Tag: Women

Australia’s Albanese declares ‘national crisis’ after killings of women | Women News

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has branded domestic violence a “national crisis” amid an outcry over the rise in the number of killings of women by their intimate partners, and pledged action to tackle the issue, including new funding to help survivors as well as a crackdown on misogynistic online content.

The measures, announced on Wednesday, came after tens of thousands of Australians rallied across the country, including in the cities of Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, demanding the government declare the issue a national emergency.

The protests were prompted by a wave of violence that campaign groups say has seen one woman killed every four days this year as a result of domestic violence.

They also followed a stabbing attack in Sydney in April, during which a knife-wielding assailant killed six people at a busy mall.

Five of his victims were women, and police said it was “obvious” that the attacker was targeting women.

Here’s what you need to know about the issue.

How dangerous is Australia for women?

Campaigners called the weekend rallies following a week in which three women were killed, allegedly by men known to them. This included Molly Ticehurst, a 28-year-old mother who authorities say was murdered by her former boyfriend, weeks after he was granted bail following his detention on charges of raping and stalking her.

In total, some 28 women have been killed this year by their current or former partners and members of their family, according to the campaign group Destroy the Joint.

The figure is almost double the number killed in the same period last year, according to public service broadcaster ABC.

Samantha Bricknell, research manager at the Australian Institute of Criminology, told the ABC that recent data suggested an increase in violence against women, with the rate of women killed by an intimate partner increasing by 31 percent from June 2022 to June 2023. Some 34 such murders took place in that period compared with the same period a year earlier, when 26 women were killed.

The increase defied a longer-term downward trend in Australia.

“What we’re really interested to see going forward … is, is this a sustained increase? That’s something that Australia needs to be worried about,” Bricknell told ABC. “More recent data suggests that it is going up, but hopefully we’ll see that that slight uptick turns around and continues to decrease.”

Government statistics also show one in four women in Australia have experienced violence by an intimate partner or family member since the age of 15. While a cause for concern, the figure is lower than in countries such as France, the United Kingdom and the United States. In the latter, more than one in three women have reported experiencing physical and sexual violence by an intimate partner.

What has Albanese said?

Albanese, who joined protesters in Canberra on Sunday, said he took the rallies as a call to action.

“We need to change the culture. We need to change attitudes. We need to change the legal system,” he told the crowd. “We need to change the approach by all governments because it’s not enough to support victims. We need to focus on the perpetrators and focus on prevention.”

Albanese also responded to calls to declare the issue a national emergency, saying such decrees were a short-term legal avenue intended for use in natural disasters. He did however describe domestic violence as a “national crisis” and scheduled an urgent cabinet meeting for Wednesday to discuss the issue. He said violence against women would be the sole agenda item for the meeting.

What kind of action is the government promising?

Following the cabinet meeting, Albanese announced that his government would invest 925 million Australian dollars ($599m) over five years to provide financial support to women and children trying to escape violence.

Those eligible for the Leaving Violence Program will be able to access up to 5,000 Australian dollars ($3,300) in financial support along with referral services, risk assessments and safety planning, a government statement added.

The national cabinet also unveiled new measures to tackle factors that it said exacerbated violence against women, “such as violent online pornography, and misogynistic content targeting children and young people”. These steps will include legislation to ban deepfake pornography and additional funding to pilot age assurance technologies, it said in a statement.

The cabinet also pledged to explore options to improve police responses to high-risk and serial perpetrators.

It added that ministers will meet again in three months to discuss progress.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Manhattan prosecutors announce retrial for film producer Harvey Weinstein | Sexual Assault News

The announcement follows a decision last week to toss Weinstein’s New York conviction on charges of rape and sexual assault.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has revealed plans to retry United States film producer Harvey Weinstein on charges related to sexual assault, less than a week after a New York court overturned his conviction for rape.

Prosecutors made the announcement at a court hearing on Wednesday. Weinstein, in a wheelchair, was in attendance, as was one of his accusers, actor Jessica Mann.

Weinstein’s case had been a pivotal part of the #MeToo movement, a public awareness campaign designed to expose and stamp out sexual assault and harassment.

More than 80 women stepped forward to accuse Weinstein of crimes and misconduct ranging from rape to groping. The allegations reached a fever pitch around 2017, when the #MeToo movement was at its height.

In 2020, Weinstein was convicted in New York on charges that he raped Mann in a local hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performed oral sex on production assistant Mimi Haley in 2006. Both women have spoken publicly about their experiences in the press.

Weinstein was serving a 23-year sentence when the New York Court of Appeals overturned his sentence on April 25. The four-to-three decision cited the fact that witnesses in the case testified to sexual assaults that had never been proven in court.

Nevertheless, on Wednesday, Manhattan prosecutors sought to underscore the severity of the crimes Weinstein is accused of.

“There was nothing consensual about this conduct,” said prosecutor Nicole Blumberg. “We believe in this case and will be retrying this case.”

Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, addresses reporters outside Manhattan Criminal Court on May 1 [Mary Altaffer/AP Photo]

Weinstein’s defence team said it welcomed the chance to clear his name. “It’s a new trial. It’s a new day,” said lawyer Arthur Aidala.

He added, “We’re very confident that if he goes to trial, the only words we’ll hear at the end of trial are ‘not guilty’.”

The 72-year-old film producer has maintained his innocence, alleging the sexual encounters were consensual.

Judge Curtis Farber told the court he anticipated scheduling the trial around the US Labour Day holiday, on September 2. But he did not specify an exact date.

Prosecutors had suggested Labour Day as a time when Mann would be available to testify again.

Haley, however, has not yet indicated whether she will participate in the retrial, according to her lawyer Gloria Allred, who added that the public scrutiny in the case was traumatising.

Aidala said Weinstein would return to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan after the hearing, where he had been sent after his release from New York’s prison system on Friday.

Still, Weinstein is not a free man: He was convicted of a different rape in Los Angeles in 2022 and sentenced to 16 years in prison in California.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Arizona’s top court allows near-total 1864 abortion ban to go into effect | Courts News

In 1864, the territory of Arizona in the United States passed a law that criminalised nearly all abortions.

Arizona was not even a state at the time of the law’s passage. But now, 160 years later, its state Supreme Court has ruled the near-total ban can go into effect in 14 days.

The court’s decision on Tuesday triggers what would be one of the most restrictive state laws to govern abortion access in the US.

Writing for the majority in the four-to-two ruling, Judge John Lopez explained that Arizona’s legislature had never established a right to abortion access in the state.

“We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgement, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens,” he said.

A previous court decision had blocked the 1864 law from being enforced, but Tuesday’s decision lifts the stay on the law.

Under the 1864 Arizona law, “every person” who participates in conducting an abortion can be held criminally liable and face a minimum sentence of two years in prison. There are no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, although there is an exception when a pregnant person’s life is at risk.

Arizona joins 14 other states with near-complete abortion bans. In 2022, the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court overturned federal protections for abortions, leaving questions of abortion access largely up to individual states.

The decision spurred alarm among reproductive health advocates, and Democrats were swift to criticise Arizona’s state Supreme Court bench, composed of justices entirely appointed by Republican governors.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, for instance, condemned the ruling as “unconscionable and an affront to freedom”. She said she would not prosecute any doctor or woman under the “draconian law”.

“Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state,” she said in a statement.

In post on the social media platform X, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, also a Democrat, called Tuesday “a dark day in Arizona”.

“But my message to Arizona women is this: I won’t rest, and I won’t stop fighting until we have secured the right to abortion. That is my promise to you,” she said.

Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and other healthcare services, pledged to continue providing abortion services until the law goes into effect.

“Today’s deplorable decision from the state Supreme Court sends Arizona back nearly 150 years,” the group wrote on X. “This ruling will cause long-lasting, detrimental harms for our communities. It strips Arizonans of their bodily autonomy and bans abortion in nearly all scenarios.”

Planned Parenthood had initially challenged the century-old abortion ban in 1971.

Two years later, the US Supreme Court upheld the federal right to abortion in the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling. That paved the way for a judge to side with Planned Parenthood and block the 1864 abortion ban.

But the Roe decision has since been overturned, throwing the right to abortion access in question across the country.

In 2022, then-state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, challenged the court order that effectively placed the 1864 ban on ice. Planned Parenthood appealed, and when Governor Hobbs and Attorney General Mayes took office in 2023, they declined to continue the state’s attempt to defend the ban.

But that was not the end of the legal push to put the 19th-century ban in place. Pro-abortion rights obstetrician Eric Hazelrigg and Yavapai County Attorney Dennis McGrane stepped in, championing the 1864 ban in the courts with the support of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group.

Tuesday’s ruling means the 1864 law will supersede a March 2022 law signed by then-Republican Governor Doug Ducey that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Abortion on ballot

The decision supercharges an issue that looms large in advance of November’s presidential election: Abortion is set to be a prominent issue on the ballot.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has positioned himself as a defender of reproductive health and women’s rights, while his likely Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, has voiced support for limits on abortion.

While Trump has flirted with support for a federal abortion ban, he said earlier this week that the procedure’s legality should be left up to the states. That, in turn, has stirred the ire of some conservatives, who had hoped he would take a firmer stance against abortion nationwide.

Biden’s campaign has accused the former president of “scrambling” to avoid being held accountable at the ballot box for his abortion stance. Trump has repeatedly highlighted his role in appointing the US Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe v Wade.

Biden beat Trump by just more than 10,000 votes in Arizona in the 2020 election.

In a statement released by the White House on Tuesday, Biden decried the Arizona ban as “extreme and dangerous”.

“This ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom,” he said.

But activists in Arizona are hoping that they can take the issue of abortion access directly to the voters this November.

Organisers say they have gathered enough signatures to add a measure to November’s ballot that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. Such referendums have had a perfect success rate in recent elections and have been credited with mobilising Democratic voters.

Other states have likewise seen a tightening of abortion law, with some gearing up for a prospective showdown on November’s ballots.

Florida’s Supreme Court, for instance, upheld a six-week abortion ban in the state last week. Critics, however, say six weeks is too short a period for most people to know if they are pregnant.

But on the same day, the Florida Supreme Court allowed a ballot measure to proceed that would likewise allow voters to decide whether abortion rights should be protected in the state constitution.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Trump says abortion should be up to US states, avoids backing national ban | Donald Trump News

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said the issue of abortion access should be left up to states to decide, eschewing calls from within his party to support a nationwide ban on the procedure in the United States.

In a video posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday, the former US president said he was “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark legal precedent that had guaranteed abortion rights on the national level for decades.

The US Supreme Court, bolstered by a 6-3 conservative majority that included several Trump appointees, overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022. That put the question of abortion access largely in the hands of individual states to decide, though some anti-abortion activists have pushed for a nationwide ban to be implemented.

“The states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said in Monday’s video.

“Many states will be different,” he said, adding that, “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”

Reproductive rights are expected to be a central issue heading into November’s presidential election, which is set to pit Trump against his Democratic Party rival, President Joe Biden.

Biden has made defending access to reproductive healthcare a central plank of his re-election campaign, condemning Trump and Republican Party lawmakers for supporting the end of Roe v Wade.

Conservatives had spent decades trying to overturn the 1973 legal precedent, and several Republican-led US states enacted strict limits on abortion after the Supreme Court’s decision nearly two years ago, in a case known as Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

But abortion has become an Achilles heel for the Republican Party, as polls show abortion bans and restrictions are unpopular and most Americans want to protect access to the procedure.

The Pew Research Center reported in April 2023 — nearly a year after Roe was overturned — that 62 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 36 percent who said it should be illegal.

Looking along partisan lines, the survey found that 84 percent of Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 40 percent of Republicans or right-leaning independents said the same.

November’s election is expected to be hard fought, and experts say Trump could risk losing votes in critical swing states if he were to come out strongly in favour of a national abortion ban.

Jeanette Hoffman, a Republican political consultant, told the Reuters news agency that “leaving abortion to the states is [Trump’s] way of punting on the issue”.

“Now that the primary is over, there’s nothing to be gained from proposing a national abortion ban, as he’ll lose support from voters in many swing states,” Hoffman said.

Trump’s comments on Monday drew criticism from anti-abortion groups in the US, however.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, said the organisation was “deeply disappointed” by Trump’s position.

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision “clearly allows both states and Congress to act”, she said in a statement. “Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a top Republican and ally of the former president, also said he disagreed with Trump’s stance.

“I will continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at fifteen weeks,” Graham wrote on the social media platform X.

Meanwhile, Biden slammed his predecessor for making “it clear once again today that he is — more than anyone in America — the person responsible for ending Roe v Wade”.

“Trump is scrambling,” Biden said in a statement.

“He’s worried that since he’s the one responsible for overturning Roe the voters will hold him accountable in 2024. Well, I have news for Donald. They will.”



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

The US war on reproductive rights should concern women everywhere | Women’s Rights

In the United States, women’s reproductive rights, gained through half a century of feminist struggle, are rapidly being replaced with reproductive wrongs.

In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade – the landmark 1973 ruling that gave women the constitutional right to abortion. Since then, in 28 states access to abortion has been restricted depending on gestational age, with bans ranging from six weeks to more than 24 weeks. Abortion is almost completely banned with limited exceptions in another 14 states. In Idaho, for example, abortion is allowed only in cases of rape or incest that have been reported to police, or where necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman. A similar ban is in force in Indiana, while in Kentucky and Louisiana, it is banned except in the case of a medical emergency or if the pregnancy is “medically futile”.

There are also efforts to establish not only the rights of foetuses but even those of embryos frozen in labs as superior to the rights of women.

Just last month, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos have the same rights as children under state law. The perplexing decision was issued in relation to a “wrongful death” claim made by three couples whose frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic.

Judges, citing verses from the Bible, ruled that a 1872 state law called “the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act” that allows for parents of deceased children to seek punitive damages where “the death of a minor child is caused by the wrongful act, omission, or negligence of any person” could be applied to “all unborn children, regardless of their location”. The ruling will have overreaching implications on the legality in the state of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), which is problematic in itself as it feeds the surrogacy trade. More importantly, however, this ruling has wide-reaching implications for women’s bodily autonomy. It implies that any man who impregnates a woman – even through rape – could sue that woman under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act for seeking an abortion at any point in gestation.

This blatant war on women’s reproductive rights and bodily anatomy in the US should concern not only Americans but also feminists in Europe, and especially those of us in the UK. This is not only because we should expose and challenge threats to women’s rights wherever they appear, but also because the cultural norms and political perspectives gaining traction in the US will have a significant effect on British politics, and consequently rights and wellbeing of British women and girls.

Indeed, in the past few decades, as the anti-abortion movement started to make legal and political gains in the US, we have started to witness a similar trend in the UK.

Since 2015, the Pro-life All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) has been working to dial back abortion rights across the UK. For the past four years, the country’s leading anti-abortion charity, Right To Life UK, has served as the Secretariat of this cross-party group.  In 2021, as feminists were campaigning to fully decriminalise abortion, this same charity ran adverts calling on supporters to prevent Parliament from introducing “extreme” laws that would “introduce abortion, for any reason, up to birth”.

Since October 2022, Maria Caulfield, the Conservative MP for Lewes, has been serving as the Parliamentary undersecretary of state for women, as well as for mental health and women’s health strategy. Caulfield supports cutting the abortion time limit and voted against buffer zones outside abortion clinics. She is vice chair of the Pro-Life APPG, and has voted against legalising abortion in Northern Ireland.

The very fact that such an open and proud opponent of abortion rights was appointed minister for women is horrifying in and of itself, because it communicates the government’s sympathy towards efforts to restrict British women’s rights and freedoms.

Caulfield has called the UK’s 1967 Abortion Act, which legalised abortion in Great Britain on certain grounds by registered practitioners, “one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world”. But this is untrue; Britain has some of the most draconian abortion laws in the world, and is still sending women to prison over “illegal” abortions.

Indeed, as recently as in June 2023, a woman in Britain was sentenced to 28 months in prison for having an abortion after the legal limit of 24 weeks gestation during a COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Following an appeal, her sentence was reduced to 14 months and suspended – but the case was a clear warning to all women that this could also happen to them.

Feminist campaigners are now demanding an overhaul of the out-of-date laws the 44-year-old mother of three was sentenced under. These laws date back to the1861 Offences Against the Person Act, under which all abortions were criminalised – except those undertaken to save the mother’s life, a caveat introduced in 1929. The 1967 Abortion Act legalised abortions with an authorised provider, but this was a mere amendment to the 1861 act, which was never repealed. Thus, the deliberate termination of a pregnancy remains illegal in the UK unless certain conditions are met.

The Abortion Act originally allowed terminations up to 28 weeks, though this was reduced to 24 weeks, the point after which the foetus is accepted as viable outside the womb, in 1991. Today, a woman in the UK may be allowed to abort after 24 weeks only if her life is at risk, or the child she is carrying would be born with a severe disability. Crimes under the Offences Against The Person Act carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. Prosecutions are rare, but according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in England and Wales, 67 women were tried for “procuring an illegal abortion” between 2012 and 2022.

While the overturning of Roe v Wade did not directly affect UK abortion law, it certainly emboldened anti-choice campaigners, many of whom have joined forces with their US counterparts to pedal propaganda to the public. We have also witnessed an increase in anti-abortion activism outside some abortion clinics. I think this is because, after the largest democracy on the planet abandoned federal abortion rights protections, many anti-abortion activists here started to feel more optimistic about their chances of effecting change in the UK.

Many battles remain to be won in the UK, before we can claim to be on the side of women’s reproductive health and choices. Until very recently, abortion was only permitted in Northern Ireland in the most exceptional of circumstances. And even though it is, in theory, now permitted, the Department of Health regularly refuses to commission abortion services, leaving many women still having to travel to England to exercise their reproductive rights. This problem is not limited to Northern Ireland either – according to pro-choice group Back off Scotland, many women there are forced to travel to England for second-trimester abortions, between weeks 13 to 26, because no health board in Scotland actually provides abortion care up to the legal limit of 24 weeks. Between 2019 and 2022, a minimum of 170 Scottish abortion clients were referred by their doctors to travel to England for an abortion.

Women seeking to access legal abortion in the UK face bureaucratic nightmares, and loud, very active anti-abortionists keep a constant buzz of anti-choice rhetoric alive in the narrative.

This is why, when Roe v Wade was overturned, many in the UK reacted with rage. And this is why, we are watching the constant backpedaling of reproductive rights there with fear and concern. We do, of course, support our sisters in the US in their fight to protect their rights, but we also know that what happens there will have consequences for us in the UK.

The US presidential election in November will be one where abortion rights is at the top of the agenda. That election will decide whether American women will face further attacks on their hard-earned reproductive rights, or have the opportunity to work with an administration that is committed to try and repair the damage done by the reversal of Roe v Wade. Whatever the result of that election, however, women in countries around the world, including those of us in the UK, will continue to suffer from the ripple-down effects of the US Supreme Court’s fateful decision not to afford constitutional protections to abortion rights.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

South Korea to China: Why is East Asia producing so few babies? | Demographics News

South Korea’s low birthrate has been declared a national emergency despite its government’s efforts to incentivise people into parenthood by paying 2 million won ($1,510) on the birth of each child as well as providing a host of other benefits to parents.

The country is one of several in East and Southeast Asia where birthrates have declined rapidly in recent years. Indeed, all five of the countries with the world’s lowest birthrates (stripping out Ukraine, which is undergoing a war) are in East Asia, according to a 2023 CIA report.

What is causing this, and why does it matter so much?

Which countries have the lowest birthrates?

South Korea, which already had one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, has experienced yet another drop in its birthrate.

Last month, Statistics Korea published data showing that the country’s birthrate has dropped by 8 percent in 2023 to 0.72 compared with 2022 when it was 0.78. The birthrate refers to the number of children the average woman will have during her lifetime.

Experts are warning that South Korea’s population of 51 million people may halve by 2100 if this rate of decline continues.

According to the 2023 CIA publication comparing fertility rates around the world, the birthrate decline is much sharper in East Asia than any other region.

The CIA’s report puts South Korea’s birthrate a little higher than the country’s own estimate – at 1.11. However, this is still the second-lowest in the world.

According to the CIA report, the birthrate in self-governed Taiwan is the lowest in the world at just 1.09 while in Singapore and Hong Kong, the birthrates are 1.17 and 1.23, respectively.

China, where a strict one-child policy was in place from 1980 to 2015, has a birthrate of 1.45. Japan, which has been facing the issue of an ageing population for some time, has a birthrate of 1.39.

These figures are in stark contrast to other parts of the world. The 10 countries with the highest birthrates are all in Africa. Niger is the highest at 6.73, followed by Angola at 5.76.

In the West, birthrates are much lower than this but still higher than East Asia. In the United States, it is 1.84 while it is 1.58 in Germany.

Why are birthrates in East Asia dropping?

While demographers refer to the birthrate as the fertility rate, this term encompasses those who choose not to have children as well as those who are unable to have children.

There are several reasons for the decline in Asia.

Economic growth and improving living conditions have reduced child mortality rates, and since more children are expected to live into adulthood, this has led to couples having fewer children, said analysts at the East-West Center, an international research organisation.

The analysts explained in an article in Time magazine that economic growth and educational opportunities for women have also led them to resist traditional roles, such as housewife and mother. As a result, they may “choose to avoid marriage and childbearing altogether”.

However, Ayo Wahlberg, a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Copenhagen, told Al Jazeera that this explanation is an “incomplete description of what’s going on”. While there may be a correlation between more women being employed and lower birthrates, Wahlberg said both men and women are working longer hours than they did in the past, giving them less time and energy to dedicate to childcare.

He cited the example of China’s “996 working hour system”, under which some companies expect people to work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Wahlberg added that in South Korea, the working conditions are similarly stringent. “When are you going to have the time to look after a child in such cases?” he asked.

He also pointed out that in many countries, the burden of housework and childcare falls more heavily on women than men. Additionally, women experience pregnancy-based discrimination in the workplace if companies decide to avoid hiring an employee who will need to take maternity leave.

Women in East Asia face some of the worst gender pay gaps among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Additionally, they are aware that taking maternity leave could harm their chances of promotion and progression in their careers. Therefore, they decide not have children despite family or societal pressures to do so, he said.

“Is that selfish? I think it’s more being very rational about a very unacceptable situation,” Wahlberg said.

Both women and men are also deciding not to have children as part of an emerging movement that has deep concerns about climate change.

Why is a declining birthrate a problem?

Low birthrates will ultimately lead to population declines. Wahlberg said, to replace and maintain current populations, a birthrate of 2.1 is required.

A declining birthrate could have disastrous economic consequences.

Many countries are facing labour shortages and are struggling under the demands of an ageing population. With improvements and developments in health and science in recent decades, life expectancy has risen sharply, which raises concerns about people growing into old age in a society that does not have enough young people to take care of them.

The burden on younger people to support a much larger, aged population who are no longer working could also become intolerable, according to a 2023 report by the Pew Research Center in the United States, which concluded that income and sales taxes could have to rise steeply in the future to compensate.

An abandoned school swimming pool at Shijimi Junior High School in Miki, Japan, which closed three years ago due to a lack of demand. Japan’s birthrate is falling faster than expected, and school closings have accelerated, especially in rural areas [Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images]

What is the solution in East Asia?

East Asian countries are trying to increase fertility rates by incentivising women to have more children.

In Japan, where schools have been closing at a rate of more than 475 per year since 2002 due to a lack of students, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has made the sliding birthrate a priority. “The youth population will start decreasing drastically in the 2030s. The period of time until then is our last chance to reverse the trend of dwindling births,” he said while visiting a daycare facility in June.

Despite high levels of debt, his government has announced plans to spend 3.5 trillion yen ($25bn) a year on childcare and other measures to support parents and encourage people towards parenthood.

In South Korea, more than 360 trillion won ($270bn) has been spent in areas such as childcare subsidies since 2006.

China has done away with its one-child policy. From 2016 to 2021, the country moved to a two-child policy. Now, a three-child policy is in place.

Reversing the one-child rule has so far been unsuccessful in China, where the birthrate continues to fall.

Due to the unequal burden of childcare placed on women, most women in China do not want a third child, according to research by the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. Furthermore, in a survey conducted by the job search website Zhilian Zhaopin in 2022, only 0.8 percent of respondents said they wanted to have three children.

A potential solution other than increasing the birthrate is for Asian countries to open up to more immigration to end or reduce labour shortages. Japan, the only major developed nation that has historically kept its doors closed to immigrants, did this in 2018 when its parliament approved a new law under which up to 300,000 foreigners could be granted one of two new visas depending on their labour skills and proficiency in Japanese.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Varadkar concedes defeat in Ireland’s referendum on family, women’s roles | Women’s Rights News

The Irish PM had called the referendum a chance to do away with ‘very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women’.

A dual referendum in the Republic of Ireland on redefining family and women’s roles in the constitution has been defeated, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said.

The government supported the proposed changes, which would have widened the definition of the family and clarified the duties of women in society.

Varadkar had described Friday’s polls, which deliberately fell on International Women’s Day, as a chance to do away with “very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women”.
He said the government would accept the results.

“I think it’s clear at this stage that the family amendment and the care amendment referendums have been defeated – defeated comprehensively on a respectable turnout,” Varadkar said at a news conference in Dublin on Saturday.

“It was our responsibility to convince the majority of people to vote ‘Yes’ and we clearly failed to do so.”

Official results are expected later on Saturday.

The two proposals would have made changes to the text of article 41 in the Irish constitution, written in 1937.

The first asked citizens to expand the definition of family from those founded on marriage to also include “durable relationships” such as cohabiting couples and their children.

The second proposed replacing old-fashioned language around a mother’s “duties in the home” with a clause recognising care provided by family members to one another.

In effect, the proposal to spread the burden of care for people with disabilities to the entire family from only the mother became a dispute about the extent or willingness of the state to support carers.

A woman arrives with children at a polling station in Dublin, Ireland, March 8, 2024 [Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters]

Polls had indicated a ‘Yes’ vote

All the major political parties had supported a “Yes-Yes” vote, and until recently, polls predicted a smooth passage for both.

But “No” campaigners argued the concept of a “durable relationship” was undefined and confusing and that women and mothers are being “cancelled” from the constitution.

Meanwhile, ultra-conservative voices argued the changes could constitutionally protect polygamous relationships and increase immigration via migrant family reunions – claims all denied by the government.

By 12:00 GMT on Saturday, it was clear that counting was showing a trend towards a “No” on the two questions.

The votes are the latest attempt to reflect the changing face of European Union member Ireland and the waning influence of the once-dominant Roman Catholic Church.

In recent decades, Ireland has transitioned from a conservative, overwhelmingly Catholic country to an increasingly diverse and socially liberal society.

This shift has been encapsulated in changes to an outdated constitution where single women, until 1973, had to resign from their jobs upon getting married, and married women could not apply for vacancies.

The constitution, the core legal text of the nation, can only be modified through a national referendum.

The country of 5.3 million opted to end constitutional limits on same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Afghan women stage rare protests, braving Taliban reprisals | Women’s Rights News

As handfuls gather on International Women’s Day, UN rights rapporteur calls for release of detained rights activists.

Small groups of Afghan women have gathered in private spaces to demand that harsh restrictions on their freedoms be lifted, despite recent Taliban crackdowns on protests that have seen activists detained.

The demonstrations were staged in different locations, including the provinces of Takhar and Balkh, as the world celebrated International Women’s Day on Friday, according to the activists from the Purple Saturdays group – an organisation formed to raise awareness and oppose restrictions on women’s freedoms.

In northern Takhar province, seven women held papers obscuring their faces, reading “Rights, Justice, Freedom”.

“Our silence and fear is the biggest weapon of the Taliban,” a demonstrator whose face was covered said in a video.

In Balkh province, several women also held up signs saying “Don’t give the Taliban a chance” in front of a banner reading “Save Afghanistan Women”.

About 20 women gathered at an event organised by the Afghanistan Association of the Blind in northern Mazar-i-Sharif city on Thursday. “It is very painful that a woman has no value in our society today. She cannot use any of her rights,” said one attendee.

On Friday, Richard Bennett, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, called on the Taliban government “to immediately and unconditionally release all those who have been arbitrarily detained for defending human rights, especially the rights of women and girls”.

Women have protested sporadically against rules handed down by the Taliban authorities, but often in small groups and indoors out of fear of reprisals, after several activists were detained for months.

‘Poverty and isolation’

Since surging back to power in August 2021, Taliban authorities have imposed numerous restrictions on women and girls, ordering women to cover up when leaving home, stopping girls and women from attending high school or university, and banning them from public spaces with laws the UN has labelled “gender apartheid”.

They also barred them from working for the UN or NGOs, and most female government employees were dismissed from their jobs or paid to stay at home.

Taliban authorities have repeatedly dismissed international criticism as propaganda. On Friday, spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said the Taliban government was committed to women’s rights within the framework of Islam, according to an interview with Tolo News.

Marking International Women’s Day, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), urged the Taliban government to lift restrictions on women and girls, saying not doing so risked “further pushing the country into deeper poverty and isolation”.

According to UNAMA, more than 12 million Afghan women are in need of humanitarian assistance. The mission raised fears over recent crackdown on non-compliance with the Islamic dress code, which was “pushing women into even greater isolation due to fear of arbitrary arrest”.

Alison Davidian, special representative for UN Women in Afghanistan, said the plight of Afghan women and girls was “a global fight and a battle for women’s rights everywhere”.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Ireland votes in ‘women in the home’, ‘makeup of family’ referendums | Women’s Rights News

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar says proposed constitutional amendments a chance to delete ‘very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women’.

Voters in Ireland are casting ballots in twin referendums on proposals to replace constitutional references to the definition of the family and women’s role in the home.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar described Friday’s polls, which deliberately fall on International Women’s Day, as a chance to do away with “very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women”.

The two proposals, called the family amendment and the care amendment, would make changes to the text of Article 41 in the country’s socially conservative, 87-year-old founding document.

The first asks citizens to broaden the definition of family by removing a reference to marriage as the basis “on which the family is founded” and replace it with a clause that says families can be founded “on marriage or on other durable relationships”.

The second would remove a reference to women’s role in the home as a key support to the state. It would delete a statement that “mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” and add a clause saying the state will strive to support “the provision of care by members of a family to one another”.

Polls opened at 07:00 GMT and close at 22:00 GMT with results in both votes expected by late Saturday. Citizens who are 18 or older – about 3.3 million people – are eligible to vote.

Social transformation

The referendums are the latest to tackle outdated legislation in Ireland, where the Roman Catholic Church was once all-powerful. Since becoming a republic in 1937, Ireland has transformed from a conservative, overwhelmingly Catholic country to an increasingly diverse and socially liberal society.

The social transformation has been reflected in a series of constitutional changes in a country where single women until 1973 had to resign from their jobs upon getting married and married women were disqualified from applying for vacancies.

In 1995, Irish voters legalised divorce in a referendum. Twenty years later, they backed same-sex marriage, and in 2018, they repealed a ban on abortions.

“A woman’s place is wherever she wants it to be, and nothing less is acceptable in our constitution,” Orla O’Connor, director of Ireland’s National Women’s Council said on Wednesday while canvassing for a “yes” vote in central Dublin.

All the major political parties back the changes in Friday’s votes with recent opinion polls predicting a smooth passage for both proposals.

Turnout in focus

However, a low-profile campaign before the votes has not appeared to engage the electorate and could see a low turnout. In the past, low turnouts have boosted the proportion of people voting for the status quo.

“No” campaigners argue the concept of “durable relationship” is undefined and confuses voters and that women and mothers are being “cancelled” from the constitution.

Disability rights activists have also argued that the care amendment appears to portray disabled people as a burden on families with the state abdicating its role in providing care.

“I am confident that the sexist, harmful language of Article 41.2 will, in the future, be fixed,” Professor Siobhan Mullally, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway’s School of Law, told the Reuters news agency.

“I am not so confident, however, that a future government will fix our continuing failure to commit to supporting the public good of care work – in families and communities.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Indonesian single mother makes ends meet as autorickshaw driver | Women News

Her three-year-old daughter at her side, single mother Ekawati plies Jakarta’s notorious traffic in her three-wheeled autorickshaw, making ends meet as one of a growing number of Indonesian women seeking informal employment outside the home.

Not that Ekawati has much choice. After her first husband died and she divorced her second, it’s on her to pay rent and support her four children, pulling in about 150,000 rupiah ($10) a day picking up fares outside the bustling textile hub of Tanah Abang Market.

“Driving a three-wheeled taxi is the fastest way to get money. I have tried various jobs but this is the most convenient one,” said the 42-year-old, who has been driving her rented vehicle for about 15 years.

Her eldest son, now 20, dropped out of school and works as a courier to help out, but Ekawati says she still lives hand to mouth, as covering her 800,000-rupiah ($51.3) rent and feeding her family takes up all of her earnings.

According to data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS), 12.72 percent of Indonesian households in 2022 had female breadwinners, mostly in urban areas. The number of female homemakers, meanwhile, began to decline during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, many Indonesian women have moved into informal employment in the service and agriculture sectors to support their families following a major reduction in official job prospects during the COVID years, according to the World Bank.

Ekawati’s second child passed away due to an illness, but she managed to send her son to an elementary school with assistance from the local government.

Now she is attempting to get similar aid for her other son who is in junior high.

“I have to drive this three-wheeler so I can give my children proper food, clothes and a house,” Ekawati said, with tears in her eyes.

“I hope God gives me good health. I also hope my children will be successful, unlike myself.”

Working in a male-dominated environment, Ekawati said she had to be tough to make it on the streets, where sexual harassment and extortion by thugs are prevalent.

“Once a passenger asked me to sleep with him for 500,000 rupiah. I immediately asked him to get out of the vehicle,” she said.

“As a woman, I don’t want to be weak. I must be strong because I make a living on and from the street. No one will help me, except myself.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version