Canadian Politics
- Abousfian Abdelrazik returned to Canada Saturday afternoon amid a crowd of cheering supporters at Pearson International Airport. Following several failed attempts to return to Canada, Abdelrazik said he was very happy to be home after spending the past six years in exile in Sudan.
American Politics
- New measures aimed at reducing prison rapes are in the works and States that fail to take steps to protect their inmates could see their federal money cut. The new standards were proposed Tuesday by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a bipartisan panel that spent five years studying the issue. It’s estimated that about 60,000 inmates in the US are sexually abused each year.
- The U.S. Census Bureau announced on June 19 that it will include same-sex couples in the 2010 census. This move is a reversal of an earlier Bush-era court decision that same-sex marriages were not to be counted.
Reproductive Choice
- The Arizona Senate approved more restrictions to women seeking abortions this week. Women will now have to wait 24-hours after their first visit to a doctor when seeking an abortion, and this visit must include specific information regarding the risks of the procedure as outlined by the state. The bill also allows pharmacists and medical professionals to refuse to provide emergency contraception if they are morally opposed to it.
- Abortion providers in Virginia are now legally subject to criminal charges if they perform a second trimester abortion, under a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals on June 25.
Gendered Violence
- Police in Bolivia have arrested eight men accused of raping over 60 women in their Mennonite community over the past few months, according to the Associated Press. The men were arrested on June 23 in the eastern Santa Cruz region, which is home to a Mennonite farming settlement.
- A woman in an eastern village of Bangladesh was sentenced to being caned 39 times for pointing out the father of her child. Human rights groups are concerned with the rise of such incidents in Bangladesh and say it’s becoming increasingly common for hard-line clerics in remote villages to take the law into their own hands. One group has recorded 15 such incidents in May and June.
- Singer Chris Brown will not serve jail time for his assault of pop star Rihanna, thanks to a plea agreement reached just hours before the scheduled trial on June 22. Brown will serve five years of probation – about 1,400 hours of community service – and take a year-long domestic violence course.
Health
- Sista’s Organizing to Survive, a one-year-old Florida-based organization, held an innovative three-day conference in Orlando this week to raise HIV awareness among black women and to encourage them to be tested. One in 68 black women in the state is living with HIV-AIDS and many are unaware that they are infected.
Arts
- A yearlong, three-part study by a Princeton economics student looked at the gender bias in theater. It found that there were twice as many male playwrights as female ones, and that the men tended to be more prolific, turning out more plays. The research also found that there is discrimination against female playwrights, but that it exists mostly because of female artistic directors and literary managers. Finally, the study showed that plays by women had to be “better” than those by men in order to make a profit.
International
- India moved this week to overturning a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexuality. The victory is a historic step forward for human rights only days after people worldwide took to the streets for gay pride. LGBTQ individuals in India face discrimination and violence on a daily basis.
- French cosmetics company L’Oreal was found guilty of racial discrimination by the La Cour de Cassation, the French equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court, on June 25. The company had sent out a fax stating that Garnier’s Fructise Style promoters “should be aged 18 to 22, wear size 38 to 42 clothes and be BBR”. “BBR” translates to “bleu, blanc, rouge” – the colors of the French flag – and is generally code for white French people born to white French parents.
- Foreign-funded development projects focusing on agriculture, agrarian reform and natural resources are the most “gender-responsive” because of their increase in women’s access to economic opportunities and basic services, concluded a study released this week.
- The World Bank has increased support and lending for gender-related issues in developing countries in order to improve women’s social and economic conditions, according to their Annual Monitoring Report. The report says that gender issues informed the design of 45 percent of all lending operations in fiscal year 2008, up from compared to 35 percent in fiscal year 2006.
- Progressive US nuns are facing scrutiny from the Vatican. In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality.
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