Good afternoon, and happy Monday. Take a break from work - find out what’s going on in Asia and the Pacific.
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.
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Love and solidarity,
- Kate
Afghanistan
The Taliban have stopped the sale of contraceptives in two of Afghanistan’s main cities, claiming their use by women is a western conspiracy to control the Muslim population.
Three women cyclists who risked their lives to escape from the Taliban, arriving in the UK, have spoken for the first time about their hopes of reaching the 2024 Olympics.
Australia
Australia should be an LGBTQ+ rights champion in the Asia-Pacific region, say Pasifika activists.
Women in media are still vastly underrepresented as men continue to dominate newsrooms across Australia, according to a new Women in Media gender scorecard. Men still account for 70% of quoted sources and 66% of experts in all news stories.
The federal government’s new tool to address the persistent gender pay gap problem, the Workplace Gender Equality Amendment Bill, may not actually achieve much.
Bangladesh
Lead poses a huge health risk for everyone, but women and children are especially affected. An estimated 35 million children in Bangladesh have high levels of lead in their blood, says UNICEF.
A new study has found strong links between mental health and climate change:
An individual experiencing a 1°C higher temperature during the two months preceding the survey rounds has a 21% higher probability of reporting an anxiety disorder and a 24% higher likelihood of experiencing both depression and an anxiety disorder at the same time.
China
Journalist and activist Huang Xueqin was detained in September 2021 and formally arrested a month later. She has been accused of inciting subversion of state power, and held in Guangzhou without access to family or lawyers, and now her health is deteriorating: advocates sayHuang has lost a lot of weight, stopped menstruating, and is suffering from untreated long-term conditions and deficiencies.
Police in eastern China have been berated by netizens after releasing personal data of women drink drivers but redacting male offenders’ details.
Fiji
Meet ‘Nana Reggie’ Mcgoon: a queen mother of Fiji’s transgender community.
A government minister is facing criticism for asking an opposition MP for "evidence" of the reported rape of Indo-Fijian women and children during the political turmoil of the 1987 coup led by prime minister Sitiveni Rabuka.
India
Rising education levels and unemployment are delaying the entry of young adults into paid work. While unemployment is high among single young men and women, marriage pushes virtually all Indian men to take up employment. In contrast, it results in women exiting employment in urban India. In other words, both young men and women are bound by societal norms.
Gig workers are on their own: Over and above long hours and declining wages, it is the indifference to their safety that women gig workers have to tackle on a daily basis.
New research indicates that one in eight women aged 15-49 years in India are both anaemic and overweight.
A useful reminder of how crucial it is to make our cities women-friendly comes from World Bank blog post on how to create women-friendly public transport in cities in India:
Women are amongst the biggest users of public and non-motorized transport across Indian cities. On average, 45% women walk, and 22% take the bus when commuting to work compared to 27% and 14% of men, respectively. Urban mobility infrastructure and services designed with a gender lens can enable women and girls to access a wider array of choices about their future – preventing dropouts from school or college, taking up a job, or attending a skill training program.
Japan
Police have arrested 17 men suspected of photographing and filming more than 10,000 women who were bathing in hot springs.
Japan’s population is aging fast, with fewer women deciding to get married and have children.
An interview with feminist writer Mieko Kawakami, author of Breasts and Eggs.
Malaysia
Tackling pay equity under the new Malaysian government.
Incidents of women being denied entry into government buildings, police stations, and even hospitals because of ‘inappropriate’ attire continue to be a major problem in Malaysia. A 60-year-old woman was recently denied entry into a lift to renew her business permit, because her long dress showed her ankles, while a young women was refused entry into a police station because she was wearing shorts.
Mongolia
Fewer and fewer young women are willing to live as nomadic herders in Mongolia.
Myanmar
Politics in Myanmar is traditionally the domain of older men, but women and youth have been prominent in resistance to the 2021 military takeover. Giving them a bigger voice could have a positive effect on the country’s political culture, no matter how the crisis ends.
New Zealand
On Jacinda Ardern’s resignation, which shocked the world but didn’t shock Kiwis quite as much:
By every conceivable metric, Ardern met the moment during the two major crises that defined her administration, and her gifts for communication, empathy, and collaboration were well-suited to those crises… But as important as Ardern’s global profile is, there’s no getting around the hard facts of domestic democratic politics. Inflation continues to batter economies across the globe; in New Zealand, that’s playing out in particular in the housing market.
North Korea
Is Kim Jong-un a feminist? Not really, but the increasing number of women in senior government roles is interesting nonetheless.
Pakistan
Malala Yousafzai was not the only young girl attacked by the Taliban: Shazia Ramzan, Malala’s friend, was shot on the same day. Now, she’s studying nursing in Edinburgh and is planning to open a nursing college in Pakistan.
Papua New Guinea
Can Papua New Guinea women's football team make history and be the first Pacific island nation to qualify for the FIFA World Cup?
The Philippines
Every year millions of Filipinos leave their homeland to work overseas, sending billions of dollars back home. Now, the death of a female overseas Filipino worker has shaken the country to its core.
Regional
The Micronesian region will be the first in the Pacific to develop a regional gender equality framework after the endorsement by leaders at the 25th Micronesian Islands Forum in Pohnpei.
South Korea
Seoul is removing women-only parking spaces, 14 years after they were introduced as a protection for women following a spate of violent crimes in basement car parks. City officials say such spaces aren't necessary anymore and will be converted to family parking spots, but critics say their removal is just the latest example of anti-feminist policies in South Korea.
Thailand
Thailand has long been one of the world’s major sex tourism destinations. In 2015, the black market research company Havocscope valued sex work in Thailand at $6.4 billion per year—about 1.5 percent of the country’s GDP that year. The country is now struggling to work out whetherto legalise the industry.
Vietnam
Police in southern Vietnam have detained two women for allegedly selling more than 30 women and girls to Chinese men as wives.