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NEWS & LETTERS, Janurary-February 2010
Women World Wide
by Mary Jo Grey
Twenty years ago Marc Lepine rounded up women at Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering school in Montreal, Quebec, and murdered 14, injuring 10 more, in a violent act of rage, then committed suicide, leaving a letter blaming "feminists" for ruining his life. In a Stratford, Ontario, remembrance ceremony, many gathered roses with the women's names attached and watched a film depicting the lives of people involved. Bonnie Henderson, a Stratford city councillor, said, "How do we reach these people who feel that because women want equal rights, they need to feel threatened? Here we are 20 years later, and women and children are still being killed."
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Women grow more than half of the world's food and as much as 80% of the food in developing countries, especially in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Yet they own only 2% of the world's land. Around the world, women are deprived of legal rights to the land they work. "Providing women with secure land and property rights is essential to addressing poverty, food security and violence against women," said Renee Giovarelli, founding director of the newly-created Global Center for Women's Land Rights.
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Hundreds of Afghan women held a street protest in December demanding that President Karzai purge corrupt officials from the government, as well as those connected with warlords or the Taliban. Many carried pictures of murdered relatives. Five hundred men followed the women in support. Violence Afghan women face includes: failure to bring to justice murderers of prominent women; 52% of women report physical violence and 17% sexual violence, but little is done; in more than half of marriages, wives are under 16, and in 80% the marriages take place without the wife's consent; only 11% of girls are enrolled in grades 1-9, and 4% in grades 10-12.
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Women from 16 Arab countries met in Tunisia Dec. 6 to discuss violence against women and ways to fight against it. They called for a wider role for women in the Arab states.
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