The Week in Women
Bring Back Our Girls again. Moms get no relief. Indian women on the protest lines. Afghan women take to the skies. And American women who made history.
Scenes from another life: Janakpur, Nepal, May 2016
Greetings, readers, and happy Women’s History Month, which really should be every month, but here we are. Welcome to The Week in Women, a roundup of women’s rights news from around the world, followed by links to a few good features, longform pieces, podcasts, and radio stories in the universe of gender equality, international human rights, politics, and whatever else is interesting on the internet.
Enjoy, subscribe (or upgrade your subscription!), and share.
What to Know
Acting Right: The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equality Act (yay!), a bill that offers significant protections to LGBT people, emphasis on the T. And they did it in the face of career misogynists who suddenly claim they’re standing up for women.
A Room of One’s Own: The ladies of the Barbizon Hotel.
Bring Them Back: More than 300 girls were kidnapped from a boarding school in Northern Nigeria, in a horrific and all-too-common crime with echos of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign of 2014. Will the world pay attention this time around?
Book Club: Some recommended (by other people) reads on female adventurers, agitators, and gangsters, and more reads by women who are awesome about women who are awesome. Feel free to read them out loud to your Ruth Bader Ginsburg doll. Or tell RBG all about the women who made history in science and environmentalism, or perhaps economics and finance, or maybe chat to her about the Black women who made civil rights history and changed America for the better — I think she’d like that story the best.
Outlook Bleak: The Biden administration may be unwilling to do anything of substance to hold the murderers of Jamal Khashoggi accountable, but they will bravely… focus on the “future conduct” of Saudi Arabia and encourage them to be a little less bad on the whole murderous human rights violations thing. So, ok.
Helpline: So many women have lost their husbands to coronavirus that widows are forming support groups.
That’s (Less) Rich: Women working at Britain’s biggest financial firms make 66% less than men. All of these people are extremely wealthy, but that is an incredibly large pay gap.
Polarizing: Poland is acting badly left and right (but mostly right and right), infringing on women’s rights and LGBT rights, and violating its EU obligations in the process.
The Worst Men On the Internet (and off): What to do about “incel” violence coming from male supremacists? An overview and set of recommendations.
Sorry Mom: Even though working mothers have suffered the biggest professional losses from the coronavirus pandemic, there’s no paid leave in the relief package.
Victim Blaming: The Chinese government is denying the widespread claims of abuse, including rape, at Uighur re-education camps; they’ve gone the way of trying to discredit the women who speak out.
Her too: Two women have accused New York governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment at work.
Conspiracy Queens: Where do the women of Qanon go from here?
“People are going to Mars and the Moon, and we are still debating whether women should be able to move freely”: For the first time in 15 years, elections are going to be held in Gaza. Hamas is spending its time curtailing women’s rights.
Gone and Hopefully Forgotten: A former Olympics gymnastics coach has died by suicide after being charged with human trafficking and sexual assault.
Pro Choice: Indonesian women are brave simply for arguing that they have the right to wear what they want — and to not wear the jilbab in school if they don’t want to.
Hypocrisy Now: Conservatives are using the government to infringe upon free speech rights in the name of being anti-woke.
Identity Politics: A proposed legal change in Japan would allow women to keep their own names when they get married. Japan’s minister for women’s empowerment and gender equality — a member of the conservative party — opposes it, because for some reason it’s good for women’s empowerment and gender equality if it’s illegal for a woman to have a different last name from her husband.
Ladies First: Women are on the front lines of India’s farmer protests.
Movin’ On Up: According to the World Bank, women gained important legal rights in some 30 countries in 2020. That’s good news! Now the coronavirus just has to end so we can use them.
Good Luck: Iran is considering a bill that would create important protections for women who experience violence, and redefine “violence against women” as, sensibly, a range of violent acts committed against women. It’s not perfect — it fails to criminalize marital rape and child marriage — but it would be a big step for Iranian feminists. But now it has to go through vetting from jurists and conservative religious leaders, and its fate hinges on their whims.
90 Minutes in Heaven: An all-female flight crew takes to the skies of Afghanistan and makes national history.
Her and Her and Her too: Brittany Higgins, an Australian government employee, told the police she was raped in her country’s Parliament building. Three other women have now come forward and accused the same man of sexual assault — and Australia’s political culture of rank misogyny.
Truth to Power: This is the true story of “comfort women,” and it’s not particularly soothing.
What to Read
America’s Political Roots are in Eutaw, Alabama: When I think about the 1870 riot, I remember how the country rejected the opportunity it had. [The Atlantic]
Inside Xianjiang’s Prison State [The New Yorker]
Take a Break
…and watch the Isabel Allende biopic on HBO Max.
…and that’s it! As always, if you’re enjoying this newsletter, please share it, and consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
xx Jill