Gender Across Borders

Thanks for visiting Gender Across Borders. If you're interested in writing for us, check out our call for writers. And don't forget to subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter (@GABblog), or friend us on Facebook.

This post is part of a series leading up to the Women Deliver conference (www.womendeliver.org), a global meeting on maternal and reproductive health and the advancement of women and girls. Women Deliver 2010 will push for an additional $12 billion in increased investment from G8 for programs to improve maternal health.

Last month, a new study in The Lancet found that the global maternal death rate had dropped 35 percent in the past 30 years. The overall number of deaths has declined, from 536,300 in 1980 to 342,900 in 2008, but the shift in statistics is still troubling. Maternal deaths are highly concentrated, almost 80 percent, in 21 countries, and 6 countries account for more than half of all maternal deaths (India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the DRC). The global MMR (maternal mortality ratio, or number of women dying for every 100,000 live births) has also dropped from 422 in 1980 to 251 in 2008, however maternal death rates are actually up in certain countries, including the United States. Even within the United States, the MMR differs drastically among races; the maternal death rate for black women is eight times higher than that of white women in New York City, for example.

Any reduction in maternal deaths is considered progress, however most countries remain far behind the Millenium Development Goal 5- a 75 percent reduction in maternal deaths by 2015. Advocates welcome the overall decline, and although hundreds of thousands of maternal deaths continue each year, the small glimmer of hope is motivation for those who have been working to reduce these numbers for years.

“The overall message, for the first time in a generation, is one of persistent and welcome progress,” -Lancet Journal Editor Dr. Richard Horton

Advocates are also worried by the findings of this report, however. Why? It may make the cause seem less urgent. Although the reduction of maternal deaths is an Millennium Development Goal and has been made a priority at the world’s G8/G20 Summits in Canada, talk alone will not solve the problem. Women with less risk of death during pregnancy and childbirth are bringing attention to this cause in many ways. According to Save the Children’s annual State of the World’s Mothers Report, the biggest difference between life and death for a mother is a knowledgeable female health worker present at the birth. (Not all women are allowed to be seen by a male other than their husbands; if there is only a male doctor, their birth can go unattended.) The SOTWM Report found that the best and worst countries in which to be a mother were Norway and Afghanistan respectively.

When I read this article about domestic violence shelters in Baghdad, I began thinking about domestic violence victims living in conflict zones. As an advocate for DV survivors, the question most people ask me is, “Why did she stay?” My favorite way to answer this question is to make a chart: reasons to stay and reasons to leave. Every time I do this, there are always more reasons to stay than to leave. (If this seems dubious, try it yourself. Imagine your spouse/partner/girl/boyfriend is abusive and you have to leave today. Make your own list.)

Of the many reasons to stay, safety is not usually one of them. In New York City, where I work, there are plenty of provisions to ensure a woman’s physical safety if she leaves her abusive partner. (I say woman because the majority of people with whom I work are women. I also work with men and would never deny that they can be victims as well.) No such promise can be made in a war zone, however, adding one more reason to stay and making the escape to freedom from violence even more elusive.

Read the rest of this entry →

Global Feminism in the News is a monthly column discussing recurring themes in international news stories concerning women. This month we will focus on women’s progress and victories.

This week’s post is inspired by Phyllis Schlafly. Yep, you read correctly. Many of you probably read/heard/talked about this study that “determined” that women are less happy now than they were in the seventies. (If not, read some responses here, here and here.) Some immediate responses to the study blamed feminism for the unhappiness. If us pesky feminists just left well enough alone the world would have continued on as it was forty years ago and women would be happier.  Ms. Schlafly weighed in, of course, with this gem of a quote:

“[T]he feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy in which their true worth will never be recognized and any success is beyond their reach … [V]ictimhood is not a recipe for happiness.”

Why, I agree with you Phyllis! Well, I agree with part of that statement. I don’t think most women need a movement to show them that they are victims of an oppressive patriarchy. When you are disproportionately affected by poverty, HIV/AIDS, sexual violence, unemployment, lower wages and discrimination, solely because of your gender, you get the message quite clearly on your own. But you’re right about victimhood and happiness. It’s hard to be happy as a victim, which is why so many women decide to see themselves as survivors, or equals, or otherwise strong and competent people despite societal barriers and limits. And for me personally, “the feminist movement” (as grand and far reaching as that term is) has taught me that we as women usually have to reach farther for our success, but we can reach it if we try.

So while many women are victims, they are also survivors, leaders, and heroes. This month’s post is about those women and the amazing progress they have made despite adversity. Does the feminist movement get credit for this too, Phyllis?

Read the rest of this entry →

Global Feminism in the News is a monthly column discussing recurring themes in international news stories concerning women. This month we will discuss rape in the news.

I decided over a month ago that September’s article would discuss rape in the news. In late July, three very different stories of rape emerged in the international news. In the United States, an eight year old Liberian girl living in Arizona was gang raped and consequently disowned by her parents. (This story was discussed in greater detail in fellow GAB author Emily’s July 27th post.) The quarterback of Pittsburgh’s professional football team, the Steeler’s, Ben Roethlisberger, was accused of raping an employee of a hotel where he stayed last year. The woman had not previously filed a police report, but was seeking damages in civil court. On a popular Australian radio show, a young girl mentioned, live on the air, that she had been raped at age 12. Her mother had called into the station to force her daughter to participate in the “Lie Detector” segment of the show in order to interrogate her about her sexual behavior.

Read the rest of this entry →

Outburst. Tirade. Tantrum. These and other belittling words (which certainly make for more exciting, if sexist, headlines) are being used to describe Secretary of State Clinton’s response to being asked her husband’s opinion* on certain Chinese contracts in the Congo.  I would describe it quite differently. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdG6KFGHRfg] Read the rest of this entry →

A 12 year old girl, displaced by conflict, holds her baby sister. Image care of Reuters photographer Finbarr O'Reilly

The war that has raged in eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo since the late nineties has a devastating effect for women– the use of rape and sexual assault as a weapon of war by troops on all sides– and no one is talking about it.  In the decade-long conflict, more than 5 million people have been killed in a country with a population of about 66 million, and tens of thousands of women have been victims of brutal sexual assault and then of stigmatization by their communities.  This Guardian report details the complex roots of the conflict, and its relationship with the Rwandan genocide.

An epidemic of sexual violence

The sexual violence and use of rape in Eastern DR Congo is being called the worst in the world, and the brutal attacks on women have become so commmon that they have become normalized in the mind of many Congolese.  Soldiers from militias as well as government troops are guilty, and even government funcitonaries and community figures have been reportely using sexual violence as a means of intimidation. Read the rest of this entry →