Female Bishops Gain in Wales; Child Bride Dies

Credit: Church of the Redeemer on Flickr, under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

(WOMENSENEWS)–

Cheers

A landmark “yes” vote on the bill to enable women to be consecrated as bishops passed the Church in Wales, BBC News reported Sept. 12. A previous vote in 2008 failed.

More News to Cheer This Week:

U.S. women have recovered all the jobs they lost to the Great Recession, The Detroit News reported Sept. 12. Men remain 2.1 million jobs short because they dominate construction and manufacturing, industries that have not yet fully recovered. Women make up a disproportionate share of workers in sectors that have been hiring: retail, health care, restaurants and hotels.

Janet Breslin-Smith, wife of U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James B. Smith, has created a network of Saudi women by hosting lunches, dinners, and meetings among female lawyers and foreign academics. She was spurred by a rule in Saudi Arabia that bars male diplomats from interacting with the female population, The Daily Beast reported Sept. 13.

Europe’s first female genital mutilation clinic, the Desert Flower Center, opened in South Berlin, a German news service The Local reported Sept. 11. Treatment will be covered by the patient’s insurance or by the Desert Flower foundation. Up to 100 patients are expected per year.

Lee Ashcroft, the manager of the Northwich Victoria football team, was fined $1,265 and suspended for 10 games for insulting a female coach, the soccer news service GOAL reported Sept. 11. Ashcroft continues to deny the offense.

Glowork, a startup founded in 2011 that links Saudi women to employment opportunities in sectors traditionally devoid of women, was granted $16 million by
Saudi company SAS Holding, Forbes reported Sept. 10. Over a third of women in the kingdom are unemployed despite their college educations.

The Deborah Brown Community School in Oklahoma apologized to 7-year-old Tiana Park after dismissing her for wearing her hair in dreadlocks. The apology came after a petition supporting Park garnered more than 20,000 signatures, the mobilizer of the petition campaign Wagatwe Wanjuki said in a Sept. 10 press statement.

A New York judge ruled that strippers at Rick’s are employees protected by federal and state labor laws and deserve at least the minimum wage, The New York Times reported Sept. 10. The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of current and former dancers at the club.

Israel Economy Minister Naftali Bennett introduced regulations and financial incentives to help better integrate women in the work force, Israel Nation News reported Sept. 9. The Committee for the Advancement of Women in the Workplace applauded Bennett’s plans.

Jeers

Eight-year-old Rawan died in Yemen after having sex with her 40-year-old husband on their wedding night, Reuters reported Sept. 10. Rawan suffered from internal bleeding due to torn genitalia and a ruptured uterus. Activists are calling for the arrest of her family and husband.

More News to Jeer This Week:

The new head of the UN agency promoting women’s rights, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said there is “a definite backlash” against equality for women despite some significant progress, Star Tribune reported Sept. 13. She pointed to an upsurge in violence against women and the uphill fight to escape poverty and crack the glass ceiling.

A U.N. report finds 1-in-4 Asian men admitting to raping a woman once in their lives. Entertainment, punishment and revenge were among the top reasons listed, International Business Times reported Sept. 11. Authors interviewed 10,178 men aged between 18 and 49 years old from different parts of Asia about forced sex.

Women make up only 1 percent of Afghanistan‘s police force, Singapore‘s The Straits Times reported Sept. 10. As a result, women are reluctant to seek justice for rising levels of violence, International Aid Agency Oxfam said.

A study confirms that many women under the age of 50 who died of breast cancer never had a mammogram, NBC News reported Sept. 9. The results revive the question of whether women should get screened for breast cancer at a younger age.

More than 100 women, including two dozen undocumented immigrants, have been handcuffed and loaded into police vans outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., The Associated Press reported Sept. 12. The women wearing red T-shirts demanding “Fair Immigration Reform,” held a rally and blocked an intersection by joining hands and sitting in a circle on a major street through the Capitol complex.

Australian activists see a stealth anti-abortion effort in the proposed Zoe Law, which says that anyone accused of harming a fetus will suffer severe physical injuries, Australia‘s Herald Sun reported Sept. 11. The law is named after stillborn baby Zoe, who died when the mother’s car was hit by a drug-influenced driver.

Noted:

Four of the men who fatally gang-raped Jyoti Singh Pandey, a 23-year-old medical student in New Delhi in December 2012, were charged with murder and sentenced to death, The Guardian reported Sept 13. The sentence was pronounced at 2.30 pm by Yogesh Khanna, the judge who has heard the case over seven months at the district court of Saket in south Delhi.

The Women in the World Foundation announced Sept. 12 an expanded partnership with Vital Voices, the nonprofit organization born out of an initiative launched by former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Madeleine K. Albright, The Daily Beast reported Sept.13. Women in the World has granted $650,000 to Vital Voices, and the partnership will expand leadership programs for women and girls worldwide.

Tina Brown, the veteran editor who announced on Wednesday that she is departing The Daily Beast and magazine journalism, has struck a deal to write a memoir, The New York Times reported Sept. 12. “Media Beast” will chronicle her career in magazines, from her early days at Tatler in London on through her stewardship of Vanity Fair, her reinvention of The New Yorker and her exit this week from The Daily Beast Web site. Her book is expected to be published in early 2016.

George Zimmerman, acquitted for the murder of unarmed adolescent Trayvon Martin, was interrogated by authorities for an alleged domestic violence dispute with his wife, The Chicago Tribune reported Sept. 9. Shellie Zimmerman, who filed for divorce from her husband on Sept. 5, said George Zimmerman pulled a gun on her and her father.

Union for the Mediterranean‘s first retreat in two years focuses on women’s rights in the Arab world, the Mediterranean news service ANSA reported Sept. 10. The Sept. 11 – 12 agenda included public harassment, sexual and reproductive rights and employment.

In Memoriam:

Sunila Abeysekera, a Sri Lankan activist and women’s rights advocate who won the United Nations Human Rights Award, died after a lengthy battle to cancer, Sri Lanka’s The Sunday Times reported Sept. 9. Abeysekera founded the nonprofit, Inform, to expose injustices resulting from Sri Lanka’s civil war between the Sinhalese and Tamil populations.