Taiwan Has the Highest Number of Women Politians, The Future of Palestinian Women Under Hamas

General

*America saw itself as a promised land, a place where the hardworking and faithful could come and build a nation of prosperity, free from the imperfections they had left behind. But that ideal also sowed a bad seed that germinated over generations into a shameful chapter in American history.
Source: Christian Science Monitor


Reproductive Rights

*After all the plotting and planning, the time was thought to be propitious. It was to be the conclusion of a carefully crafted, long-term effort that had been the right's fundamental ideological objective for decades. These opponents of reproductive rights were poised to for their grand moment--the evisceration of a woman's right to privacy and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 2006? No, 1989.
Source: TomPaine.com

*Gov. M. Jodi Rell is siding with the state's Catholic hospitals in the battle over whether the hospitals should be forced to offer the morning-after contraceptive pill for women who have been raped. Some lawmakers and advocates for sexual assault victims have called upon the General Assembly to require all Connecticut hospitals, including the four Roman Catholic hospitals, to provide emergency contraception if requested by the rape victim.
Source: Hartford Courant

*The federal government has approved the state's request for a Medicaid waiver to extend family planning services to 200,000 women without health insurance coverage, Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Thursday. "We specifically requested this federal family planning waiver because we believe extending these services to low-income women across our state greatly increases the chance that every pregnancy in Michigan is a wanted one," the governor said in a release.
Source: AP


International

*The BBC's Alan Johnston looks at what the rise of Hamas and its formation of the new government might mean for Palestinian women.
Source: BBC

*The ratio of female lawmakers in Taiwan is the highest in the world in 2005, showing the governments efforts to promote women's participation in politics have borne fruit, a women's group said Monday.
Source: CNA

*Seven Thais, including a female monk, a novice and two nuns, have made the United Nations' list of Outstanding Women in Buddhism for 2006.
Source: The Nation

*Aiding victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, providing mother-and-child care in remote areas of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, giving courses to female detainees in Yemen to help them find their way in society after release - these are examples of the commitment shown by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to carefully assessing and meeting the specific needs of women in all aspects of its work.
Source: IRCR

*What's in a name? If you're a married woman in Argentina, it's often a little word called "de," meaning "of," that comes after your maiden name and before your husband's last name. But for many Argentine women these days, the possessive ring to that traditional formulation feels offensive and smacks of a not-too-distant chauvinist past here when women were put on pedestals but locked in cages ... figuratively, of course.
Source: Christian Science Monitor

*Every police station in the Philippines has a women's desk, manned by female investigators specially trained to handle crimes against women and children.
Source: Channel NewsAsia

*Mounriatou was just 16 when she was taken from her home in Togo to the oil-rich state of Gabon. Less than a year later she was dead from Aids after being gang-raped by a group of boatmen on her way to the "promised land". Just before she died she told aid workers her story. Now the charity, Plan International, is fighting to stop child trafficking and keep children like Mounriatou safe in their own countries.
Source: BBC

*It is a smelly, offensive and debilitating condition in which women injured in childbirth uncontrollably leak a trail of urine or feces. The condition, known as fistula, all but disappeared in the Western world in the late 19th century, when Caesarean section births became widely available. But in sub-Saharan Africa, the condition remains widespread, sentencing as many as 3 million women to a life of abandonment and enforced solitude.
Source: The Washington Times