Gender Across Borders

The Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Situation Report is a monthly column devoted to examining policy changes and issues around these critical rights around the world.

This month’s column focuses on so-called “reproductive tourism,” the growing trend of women in the U.S. finding gestational surrogates in India.  Gestational surrogacy is the practice of implanting a fertilized egg in another woman’s uterus.  Through the miracle of modern science and hassle-free air travel, western women are traveling to India, where the medical infrastructure is good and most of the doctors speak English, to find a surrogate to carry their baby.  Medical tourism has been around for a while, complete with travel agencies that set you up with the doctor and the spa/hotel where you’ll recoup after your nose job.  This new twist, however, brings up a lot of problems. Read the rest of this entry →

President of India, Pratibha Patil

This week the New York Times reported on the death of Nirupama Pathak, a high caste woman recently married and pregnant with her partner, a lower caste man.  Honor killings, though illegal, have been a chronic practice in India (and a number of other countries) for some time.

But recently, the antiquated stain fell upon an elite Delhi neighborhood and it seemed the international media really took note.  An even fiercer follow-up editorial in the Times calls on Indian politicians to address and eradicate the practice, plainly called “murder.”

While India emerges as a global giant – and economic force to be reckoned with – and with some of the more progressive reproductive health policies in Asia, there are periodic  reminders of a society where transgression and traversing, particularly for women, are still fatally taboo.

What the hell is this elusive notion of “honor,” and why does it fall upon the head of women, not just in India but in countless cultures worldwide?

The recent slew of honor killings are  just coverage of a deeper and broader occurrence of the events.  Some construe the continued practice  as unfortunate “growing pains”: side effects of a society in flux, transitioning from a generation born in colonization to one born in greater freedom, with the world virtually at their finger tips.

In India, many would like to think – and this may be largely true – that caste is increasingly irrelevant, and that mobility, education, economic opportunities particularly for women, are widespread.  Women in India have fought for and earned numerous opportunities for advancement, including the recent passing of the women’s reservation bill, which reserves 33% of state assembly and parliamentary seats.

Abortion is largely legal, and family planning (theoretically) widely accessible.  There is, in theory, government-funded health care, and an impressive number of high-powered and high-achieving women in political leadership roles.  And yet… Read the rest of this entry →

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.

Welcome to GAB’s monthly book club! This month we will be discussing Vandana Shiva’s Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Feel free to use this post as an open thread for discussion of the book and to post any comments or questions you have about it here, but if you’re not sure where to start, here are some ideas to get the discussion going:

• Do you believe that the corporate co-opting of farming contributes specifically the feminization of poverty? If so what viable solutions do you see?
• Does Shiva make her argument clearly and without predilection, or is her argument biased? If so, in what way?
• What role can/should/does feminism play in eco-activism?
• If you identify as both a feminist and an eco-activist, what intersectionality have you experienced personally between the two?

If you are interested in more information, read Dr. Shiva describe the writing process of this book here, or read an interview conducted with her around the time of the publication of this book here.

I recently watched the documentary film Stolen Childhoods, an exposé on global child labor. The movie is, unsurprisingly, sobering, but I enjoyed it because the viewer is given clear instructions on how to work to end child labor (buying Fair Trade products, for example) and introduced to those who are working every day to end this egregious human rights violation. I was struck by how many women were featured in the film as community leaders, and I wanted to highlight their work here.

A young girl shovels instead of studying (photo via noesunjoc on flickr)

Professor Wangari Maathai of Kenya spoke, and was, as always, eloquent and moving. If you have not yet read Elizabeth’s article from last week about Professor Maathai’s work, she gives a great summary of the inspirational leader’s life and accomplishments.

Read the rest of this entry →

On May 3, we will be discussing Vandana Shiva’s Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply.  This non-fiction account of the globalization of agriculture is a sobering, educational read.

The book, more a collection of essays, explores the changes from local, individual farming with almost no negative environmental impact to agribusiness in India. Shiva is often called an “eco-feminist” and Shiva does pay lip service to some women’s protests against the commercialization of farming. Many people in India have lost control of their own means of food production while Western corporations are given free reign to farm, fish, or take almost anything they want. With cooking and food prep considered a woman’s domain, this book explains an important connection between the feminization of poverty and the globalization of farming.

Please join us on May 3 when we will open up a thread for discussion of Shiva’s book.

Welcome to GAB’s first monthly book club! Feel free to use this post as an open thread for discussion of the novel and to post any comments or questions you have about it here, but if you’re not sure where to start, here are some ideas to get the discussion going:

• What did you think of the characters?

Hiroko Tanaka is of course the most clearly drawn; I found her at once remarkable and remarkably average. Her greatest strength seemed to come from her ability simply to keep moving, while the extraordinary nature of her experiences is what makes that movement extraordinary. Then again, the seemingly extraordinary things she experiences happened to many people: that is what makes them historical events. This tension between the ordinary and the remarkable not only makes for a compelling protagonist but also suggests a more thematic issue related to the question of what happens when history becomes personal. Read the rest of this entry →

This post is a part of the Blog for IWD BLOG

For Blog for International Women’s Day, we’ve asked you to describe a person or event that has helped to fight for equal rights around the world. At GAB we decided to answer our own question, and each editor came up with her/his own Global Feminist Profile.

As some of you may know, a Global Feminist Profile [GFP] is a monthly column on Gender Across Borders that highlights feminist leaders all over the world who are creating change and empowering their countrywomen to demand equality.  GFPs run on the third Monday of each month. Some previous Global Feminist Profiles have been: Audacia Ray, Marta Lamas, and Dr. Shershah Syed, to name a few. You can look at the complete archives of the Global Feminist Profiles by clicking here.

And without further ado, I give you the mini-Global Feminist Profiles from each of the GAB editors:

Dr. Lee Ae-ran, profile by Erin Rickard

Dr. Lee Ae-ran’s activist pursuits have risen out of her early experience with political oppression. Dr. Lee was born in North Korea, and when she was 11 years old she and her family were imprisoned in a labor camp. After suffering eight years of abuse she was released, and she went on to earn a college degree and eventually fled to South Korea. She has founded several aid organizations for North Korean refugees, including the Hana Defector Women’s Organization that provides women with education and child care; the North Korea Traditional Culinary and Culture Institute which trains women in culinary and entrepreneurial skills; and the Global Leadership Scholarship Program for students. Dr. Lee is one of this year’s recipients of the US State Department’s annual International Women of Courage Awards.

Hélène Cixous, profile by Kyle Bachan

Hélène Cixous is a French feminist writer, poet and playwright. With over seventy works detailing the relationship between sexuality and language, she is considered one of the mothers of poststructuralist feminist theory. Hélène’s body of work is considered to be a wealth of self-liberation, for herself, and for all others. She founded the first centre for women’s studies in Europe at the University of Paris VIII, and still teaches there today.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, profile by Emily Heroy

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, originally from Mumbai, India and now resides in the U.S., became influential after her essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” published in 1986 by Duke University Press. For me personally, this essay changed my outlook on what international feminism meant. Specifically, she breaks down the structure of the “Third World Woman,” and how  oppression is very diverse, from country to country and from culture to culture. Mohanty writes about this subject further in a book of essays entitled Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Mohanty is currently the department chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Read the rest of this entry →

As mentioned yesterday, we’re starting a global feminist book club here at Gender Across Borders. Every month, we will choose a new book to read and discuss. The book for April will be Kamila Shamsie‘s Burnt Shadows. This sweeping book tells the story of the postmodern age, beginning with the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and ending after 9/11, through the remarkable and at times agonizing life of a Japanese woman. Hiroko Tanaka fits none of the stereotypes Westerners often hold about Japanese women. She is, like all of us, at times helpless against the brutal forces of history and the decisions of the powerful but she faces the world recreated by those forces with determination and daring. Her bravery at first may come from a certain naivete. By the end, however, after surviving calamity after calamity, her ability to move on in life and to new countries, comes from another kind of calmness and self-possession.

What makes this book so powerful is that the tension comes not from wondering what is going to happen but from knowing and being unable to stop it. In this way, Shamsie personalises the experience of reading history.

Please join us on April 1 when we will open up a thread for discussion of this striking work of contemporary fiction.

A Vision Entrepreneur at work in Latin America/www.visionspring.org/blog

Last week while flipping through Parade magazine, of all places (it’s that Sunday newspaper insert that reads like a Cliffs Notes version of Reader’s Digest), I came across the story of a nonprofit that has a unique model of aiding impoverished communities in developing countries.

VisionSpring trains local individuals—many of them women—to perform basic vision exams and sell nonprescription glasses to members of their community. It’s a win-win situation, as it gives people access to the vision correction they need to perform their work, and it provides a source of income for the seller, called a “vision entrepreneur” or VE. The organization now operates in India, Bangladesh, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Ghana.

Founder Dr. Jordan Kassalow, an optometrist, developed the idea for VisionSpring while working in developing countries. He found that about 40% of patients he treated needed a simple pair of nonprescription glasses which were not available in their communities. Without glasses, many patients would find it difficult or impossible to continue their work in weaving, farming, artistry, or other trades. But rather than simply bringing in an American team to distribute glasses, Dr. Kassalow recognized an opportunity to employ locals who needed a source of income. Read the rest of this entry →