Good morning! Welcome to the final edition of Solidaritas for 2022. I’ll be taking time off until mid-January, so you won’t hear from me for a month.
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.
If you like Solidaritas, you can choose to support the newsletter by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s just US$5/month or even cheaper at US$40/year, and would make a sweet Christmas gift, too, just saying:
Have a restful break!
Cheers,
- Kate
Afghanistan
In the months before the Taliban returned, in August 2021, 18 Afghan women writers wrote fictional stories, drawn from real lives. Many Afghan women felt let down and left alone by the international community. But these writers used their pens and phones to comfort each other and to reflect on issues now faced by millions of women and girls. Here, two writers in Kabul share their thoughts written in secret.
Female activists are secretly building support networks for marginalised women in Taliban-governed Afghanistan.
Millions of Afghan women banned from school are now forced to work on farms, weaving carpets, and doing household chores.
Flogging returns in Afghanistan, targeting those found guilty of ‘moral’ crimes.
Bangladesh
The Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice has passed constitutional changes to grant equal representation to women in the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). The amendment requires that at least two out of four ECP members be women.
Bangladesh's fledgling clean energy industry, which the country says is crucial for increasing access to renewable power and curbing its already low greenhouse gas emissions, is creating thousands of new jobs and, with them, opportunities for more women to join the workforce:
When Shefali Khatun separated from her husband, her biggest worry was how she would support her young son and cover all the expenses for their home in central Bangladesh - without a job.
Then she heard about a programme run by a Bangladeshi green energy initiative that teaches women to build and fix solar-power systems. She signed up, despite having no engineering background or experience in the renewable energy sector.
Five years on, Khatun now works making solar equipment and earns about 10,000 taka ($95) a month, enough to meet her family's needs and send her son to school.
Bhutan
Women working at hydropower sites, road, and bridge construction reported bullying and harassment at the workplace according to a National Commission for Women and Children (NCWC) study. The report found that women face sexual harassment at 9.23 percent, 12 percent, and 11.11 percent at hydropower construction sites, road construction sites, and bridge construction sites respectively.
Cambodia
One in five women in Cambodia report experiencing domestic abuse. Now a theatre group in Battambang is producing shows that help survivors talk about what is still a taboo subject.
The Cambodian community is calling for the release of casino union leader Chhim Sithar's from prison after she was arrested on return from a visit to Australia.
China
Women are at the forefront of protests against China's "zero-Covid" policies. Dr. Leta Hong Fincher traces their work to the fight of feminist groups in the country.
Uyghurs report disturbing stories of their relatives in Xinjiang being forced to marry Han Chinese, part of Beijing’s strategy for diluting Uyghur heritage.
Fiji
It took a trip to Australia to find her true self. Now Divina Loloma wants to be Fiji's first transgender politician.
India
Women are amongst the biggest users of public transport in India, a new report by World Bank says, with 84% of women's trips estimated to be by public transport.
India's gender pay gap is among the worst in the world. But the women's cricket team hopes to change that: for the first time in history, the Indian women's international side is getting paid the same amount per match as its male counterpart.
On the surface, India has one of the world’s highest abortion rates and most progressive abortion laws, but this hides a tangle of issues that prevent many women from accessing safe abortion.
Indonesia
The Indonesia’s Women Clerics Congress is redefining who is able to interpret Islamic law.
Indonesia has a new criminal Code. It’s.. not great and criticism has been pretty widespread (including from myself). Even the UN was called in by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain their critical stance.
Japan
A draft law that may be introduced in the Japanese parliament this month would prohibit doctors from providing fertility treatment to any woman who is not married to a man. The Bill on Specified Assisted Reproductive Technology would outlaw artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF) for single women and lesbian couples.
The number of female presidents of companies is rising in Japan, but the pace is extremely slow, with just 8% of companies having female presidents in 2022.
Nepal
‘Your mother is in the mountains’: A photo essay of Nepal’s record-breaking female mountaineers.
Nepal went to the polls on 20 November, but the results for women are lower than mandated by the Constitution, which requires 33% female representation. There are only 91 women lawmakers in the 275-member Nepal Parliament, the Election Commission announced.
The policies of the Kathmandu Municipal Government toward street vendors, landless people, and begging are threatening the human rights of thousands of city residents, Human Rights Watch says. Recent campaigns by the city administration under Mayor Balendra Shah, who was elected in May 2022, have used the police to mistreat the urban poor, including from vulnerable Dalit and Indigenous communities, without measures to provide alternative livelihoods or housing. A large number of women who have no alternative source of income support themselves and their children by working in the sector.
A study report on online violence against women journalists shows that 88.6 per cent of the women journalists in Nepal experience violence in their life.
Communities across Nepal are worried about increasing cases of missing children, fearing children are being trafficked for labor and sexual exploitation both in Nepal and abroad.
Women are being forced to take out loans to respond to climate change:
Last monsoon, Purna Maya BK from Bethanchok in Kavre woke up to a big thud. It had rained constantly all night and she thought that there was an earthquake. But, when she got out of her house, she saw that the constant rain had swept away her front yard.
She did not have enough money to repair it so she went to a cooperative that gave her a loan of Rs 200,000 at an interest rate of 15 per cent. She repaired it, but soon the cooperative came calling. Since she had no means to earn money, she could not pay it back on time as interest piled on and on.
Laos
Stigma around using contraception before marriage and the belief that only sex workers contract STIs is driving a sexual health crisis in Laos, and a new railway connecting into China could make things even worse.
Malaysia
Women ‘acting like men’ could face jail in the state of Terengganu, as the governemtn toughens laws top protect “the well-being of Muslims”.
Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government has made history by appointing two women MPs to take charge of the education ministry. The minister is Fadhlina Sidek, the first woman to hold the post. Her deputy is Tanjong MP Lim Hui Ying. Both are first-time MPs.
Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa has said that her ministry will embark on a mission to address period poverty faced by women in Malaysia.
Mongolia
Protesters, including many women, have been demanding an end to the “coal mafia” in ongoing demonstrations since December 5.
Myanmar
More than 2,600 female political prisoners are among the 16,300 unjustly arrested political prisoners nationwide during the nearly two years of the military coup, according to the Women’s League of Burma.
Pakistan
Women and girls in Sindh Province are increasingly vulnerable to abductions, with the latest case involving the kidnapping of a 15-year-old girl from a police station.
A tribute to a group of Bangladeshi women photographers who stood their ground, broke social norms, and paved the way for future generations to provide us with glimpses of history through their iconic images of an unrecognised genocide: the Bangladesh Liberation War.
Papua New Guinea
Why Papua New Guinea's next new cricket star Hollan Doriga is in it for her family.
The Philippines
Gabriela Women’s Party has urged President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to support a pending divorce bill after the UN called for the Philippines to pass pro-women and gender-sensitive laws. Marcos’ justice secretary recently commented that the UN’s recommendations were “unacceptable” to the Filipino people.
The Philippines has registered its sharpest ever decline in birthrate, falling to just 1.9 children per adult woman, the third-lowest in Southeast Asia.
South Korea
Instead of fixing South Korea’s gender problems, South Korea's new President Yoon Suk-yeol has said structural sexism is "a thing of the past". Yoon has scrapped government gender quotas, declaring people would be hired on merit, not sex, and appointed just three women to his 19-member cabinet. He is now trying to abolish the government's Gender Equality Ministry, which supports women and victims of sexual assault, claiming it is obsolete.
Recent surveys reported that 76% of Korean men in their 20s oppose feminism, in contrast to 64% of Korean women in their 20s who support feminism:
Young, educated and tech-savvy men have been the main drivers of misogyny and hate speech against women online. They blame women and feminism for their economic and social difficulties in a society distressed by high youth unemployment, spiking housing prices and growing economic inequality. Some of these men have formed the base of the alt-right movement in South Korea, brandishing the conservative flag against women, immigrants, sexual minorities and the disabled. These sentiments have been manipulated by conservative politicians into potent public weapons of battle.
Meet Park Ji-Hyun, an advocate for women’s rights in South Korea, who helped attract 11,000 new members—80% of them female—in Seoul alone to the center-left Democratic Party of Korea in the two days after the March presidential elections.
Taiwan
Taiwan's parliament has the highest ratio of female to male lawmakers in Asia. Recent local elections continued this trend, but many female politicians still have to contend with sexism and harassment.
Tonga
‘Enough is enough: audaciously decolonising the development and humanitarian nexus’: ‘Ofakilevuka (‘Ofa) Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Director of the Women & Children Crisis Centre (WCCC), Tonga.
Vanuatu
Gloria Julia King has single-handedly ended almost a quarter-century of male rule within the halls of Vanuatu’s parliament, with the former athlete becoming the only woman elected in the nation’s 52-member legislature.
Vietnam
Tens of thousands of Vietnamese factory workers have been laid off as Western consumers cut spending, and almost half a million others have been forced to work fewer hours. Women factory workers, who make up 80 percent of the labour force in Vietnam's garment industry, have been hit the hardest.