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 from 2018, when I was working with the International Land Coalition to hold the Global Land Forum in Bandung, Indonesia.
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Love and solidarity,
- Kate
Afghanistan
Following a systematic crackdown on the rights of Afghan women and girls by the Taliban – from attending school to working at the UN – “the stage may be set for multiple preventable deaths that could amount to femicide” unless restrictions are reversed rapidly, independent UN human rights experts announced following an eight-day visit to the country. Highlighting this situation, Tens of Afghan women held a spontaneous protest in Kabul, while the UN claims that female employees have been detained by the Taliban.
Australia
A data story: early next year, the gender pay gap — the difference between what men and women are paid in the same organisation — of every Australian company with more than 100 employees will be published.
The Australian government is reportedly reconsidering its approach to helping citizens embroiled in ‘hostage diplomacy’ as it marks the 1,000th day of the journalist Cheng Lei’s detention in China.
Fifty years ago, Elizabeth Reid stepped into the newly created role of government adviser on Women’s Affairs. She was the first in the world to hold such a role, but she left after just two and a half years. The Saturday Paper’s 7am podcast asks her why.
Should the government subsidise the cost of egg freezing?
Bangladesh
Ten years after the Rana Plaza disaster, how safe is Bangladesh’s garment industry now? The nine-storey factory collapsed in 2013, killing 1,134 people, in one of the deadliest industrial disasters in history.
Related: Major clothing retailer Best&Less has been accused of putting company profit ahead of the safety of Bangladeshi garment workers by declining to sign a key international accord on worker safety and labour rights.
China
Women in China are covering up surrogacy ads in toilets with stickers and lipstick as they try to discourage other women from becoming surrogates or take up their services:
“On the one hand, I think (surrogacy) can help those families who cannot conceive because of physical reasons. On the other hand … the most likely result is that the rich use surrogacy in large numbers and exploit the poor,” said Zhao.
Commercial surrogacy is banned in China, together with all sales of gametes, fertilized eggs, and embryos. The prohibition has led to the emergence of black markets and cross-border surrogacy services that target infertile and same-sex couples. Surrogate mothers in China can receive up to 280,000 yuan ($40,282) for their services, while customers reportedly pay up to 1.1 million yuan for a surrogate baby with a chosen sex.
Related: An unmarried Chinese woman has made a final appeal in court in her bid to sue a hospital for violating her rights by refusing to freeze her eggs because she is single. Teresa Xu, a 35-year-old freelance writer, lodged her original complaint against the Beijing Obstetrics and Gynaecology Hospital in 2019 in a landmark case in China of a woman fighting for her reproductive rights.
China’s adult product industry is changing, with women demanding more from the market. Companies are finally starting to listen.
Cook Islands
The Cook Islands has removed a law from its Crimes Act that criminalizes homosexuality, in a huge victory for the local LGBTQ+ community. Meet some of the activists involved in advocating for this massive win.
Fiji
Finau Vulivuli became Fiji's first female football referee. This is how she made it all the way to the FIFA Women's World Cup.
Hong Kong
‘We don’t need a baby, we have a cat’: Hong Kong women say no to having children as experts scratch their heads at ways to reverse trend.
A 38-year-old Filipina domestic worker fell to her death from the 18th floor of an apartment building while cleaning windows.
India
Women's groups in eastern Odisha are the driving force behind enabling access to toilets in their homes and within their communities, with the aim of ending open defecation.
On the continuing problem of witchcraft accusations:
But witchcraft accusations are now often simply a tool to oppress women, victims’ advocates say. The motives can be to grab land, to ostracize a woman to settle a score, or to justify violence.
In the Jharkhand case, the young woman who was attacked, Durga Mahato, said the trouble started when she refused the sexual advances of a prominent man in the village. He, his brother, his wife and their daughter then declared Mahato a witch before luring her to their home and attacking her.
For Mahato, the consequences of being labeled a witch did not end with the savage beating. She was banned from bathing in the village pond and drawing water from the community tap. A wooden fence was built around her house to prevent her from wandering into the village. Villagers blame her for problems like the death of a cow. Only some people talk to her now. She still has pain in her waist and back.
“What wrong have I done, that God gave me such a huge punishment?” she said one recent evening, seated on a bright yellow charpoy, a woven bed, outside her brick house. “Call me a witch as much as you want to,” she added, breaking into tears.
Indonesia
In response to protests, the General Elections Commission has reversed a recent rule change that would have decreased the minimum number of women candidates in electoral districts under some circumstances. The commission returned to its previous policy of rounding up the minimum number of women candidates in an electoral district if the calculation resulted in a decimal, revoking a recently passed rule that involved rounding down in some cases.
Japan
Japanese men have more opportunities than the nation's women in education, employment and society in general. Equality activists are 'not optimistic that effective change will happen anytime soon. But what if it could?
Laos
The Laotian government last week opened a new shelter in Luang Namtha province to accommodate trafficking victims, mostly women and children, returning to Laos following their escape or release from enforced labour in neighbouring countries.
Malaysia
Gender equality issues, including the 30 per cent target of women as decision-makers and participation in the workforce, dominated the Unity Government’s National Women Convention.
New Zealand
A survey has found that nearly a quarter of young women in the New Zealand Defence Force experienced inappropriate sexual behaviour in the past year. The survey came seven years after the NZDF launched Operation Respect to stamp out bad conduct.
Papua New Guinea
A group of more than 500 midwives from Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the Pacific are using a popular instant messaging app to share lifesaving information on how to deliver and resuscitate babies.
The Philippines
The Philippine authorities have rescued over a thousand people, mostly women, from several Asian nations who were trafficked into the country, held captive and forced to run online scams.
Regional
The Pacific Feminist Fund has been launched! Great news for women’s organisations in the Pacific.
Microfinance has often been introduced as a development tool that acts as a panacea for poverty alleviation. However, research conducted in the past three decades highlights that microfinance not only fails to alleviate poverty, but instead makes the lives of the vulnerable even more uncertain, especially for women.
A new lifesaving solution has been found to dramatically reduce severe bleeding after childbirth:
The study, which involved over 200 000 women in four countries, found that objectively measuring blood loss using a simple, low-cost collection device called a ‘drape’ and bundling together WHO-recommended treatments - rather than offering them sequentially - resulted in dramatic improvements in outcomes for women. Severe bleeding – when a woman loses more than a litre of blood after birth - was reduced by 60%, and they were less likely to lose their life.
Singapore
The age limit for women looking to undergo elective egg freezing and for those donating eggs for use by other women will be raised from 35 to 37 years old.
South Korea
The animosity between Korean men and women has reached a point where some women are outright refusing to date, marry and have kids with men – a phenomenon known as the 4B movement. Researcher Min Joo Lee provides a quick history of recent developments in South Korea’s ‘gender war’.
Sri Lanka
The results of the first ever national study on sex workers in Sri Lanka was launched this month.