Women's Issues News Roundup: Protests Over Darfur Rapes, Rights in the Arab World

IN THE WORKPLACE

Female BBC news presenters earn £6,500 less than men - Press Gazette
The BBC pays its female reporters on its flagship news programmes £6,500 less on average than their male counterparts according to answers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The average salary of reporters on the One, Six and Ten o'clock news is £65,625 for men and £59,050 for women.

INTERNATIONAL

Militants kill 2 female teachers in E. Afghanistan - People's Daily Online
Unknown gunmen have killed five civilians including two female teachers in Kunar province of eastern Afghanistan, a local senior police officer said Saturday. The bloody incident occurred on Friday night in Narang district when armed militants barged into a house and started a shooting spree, killing five persons including four women and a man, Abdul Sabour Alahyar told Xinhua.

Militia 'free to rape in Darfur camps' - Telegraph
Sudan's authorities have not convicted a single man for rape in Darfur despite a "systematically conducted" campaign of sexual violence which is sweeping the country, human rights groups said yesterday. Women living in refugee camps scattered across the war-torn region of western Sudan are vulnerable to assault, often carried out by the pro-regime "Janjaweed" militia. Gunmen lurk on the outskirts of the camps, frequently raping women who venture away from their shacks in search of firewood.

Alarms protest over Darfur rapes - Yahoo News
Hundreds of demonstrators have set off rape alarms outside Downing Street in a protest against sexual violence in Darfur.
About 200 protesters marched from the Sudanese embassy in central London to No 10 before delivering a formal letter to the Government calling for political pressure to stop the crisis. The event is part of International Human Rights Day, which has this year been adopted by campaigners from around the globe as a day of action to demand peace in Darfur.

Arab nations urged to improve conditions, status for women - Washington Post
Arab countries have made advances in their treatment of women in recent years but have failed to significantly improve conditions for them, according to a report carried out under the aegis of the U.N. Development Program. The report, released Thursday in Yemen, urges Arab leaders to make genuine changes and to reinterpret Islamic laws as a means to empower women. Arab governments have "announced a host of reforms targeting freedom and good governance," the report says. But "reforms often seemed empty gestures to cover up the continuation of an oppressive status quo."

UAE's first woman taxi driver - AFP
Ayda Sultan is a recently widowed 43-year-old who took advantage of a five-year-old law to become the first woman taxi driver in the United Arab Emirates, newspapers reported. Even though what she was doing was not illegal, Sultan said she was still stopped many times by police unused to seeing a woman behind the wheel of a taxi. "But when I showed them my permit to drive a taxi, they were astonished and wished me well instead of booking me," she said.

All-female showroom launches in Saudi Arabia - Toronto Star
Saudi women still can't drive cars, but they can now sell them. Potential buyers can go to an all-women showroom where, for the first time, other women will help them choose a car and answer questions about horsepower, carburetors and other features. But neither the saleswomen nor the female buyers can take the car out for a test drive because women are still banned from driving in Saudi Arabia — even though they have been allowed to own cars for decades and hire male drivers.