Good morning!
Solidaritas is a fortnightly newsletter about women’s rights, feminism, and gender in Asia and the Pacific, covering the entirety of this huge region: from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the west to Kiribati and Cook Islands in the east.
This issue’s header image is from the Australian National Botanic Gardens. The rainforest garden was my favourite place when I was a wee girl and remains high on my list.
If you like Solidaritas, I’d be thrilled if you chose to support the newsletter by becoming a paid subscriber for just US$5 a month:
In solidarity,
- Kate
Afghanistan
Female medical students have been forced to study in secret due to the Taliban’s ban on women’s education.
Meanwhile, the Taliban are also restricting Afghan women’s access to work, travel and health care if they are unmarried or don’t have a male guardian:
In one incident, officials from the Vice and Virtue Ministry advised a woman to get married if she wanted to keep her job at a health care facility, saying it was inappropriate for an unwed woman to work.
Australia
Fertility testing is becoming more accessible as demand from Australian women increases. But what are the implications?
The Victorian government has announced an inquiry into women’s pain. The inquiry will take around a year.
Bhutan
With just two women in the National Assembly, women’s representation in Bhutan’s legislature has hit an all-time low.
China
China’s population fell again in 2023, despite the state’s fervent efforts to get women to have more children.
Related: Blaming China’s women for high ‘bride prices’ is not how to promote marriage, argues Phoebe Zhang:
If Beijing really wants to encourage marriage, rather than putting pressure on women and their families to stop this admittedly problematic custom, it should address the gender inequalities that make marriage unattractive to women.
Fiji
When Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka took office more than a year ago, dealing with a sex scandal involving two of his ministers would have been at the very bottom of a list of potential threats to his government.
Indonesia
Women’s political representation in national parliament sits around 21%. How much of a role do campaign finances play in women getting elected?
Cyberbullying in the leadup to February’s national and presidential elections are impacting women’s ability to express themselves online.
Governments have long enlisted women’s bodies to meet reproductive policy goals, often with little forethought to the broader implications. Negligent medical practices as well as unfair societal perceptions and actions are just some of the outcomes women face in Indonesia.
Japan
While the number of all-male boards of directors in Japan has fallen markedly in recent years, few women have been able to work their way up internally, highlighting the obstacles facing women aspiring to management. Out of 1,836 companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's ‘prime’ market, only 15 firms, or less than 1%, were led by women in January 2023. One person has since stepped down and six companies with female CEOs have moved from the ‘prime’ to ‘standard’ markets.
Taro Aso, Japanese former prime minister and vice-president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has been accused of sexism after making insulting comments about the foreign minister’s appearance and age. Aso said Yoko Kamikawa was “not that good looking”, got her name wrong, used an ageist jibe, and mixed up her place in history.
Malaysia
The gender wage gap seems to be widening in Malaysia. For every RM100 in salaries and wages received by men, women receive just RM66.67.
Myanmar
Three years have passed since the military coup in Myanmar:
While the political, social, and armed aspects of the revolution have shifted, what has remained constant is the unwavering participation and leadership of women who have defied patriarchal systems, including gender stereotypes, and set an unquestionable new standard of what is possible for women and girls in Myanmar.
Nepal
More Nepali women are looking to migrate overseas for work, but illegal recuiters and networks continue to pose significant challenges.
Pakistan
How female Baloch surgeon and orator Mahrang Baloch is taking on the Pakistani establishment, leading a long march in protest of rights abuses in Balochistan.
Papua New Guinea
Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects 80% of women in Papua New Guinea, a rate that may be the highest in the world. This DevPolicy blog draws on a sample of 152 cases (out of over 2,000 cases in total) maintained by the police’s Family and Sexual Violence Unit (FSVU) in Port Moresby for the year 2020, to understand the factors driving incidents of IPV. It also examines outcomes of the cases in terms of justice for victims.
Regional
In India and Pakistan, socially conservative and patriarchal values make the threat of sexually-themed deepfakes a dire concern for the countries’ girls and women.
Women journalists in the Pacific are mobilising to work together against gender discrimination in male dominated workplaces.
A US state governor is taking Meta (owner of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp) to court. He alleges Meta is “the world’s single largest marketplace for paedophiles”.
Solomon Islands
Shama Maemae has become the first female FIFA-accredited referee in the Solomon Islands.
South Korea
A bachelor time bomb is about to go off:
Following a historic 30-year-long imbalance in the male-to-female sex ratio at birth, young men far outnumber young women in the country. As a result, some 700,000 to 800,000 “extra” South Korean boys born since the mid-1980s may not be able to find South Korean girls to marry.
Related: An increasing number of South Korean men are looking for brides in Vietnam.
Sri Lanka
Job losses are hitting Sri Lankans working in Oman, leading to protests outside the Sri Lankan embassy there. The workers are demanding their government help bring them home, but the government argues they have no responsibility to do so, because the migrant workers arrived on tourist visas.
Taiwan
A record percentage of new fathers applied for paternity leave in 2022 following the passage of higher subsidies the year before, an annual report has revealed.
Tonga
Until recently no Tongan woman had ever played professional soccer, but now defender Laveni Vaka is poised to make her debut in a new National Women's Soccer League team in the United States.