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.
Today’s header image is of my street (not my house, though), where the leaves have turned orange and begun to fall as we enter a rather chilly autumn.
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Love and solidarity,
- Kate
Afghanistan
The Afghan people are in for a "very difficult year ahead," warned the top U.S. aid official, as donors grapple with challenging a Taliban administration crackdown on women and girls, more crises around the world and overall less funding.
Teenage girls remain locked out of school:
"Every day I wake up with the hope of going back to school. They [the Taliban] keep saying they will open schools. But it's been almost two years now. I don't believe them. It breaks my heart," says 17-year-old Habiba.
Australia
Blackbirding is the name given to the trafficking (and often kidnapping) of Pasifika peoples to bring them to work on plantations in Australia in the 1800s. Fifteen per cent of those blackbirded to Australia died from exposure to illnesses, malnutrition, or mistreatment. Now, the women of Blackbird International, are trying to reunite the descendants of those blackbirded with their families in the Pacific.
My territory, the ACT, has become the first Australian jurisdiction to offer free universal access to abortions. Woo! (Related: How Canberra become a progressive paradise but a housing hell.)
The March 2023 Taking the Pulse of the Nation (TTPN) survey reveals that women with children continue to bear the burden for domestic work, and that overall, women do 23.1 hours of unpaid domestic work per week compared to men’s 15.3 hours.
Bangladesh
Are climate change and rising sea levels to blame for coastal women’s reproductive health problems? Local women say so:
Excess salinity in drinking water can cause sodium intake levels to spike, which increases blood pressure and has been linked to higher risks of hypertension and preeclampsia in pregnant women. Bathing or standing waist-deep in saltwater for hours to fish can increase a woman’s risk of reproductive tract infections and affect normal menstruation. Elevated exposure to salt water has also been associated with skin diseases, diarrheal diseases and outbreaks of cholera.
Lipi Khanom, 28, lives in Kolibari, a village near the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest. She said that when the tide comes in, salt water often spills into her house and into a nearby pond where she used to bathe. For the past two years, she said she has dealt with irregular periods and pain in her lower abdomen. Khanom and her husband have also struggled to get pregnant with a second child.
“My husband and I are quarreling about not having children,” she said in Bengali. “He is blaming me.”
China
In China, divorce is still a social taboo that is not expected to be discussed publicly. Divorce rates in the country peaked in 2019 then dropped slightly, but data from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs shows they are again on the rise, with more than 3 million couples divorced in the first nine months of 2022. Now, some women are taking to social media to talk about their experiences with divorce, aiming to remove the social stigma.
Buzz cuts for women are on the rise, both for simplicity’s sake but also as a bold statement.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s femtech entrepreneurs are pushing hard for more support and funding, saying the city is falling far behind its femtech competitor Singapore.
India
Accusations of sexual harassment have rocked women’s wrestling in India:
They were the first women to bring Olympic glory in the wrestling ring to India. But last week several of India’s top female wrestlers threatened to hand back their medals, accusing the authorities of ignoring their allegations of sexual harassment against the sport’s top official.
For the past 15 days, top wrestlers including Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik have staged a protest in the centre of Delhi, sacrificing their rigorous training schedules, sleeping in the rain and facing beatings by police.
Their demand is simple: the investigation and arrest of the president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), Brijbhushan Sharan Singh, who they allege has sexually harassed seven female wrestlers over more than a decade.
PM Narendra Modi has been silent on the accusations, even though Singh is a politician within his own party, the BJP.
Hopes are pinned on India’s Supreme Court to legalise same-sex marriage. The Court is currently hearing a case to do so, and activists are quietly hopeful.
Why more women in their 30s are choosing to freeze their eggsc.
An estimated 5,000 women from Pamban Island, situated between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, make their income diving for seaweed. They dive for 8 hours a day, 12 days a month.
How taboos around menstruation leave endometriosis suffers in India in pain and suffering, without diagnoses.
Japan
Female Japanese authors such as Murata Sayaka and Oyamada Hiroko are experiencing a surge in popularity among readers in the West.
PM Fumio Kishida has pledged to have women holding one-third of top boardroom roles by 2030.
Laos
It could take over 100 years to clear Laos of all the unexploded ordinance (UXO) left behind by the American-Vietnam War. Many women now work as members of UXO clearance teams:
UXO clearance is a painstaking, repetitive business. Nicsamone, a 28-year-old with long red fingernails, pauses as her metal detector beeps and whines. “I want Laos to be clear of UXO,” she says, dropping to her knees and starting to dig. “My father was killed by a cluster bomb when I was eight. I don’t want more children to experience what I did.”
Related: how woven textiles (such as the one above, right) tell women’s recollections of the war.
Malaysia
Police investigations into the involvement of LGBTQ protesters in this year’s Women’s March reflect growing prejudicial attitudes in Malaysia’s parliament, activists warn.
Myanmar
On the importance of emphasising women’s rights and gender equality since Myanmar’s revolution shifted from peaceful protest to armed resistance:
Women and girls from all backgrounds fear the possibility of rape and conflict-related sexual violence being used as a weapon of war against them. This includes women who are resisting the junta as members of the Karenni police force and on the front lines as soldiers. These are typically young women who are eager to see the success of the Spring Revolution but may be unaware of their rights and freedoms. This emphasizes the need to spearhead knowledge campaigns on the importance of gender equality.
More than 513 women have been killed and 3,390 detained by Myanmar’s junta since the February 2021 coup, according to the Burmese Women’s Union, including at least 55 women killed and 43 detained in April alone.
Meet the midwives on the Myanmar-Thailand border who are saving the lives of refugee women and children.
Nepal
Almost 12% of Nepali migrant workers who die abroad, mainly in the Gulf and Malaysia, take their own lives, and the families who are left behind struggle to make sense of the loss.
Child marriage is illegal in both Nepal’s Constitution and Penal Code, yet 37 percent of girls still get married before the age of 18.
A recent report by Dignity Initiative, a Nepali think tank, details the bleak status of women and other marginalized groups in the country’s three tiers of government:
In the 275-member lower house of the federal parliament, 91 members are women. However, just 16 of the 275 belong to the Dalit caste, and 13 are ethnic Tharus, two of Nepal’s most marginalized groups. Even this meager representation would not have been possible without seat reservations under the 2015 Constitution, which mixes direct and proportional elections. Just nine women, one of whom is Tharu, and one Dalit man were directly elected, while the rest were nominated by their political parties under the proportional representation system.
New Zealand
The New Zealand women's soccer team will swap their home kit's white shorts for teal blue to ease players’ period anxieties.
Regional
The Pacific has some of the lowest levels of women's political participation in the world. And while no two Pacific countries are the same, but there are some common threads in the challenges women face when trying to get into politics.
How social protection initiatives such as old age pensions are a crucial form of support for women in the Pacific.
Learn more about the Pacific Feminist Forum, the third forum of which will be held this week.
South Korea
The number of women working in their 30s has hit an all-time high.
Sri Lanka
Only about 7% of incidents of workplace harassment are officially reported in Sri Lanka. What’s the reality like for women harassed at work?
Thailand
A Thai woman accused of poisoning people with cyanide has been charged with 14 counts of murder, while her ex-husband is facing charges of fraud, police said, in one of the country’s worst suspected serial killing cases.
As Thailand prepares for its general election next month, one woman is charging ahead in the polls as preferred Prime Minister: Paetongtarn ‘Ung-Ing’ Shinawatra. Ung-Ing is the third member of the billionaire Shinawatra dynasty to vie for the top job in Thai politics.
Tonga
Tonga has received mixed reactions during its human rights evaluation at the 43rd Session of Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, with concerns expressed by a number of states about the rights of LGBTQ people, an existing law on capital punishment, the right of women to inherit land, the non-existence of a Human Rights Institution and the continuous non-ratification of treaties such as CEDAW.
Vietnam
In what would be a massive victory for transgender rights, a gender identity law could be included in Vietnam’s parliamentary agenda next year. Lawmakers put forward a proposal to the National Assembly last month.