httpss://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/women-march-against-violence
By Jackie Marchildon, Global Citizen, November 26, 2018
People around the world marched Sunday on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, to mark the start of 16 days of activism set by the United Nations, the New York Times reported.
Women and their allies have marched many times before the UN-designated day, but this weekend saw unified marches across several countries, including Turkey, the Dominican Republic, France, Syria, Spain, Italy, and Greece.
The UN’s 16-day campaign runs from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10, Human Rights Day. It’s an annual campaign that aims to bring people together to denounce violence against women and girls — people are encouraged to speak out, take action, and raise awareness.
This year’s theme is Orange the World: #HearMeToo, and participants are asked to use the color orange to help highlight the issue of violence against women, while also using the hashtags #orangetheworld and #HearMeToo.
The purpose of this year’s theme is “to bring to the forefront the voices of women and girls who have survived violence and who are defending women’s rights every day, away from the limelight of Hollywood and the media,” UN Women wrote.
And marches around the world, as well as voices online, did just that.
Violence against women can be physical, sexual, or psychological.
The UN estimates that more than a third of women worldwide will experience some kind of violence in their lifetime.
For that to end, there needs to be awareness, education, and legal reform in countries all over the world.
Recent cases of sexual violence in Spain made this year’s marches especially pertinent in Europe. Just this past Friday, in Lleida, Spain, two men were cleared of a serious charge of sexual assault. In a back alley, the men forced her to have sex without her consent, the court was told.
They were sentenced to four and a half years for the lesser charge of sexual abuse because they were deemed not to have used “intimidation or violence,” even though the woman pleaded for them to stop, according to the New York Times.
And in Ireland this month, a lawyer indicated that a woman’s choice of underwear showed consent during a trial against a man accused of raping her in an alleyway.
Rape laws in some countries in Europe only consider cases to be rape when physical violence, threat, or coercion is reported, according to a study by Amnesty International.
The study revealed that only eight countries (out of 31) legally define sex without consent as rape. Amnesty International also said that nearly 9 million women over the age of 15 have been raped in the EU, according to the New York Times.
These are not isolated cases. They are not country-specific. Violence against women exists everywhere — and without addressing it, the world will not succeed in achieving Global Goal 5 on gender equality, and will therefore fail to achieve all of the Global Goals by 2030. (1)
And another post: Rape victims should marry their rapists, Malaysian MP tells parliament
I invoke the Mother with Her Blue Diamond Energy of Hope and the Universal Law of Elimination for bigotry, hatred, limitation, control, all violence towards women and men.
Wisdom of the Tri-flame
I Love You, I’m Sorry for our human suffering,
the false grids, the entrenched belief that “God is punishing”
Please Forgive Me for the parts I’ve played creating the old ways
Thank You for Your Constant Forgiveness
I Love you.
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
Gender Equity is the Most Overlooked
Solution for Climate Change
“Gender and climate are inextricably linked.”
By Adele Peters, Fast Company, November 29, 2018
The list of solutions to climate change usually focuses on technology: solar power, electric cars, devices that suck carbon out of the atmosphere. But one impactful solution is often overlooked.
At TEDWomen, TED’s conference focused on women and girls, environmentalist Katharine Wilkinson explained why gender equity is a critical piece of addressing climate change.
“Gender and climate are inextricably linked,” said Wilkinson, one of the authors of Project Drawdown, a book that takes a deep dive into the most effective ways to fight global warming, and found that empowering women and girls was one of the top solutions.
Women and girls face more risks as the climate changes, from higher odds of being killed during a natural disaster to a greater risk of being forced into an early marriage or prostitution if prolonged drought or floods destroy a family’s finances. But improving gender equity can also directly impact emissions.
In lower-income countries, female farmers grow most of the food on small farms. But women don’t have the same access to resources as men who farm–from credit to training and tools.
“They farm as capably and efficiently as men, but this well-documented disparity in resources and rights means women produce less food on the same amount of land,” said Wilkinson.
When farms are less productive, that leads to deforestation, as farmers clear more land to grow the same amount of food.
If women had the same tools as male farmers, Project Drawdown calculates that they could grow 20-30% more food on the same amount of land. That translates into 2 billion tons of emissions that could be avoided between now and 2050.
Gender equity in education also matters for the climate. One-hundred-thirty million girls still don’t have the right to attend school.
When girls go to school, it changes many things–their health, their financial security, and their agency. But it also means that they’re more likely to marry later and choose to have fewer children.
Family size is also obviously impacted by access to contraception; hundreds of millions of women say that they want to decide when to have children, but aren’t using contraception.
If women have the right to choose to have smaller families, it could lead to one billion fewer people inhabiting Earth by midcentury, and dramatically reduced demand for food, electricity, and other basic services.
That could mean avoiding 120 billion tons of emissions.
“If we gain ground on gender equity, we also gain ground on addressing global warming,” Wilkinson said.
Footnotes
Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. (“Partnership for the SDGs,” at httpss://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/partnerships/goal5/