April 2018 – Page 3 – Bridge Agents

The Long Tradition of Women Being Told to Shut Up

April 18, 2018 Bridge Agents

(Conversation) – Professor Mary Beard’s latest book Women & Power: A Manifesto is a short, sharp analysis of women in the West and their ongoing struggles for a voice in the public domain. Based on two lectures delivered in 2014 and 2017, Beard chronicles some of the major obstacles women continue to face, framing her analysis through the lens of the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome. In her first essay, Beard provides some examples from antiquity to illustrate the social and gender dynamics inherited in the West. In short,…

Northern Ireland Rape Trial Highlights Rough Deal for Victims

April 18, 2018 Bridge Agents

(HRW) – An unlikely source took a stance on respect for women: professional rugby. Two Northern Ireland players had their contracts revoked following their widely publicized rape prosecution. Both players, Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding, were acquitted of rape of a woman in 2016 when she was 19, but the trial revealed several players’ text messages bragging about what they considered sexual conquests, while referring to the woman in degrading, nauseating terms. On Saturday, the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) and Ulster Rugby let the players go for failure to…

How Indigenous Women Who Survived Guatemala’s Conflict are Fighting For Justice

April 18, 2018 Bridge Agents

Guatemala (Conversation) – In February 2016, Guatemalan women survivors and the alliance of organisations supporting them successfully prosecuted two former members of the Guatemalan military for domestic and sexual slavery in the groundbreaking Sepur Zarco trial. The trial marked the first time a national court has prosecuted members of its own military for these crimes. It was an historic achievement in the fight to stop violence against women and secure justice for wartime sexual violence. And yet, two years later, the Guatemalan government has not carried out most of the collective reparations measures ordered…

From Land Day to the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, Palestinians have plenty to protest

April 15, 2018 Bridge Agents

Palestine (OpenDemocracy) – On Friday March 30, over 30,000 Palestinians peacefully approached the border area of the Gaza strip to bring attention to their unfulfilled right of return to their families homes inside Israel and to highlight the ongoing plight of living under Israeli occupation. Israeli military forces responded with lethal force, deploying troops, drones, tanks, and snipers who fired on the crowds using live fire, rubber-coated steel pellets, and tear gas. By the end of the day, fifteen Palestinians had been killed – many of them plainly unarmed – and over…

#GirlsOnBikes: Women Ride Bicycles To Reclaim Public Spaces in Pakistan

April 14, 2018 Bridge Agents

Pakistan (GV) – On April 1, 2018, a bicycle rally was organized in major cities of Pakistan (Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi) by prominent Pakistani feminist collective Girls at Dhabas. The ‘Girls On Bikes’ Rally was their third annual event to promote female participation in public events, fight restrictions faced by women in public places and increase awareness about issues faced by women. In May 2015, two Karachi-based girls, Sadia Khatri and Natasha Ansari, started using the hashtag #GirlsAtDhabas as a space to curate photos of women on Tumblr. The hashtag went…

It’s Time to Cut the Contractors Loose

April 14, 2018 Bridge Agents

(OW) – How much of your paycheck do you plan to hand over to corporate Pentagon contractors this year? The average American taxpayer will have paid $14,520 in federal income taxes in 2017. And that’s not even including the taxes that every working person pays to take care of our elders (and one day, ourselves) through Social Security and Medicare. If that seems like a ton of money, it is. A full-time, minimum-wage worker earning $7.25 an hour would have only earned $15,080. Of course, how much you pay depends…

How an uproar over aid and sexual exploitation ignored women’s actual experiences

April 14, 2018 Bridge Agents

(Conversation) – The recent “Oxfam sex scandal” – during which some aid workers were accused of paying for sex with young women in vulnerable conditions – has focused almost exclusively on the aid workers and aid organisations involved. But the perspectives and motivations of the young women who were paid for sex with money or material goods have hardly been discussed at all, and the contexts in which they live have been misrepresented and misunderstood. The problem of transactional sex in areas hit by disaster, war, or extreme poverty is…

What’s the Reality of Debt for Today’s Veterans?

April 13, 2018 Bridge Agents

It is a sad fact that many former military members fall into debt. It could be so bad to the point that veterans are left both penniless and homeless. Debt actually begins to accumulate while members are still in service. The amount of money owed usually increases at a faster rate than civilians. A couple of causes of this debt includes the gap between pay and payments, and the ease of acceptance of credit. These bills can follow military members into their veteran years. Pay is Steady, but Debt Grows…

Tajikistan: Chinese company gets gold mine in return for power plant

April 12, 2018 Bridge Agents

(EAN) – A company from China has reportedly been granted a license to operate a gold mine in Tajikistan in exchange for building a power plant free of charge in the country’s capital. Asia-Plus newspaper reported on April 11, citing an unnamed official with the State Geology Department, that Xinjiang-based TBEA has received the concession to develop the Upper Kumarg mine in the Sughd region in northern Tajikistan. The company was previously given the concession for the Eastern Duoba mine. The newspaper’s source said that the mining license was granted…

When is Sex Work ‘Decent Work’?

April 12, 2018 Bridge Agents

Thailand (OpenDemocracy) – My name’s is Liz Hilton. I’m from Empower Foundation, which is a sex worker organisation. I’ve been part of the Empower family since 1992. The reason why there’s only me here (at the conference ‘Human trafficking, forced labour and modern slavery: understanding popular narratives and planning strategic action’, held by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women in August 2017 in Bangkok, Thailand), and not the rest of Empower, is that the sex workers in Thailand are sick of talking about trafficking so they sent me. Sam Okyere (oD):…