Good morning!
It’s almost the middle of the year: here’s your fortnightly round-up of news on women’s rights, gender, and feminism in Asia and the Pacific. Undoubtedly there are stories I’ve missed, and some I can’t link to because they’re behind a paywall, but I try to cover the most interesting stories from around the region.
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- Kate
Afghanistan
Rangina Hamidi is Afghanistan’s first female Education Minister, and she’s determined to ensure the country’s girls and young women get good educations.
NGOs report a ‘steep rise’ in the number of women and men working as sex workers in Kabul.
Australia
The data is clear: across almost all sectors, Australian women continue to earn less than men.
Heavily pregnant women living in remote and regional Australia are forced to pack their bags and head to hospitals in other cities to wait for the birth of their babies, far away from family, culture, community, and connection.
A Sri Lankan family, the Murugappans, who have been fighting for the right to stay in Australia for years, will be released into community detention while the youngest of their two daughters undergoes medical treatment. Both children were born in Australia.
An Iranian woman, who was the last female refugee evacuated from Nauru to Australia, could be deported back to Nauru despite her ill-health.
Swimming Australia will set up an all-female panel to investigate allegations of abuse and toxic behaviour against young female swimmers.
Bangladesh
Eleven people have been arrested for being suspected members of gang that lured girls and women into India’s sex trade using TikTok.
Bhutan
Three women have been found guilty of attempting to traffic young Bhutanese girls to Iraq.
Cambodia
‘Mangroves are life’: meet the female conservationists rewilding the Cambodian coast.
The wives of jailed opposition leaders protest every Friday in Pnomh Penh. Two weeks ago, their rally was disbanded roughly by police.
China
Despite continuing crackdowns against the Chinese women’s movement, more women than ever before identify as feminists.
Nanjing University is trying to encourage young men to apply to study there by using provocative ads.
China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission projected that a two-child policy would result in an extra 30 million working-age people by 2050, but…:
What happened instead was the fertility equivalent of a car crash. After an initial first-year baby bump, birth rates fell every year of the two-child policy. … Beijing didn’t try to rewrite the script. Instead, the men of Zhongnanhai largely resorted to the old, sexist playbook from one-child policy days. Instead of providing adequate economic inducements to lessen parenting burdens, such as subsidized education and child care, authorities resorted to the stick, not carrot, approach. The middle classes were bombarded with old-school messages exhorting the need to produce for the motherland.
Cook Islands
A former Cabinet minister and a prominent Cook Islands lawyer is facing jail time after he was found guilty of two acts of indecent assault.
Fiji
The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre received over 800 calls for assistance in May. 75% of calls relating to domestic violence.
Hong Kong
Democracy activist Agnes Chow is free!
India
What’s behind the decline in India’s female workforce?
Tribal women in Maharashtra are getting new ‘period huts’. Girls and women are often banished to these huts while menstruating, and some advocates now say that if the practice cannot be abandoned quite yet, then at least the huts should be comfortable and safe.
17 per cent more men than women have received a COVID-19 vaccination in India so far.
Indonesia
How an NGO in Bandung has been teaching hundreds of trans women to grow vegetables and raise fish to survive and even sell their produce during the pandemic.
Two Jakartan women began collecting plastic waste two years ago. They’ve since turned it into over 100,000 construction bricks.
Malaysia will deport about 7,200 undocumented migrants to Indonesia. Indonesia wants the most vulnerable people, including women and children held in detention centres, to be returned first.
Malaysia
A well-known female ophthalmologist and motivation speaker told her social media followers that if women are struggling to find a husband, they should “act dumb”. She has (obviously) since deleted the post.
Mongolia
A lack of childcare is forcing Mongolia mothers back into the domestic sphere.
Myanmar
By now, it’s not really news to anyone that Myanmar’s women are leading the struggle against the junta, but TIME offers a neat summary of their involvement.
In Karen State, young women and men are learning combat skills to further their anti-coup fight.
New Zealand
A new documentary film explores the stolen generations of Maori people.
Pakistan
Tahira Bano is a district superintendent for COVID-19 vaccination in Karachi, and she’s working non-stop to ensure residents can access their shots.
Meet the man trying to make comfortable, well-fitting and affordable underwear for Pakistani women.
Pakistan’s female athletes are determined to be successful despite their patriarchal society.
The Philippines
Multiple lesbian women in Manguindanao have reportedly had their heads forcibly shaved as ‘punishment’ for their sexuality.
Papua New Guinea
Are attacks based on ‘revenge’ for witchcraft on the rise in PNG?
Regional
Are chemicals poisoning the world’s female workers?
Samoa
Could Samoa’s election chaos put Pasifika women off entering politics? Or worse, harm gender equality in the Pacific in general?
Singapore
A ban on women freezing their eggs in Singapore has meant that local women have been going overseas to undergo the process.
South Korea
A new documentary explores how young mothers are pressured to give up their babies for adoption in South Korea.
Sri Lanka
A quarter of households in Sri Lanka are headed by women, yet there is no comprehensive national strategy to address their needs, even during COVID-19.
Timor-Leste
The trial against priest and alleged sexual abuser Richard Daschbach continues:
It is known to the local and donor community that young girls would regularly take turns to sleep in his bedroom, but the priest is quick to brush off any suggestion of impropriety. In Timor-Leste, he explains, it is normal for children to sleep in the same room as their parents.
But unbeknownst to the many who trusted and loved him, the missionary was not a saint. His shelter home was not an oasis. The co-sleeping was not innocent. He was, rather, a calculating predator. His kindly persona, a deliberate façade.
Vanuatu
More than 30 individual athletes have represented Vanuatu at past Olympic events, but no Vanuatu team has ever qualified. Will the women’s beach volleyball team be the first?
Vietnam
Despite closed borders during the pandemic, there is an indication that human trafficking is on the increase in Vietnam.