U.N. pact leads a Dutch woman to political victory
by LEONTINE BIJLEVELD
Do women’s rights documents that get signed and ratified with diplomatic fanfare at the United Nations ever change things for women in the real world?
The answer is yes.
The greatest global women’s rights treaty of them all–the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or CEDAW, adopted in 1979–can give women leverage in clashes with traditional religious principles.
For proof, look at what just happened here in the Netherlands to the oldest political party in the country. The orthodox Christian Party, or SGP, is a small party founded in 1919 that has long held the position that it was against God’s will, as expressed in the Bible, for women to occupy a political post or run as candidates. (The party did not object to be voted upon by women, which became possible in the very same year, 1919.)
Last week that changed when Lilian Janse became the first woman to represent the SGP in the Vlissingen town council of Zeeland province in the South West. (Previously the party was not represented on this town council.) “A dream comes true” Janse said on the night of March 20, after her election.
(Unfortunately the legal benefits of CEDAW cannot be used by women in the United Sates, one of the few U.N. members that has not yet ratified the convention.)
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Pushed out of school, black girls lose huge ground
by CRYSTAL LEWIS
Once black girls wind up in juvenile justice schools it’s hard to find the path to financial stability. Research has found that black girls are more likely to be punished for being “un-ladylike” and seen by teachers as “loud, defiant, and precocious.” The first in the series the Bias Price.
PHOTO/Steven Depolo/Flickr
Monique Morris says black girls are getting into trouble at school for just being who they have to be.
“The majority of black girls who have been suspended got kicked out for being loud, even if they weren’t being disrespectful,” said Morris, co-founder of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, based in Oakland, Calif. “It’s cultural for black girls to speak up, and they are going to fight back if something is wrong.”
Once these girls have gotten in trouble at school, they’re often seen as “the problem.”
This is especially true because black girls bullying at school often looks different than it does for white girls. Morris offers the example of a student who was kicked out for vandalizing school property when she wrote “I hate the B’s at this school.” “She was being bullied and provoked to fight, and didn’t know how to react. This was her cry for help, and no one listened,” she said.
“We need to stop these push-out practices that criminalize girls for who they are instead of what they’ve done,” added Morris, whose article “Education and the Caged Bird: School Pushout and the Juvenile Court School,” published in Poverty and Race Research Action Council, is one of the few explorations into the intersection of black girls, education and the juvenile justice system. “Girls are at an increased risk because there is a lack of community-based response to their problems. We have male-oriented reporting centers, but there’s no exploration of what girls need so that they won’t reoffend.”
Once they’ve gotten stuck in a troubled pattern, many black girls simply drop out of school.
Just 60 percent of black females graduate high school in four years, the National Women’s Law Center reports, compared to 78 percent of white females. Black girls are three times more likely than white girls to receive out-of-school suspensions, according to a 2012 report by the Department of Education, and are more likely to repeat a grade.
Later-Life Costs
Data show the steep price that veering off course at school costs later in life. A black woman who has graduated from high school has an income that is 48 percent higher–almost $7,000–than a black female dropout, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Black women with a bachelor’s degree will earn almost three times more than those who have dropped out of high school.
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