Month: March 2010

A cache of ostrich eggshell fragments discovered by archaeologists in South Africa could be instrumental in understanding how humans approached art and symbolism as early as the Stone Age. The eggshells, engraved with geometric designs, may indicate the existence of a symbolic communication system around 60,000 years ago among African hunter-gatherers [Discovery News].

At a site known as the Diepkloof Rock Shelter, a team led by archaeologist Pierre-Jean Texier discovered fragments of 25 ostrich eggs that date back 55,000 to 65,000 years. In an online paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the archeologists revealed that the eggshell fragments were etched with several kinds of motifs, including parallel lines with cross-hatches and repetitive non-parallel lines [ScienceNow]. The scientists are confident that the markings are almost certainly a form of messaging — of graphic communication [BBC].

Further study of the fragments revealed that a hole had been drilled at the top of some eggshells, suggesting that the hunter-gatherers could have used them as water containers during long hunts in arid regions, as the Kalahari hunter-gatherers were known to do in more recent history. Scientists estimate that each egg could have held one liter of water. The patterns on the shells, they propose, could have been a symbolic way of acknowledging the individual who used the canteen, or which community or family the user belonged to. For scientists studying human origins, the capacity for symbolic thought is considered a giant leap in human evolution, and [what] sets our species apart from the rest of the animal world [BBC].

Discover for more

by AVI ISSACHAROFF AND AMOS HAREL

srael has conveyed messages to the Palestinian Authority over the past few days that it must contain the popular protests that have recently erupted in the West Bank, stop PA officials from participating in them and keep them from turning violent, Palestinian sources told Haaretz.

They said Israel also told the PA it must reduce incitement regarding the Temple Mount and Jerusalem and curtail its campaign against the use of Israeli products. Israeli officials said that if the PA does not cut down on the incitement and keep the protests and boycott campaign in check, Israel will reduce cooperation with the PA and increase its arrests in Palestinian-controlled areas, the Palestinian sources said.

Haaretz for more

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

by Dr. SAROJINI SAHOO

(The Kindle magazine has chosen Dr. Sahoo as one of the 25 exceptional women of India. We congratulate Dr. Sahoo for this honor. Ed.)

That day, one of my younger colleagues wore a pair of earrings, which made her face bright and beautiful, and she looked quite pretty and we, that is, all the female teachers, appreciated this. Meanwhile, one of our senior male colleagues made comments about her ‘so provocative’ get up. “What is the difference between ‘beautiful’ and ‘provocative?’ ” I asked that older teacher. And he replied, “Whatever it may be argued, but a teacher should keep herself away from any fashion.” I laughed and told him that “I wish if Betty Friedan were here, she could see how similar her ideas are with yours.” Certainly my old colleague doesn’t know who Betty Friedan is, so he considered it as a complement to him!

Betty Friedan (1921) was a leading figure in the “second wave” of the U.S. Women’s Movement and is mostly known for her book The Feminine Mystique, which is considered as a succeeding effort of Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Simone’s great comment “One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman” made her successor feminists so much influenced that the total attitude of second wave feminists changed. Simone wrote The Second Sex in 1949. In French, Le Deuxième Sexe. Jonathan Cape first translated it into English and it came to America in 1953. In that book, Simone wrote that patriarchy always attempts to trap a woman into an impossible ideal by denying the individuality and situation of all different kinds of women. Patriarchy tries to impose an authentic false aura of ‘womanhood’ in them.
Continue reading “The Beauty Dilemma”

by LISA MACDONALD

In January, Bolivia’s left-wing President Evo Morales began his second term by appointing a new cabinet in which women are equally represented for the first time.

Morales, Bolivia’s first president from the nation’s long-oppressed indigenous majority, is leading a revolutionary process of transformation.

The 10 women ministers are from a wide range of backgrounds, and three of them are indigenous. Introducing the new ministers, Morales said: “My great dream has come true — half the cabinet seats are held by women.

“This is a homage to my mother, my sister and my daughter.”

In the December 6 national elections, in which there was the highest-ever voter participation in Bolivia, Morales and his Movement to Socialism (MAS) party won a resounding victory. Morales was re-elected with a record 64.2% of the vote and the MAS secured the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to pass legislation to advance its pro-people program.

The proportion of women in Bolivia’s new parliament doubled, from 14% to 28%. Women now hold 47% of Senate seats and Ana Maria Romero from MAS has been elected Senate president.

This is a remarkable achievement in the poorest country in South America. It was not until the 1952 national revolution that either women or the 60% of Bolivia’s population that are indigenous were even entitled to vote.

Until 1996, women were largely prohibited from owning or inheriting land.

MAS senator Gabriela Montano told the BBC on January 29: “This is the fruit of the women’s fight: the tangible proofs of this new state, of this new Bolivia, are the increasing participation of the indigenous peoples and the increasing participation of women in the decision-making process of this country.”

Morales was first elected in 2005 on the back of five years of massive protests and uprisings — in particular against the privatisation of Bolivia’s gas.

Morales’ government has implemented some of the key demands of the people’s struggle — in particular the partial nationalisation of gas and the convening of an elected constituent assembly to draft a new constitution based on justice and equality for the indigenous peoples.

The new constitution — passed in a national referendum in January 2009 — guarantees equal rights for women and men, and empowers women and Bolivia’s indigenous majority in all areas of society.

Morales and MAS have stated that their goal, reflecting the will of the people, is to build a new state “from below” that is based on three pillars: “plurinationality” (recognition of indigenous equality); regional and indigenous autonomy within the framework of “a democratic decentralisation of power”; and a mixed economy in which the state plays the central role in strategic sectors.

At his January 21 inauguration, Morales argued for the need to build a “communitarian socialism” in Bolivia — to replace capitalism’s destruction of life and the planet.

Green Left for more

Source: Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984;
First Published: Pravda, No. 40(244), 17 February, 1913, St Petersburg;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000;
Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.

The article ‘Women’s Day’ by Alexandra Kollontai was published in the newspaper Pravda one week before the first-ever celebration in Russia of the Day of International Solidarity among the Female Proletariat on 23 February (8 March), 1913. In St Petersburg this day was marked by a call for a campaign against women workers’ lack of economic and political rights, for the unity of the working class, and for the awakening of self-consciousness among women workers.

What is ‘Women’s Day’? Is it really necessary? Is it not a concession to the women of the bourgeois class, to the feminists and suffragettes? Is it not harmful to the unity of the workers’ movement?

Such questions can still be heard in Russia, though they are no longer heard abroad. Life itself has already supplied a clear and eloquent answer.

‘Women’s Day’ is a link in the long, solid chain of the women’s proletarian movement. The organised army of working women grows with every year. Twenty years ago the trade unions contained only small groups of working women scattered here and there among the ranks of the workers party… Now English trade unions have over 292 thousand women members; in Germany around 200 thousand are in the trade union movement and 150 thousand in the workers party, and in Austria there are 47 thousand in the trade unions and almost 20 thousand in the party. Everywhere – in Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland – the women of the working class are organising themselves. The women’s socialist army has almost a million members. A powerful force! A force that the powers of this world must reckon with when it is a question of the cost of living, maternity insurance, child labour and legislation to protect female labour.

Marxists for more

International Women’s Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women’s groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.

International Women’s Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for “liberty, equality, fraternity” marched on Versailles to demand women’s suffrage.

The idea of an International Women’s Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is a brief chronology of the most important events:

1909

In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman’s Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.

1910

The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women’s Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women’s rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.

United Nations for more

A Saudi Arabian woman, Sawsan Salim, has been sentenced to 300 lashings and one and a half years in prison for filing harassment complaints about government officials and appearing in court in the northern Qasim region without a male guardian present. In 2007, Salim filed 118 harassment complaints against local officials, who allegedly mistreated her when she appeared in their offices unchaperoned, according to Business Week. Salim appeared without a male guardian because her husband, her sole male family member, was in prison at the time. She initially approached a local court in 2004, when she sought help to release her husband from prison.

The legal guardianship system in Saudi Arabia requires that women, both minors and adults, must be accompanied by a male guardian outside the home. If women wish to conduct themselves in public business, work, or to drive, they must obtain permission from or be accompanied by their male guardian, who may be her husband, father, brother, or even a minor son, according to Human Rights Watch. The Saudi Arabian government promised in June 2009 to follow United Nations suggestions to remove this restrictive system, but has not made this change.

“In Saudi Arabia, being a woman going about her legitimate business without a man’s protection is apparently a crime,” said Nadya Khalife, a women’s rights researcher for the Middle East at Human Rights Watch. “The government needs to free Sawsan Salim and keep its promise to end this discriminatory system.”

A similar case occurred in March 2009, when Khamisa Sawadi, an elderly Saudi woman, was accused of fraternization with men after two men outside of her family brought her bread. She was sentenced to 40 lashings, 4 months jail time and deportation. In February 2008, an American business woman was arrested for being in the family section of a Starbucks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with a male colleague.

Media Resources: Human Rights Watch Statement 3/3/2010; Business Week 3/3/2010; Feminst Daily Newswire 3/17/2009, 2/20/2008

Ms. Magazine

by TARAN N. KHAN

In a women’s reading club in the northern part of Mumbai, members cast off their burkas and tackle the literary merits of the author-of-the-month. For many, it’s a rare chance to break the cloistered domestic routine.

MUMBAI, India (WOMENSENEWS)–Most of Mehr-un-Nisa’s day is spent doing domestic chores and exchanging verbal volleys in an ongoing feud with her mother-in-law.

Come afternoon, however, while the household is sunk in siesta, she takes off for two idyllic hours to the Rehnuma Reading Club and Library Center.

“Most of my life, I couldn’t even tell if a book was the right way up,” says the cheerful 30-year-old. “But now, I hate anything that interrupts me when I’m in the middle of a good read.”

Nisa is one of the hundreds of women who have found their way over the past four years to the 5,000 or so books at Rehnuma, a word that literally translates into “guide” or “leader.”

The small, two-room reading club, on the first floor of a rickety building, is in the heart of Mumbra, an orthodox, Muslim-dominated suburb of Mumbai. Most women on the streets here are covered in head-to-toe burkas or veils covering their heads and parts of their faces.

“We started the library in 2005 when we realized that there was no space for local women to talk or just be together,” says Hasina Khan, a member of the nongovernmental group Awaaz-e-Niswan (Voice of Women), which runs the center. Along with facilities for reading and studying, the center provides counseling and legal aid to women as well as support programs for victims of domestic violence. There are also literacy classes for women who have had to drop out of formal schools and colleges, as well as English speaking courses, all running out of the same small space.”

Women here can end up spending their entire lives within the same restricted circles, moving from adolescence to old age without breaching these boundaries,” says Hasina Khan. “Through reading, we hoped to open a window to the world outside.”

Women’s e news

via International South Asia Forum

by MISSY COMLEY BETTIE

I don’t care that Scott Brown posed nude, his hand placed strategically to hide his package, in a 1982 issue of Cosmopolitan when he was a law student. Or that the magazine called him “America’s Sexiest Man.” Certainly, I take issue with the superlative because, well, okay, let me give you an example: Mel Gibson was sexy. Was. But when he opened his mouth and outed his inner bigot, his sex appeal vanished.

Same with Scott Brown.

Some years ago, Brown said that the idea of two women raising a child “just isn’t normal.” Huge criticism was quickly heaped on Brown for this gay trashing, so he, with great political expediency, ate his words, probably without adjusting his heart and learning compassion. Now, he says he approves gay civil union but not same-sex marriage. In fact, Brown supports a constitutional ban on gay marriage. It’s this position, and soooooo many others, that make him very Mel Gibsonian.

But, I digress. I began by saying Scott Brown’s au naturel photo shoot doesn’t bother me. What does is this: if a female candidate had posed nude with an arm across her breasts to hide her nipples and her hand covering her woman machine, can you imagine the storm of criticism that would lightning strike and electrocute her campaign? She would be fried.

If beauty pageant titleholders must relinquish their crowns because someone produces nude photographs or a video of them in various stages of undress, just think what a career-ender this would be for a woman aspiring to any elected office or to be a political appointee.

So much was made of Sarah Palin’s physical qualities when she was sinking John McCain. I recall a pin worn by a man at the Republican National Convention—“Our VP is a Hottie,” or something similar. Parading her pregnant, unwed daughter before the masses made Palin even more popular. So many could identify. But what if someone had found and presented for public consumption nudie pictures of Palin? We know the answer.

Of course, with new airline security soon to be in place—body scanners that expose contours, enclosures, wrinkles, and overhangs, all who fly may be calling the friendly skies the intimate frontier. Is reartier a word? Whatever, the present double standard may soon go the way of older and traditional airport screening. Eliminating gender bias would be collateral progress. But airline safety should not be the basis for ending a sexist code of behavior.

Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She’s written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she’s a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,’05, she has been writing political articles. She can be reached at: Missybeat@aol.com

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