7 ‘Nasty’ Women Who Changed the World
"Well-behaved women rarely make history." - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
I want to be a 'nasty woman' when I grow up. If groundbreaking, inspiring, passionate women are nasty, then that's exactly what I want to be! For a brief moment, I ask you to place your political viewpoints aside and simply appreciate the many women who worked for a brighter future. They faced opposition. They were ridiculed, discouraged and often disowned by those close to them. Yet they fought for their 'nasty' unconventional ideas and went against the grain for something they believed in. No matter where you stand in politics, shouldn't we all stand with those who wish to change the world?
Click through to read the full list of "nasty" women who made a difference.
-Victoria Mendoza
viralwomen.com - Whatever their chosen field – from politics and popstardom to fashion and feminism – women have been leaving their mark on the world since time began.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the world “nasty” as “indecent and offensive.” And women like Clinton — independent, driven, and hell-bent on changing history — have been defined as such for decades. It seems that men decide women who want to make a different are just plain nasty.
This is a list of strong women who did their part, both big and small, to make the world a better place.
Susan B. Anthony was raised in a Quaker family with deep roots in activism and social justice and became an advocate for women’s suffrage, women’s property rights and the abolition of slavery. In 1872, to challenge suffrage, Anthony tried to vote in the 1872 Presidential election. While Anthony was never able to legally vote, the 19th amendment, ratified in 1920, was named the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment.”
How Nurses and Cheap Morphine Made Uganda a Model for Palliative Care
This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Grainne Harrington
Uganda’s underfunded health system struggles to effectively treat the country’s growing number of cancer patients. But for the terminally ill, a small hospice organization has come up with a homemade pain relief treatment that has revolutionized end-of-life care.
KAMPALA, Uganda – Roselight Katusabe sets off for work in the morning with her usual tools: patient notes and a pen, some gauze dressings, and a suitcase full of morphine. Katusabe is a palliative care nurse at Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU), an NGO based in Kampala, which focuses on home care. The bottles of morphine she brings to her patients have revolutionized the way terminally ill people spend their final days in Uganda. And it all began at a kitchen sink in the hospice, where for 17 years healthcare workers made up the solution for thousands of patients.
“It’s easier to make than a cup of coffee,” says Dr. Anne Merriman, the British founder of HAU. Merriman, a palliative care specialist and former missionary doctor, developed her own formula for affordable oral morphine while working in Singapore, and brought it to Uganda in 1993. At the time, the most commonly used analgesic for severe pain was codeine. Commercial injectable morphine was expensive and only available in hospitals on an “as needed” basis, which Merriman says left patients in pain. To make HAU’s cheaper, oral solution, “all you need is accurate scales to weigh the [morphine] powder, then all you do is add distilled water, a preservative … and then we add a dye to show the strength,” says Merriman.
These days, the formula hasn’t changed, but the kitchen sink has been replaced by a modern laboratory. Since 2011, the hospice, in partnership with the Ugandan government, has been manufacturing its morphine solution for the entire country, free of charge.
In Uganda, where the underfunded health system struggles to provide even basic care, morphine is the key to pain relief and a better end of life for thousands of cancer patients. HAU’s homemade approach makes the drug affordable: While other countries buy injections and tablets from pharmaceutical companies, a 10-day supply of oral solution costs just $2.
And by pioneering a system that allows nurses to administer morphine, Uganda has led the way in palliative care for cancer patients in low-income countries.
On this day’s rounds, Katusabe is delivering a bottle of Merriman’s formula to Agatha, a 38-year-old battling stage-four breast cancer, at her home in a slum in Kawempe, northern Kampala. The nurse takes out a brown bottle and a dosing syringe, shows the patient how much she should take and gently answers her questions. When asked what difference the hospice has made to her life, Agatha pauses. She cannot express it in words, she says.
The palliative care Agatha is receiving is unique in this region. Uganda was the first country in the world to let specially trained and registered nurses administer morphine, a job previously reserved for doctors. This development, too, was largely due to Merriman and her NGO. When HAU was founded, the country was going through one of the worst AIDS epidemics in the world, and widespread immunodeficiency led to a rise in many types of cancer. The minister of health at the time immediately agreed to Merriman’s plan to introduce her cheap morphine solution, but doctors were far more reticent, fearing it would lead to addiction and overdose.
“The doctors said we were bringing in euthanasia,” says Merriman. “Many of those senior doctors would not let any of their patients have morphine. They said, ‘They’re going to be addicted.’”
As cancer rates continued to rise, Merriman realized her morphine wouldn’t get to the people who needed it unless the number of prescribers increased. Nurses were already allowed to administer another opioid drug, pethidine, to women in labor. In 1998, HAU began to lobby the Ministry of Health to widen the legislation so that nurses could also prescribe morphine. The change eventually went through in 2004. Uganda has an average of one doctor per 20,000 people but almost twice as many nurses, so allowing nurses to administer the homemade morphine solution has made affordable pain relief accessible from the capital right down to village level.
Merriman credits the Ugandan government’s progressive policymaking for bringing about radical changes in the way people with terminal illness are treated in the country. In the Economist’s 2015 Quality of Death Index, Uganda ranked 35th out of 80 countries, and was one of only two African countries in the top 50, along with South Africa.
But while it has made strides in quality of death for cancer patients, Uganda’s healthcare system still struggles to provide effective treatment that could improve their quality of life. Katusabe’s patient was diagnosed when her illness was at stage two. In many countries, this is early enough to hope for a good outcome, but Agatha first turned to a traditional healer for help – she didn’t seek medical treatment until her cancer was advanced.
The Uganda Cancer Institute says that 75 to 80 percent of cancer patients are diagnosed at stage three or four, when surgery and other curative therapies are far less effective. Part of this is due to a lack of awareness, despite a considerable outreach effort on the part of the Ugandan government and other organizations. Financial constraints also play a big part. Hospitals frequently run out of necessary drugs, Katusabe says.
And even when treatment is available, it’s often too expensive for most Ugandans. According to HAU, a four-week course of chemotherapy can cost from $900 to $1,000. Because of this, Katusabe says patients who know they can’t afford treatment will simply accept a cancer diagnosis as a death sentence.
In April, Uganda’s only radiotherapy machine broke down after years of disrepair. Replacing it will take over a year. In the meantime, patients who can afford it have been told to go to neighboring Kenya for treatment.
After leaving Agatha, Katusabe visits two cervical cancer patients who are going for treatment in Nairobi with HAU funding. The women are cheerful and hopeful that radiotherapy will help. But for many other cancer patients in Uganda, Katusabe and her plastic bottles of morphine are the best relief they can hope for.
Kudos and a Curse: Meet the Savior of Girls in Samburu
This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Hannah McNeish
Josephine Kulea has saved over 1,000 girls in Kenya from forced marriage and the female genital mutilation that usually precedes it. Her work has earned praise from Barack Obama, but she says politicians back home won't support her work in case it loses them votes.
NAIROBI, Kenya – Her face has been plastered across billboards in New York and London and she was lauded by U.S. President Barack Obama on his visit to Kenya. But Josephine Kulea sees herself as still very much a grassroots activist. She works with communities in the area where she grew up, saving girls as young as seven from forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and either being pulled out of school or never getting the chance to go. Despite national laws banning child marriage and FGM, in Samburu culture, girls can be matched to men old enough to be their grandparents, and polygamy is common.
Once cursed to death by her family for breaking up a marriage between her uncle and a seven-year-old cousin, Kulea, 30, now runs the charity The Samburu Girls Foundation, which, to date, has stopped over 1,000 girls across four counties from marrying young and missing their education. Women & Girls Hub spoke to her about how it all started with her mother and why she became the target of a death curse.
Women & Girls Hub: How did you start helping girls?
Josephine Kulea: I was following in my mom’s footsteps. My mom also fights for girls to go to school within my community because she was taken out of high school to become my dad’s third wife.
Women & Girls Hub: What about your childhood?
Kulea: I finished school but every holiday when I came home there was a new [potential] husband who wanted to marry me. My uncles wanted to marry me off because my dad passed away when I was young. Everyone was over 45 or in their 50s. I was 12, 13, 14, 15. But my mom fought for me.
After I finished school I went to nursing college and came back to work in my village. The first two girls I rescued were my own cousins. The first was a 10-year-old who was supposed to be getting married. Then two days later I got a call to say the same man, my uncle, was going to marry the youngest girl in the family who was just seven years old. She had to go through FGM on the day of the wedding. She got married and two days later we went to get her and arrest my uncle, and that became history in my village. They even had a big meeting to curse me [to death] because it was considered a very bad thing to do.
Women & Girls Hub: How did you feel when you heard about the curse?
Kulea: I knew I was not in the wrong because I was just protecting child rights. I continued getting calls from women from the same village to rescue more girls. I paid their fees with my nursing salary. It was less than $200 a month. I spent almost everything [on the girls’ education] because you have to buy uniforms and books and pens.
Women & Girls Hub: How did the Samburu Girls Foundation come about?
Kulea: In 2012 we started the organization, registering it and making it official like an NGO, so now we can ask people for money. We are now reaching out to four counties – Samburu, Marsabit, Isiolo and Laikipia. The community has donated 15 acres of land. That’s where our girls stay, we have a dormitory and dining room. Safaricom [Kenya’s largest mobile phone company] is coming to build us classrooms soon and we hope to eventually have a fully fledged school because we’re spending a lot of money on taking these girls to schools across the country.
Women & Girls Hub: How many girls have you helped?
Kulea: We’ve rescued over 1,000 girls. We have 300 girls who are directly under our organizational support. When we rescue these girls, the families normally are bitter because they are missing out on the dowry. It is sometimes up to one year until the girls are accepted back [by their families]. We talk to the parents and counsel them and the girls. Eventually we reunite them. Some parents lie to us. They really want to marry them off again, so we tell the girls that they can always come back to us, they can call us and also they become our eyes in the village and they make sure their own sisters, cousins and neighbors are not going through the same thing.
Women & Girls Hub: Is there any sign parents are starting to value educating girls?
Kulea: The problem we have is the villages in these areas have been marginalized for so long. The illiteracy levels are so high: In Samburu county it’s 80 percent. Such communities have yet to understand the value of educating girls.
Women & Girls Hub: The culture of ‘beading’ – when men give young girls beads to “book” them for sex – is this changing?
Kulea: It is dying out around the cities because more people there have embraced education. But there are a few other areas where it is still very common and as much as we try to spread awareness that it’s wrong, people feel it’s still part of our culture. Some girls feel it makes them beautiful because someone has given them these beads.
Women & Girls Hub: What was it like getting mentioned by Obama?
Kulea: It was awesome! It felt nice because sometimes you work so hard, do a lot of work and you think you’re hidden in the bush and no one notices. We are yet to get those shout-outs from the local or county government.
Pushing to Put Women and Girls at the Center of Development
This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Eline Gordts
As world leaders gather in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, Katja Iversen, president and CEO of Women Deliver, says that gender should be at the forefront of the development conversation.
One year ago, during the 2015 U.N. General Assembly, world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals: 17 targets to help end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. This year, as global leaders meet to debate how to make that ambitious agenda a reality, Women Deliver argues that gender should be at the forefront of the conversation.
On Wednesday, the international advocacy organization officially kicked off Deliver for Good, its campaign to transform the way the development community looks at women and girls – from powerless victims to agents for change – and to push stakeholders to apply a gender lens to the Sustainable Development Goals. Nine organizations, including Business for Social Responsibility, Landesa and Plan International, have signed on to the campaign.
Women & Girls Hub spoke with Katja Iversen, president and CEO of Women Deliver, about Deliver for Good’s approach and goals on the sidelines of a panel discussion hosted by the organization in New York.
Women & Girls Hub: Why is putting women and girls at the center of the Sustainable Development Goals so important?
Katja Iversen: The philosophy of the campaign is that we need to invest in women and girls if we want to see positive change happen in the world. While some people may find that obvious, apparently it’s not.
We need to focus on them, their needs and their opportunities. The Sustainable Development Goals are a fabulous opportunity. Every single country in the world has to make national plans, so why not use this opportunity to really place women and girls at the center of them. They should be a focus in health, education and economic development plans.
We do anything we can to put girls and women in the driver’s seat and also showcase, with evidence, how they are the change agents. That evidence is rolling in. Studies by McKinsey & Company explained during the panel have shown that it economically pays off to invest in women and girls.
Women & Girls Hub: The Deliver for Good campaign cuts across sectors and focuses on “the whole woman.” Please expand on those ideas.
Iversen: It’s important because it’s the most efficient. We’re not a body part. I’m not identified by a sickness or by my age. We’re whole people. Why build a clinic for nutrition advice, a separate clinic for HIV and one for family planning? It’s a holistic approach that looks at people as whole people and not as however an organization wants to define them.
It’s also efficient funding-wise. It’s not as if we live in an abundant world, so why not do it the best way? Let’s come up with some smart solutions that bring it together.
Women & Girls Hub: Peder Michael Pruzan-Jorgensen, the senior vice president of Business for Social Responsibility, explained during the panel discussion that in many parts of the private sector, the development of women and girls is still a foreign language. What are some of the crucial things that can be done to make it part of their language?
Iversen: Make it easy, and make it economically viable and desirable.
Showcase the evidence that proves that investing in women and girls will lead to growth for the company. I met with the CEO of Sony yesterday, and he said that investing in women, whether at the assembly line or in boardrooms, has paid off. He said that with the evidence there is now, he wouldn’t be a responsible manager if he didn’t invest in women.
It’s also important for us to get into the fora where people like him are. Make the communities come together. At the Women Deliver conference, we brought together 65 business leaders. We also worked with BSR to develop a book – a toolkit, basically – that explains how to approach this, whether you’re a small, medium or multinational company.
Women & Girls Hub: That ties into an interesting insight Peder brought up – that just targeting the multinationals is not enough, because those big companies are not the main employers that women and girls in the developing world interact with.
Iversen: Exactly. The biggest growth in employment is in small- and middle-sized companies. If those companies apply a gender lens and break down some of the gender barriers and prejudices, that’s where the growth in the female workforce will come from.
Women & Girls Hub: Plan International CEO Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen noted today that in the areas where her organization works, the needle hasn’t moved much when it comes to the lived reality for women and girls. How can we speed up actual change in women and girls’ lives? How can we go from amazing goals to implementation?
Iversen: I’m a pragmatist. Let’s look at who’s out on the front line, the organizations that are working in the field. We need to push so that those people and organizations deciding the reality put gender central, do more and get the opportunity to do more by receiving funding for what they do well.
The U.N. works with governments, that’s their job, but we want to push in the same direction across sectors, with everyone who touches upon the lives of girls and women.
This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Women’s Refugee Commission: Protecting Female Refugees Is Essential
This article originally appeared on Refugees Deeply and the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about the global migration crisis and issues affecting women and girls, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list as well as the Refugees Deeply email list. By Preethi Nallu
Speaking at the opening of the United Nations Refugee Summit on September 19, Women’s Refugee Commission members reiterated their calls for a “complete rethink of traditional humanitarian response.” This conversation is part of our “Voices from the Summit” coverage.
NEW YORK – Addressing world leaders at the first roundtable of the U.N. Summit for Refugees and Migrants on Monday was a defining event for Foni Joyce from South Sudan. A 24-year-old woman who was displaced from her home due to conflict, she opened the conversation at the morning session, as an individual representative of displaced women and girls across the world whose specific needs deserve closer attention amid the accelerating migration influxes.
“The solutions are right in front of you. We can contribute,” said Joyce, speaking on behalf of the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC). Joyce had to defy odds to be able to graduate from university, but she would like to see education and employment become more accessible to female refugees in their transition towards stability. Indeed, it is not often that women are leading voices at the podium, whether with international policies or community-level decisions within displaced communities. The WRC has been working on rectifying this dearth of female voices that has become abundantly clear over the Mediterranean migration crises.
Given that a majority of women like Joyce increasingly end up in urban centers of the world, while seeking asylum, WRC has been documenting this growing trend and its impact on female refugees over the past several years.
In February of this year David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee, announced a statistic at the U.N. that rang alarm bells for mayors of cities and municipalities across the globe.
“At least 60 percent of refugees are now living in urban areas,” Miliband said during his briefing.
This never-before-witnessed level of urban displacement is being investigated by field research that calls for a more “nuanced” understanding of the hurdles that female refugees, in particular, face in urban contexts.
Earlier this year, WRC published a report called “Mean Streets,” based on conversations with diverse refugee populations in Quito, Ecuador; Beirut, Lebanon; Kampala, Uganda; and Delhi, India. Over this summer, they further identified the risks that female refugees in Greece and Turkey, especially those stranded in urban centers, encounter due to an “ineffective” deal between the European Union and Ankara.
Reiterating their “Call to Action on Protection Against Gender-based Violence in Emergencies” at the U.N. summit in New York, the WRC’s researchers explain that policy initiatives do exist to protect female refugees in transition and once they reach their destination. What WRC researchers would like to see is an explicit commitment from governments and acceptance of a concrete action plan that they, together with 50 other groups, have endorsed as part of a five-year road map.
The latest findings, WRC says, show that Greece is “shockingly ill-equipped” to handle basic gender-based needs. Marcy Hersh, senior advocacy officer at WRC, spoke with Refugees Deeply about how the U.N. summit can pave the way not only for protection of women and children but also for providing livelihoods and education. These crucial elements can reduce the risk of women and minors being trafficked, attacked or manipulated into harm.
Refugees Deeply: Could you spell out your main campaigning points at the U.N. Summit for Refugees and Migrants?
Marcy Hersh: The summit should advance effective asylum and legal protection mechanisms in domestic migration management policies and in international forums. It must seek to end arbitrary detention for asylum seekers and instead emphasize the lifesaving importance of access to comprehensive reproductive health services. We are looking for an explicit, detailed commitment to protect all displaced women and girls from gender-based violence while in transit and upon reaching their destinations. We are also calling for expansion of legal and safe employment opportunities that leverage the capacity of refugee women and youth to sustain and protect themselves and their families.
Refugees Deeply: Is it possible to formulate a global, binding policy to protect displaced women and girls from gender-based violence (GBV)? How would such a policy come into effect?
Hersh: I would say that that the policy initiatives needed to protect displaced women and girls from the threat of gender-based violence, in fact, already exist and it is our hope that the U.N. Summit for Refugees and Migrants is an opportunity to further the uptake of said initiatives. The “Call to Action for the Protection of GBV in Emergencies” is a commitment by all humanitarian partners to change how we work so that every humanitarian and refugee response provides safe and comprehensive services for those affected by GBV and mitigates GBV risk. A group of more than 50 governments, U.N. agencies and NGOs have developed a five-year road map that outlines concrete steps all humanitarian and refugee stakeholders can take over the next five years to build this change into the policies, systems and mechanisms we use to respond to emergencies. Each stakeholder has unique strengths and capacities, and by coordinating action and working together we can provide better protection from GBV to the people we serve. When more partners become members of this initiative, and fulfill their commitments under the road map, displaced women and girls will experience meaningful protection.
Refugees Deeply: How does the current E.U.-Turkey deal expose female refugees to gender-based violence (GBV)?
Hersh: Virtually overnight, the E.U.-Turkey agreement forced an unprepared and ill-equipped Greece to shift from being a transit country, where refugees stayed for a few days, to being a host country for 50,000 stranded refugees seeking legal protection. The consequences have been alarming. The deal has had profound and distressing ramifications for refugees, especially women and girls seeking asylum and family reunification in Europe. Refugees now endure prolonged displacement, family separation and unacceptable hurdles to accessing legal protection. Refugee women and girls face unsafe and dire living conditions, increased risk of gender-based violence and heightened fear, anxiety and uncertainty.
Refugees Deeply: How can this situation be remedied?
Hersh: In our recent report, the Women’s Refugee Commission issued a number of recommendations to the European Union, Greece and Turkey. Foremost, we urge the E.U. to review and overhaul its humanitarian and asylum policies to fairly, humanely and expeditiously respond to the needs of all refugees seeking safety, protection and relocation and adhere to international and European laws that bar the return of refugees to unsafe countries. We call on the E.U. to increase financial, material and human resources and oversight to help Greece and Turkey effectively adjudicate claims and deliver needed humanitarian services.
We call on both Greece and Turkey to establish appropriate alternatives to sheltering refugees, wherever they are. Turkey is also urged to ensure refugees have equal access to legal protection and aid regardless of nationality, and to facilitate and increase humanitarian assistance, legal counsel and psychosocial support for returned refugees.
Refugees Deeply: How can the Greek asylum system be scaled up to better protect the interests of all asylum seekers and lone women in particular?
Hersh: Greece must build the capacity and resources of the Greek Asylum Service to ensure the timely and fair review of asylum claims, as well as requests for family reunification or relocation. They must ensure that refugees have information about legal options and processes in a language they understand. Lastly, they must simplify and streamline administrative requirements and decision-making processes to reduce bureaucratic delays.
Greece should coordinate closely with international aid organizations to upgrade safety and services at all sites – increasing access to specialized medical care, psychosocial support and safe spaces for GBV survivors, and reproductive health care and mental health services.
Refugees Deeply: Is there evidence of discrimination based on nationality in terms of aid and shelter, once refugees arrive in Greece?
Hersh: Refugees’ rights and ability to access legal protection in Europe vary dramatically depending on nationality. WRC believes policies linked to nationality create an unofficial and unfair hierarchy among refugees – impacting everything from protection options to the ability to access services. Such discriminatory policies are also in contradiction of the concept and tradition of due process and individualized determinations.
Refugees Deeply: What are the conditions you discovered in Turkey that render it less than safe for mass returns?
Hersh: WRC was not granted direct access to the centers where refugees are returned. From our mission in Turkey, we learned that returned refugees arrive in Turkey most often by boat or sometimes by air and are then transported to one of two “removal centers.” Non-Syrians are largely sent to a center in the Kirklareli area near the Bulgarian border and Syrian refugees to the Düziçi center, a remote site in southern Turkey. Turkey describes removal centers as temporary accommodation while background checks and the registration process unfolds, but WRC would characterize the facilities as detention centers. Freedom of movement is limited at these sites, and individuals can’t leave the premises. Possessions were confiscated and specialized medical care, legal counsel and other needed services are reportedly not available. European MEPs who visited the sites “documented violations of fundamental rights” and cases of “inhumane and degrading treatment.”
Refugees Deeply: Given that a majority of female refugees across the globe are now in urban centers and often on streets, how should U.N. agencies and NGOs address the needs of such refugees differently? Where has UNHCR’s 2009 Urban Policy fallen short?
Hersh: Protecting urban refugees with heightened risks, including women and adolescent girls, requires innovative, tailored programming and outreach. First, recognizing that they are the chief responders in urban settings, humanitarians must systematize and broaden engagement of local actors. Next, in recognition that shelter and livelihoods are extremely fraught with risks and dangerous for urban refugee women, humanitarians must develop proactive and targeted strategies for addressing GBV risks related to shelter and livelihoods. Lastly, humanitarians in urban settings must balance programming done within refugee communities with sessions in the host community. Women refugees remarked that while GBV awareness-raising activities, for example, are beneficial to refugee communities, it is equally important – if not more important, in some locations – to conduct these activities within the host communities where they feel vulnerable and targeted.
Refugees Deeply: How can the U.N. better engage local actors and why is this key?
Hersh: Local actors are the first responders in humanitarian emergencies. They are the first on the scene, they have the best knowledge of humanitarian needs, and will stay the course, providing lifesaving support to displaced populations, long after international donor funding dries up and international partners have moved on to the next crisis. The World Humanitarian Summit included in its Grand Bargain a commitment to direct 25 percent of humanitarian funding “as directly as possible” to local and national organizations. Fulfilling this pledge would be a major milestone and would firmly recognize the essential contributions of civil society organizations in humanitarian response.
Refugees Deeply: How would you propose for “accountability mechanisms” to be put in place to assess the performances of U.N.’s implementing partners?
Hersh: There needs to be far greater accountability throughout the humanitarian system, not just from the U.N. to its implementing partners, but in fact a more robust system of mutual accountability that resonates at all levels. When donors issue funds to an implementing partner, they will include mandatory monitoring and reporting to ensure that the aims of the project are achieved and that the funds are well spent. In order to achieve thorough and meaningful change throughout the humanitarian system, accountability must go in the other direction as well, from implementing partners, up to the U.N. and donors.
The World Humanitarian Summit provides an ideal opportunity to create mechanisms of mutual accountability, where everyone’s commitments, be they from an NGO, a U.N. agency or a donor, all are monitored and publicly reported on, to ensure that all actors fulfill their pledges. It is only through collective action and collective accountability that members of the humanitarian community will meet our ambitious and essential goals.
This Teen Is Giving Tampons to Homeless Women
allure.com - When you get your period, you probably know where you're going to get tampons or pads. For homeless women, basic feminine-hygiene products are harder to come by. Camions of Care, a nonprofit organization founded by Nadya Okamoto, an 18-year-old from Portland, Oregon, is hoping to change that. (If you're curious, a camion is sturdy cart or wagon designed for bulky loads.) So far, Okamoto and her organization have helped deliver 27,243 period care packages to women and girls in need all over the world.
When Okamoto was 15, her family was declared legally homeless. During that time, she was living at a friend's house two hours from her school. During her commute, she tells Allure that she'd encounter underserved women who didn't have reliable access to feminine-hygiene products. Because shelters can't keep up with the demand for tampons and pads, the women would get industrious, using newspaper, socks, and brown paper grocery bags instead. "What scared me was that it made so much sense. You can find [brown paper grocery bags] anywhere around Portland," Okamoto says. "But it's so unsanitary because women were getting these bags from recycling bins or trash cans." Besides being stressful and ineffective, nonsterile alternatives could lead to dangerous infections and toxic shock syndrome .
Variety’s Power of Women Honors Entertainers, Game-Changing Philanthropists
blog.womenandhollywood.com - Variety has announced this year’s female entertainers for their annual Power of Women event: Helen Mirren, Ava DuVernay, Scarlett Johansson, Laverne Cox, and Miley Cyrus have been chosen as the five 2016 honorees.
Each year, the women selected represent “some of the most philanthropic women in Hollywood and their work with their respective causes.”
“For the past eight years, Variety has had the honor and pleasure of identifying leading women in entertainment who are dedicated to improving the community through the worthy causes they support,” said Claudia Eller, Variety co-editor-in-chief. “We are so pleased that once again our amazing partner Lifetime will join us to celebrate the achievements of our outstanding honorees.”
“It is an honor to continue this deeply meaningful partnership with Variety as we together celebrate the power of women’s collective voices dedicated to impacting the world around us in such profound ways,” added Liz Gateley, EVP and head of programming, Lifetime. “We couldn’t be more proud to use Lifetime’s global platforms to amplify the efforts of this year’s honorees and inspire others to join them.”
Why More Women Leadership In Media Would Change The Stories of The World
taketheleadwomen.com - In the 1980s I worked for a newspaper in Texas as a feature writer and columnist where staff parties of arrivals, departures and birthdays were held at the bar across the street. Often they included serving a cake decorated with a naked woman, complete with pink and black icing. I was in my 20s and not well-versed in the newsroom culture, but as soon as I saw the anatomically correct lady cake, I took three cocktail napkins and covered her sugar-coated image.
“You ruined it, “ the editor-in-chief chastised me.
It is no surprise to women journalists or women working in media-related fields that leadership in media companies is lacking women at the top ranks. Consider the debacle for many women who have worked at Fox News. And that reality shapes workplace culture, coverage of women’s issues, gender bias in commentary and placement of stories. In short, it shapes how we as consumers of media view the world.
Following the recent departure of Arianna Huffington from her namesake media empire, observers are checking in on the lack of women leaders in the media.
Want to receive earlybird invitations to our global events, custom-tailored content we think you'll love, and get exclusive access to "The World Women Report"?
Wonder Woman is The New UN Ambassador For Empowerment Of Women And Girls
- Victoria Mendoza
indiatimes.com - Wonder Woman has been appointed as the new UN ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls. She will be officially titled on October 21, the character's 75th anniversary at the UN Headquarters in New York. The event will also launch the UN's global campaign supporting the fifth goal of Sustainable Development which is "to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls."
"Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world," said a UN spokesperson, adding that, "Providing women and girls with equal access to education, healthcare, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large."
Wonder Woman was coined during WWII, which was in itself path-breaking. Firstly. her character broke away from the damsel-in-distress characteristic attached to women in Superhero comics with male leads and saw her saving herself from bondage. And secondly the name itself Wonder Woman - not a girl - she was a woman at par with superhero men. DC is finally handing Wonder Woman her dues in 2017 by releasing their first movie on one of the first female superheroes. And she will also be making an appearance in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.
UN Women Spotlights Child Marriage on International Day of the Girl
“Without progress for girls, there can be no real progress,” says UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
The International Day of the Girl is a day to celebrate girls -- their strength, their talents, their tenacity, their kindness, their accomplishments -- as well as to reaffirm that girls matter and how we need to do better protecting and lifting up girls everywhere. They're not property, they're not inferior to boys and men, and they have the right to determine and forge their own futures.
UN Women focuses on how an issue that often stands in the way of girls' futures: child, early and forced marriage. Presenting sobering facts and data on child marriage, the organization offers statistics, discussion, personal stories, videos and more detailing how to help, protect and empower girls around the globe. Click through to check out a thorough study into the subject, also including UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson visiting Malawi to highlight the need to end child marriage.
Learn the facts on child marriage, share your hopes for girls around the world -- and may we all lift up and celebrate all girls, all day, every day.
unwomen.org - There are 1.1 billion girls today, a powerful constituency for shaping a sustainable world that’s better for everyone. They are brimming with talent and creativity. But their dreams and potential are often thwarted by discrimination, violence and lack of equal opportunities. There are glaring gaps in data and knowledge about the specific needs and challenges that girls face.
What gets counted, gets done. The theme for this year’s International Day of the Girl Child, on 11 October, “Girls’ Progress = Goals’ Progress: A Global Girl Data Movement,” is a call for action for increased investment in collecting and analyzing girl-focused, girl-relevant and sex-disaggregated data. One year into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, improving data on girls and addressing the issues that are holding them back is critical for fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals
One such issue that is standing in the way of girls’ progress is child marriage. The data is daunting—one in three girls in developing countries (except China) get married before they turn 18. Girls who are child brides miss out on education, are more vulnerable to physical and sexual violence, and bear children before they are physically or emotionally prepared. The cycle of violence that begins in girlhood, carries over into womanhood and across generations. The 2030 Agenda must address their needs and unlock their potential.
UN Women works around the world to empower women and girls and raise awareness on their rights, advocate for the adoption and implementation of laws and policies that prohibit and prevent child, early and forced marriage, and mobilize communities against the practice.
On the International Day of the Girl Child, we stand with the global community to support girls’ progress everywhere. Let girls be girls.
Girl under 15 married every seven seconds, says Save the Children - BBC News
The study also studies girls' situations around the world, explores ways to empower and give voices to girls, examines the importance of sexual and reproductive health services and more.
Read more below and at the link, or read the Save the Children study.
bbc.co.uk - One girl under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds, according to a new report by Save the Children.
The study says girls as young as 10 are forced to marry much older men in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen, India and Somalia.
Save the Children says early marriage can trigger a cycle of disadvantage across every part of a girl's life.
Conflict, poverty and humanitarian crises are seen as major factors that leave girls exposed to child marriage.
"Child marriage starts a cycle of disadvantage that denies girls the most basic rights to learn, develop and be children," said Save the Children International CEO Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
"Girls who marry too early often can't attend school, and are more likely to face domestic violence, abuse and rape. They fall pregnant and are exposed to STIs (sexually transmitted infections) including HIV."
The report, called Every Last Girl, ranks countries based on the hardest place to be a girl based on schooling, child marriage, teen pregnancy, maternal deaths and the number of women in parliament.
Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia were ranked at the bottom of the index.
Women & Girls with Disabilities Need Empowerment, Not Pity, UN Experts Tell States
Now, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is helping to promote disability visibility and advocacy with a statement about the rights and needs of women with disabilities--and society's responsibilities toward them.
Click through to read an outline of the statement from the Women's UN Reporting Network, or read the full General Comment; which discusses the main areas of concern for girls and women with disabilities, recommendations for practical steps to better serve everyone in our communities, a call to repeal discriminatory legislation and more. And always remember--we're fighting for the rights and empowerment of all women.
wunrn.com - States too often fail to uphold their obligations with regard to women and girls with disabilities, treating them or allowing them to be treated as helpless objects of pity, subjected to hostility and exclusion, instead of empowering them to enjoy their fundamental human rights and freedoms, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has said.
“Policies for women have traditionally made disability invisible, and disabilities policies have overlooked gender. But if you are a woman or a girl with disabilities, you face discrimination and barriers because you are female, because you are disabled, and because you are female and disabled,” said Committee member Theresia Degener.
To help to address this, the Committee has issued guidance for the 166 States that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on how they can promote the empowerment of women with disabilities to enable them to participate in all spheres of life on an equal basis with others, as set out in the Convention and expressly in Article 6.
The guidance, termed a General Comment, stresses that refraining from discriminatory actions is not enough. States need to empower women by “ raising their self-confidence, guaranteeing their participation, and increasing their power and authority to take decisions in all areas affecting their lives.”
The Women Behind The New Bustle On Reinventing "Women’s Media"
fastcompany.com - At Bustle's Chelsea office in Manhattan, the two women at the heart of the website's overhaul—creative director Isla Murray and senior engineer Zahra Jabini—are sitting together in the design room. Around them, the walls are covered in inspiration boards filled with images from recent photo shoots for the online publication. Women wearing colorfully patterned dresses seem to float in a sea of bright pinks, teals, oranges, and yellows. Such scenes of warmth, optimism, and fun have been channeled into Bustle's brand-new look, which is being revealed today.
The site was first developed three and a half years ago and had a functional aesthetic much like Medium or Tumblr that allowed you to scroll through blocks of clickable images that would take you to an article. The background was white and minimalistic. "There wasn't that much personality," Murray says. "As we've grown, developing our editorial voice and our social voice, and really come into our own, we've been screaming for a way to visually express that."
To improve gender equality at work, change the language of job postings
It’s fashionable to put the onus on women to lean in and be more confident, the banking chief told a crowd at the FT Women at the Top conference in London on Sept. 30. But companies need to take some responsibility, too. They should, Vadera said, re-examine job posting vocabulary because certain words “can be off-putting, like using ‘ambitious,’ ‘dominant,’ and ‘competitive.'”
There is support for this claim. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2013 investigated ads for jobs in traditionally male fields, like plumbing, engineering, and programming to see if they used stereotypically male words—like “competitive,” “dominate,” and “leader”—and if those words dissuaded women from applying. Researchers compared over 4,000 job ads, then they asked women to respond to the postings. They found “that masculine wording in job advertisements leads to less anticipated belongingness and job interest among women.” The study proposed that this phenomenon perpetuates gender inequality in male-dominated fields, maintaining the status quo.
Want to receive earlybird invitations to our global events, custom-tailored content we think you'll love, and get exclusive access to "The World Women Report"?
Female CEOs are at record level in 2016, but it's still only 5 percent
America hit a milestone in 2016: The most female CEOs ever. There are now 27 women at the helm of S&P; 500 companies.
The good news is it's a new record for women in business, according to S&P; Global Market Intelligence. It's also 22% more -- a big jump -- from last year, when only 22 women led S&P; 500 companies.
But women still have a long way to go.
Females lead only 27 out of 500 (or just 5.4%) of America's largest publicly traded companies (known as the S&P; 500). And that's after all the efforts to draw attention to the gender gap and promote female leaders by celebrities like Beyonce and Lena Dunham and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" movement.
"The overall numbers are up, but they're still quite small," says Pavle Sabic, a director at S&P; Global Market Intelligence and author of a new study on the CEO Gender Gap in the U.S. and Europe.
Women now lead companies in just about all sectors. American females have made big gains in recent months in energy and utilities, sectors typically dominated by men.
Want to receive earlybird invitations to our global events, custom-tailored content we think you'll love, and get exclusive access to "The World Women Report"?
After swimming at the Olympics, a Syrian refugee gains a new platform at the U.N.
washingtonpost.com - A Syrian teenager who saved fellow refugees from drowning and then swam for the refugee team at the Olympics was among those honored at the first Global Goals Awards in New York City.
Yusra Mardini, 18, who fled Syria with her sister in 2015 and now lives in Germany, received the Girl Award at the ceremony on Tuesday night.
The awards honor champions for women’s and girls’ rights and were organized by UNICEF, a children’s humanitarian program run by the United Nations.
Mardini, who had to swim for her life when her overloaded boat broke down in the Mediterranean Sea on the way to Europe, captured headlines when she competed at the Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
At a U.N. summit on migrants and refugees this week, she told world leaders that she wanted to change perceptions of those displaced from their homes.
Meet Madison, a 9-year-old Champion for Change
Madison Harrison, who launched her own photography business at 7, has loved photography since she was a toddler. The young entrepreneur, now 9, posted a photo supporting the #62MillionGirls campaign and speaks out about the importance of girls receiving an education. Read more here and follow the for the full interview with Harrison, where she talks about her passions in photography and her support of Girl Rising's mission to help girls everywhere achieve their dreams.
Visit Photos With Madison and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
girlrising.com - While most 9 year olds are busy making memories, Madison Harrison is also busy capturing them.
Her interest in photography was sparked at her third birthday party and at the age of seven, Madison started her own photography business.
“I love to photograph little girls and their dolls or boys and their toys,” Madison says on what she likes most about photography.
In two short years she’s gone from photographing her friends and flowers (still two of her favorite things to photograph) to organizing dress and canned food fundraisers and even photographing two weddings.
Girl Rising first met this young professional during the #62MillionGirls campaign where she posted a photograph to show her support.
“I am so happy that this campaign is letting the world know that there are so many girls who are not in school,” Madison says. “The more people know, the more it will make a difference. “
One thing that we love about Madison is that she’s working hard to make a difference in the world through her photography projects.
Read the whole story here.
Passing The Baton: 5 Ways Women Leaders Can Help Other Women - Take The Lead
We're happy to share this piece from Take the Lead Women on five ways women leaders can help other women, paving the way for even more women leadership and empowerment.
taketheleadwomen.com - I was in the audience at a conference listening to a professional panel last week, with each one of the three women leaders talking about her years of experience in media. A younger woman in the audience raised her hand to ask a question.
“I want to know more about passing the baton, and how I can grow into a career, following in your footsteps.”
One of the seasoned journalists responded, “I want to pass the baton to you smoothly, but I cannot stop and look for you behind me. You need to keep up the pace, so I can reach behind me and you can grab it quickly, move ahead and continue the race. I am happy to help, but if I stop to try to find you, we will both be disqualified. This way we both win.”
But the behaviors of women at work can be on the other end of the spectrum. In some work environments, women leaders not only don’t pass the baton, they make sure they are obstructionists to any other woman rising up. We don’t want to be her. So here are five quick strategies to being the kind of woman in the workplace who is not only amenable to other women, but also supportive to the cause of empowering all the women she encounters professionally.
Girl Scouts Exec: Girls Shouldn't Pursue Perfection
Chief Girl and Parent Expert at Girl Scouts of the USA Andrea Bastiani Archibald used the magazines' differing approaches as an opportunity to address the larger issue of girls and perfection. Read below and click through to learn why teaching our girls to strive for the appearance of perfection actually holds them back--now and throughout their lives.
And whether it's with the latest fashions and full makeup or in a T-shirt and messy ponytail, may we encourage all girls to explore their futures.
To join Girl Scouts as a girl member or adult volunteer, visit www.girlscouts.org/join.
motto.time.com - The bombardment of image- and status-driven messages today’s girls and young women receive through media and our culture at large is destructive. Success is the currency for entry—or rather, the illusion of success. Finding just the right Instagram filter to ensure your latest selfie as enviable and drool-worthy as possible is a must for boosting your social capital. And girls are often the most impacted in this “nothing-less-than-success” theater.
Social media recently erupted over the controversy surrounding the cover of the September issue of Girls’ Life magazine (touting multiple beauty tips and how-tos on luring a potential boyfriend for its core audience) compared to the cover of Boys’ Life (splashed with the more substantive headline “Explore Your Future”). These dueling magazine covers highlight the stark difference between how society communicates life priorities and the trappings of success to girls versus boys, and serves to reaffirm an obsession with cultivating a perfect, unattainable façade.
If girls internalize the idea that everything undertaken in life must be image-centric, flawlessly executed and successful, that may cause fear of venturing beyond one’s comfort zone—or of even trying. Because if there’s a chance that you’re going to mess up, and not do something perfectly, why risk it? Just imagine all the rites of passage a girl might not pursue for fear of embarrassment or failure: not trying out for a sports team, not raising her hand in class to answer a question, not approaching a classmate to make a new friend, not volunteering for an exciting class project. Being too afraid to embrace these important growth milestones has serious implications, putting girls at a disadvantage as they grow into women and venture out into a deeply competitive and demanding world.
Girl behind #1000BlackGirlBooks gets dream job
nj.com - When Marley Dias started her #1000BlackGirlBooks social media campaign to collect books featuring black girls as main characters, she didn't expect to exceed her goal of a thousand books.
Dias, an Essex County middle-schooler, came up with the campaign last year after becoming frustrated with the lack of black, female main characters in books she had to read for school, the ones filled with "white boys and their dogs."
But the effort drew a surplus of books — more than 7,000 so far — and a significant amount of attention from national media. Marley wound up a guest on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and later got to meet Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama.
Now the 11-year-old from West Orange has been made an editor-in-residence for Elle.com, which on Monday launched Marley Mag, a zine of her very own.
"When you see a character you can connect with, if they learn a specific lesson, you're more likely to apply that to your life," Dias told NJ Advance Media in January when talking about the impetus behind her book campaign. Dias, then a sixth grader at Thomas A. Edison Middle School, said her ultimate goal was to edit her own pop culture and lifestyle magazine.