Women in Action articles from April 2003

Women in Action archives from April 2003

The personal is political ... redux. (editorial).(Editorial)
April 1, 2003... During the second-wave of the feminist movement in the 1960s-70s, one of the prevailing philosophies that evolved was that "the personal is political"--i.e., matters that were regarded as personal had political meaning. There are two main...

Women sold 'like sacks of potatoes'. (clips).
April 1, 2003... After the wars that tore the former Yugoslav federation apart in the 1990s, the area has become notorious now for the trafficking of women who end up as sex slaves. An estimated 700,000 women illegally pass through European borders every...

Young workers toil to churn out Santa's toys. (clips).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Much of the world's Christmas glitter is made in China, in sweatshops where 1.5 million peasant girls work 12 or even 14 hours a day, inhaling toxic fumes. China is quickly becoming the world's major producer of Christmas toys and...

Vatican says word 'gender' is anti-church code. (clips).
April 1, 2003... The Vatican announced it will publish a collection of phrases and words including "reproductive rights" and "gender" that it says are code for anti-Catholic sentiments. The Vatican said these and approximately 76 other neutral-sounding...

Judge rules rape of Aboriginal girl 'traditional'. (clips).
April 1, 2003... In North Queensland, Australia, a state judge defended an Aboriginal man's right to forcible intercourse with an underage girl as a 40,000-year-old custom. The judge ruled in October that a 15-year-old Aboriginal girl "knew what was...

Women with HIV defend their right to bear children. (clips).(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Sumaia dos Santos Dias was railroaded into having a ligation after giving birth to her third child at the age of 24, because she tested positive for HIV, the AIDS virus. Today she is working to defend the reproductive rights of other...

Oppressive traditions must be challenged in the home first. (women negotiating personal spaces).
April 1, 2003... Most children simply are not empowered enough to make others around them--especially their parents and other adults--aware of their innermost feelings. This is often due to fear of being hit or shouted at with ugly words that tend to leave...

Women have to cope as AIDS, economic woes afflict Zambia. (women negotiating personal spaces).
April 1, 2003... The HIV/AIDS pandemic is taking its toll; unemployment is soaring. Husbands are fleeing from home, and women have to fend for their children. This is the glum scenario taking place in many African countries south of the Sahara. When...

At home with the struggle. (women negotiating personal spaces).
April 1, 2003... It is a humid Wednesday afternoon. After welcoming me, Ka Nere suggests moving next door to a day-care centre packed with kids reciting Filipino nursery rhymes. At the back, a spiral staircase leads to a room with two computers and an excellent...

Extended families wane as group parenting vanishes in Zambia. (women negotiating personal spaces).
April 1, 2003... The proliferation of orphanages and the unprecedented increase of street kids demonstrate how Zambian society has broken up due to the harsh economic climate and "westernisation" which has seen most citizens lose social responsibility and...

Locations of silence. (women negotiating personal spaces).
April 1, 2003... Dinner Table: The Theory of Space-Time in Silent Dimensions The stars we see farthest away are the stars we are seeing longest ago. (1) In physics, it is said that each object, each person, each planet, each star, each galaxy, exists...

Navigating spaces: lesbians claiming territory. (women negotiating personal spaces).
April 1, 2003... The concept and definition of "family" have fractured and shifted over time, with changes in the two-parent family structure according to new "norms." Higher divorce rates, and the economy in an increasingly consumption-driven society, are just...

HIV/AIDS in Tanzania: why are girls still being buried alive in Muslim communities? (women negotiating personal spaces).
April 1, 2003... Muslims believe that Islam came as a mercy to humanity. It, allowed women in particular to enjoy higher status and more rights than they had in the early patriarchal societies. Parents were duty-bound to support and show kindness and justice to...

Of 'Sluts' and 'Bastards': a Feminist Decodes the Child Welfare Debate.(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... By Louise Armstrong This book is a feminist response to the welfare issue, revealing the link between the issue of welfare, the will to punish "sluts" and that of child welfare intervention to remove their "bastards." It explores the roots...

Good Enough Mothering?: Feminist Perspectives on Lone Motherhood.(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... Edited by Elizabeth Silva Currently, lone mothers and their children make up almost 20 percent of families with dependent children in the United Kingdom, a threefold increase since 1970. Yet, while they are often cited by politicians as...

Southern Mothers: Fact and Fictions in Southern Women's Writing.(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... Edited by Nagueyalti Warren and Sally Wolff Southern Mothers, a collection of critical essays by prominent literary scholars, examines the significance of motherhood in the fiction of the North American South. The belle, the mammy,...

Mother Journeys: Feminists Write about Mothering.(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... by Maureen T. Reddy, Martha Roth, and Amy Sheldon The book is a collection of over 40 essays, stories, poems, cartoons, and drawings, focusing on the motherhood experiences of feminists in the late 20th century. As varied as the...

Everyday Acts and Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community, and Home.(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... By Anndee Hochman The book is full of delightful tidbits about women who live their lives as they choose and find fulfillment in beautiful ways. It celebrates women who defy conventional norms in attempts to live more freely and attain...

The Third Shift: Managing Hard Choices in Our Careers, Homes, and Lives as Women.(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... By Michele Kremen Bolton By identifying and analysing the unique challenges women face in the workforce, Bolton provides cogent strategies for not only coping with the "third shift"--a woman's inner dialogue that often second-guesses her...

Lesbian Family Life Cycle.(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... By Suzanne Slater Until now, lesbian families have had little help in identifying the stages of their couple relationships or recognising the often stressful periods of relational transition. In this first-of-its-kind book, psychotherapist...

Shaking the family tree.(The Filipino Family)(Book Review)
April 1, 2003... Belen T. O. Medina, ed., The Filipino Family, 2nd ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2001. No book provides a more state-of-the-art approach to Family Studies in the Philippines than Belen T.G. Medina's The Filipino...

A cafeteria Pope. (health section).
April 1, 2003... On March 12, 2000, Pope John Paul II made history by asking forgiveness for the conduct of his Church over the centuries. The Church characterises those who pick and choose what to believe to be "cafeteria Catholics." Citing a long list of sins...

Declining birth rate worries Taiwan government. (health section).
April 1, 2003... Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior is worried about the nation's declining birth rate, which has hit a record low, and is looking for ways to get couples to have more children. The ministry's Population Administration Department is going to...

What happened to the 71ers? (health section).
April 1, 2003... The "in control" generation is about to lose it. As the children of 1971--Australia's largest ever year for births--march toward their 40s, confident in their own health and the ability of technology to deal with any medical problems they...

Porn spam: it's getting raunchier. (media section).
April 1, 2003... Naked women performing oral sex with guns pressed to their heads, naked women with large dogs clutching their backs, naked women in pigtails pretending to be daughters having sex with fathers. These are some of the explicit images that have...

Women's media transformed by Internet. (media section).
April 1, 2003... In the feminist-periodical field, the news is both happy and sad. As some publications of the modern feminist era sign off, new ones appear, most often on the Internet, where their potential reach is far beyond what could have been envisioned...

HOWTO encourage women in Linux. (ict section).
April 1, 2003... The Operating System or OS is the most important programme that runs a computer. Computers must have an operating system to run or manage other programmes. The OS performs basic tasks such as handling input and output to and from attached...