many feminists get uneasy about anything that gets a bit too close to abortion rights.
So let’s be clear: stillbirth happens to women who want to be mothers, who have chosen to take a baby to term. It has nothing to do with abortion. Many mothers of stillborn babies are pro-choice and would not seek to restrict women’s access to abortion services.
If feminists believe women’s choices should be respected, then there is nothing to fear from recognising a woman’s choice to be a mother. There is everything to gain from demanding that society take seriously a public health problem that devastates six women and their babies a day in Australia.
It’s estimated more than 1,000 early years workers walked off the job today at 3.20pm – the time that women in Australia effectively start working for free.
A protest by childcare workers and their supporters in Sydney on International Women’s Day. Photograph: Paul Miller/AAP
Early childhood educator Julie Lofts said she wanted the government to recognise the value of her work. After 18 years in the industry, she said she continued to live paycheque to paycheque, and had struggled to raise two sons balancing bills and “some quality of life”.
“I should be paid a lot more than what I get now,” she said. “I don’t do this for the money, I do it because it’s a job that I love. But I’m not paid according to my qualifications.”
Carley Adams, an educator at the same centre, had been “shocked” to discover how little she would earn when she joined the sector six years ago.
“It’s my career, it’s not just a job I come to every day … When you find something you love to do it’s hard to leave it, but if I don’t get a pay rise I would have to leave eventually, which is sad.”
India’s minister for women has sparked anger and ridicule after saying female students need curfews to protect them from their own “hormonal outbursts”.
AFP reports:
Many Indian universities inflict curfews on women while allowing their male students freedom to stay out at night, a policy that critics say is sexist and outdated.
Asked about the practice on the NDTV news channel, Manekha Gandhi said it was necessary to protect young women from their own hormones.
“To protect you from your own hormonal outbursts, perhaps a certain protection, a Lakshman Rekha [red line] is drawn,” she said.
“You can make it [the curfew] six, seven or eight, that depends on college to college but it really is for your own safety,” she told the studio audience of college students during a special show to mark International Women’s Day.
Gandhi said a similar deadline should be put in place for male students, but many social media users ridiculed her for her comments.
“You know what would be safest? Lock hormonal men in, instead of denying women the right to lead a full life,” tweeted one critic.
Gandhi, who is the sister-in-law of opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, is no stranger to controversy.
Last year she angered women’s rights campaigners arguing for a law against marital rape by saying that could not apply in India because society viewed marriage as sacrosanct.
In 2015, female students in Delhi launched a campaign against the curfews under the name Pinjra Tod (“Break the Cage”).
University residences generally justify the rules with concern for the safety of young women in a country where sexual violence is widespread.
A flicker of controversy from the US, where the lights have gone out on the Statue of Liberty.
Was Lady Liberty joining the Day Without Women and showing her support for the global IWD strike? Plenty on social media seemed to think so.
The lights appear to have gone out at the Statue of Liberty...aside from the crown & torch. No word yet on what caused the outage.NA-157TU pic.twitter.com/4o4sDu8s8a
As our Southeast Asia correspondent Oliver Holmes reports, the forced marriage of women and girls from Myanmar into China has been highlighted today by the Freedom Fund, a private philanthropic initiative dedicated to ending slavery.
The organisation’s CEO, Nick Grono, has been travelling around Myanmar during the past few days and sends this report:
China’s one-child policy, and the preference of parents for boys, means that by 2025-2030, an estimated 22 to 30 million Chinese men will be unable to find women to marry. This is creating a huge demand for foreign ‘wives’.
We heard devastating stories from women who have returned from China. One told us how she travelled to what she thought was a well-paying job in the north of Myanmar, only to be sold into marriage in China. She was trapped near Beijing for seven years, and had two daughters with her ‘husband’, only to then be deported by Chinese police to Myanmar. She has not had contact with her daughters since then.
Another told us how she was deceived by a friend (who turned out to be a marriage broker) to travel to the border with China. There she was sold to a Chinese man for US$9,300. When she did not become pregnant within seven months, this man sold her to another Chinese man for $11,500. She was trapped in that ‘marriage’ for three years before her family and Myanmar police managed to secure her release. We heard many other equally heart-wrenching stories.
Grono has met with Myanmar officials in the capital, Naypyitaw, and says there is a genuine willingness by the authorities to fight forced marriage. He said the Freedom Fund has a strategy ready and hopes to establish a presence in the country.
Zehra Khan has much to celebrate on International Women’s Day. It is exactly four months since members of the Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF) in Sindh province in Pakistan – of which Khan is secretary general – finally received legal recognition.
The province’s chief minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, signed a policy that means the region’s estimated 5 million home-based workers – the majority of whom are women – can register as workers and access benefits.
“It was an important day not only for the history of the labour movement in Sindh and Pakistan, but also for south Asia,” says Khan, whose federation has more than 4,500 members.
“Once they are legally accepted as workers, they can be registered with the government-run social security institution, [and] be part of [the] workers’ welfare board to enjoy benefits like health, education and housing, as well as those offered after retirement,” she adds.
Almost 80% of an estimated 12 million Pakistani home-based workers are women. As well as unpaid domestic work, the women often spend up to 10 hours a day making garments, footwear, sports goods, and arts and crafts behind closed doors. Their work is often invisible to the rest of the world, despite having propped up the country’s informal economy for so long.
“They are left to negotiate with the middlemen. Many often get deprived of payment or chastised if they demand better wages,” says Khan.
The new government policy, however, brings hope that this kind of exploitation will soon come to an end. Once registered as workers, the women will be able to demand a basic level of pay as set out in the Minimum Wages Act of 2015.
Raising a few eyebrows in Australia today is this IWD tribute by Liberal senator Eric Abetz, who has taken to Facebook (retweeted here by Labor MP Tony Burke) to praise Queen Elizabeth II.
Fair enough, to a point: plenty of people would applaud her role in public life. As an example of where “hard work and commitment” can get you in life, the logic goes a little astray. But the most jarring note is surely that dismissal of “demanding that people … artificially promote you simply because of your sex”. If Elizabeth had had a brother – even a younger one – she would not have been entitled to that throne at all, of course.
In Australia, more than 1,000 early childhood educators have walked off the job to campaign for equal pay in the “pink-collar” sector.
Dozens of childcare centres closed mid-afternoon on International Women’s Day, said to be the largest action taken by the sector in Australia.
The national gender pay gap in Australia is 16.2%, but female-dominated industries attract lower wages than those made up of mostly men.
The childcare sector is 97% women but qualified early childhood educators earn some of the lowest wages in the country – as little as $20.61 an hour, or about half the national average wage.
It was estimated more than walked off the job at 3.20pm – the time that women in Australia effectively start working for free.
Helen Gibbons, the assistant national secretary of the early childhood union United Voice, said participating educators had worked closely with parents over a matter of weeks to ensure they would not be inconvenienced by the industrial action.
“We’ve been really excited and pleased to see that a lot of parents are really supportive of this campaign and in fact many parents will be joining the educators when they’re walking off the job this afternoon.”
India has launched its first all-women cricket league to promote women’s cricket. The sport, which enjoys enormous popularity in India, has been dominated by men for decades. Founders say the want a women’s league that enjoys the same prestige as the male Indian Premier League, which has drawn cricket stars from around the world and has huge sponsorship from multinational companies and celebrities.
In a statement, founder Parul Jain said, “It’s important that young girls coming through can see cricket as a viable option to play at the highest level. The WCL #T20 League is expected to be of the same repute as the Indian Premier League (IPL) and women Big Bash League of Australia in support of women.”
“This will lead to greater interest in women’s cricket in India, which has generally been given much less importance than the men’s sport. With many sports getting their own professional leagues and ever-growing popularity in the country, it is time that the women cricket league is formed. It is no surprise that the fierce team of eves does not get as much attention and opportunities neither from the sports bodies or the sponsors in India as the men’s team,” he said.
Founders say India has hundreds of millions of women cricket fans, but few opportunities to play the sport at a professional level. The league will encourage women competitors, who are often discouraged from playing sports, especially in more conservative parts of the country.
Sunita Sharma, the country’s first female cricket coach, who is closely associated with the project said, “It’s been more than three decades since the Indian women cricket team has been formed and has won various matches globally, still there is hardly any acknowledgement to women as per men cricketers in India.”
India’s Harmanpreet Kaur, left, and Rajeshwari Gayakwad celebrate after defeating South Africa in the women’s world cup qualifier final one-day international cricket match in Colombo in February. Photograph: Eranga Jayawardena/AP
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