Month: March 2019

United States (Conversation) – Recent media reports have revealed decades of abuse by Southern Baptist pastors. Denominational leaders are offering apologies and calling the sexual abuse “evil,” “unjust” and a “barbarity of unrestrained sinful patterns.” Many Southern Baptist leaders are considering action. As a scholar who has written a book on Southern Baptist women and the church, I’d argue that this scandal has its origins in how Southern Baptists have long and purposefully pushed back against women’s progress. The ‘woman question’ Since the Southern Baptist Convention’s founding in 1845, Southern…

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Africa (Conversation) – Language, music, and art often vary between adjacent groups of people, and help us identify not only ourselves but also others. And in recent years rich debates have emerged and spawned research into culture in non-human animals. Scientists first observed chimpanzees using tools more than half a century ago. As this complex behaviour appeared to differ across different populations, researchers concluded that tool use in apes was socially learned and therefore a cultural behaviour. This was the beginning of exploring what behaviours in other species might be…

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United States (Conversation) – New England Patriots CEO Robert Kraft’s criminal charges in a suspected sex trafficking case in southern Florida draw new attention to this serious problem. Sex trafficking, as the federal government defines it, is “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act” by means of “force, fraud, or coercion.” This is a form of modern-day slavery. Found in massage parlors, escort services, residential brothels and street prostitution, some might be victims for weeks and others for years….

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United States (FEE) – After being arrested and charged with practicing midwifery without a license last fall, a midwife in upstate New York is wondering whether or not she will go to jail for the work she has done for decades. Elizabeth Catlin is a beloved certified professional midwife (CPM) who has caught hundreds of babies in the tight-knit community of mostly-Mennonite women near her home. According to a recent in-depth article on her ordeal, the state is cracking down on her actions, which they say are illegal. Another Tale of…

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Canada (Conversation) – Last fall, a group of Indigenous women in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan brought a class-action suit against the Saskatoon Health Authority. They also sued the provincial and federal governments and some medical professionals. They asserted that some Indigenous women had been forcibly sterilized. Others had been tricked into giving consent for sterilization when they were under stress or heavily drugged. They claimed that doctors did this over several decades, up to the 2000s. The UN Committee on Torture recommended in late 2018 that the Canadian government…

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Indonesia (GV) – On February 16, 2019, the Indonesian feminist online magazine Magdalene (also a Global Voices republishing partner), launched Mango Meter, a movie review mobile application created to address gender representation in movies and film industry. As the Mango Meter team notes, the “seventh art” is one of “the most effective media to spread norms and values in society,” and movies “largely reinforce gender and racial stereotyping, sexually objectify women, and normalize gender-based violence, as the film industry insists it is only meeting market demands.” Screenshots of the Mango…

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(Conversation) – In 1635, María, a slave woman from the Indian sub-continent living in the Spanish-controlled Philippine Islands, enters the historical record. We know that women as well as men were involved in forced movements like María’s around the region but historical documentation about their lives is rarely available. María was owned by an artilleryman named Francisco de Nava who was then living in Manila. In 1635, the city’s archbishop, Don Hernando Guerrero, began an investigation into, in the words of the contemporary documents, “illicit communication” between the two. Nava…

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United States (Deceleration) –  Once again friends and supporters we come to you for prayers and support.  We are few now but represent the hopes of millions. We sleep on the ground, eat outside, use portable toilet facilities and share the weather and insects. The work we do requires walkie talkies, drones, web access and pure water. Supplies of food, water and transportation are necessary to serve. We need your help. Phase III begins NOW.  We will continue building more camps and villages and Warriors are encouraged to join us. …

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