By Carmen for Autostraddle – We have seen it in the United States, women are leaders of protest movement, e.g. Black Lives Matter, Fight for 15, climate justice and extreme energy extraction, among others. Here are 95 photos of feminists from around the world protesting injustice. Feminism is alive and well, my friends. And I’ve got 95 photos from across the planet to prove it. (Click on them to find the source articles about the protests and movements pictured!) Including an image of a protest or images from a specific region doesn’t indicate any sort of endorsement of that region or movement’s politics — this is just about showcasing that the fight for women’s rights and gender equality is raging on around the world.
By Ms. Foundation For Women – The survey shows that people see issues in their community as interconnected and would rather hear candidates and elected officials propose solutions with this in mind. When it comes to community problems, issues around economic security rise to the top – not necessarily a new polling finding. What is new, however, is that the survey reveals which issues the public sees as having disproportionate effects between genders. While most feel that women and men approach problems differently and have different strengths, they are much more likely to feel that men — rather than women — are in positions to fix problems. Finally, the survey shows the term “feminist” may have lost some of its meaning. After hearing a very simple definition, the percentage of the public who adopts the label triples.
By Hilary Klein in Truth Out – In the 1980s, outsiders dressed as doctors or teachers arrived in Araceli and Maribel’s jungle community and began asking the peasants why they were paid such low prices when they sold their coffee or corn. These outsiders talked about the fundamental injustices between rich and poor, and about the mistreatment their indigenous community had endured for more than five hundred years. They said that women had rights too. Villagers like Araceli and Maribel took a risk and joined “the organization.” They attended secret meetings at night and recruited their neighbors. Some left home to live in the mountains and become insurgents – joining a scrappy indigenous army that was growing in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
International, Northern and Southern Korean women activists who plan to cross the Korean Demilitarized Zone said Wednesday they are determined to move forward with their walk, despite the announcement that United Nations authorities can’t guarantee their safety if they walk from the North to the South at Panmunjom. Panmunjom is where the Korean War armistice agreement was signed, and it is critical to the delegates that the DMZ crossing take place at this symbolic site. Officials in Pyongyang have informed organizer Christine Ahn, a Korean-American peace activist, that without a formal letter from Seoul approving a crossing at Panmunjom they may have to cross at another location. Ahn said the group has been advised to consider crossing from nearby Kaesong on a highway that is used mainly for civilian and commercial purposes.
Thousands of people flooded the streets of Bristol in an anti-austerity demonstration which was organised by a group of young yet determined women. A group of seven teenagers organised the march, which opposed the Government’s austerity measures, on social media. Support grew rapidly for the group, which called itself Bristol Against Austerity, and evening thousands of people packed every corner of Park Street as the demonstration snaked round the city centre. Many of those who attended were angry, and the majority were young people bearing placards, who said they were disgusted at the Government’s attitude to the NHS and welfare spending.
Marking two years since the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, protesters are converging on the country’s capital and feminist actions are sweeping the globe on Friday, to honor the lives of the 1,138 people—most of them women—who perished in the tragedy and to demand justice for those they left behind. News outlets are reporting that demonstrators have gathered in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, the city where the Rana Plaza factory was located. Among them are survivors of the tragedy and family members of the deceased, who say that, two years later, they still have not received adequate compensation. “I haven’t received any compensation from the government yet,” Nilufar Begum, a worker wounded in the factory collapse, told Euronews. “I can’t support my family, my children can’t go to school. I’m crippled forever.”
Thousands of people marched through the Afghan capital, demanding justice for a woman who was beaten to death by a mob after being falsely accused of burning a Qur’an. Men and women of all ages carried banners bearing the bloodied face of Farkhunda, the 27-year-old religious scholar killed last week by the mob. Farkhunda was beaten, run over with a car and burned before her body was thrown into the Kabul river. Organisers of Tuesday’s march estimated that 3,000 people took part, calling it one of the biggest demonstrations in Kabul’s history. Marchers chanted, “justice for Farkhunda!” and “death to the killers!”. The demonstrators also called for action against officials and religious leaders who had initially supported the attack on Farkhunda by saying her killing was justifiable if she had burned pages of a Qur’an. The country’s interior ministry said the spokesman for the Kabul police, Hashmat Stanikzai, had been fired over comments he made on social media supporting Farkhunda’s killers.
Co-ops not only give low-income and immigrant women a way to enter an often unwelcoming – and in some cases, hostile – economy, but also give them a way to exert some control over their work lives and simultaneously support themselves and their families. They have consequently been some of the early adopters in the not-yet-critical-mass movement of worker-owned cooperative businesses that has begun to catch fire in towns and cities throughout the United States. Melissa Hoover, executive director of the Democracy at Work Institute, estimates that there are presently between 300 and 400 worker-owned businesses operating domestically.
Zinn was of Russian-Jewish heritage, an influential historian and, in 1960, a beloved professor at Spelman College, the historically black women’s institution in the then-segregated city of Atlanta. The attribution of “finishing school” in the title was well-earned: Spelman girls, whose acceptance letters included requests to bring white gloves and girdles with them to campus, were molded to honor the virtues of “true-womanhood”: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. Nevertheless, by 1960, Zinn’s students had morphed from “nice, well-mannered and ladylike” paragons of politesse to determined demonstrators who picketed, organized sit-ins, and were sometimes arrested and jailed for their efforts. “Respectability is no longer respectable among young Negro women attending college today,” Zinn concluded.
A year ago, I went on this peacebuilding mission to Pyongyang to discuss an international women’s peace walk across the two-mile wide De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas. To my relief, Pyongyang responded very favourably towards our proposal, but with a stern caveat: only if the conditions were favourable. Today, despite New Year calls for engagement by both Korean leaders, tensions remain very high. And this month, the United States and South Korea are conducting a two-month long period of military exercises called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, which the North Korean Rodong Sinmun believes are “aimed to occupy the DPRK through pre-emptive strikes.” The conditions are not favourable, but we are still planning the women’s peace walk across the DMZ this May.
During the Mexican Revolution, female soldiers known as soldaderas went into combat along with the men although they often faced abuse. One of the most well-known of the soldaderas was Petra Herrera, who disguised her gender and went by the name “Pedro Herrera”. As Pedro, she established her reputation by demonstrating exemplary leadership (and blowing up bridges) and was able to reveal her gender in time. She participated in the second battle of Torreón on May 30, 1914 along with about 400 other women, even being named by some as being deserving of full credit for the battle. Unfortunately, Pancho Villa was likely unwilling to give credit to a woman and did not promote her to General. In response, Petra left Villa’s forces and formed her own all-woman brigade.
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of International Women’s Day. First agreed at a socialist women’s conference in Copenhagen in 1910, its aim was to campaign for the rights of working women. Today, the lives of women have changed beyond recognition compared with those of their grandmothers and great grandmothers. But the changes in work and personal life have been distorted by the needs of the market and have fallen far short of women’s liberation. The experience of work has been challenging and invigorating for a few, but for most women in the shops, offices, call centres and factories of 21st-century Britain it has been more likely to represent long hours, constant pressure, and growing attempts to squeeze more productivity and profit out of them.
“I give you a message from my heart,” she says, “let’s move forward and work together for the benefit of everyone. And especially for those who work in the fields, as we are the ones who suffer the most.” That is the voice of Arminda, a farmer and agro-forestry advocate from Bolivia, who is among a number of women farmers and activists featured in a campaign video by Oxfam International which celebrates female voices from around the world who are raising the alarm about climate change, organizing their communities in response, challenging others to recognize their wisdom, and pressuring local and national officials to follow their lead. According to Oxfam, the small group of brave women in the film is just a sample of the thousands of others who are standing up to the ravages of climate change – and to the governments and big businesses who are allowing runaway global warming to destroy the world.
On Wednesday, February 4, 2015, the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) released its groundbreaking report, “Black Girls Matter.” Ahmad Greene-Hayes, a guest writer for The Feminist Wire, interviews Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw and Dr. Luke Harris, from AAPF, about this report’s impact on the Black Lives Matter movement. The report, executive summary, and social media guide are also available online for viewing.Black Girls Matter Report Ahmad: The African American Policy Forum has been an instrumental voice in the national dialogue centered on the inclusion of girls in racial justice policies and initiatives. Your work was pivotal in shaping the conversation on the limitations of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative. Outside of the work AAPF has been doing, what was the genesis of Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Over-policed, and Under-protected?
“Among Palestinians, jail is a very normalized part of life — as normal and as common as school, as babies, as olive oil and thyme,” proclaimed Palestinian lawyer Noura Erakat at a recent discussion (with Angela Davis) on mass incarceration in the United States and Palestine. Indeed, since 1967, Israel has incarcerated around 800,000 Palestinians — approximately 20 per cent of the Palestinian population of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. A significant number of those criminalized and imprisoned for their political activism have been women. According to Palestinian prisoner support association Addameer, there are currently 19 women political detainees in Israeli prisons. And yet, these women activists have been largely marginalized in both national histories and academic studies, invisibilizing them into ghosts or distorting them into monsters.
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