politics | Women in politics and the economy around the world.

So recently Nicolas Kristof, New York Times columnist who has set himself up as a women's rights crusader, was tackled on the fact that he hinged his stories on whiote poeple who were helping the natives of the various brown citizen majority countries that he reports from: Texas in Africa has the story in white man's burden

Back in May, @viewfromthecave tweeted that The Kristof was taking questions from readers to be answered via YouTube. This is the question I asked:

Your columns about Africa almost always feature black Africans as victims, and white foreigners as their saviors.

There was more to it than that, but I can't find the original post. At any rate, the gist of the question was, "Why not feature more of the work that Africans are doing to solve their countries' problems?"

And, lo and behold, Kristof answered. NYT Picker thankfully has the transcript for those of us on dial-up connections:
This is a really important issue for a journalist. And it's one I've thought a lot about.

I should, first of all, from my defensive crouch, say that I think you're a little bit exaggerating the way I have reported. Indeed, recently, for example, among the Africans who I have emphasized, the people who are doing fantastic work are the extraordinary Dr. Dennis Mukwege in the Congo, Edna Adan in Somaliland, Valentino Deng in Sudan, Manute Bol in Sudan, and there are a lot of others.

But I do take your point. That very often I do go to developing countries where local people are doing extraordinary work, and instead I tend to focus on some foreigner, often some American, who’s doing something there.

And let me tell you why I do that. The problem that I face -- my challenge as a writer -- in trying to get readers to care about something like Eastern Congo, is that frankly, the moment a reader sees that I'm writing about Central Africa, for an awful lot of them, that's the moment to turn the page. It's very hard to get people to care about distant crises like that.

One way of getting people to read at least a few grafs in is to have some kind of a foreign protagonist, some American who they can identify with as a bridge character.

And so if this is a way I can get people to care about foreign countries, to read about them, ideally, to get a little bit more involved, then I plead guilty.

As NYT Picker aptly notes, the persons to whom Kristof refers have either not been mentioned in his print columns or are typically only mentioned briefly.Texas in Africa proceeds to fisk this white liberal racist BS as it deserves

I am extremely pissed at this BS meself, so have a linkspam of women in their own countries, being all awesome without some white saviours anywhere near them.

INDIAN OCEAN ISLANDS Women Join Forces for Political Equality

PORT-LOUIS , Jul 14, 2010 (IPS) - "Instead of moaning all the time, why don’t you create your own (political) party?" some men asked Brigitte Rabemanantsoa Rasamoelina, a female politician from Madagascar. She accepted the challenge and in February formed Ampela Mano Politika, a political party which started with only 22 female members and now has over 5,000 female members ... and 10 men.

With female political representation standing at only 3.75 percent in Madagascar, a women’s lot is very precarious, says Rasamoelina.

And so too is the situation for many women in most of the Indian Ocean Islands. Female political representation is a mere three percent in Comoros, 18 percent in Mauritius and 23.5 percent in the Seychelles.

It is one of the reasons why Rasamoelina and 30 other women from the Indian Ocean Islands, gathered recently in Mauritius to identify ways to attain parity among men and women in politics in an event organised by the Indian Ocean Commission and Women in Politics (WIP).MORE

URUGUAY Women breaking out of the political corset

MONTEVIDEO, May 28 , 2009 (IPS) - When Uruguay returned to democracy in 1985, "a political corset was put on women," said a member of the opposition Colorado Party.

In the first parliament to emerge from the 1984 elections that put an end to the 1973-1985 dictatorship, "there was not a single woman lawmaker," said Glenda Rondán, a city councilor for Montevideo and former member of the lower house of parliament, at a breakfast held this week for women politicians by the Foreign Press Association in Uruguay (APEU).

The democratic state "was born crippled in that respect," because women "did a great deal to bring about the return to democracy," she said.

Twenty-four years later, Uruguay is in 91st place on a list of 134 countries drawn up by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, ranked according to women's participation in the legislative branch.

With four women in the Senate and 11 women members of the lower house among a combined total of 130 parliamentary seats, 11.5 percent of Uruguayan lawmakers are women, considerably lower than the 21.5 percent average for the Americas and the world average of 18.4 percent
How Uruguay's political system works

URUGUAY Women join forces in the parlimentary trenches

MONTEVIDEO, Jul 1, 2010 (IPS) - Women lawmakers in Uruguay have joined forces across party lines, in spite of criticism from colleagues in their own parties, and have built majorities to approve laws in favour of gender equality and other rights that have been denied for years.

It all started in 2000, when the few women elected to the lower house of parliament decided that together, they had a chance of advancing an agenda for women without regard for party loyalties. They formed the women's caucus, which in 2005 became the Bicameral Women's Caucus (BBF) when some women were elected to the senate.

Thanks to pressure and support from the BBF, laws were enacted allowing women to choose a person to be present when they give birth, ending the description of murders resulting from domestic violence as "crimes of passion", providing sex education in primary schools, giving domestic employees the same labour rights as other workers, and penalising sexual harassment in the workplace.MORE

MADAGASCAR Calls for Equality to be Written into New Constitution

JOHANNESBURG, Jul 2, 2010 (IPS) - Madagascan female activists are asking that the right of women to participate directly in politics be included in a new draft of the country’s Constitution, so that there can be 30 percent of female politicians in parliament by 2012 and 50 percent by 2015.

Women’s rights organisation Vondrona Miralenta ho an'ny Fampandrosoana (VMLF-‘group of women in politics’), say this constitutional requirement is needed to change the disproportion number of men and women represented in economics and politics. According to a study conducted by the Electoral Institute for the Sustainability of Democracy in Africa in 2009, there are less than eight percent of Madagascan women in political decision-making bodies.MORE

ZAMBIA Need to Mainstream Gender Equality into all Policies

LUSAKA, Jun 29, 2010 (IPS) - Despite the adoption almost a decade ago of a national gender policy that aims to ensure fair participation of men and women in the development process, most of the Zambian government’s policies still remain gender blind, say civil society and women's rights associations.

Critics say the most glaring of these policies is the country’s national budget that fails to disaggregate resource allocation and incentives by gender. Gender is also not one of the considerations in setting targets for various programmes like access to land and credit by government.MORE

MALAWI Changing the Face of Politics

JOHANNESBURG, Jun 15, 2010 (IPS) - The face of politics is changing in the southern African country of Malawi. And civil society is making plans to ensure that it changes even more.

Fresh from a dramatic increase in the number of women representatives elected into national government last year, the NGO Gender Coordination Network is already implementing plans for the Malawi’s "50/50 campaign" to ensure that more women than ever before sit in local government seats after the November elections.

Their enthusiasm is inspired by the dramatic increase in the number of women representatives elected to national government during the 2009 elections.MORE

MALAWI Women Candidates Desperate to Finance Freebies for Voters

LILONGWE, Jul 13, 2010 (IPS) - Mable Malinda wants to contest the local government elections but the independent candidate who is using her life savings to fund her campaign only has 500 dollars left in her bank account. She has already spent three times as much buying handouts for voters – an unofficial requirement when contesting elections in Malawi.

"This is not going to be enough because the voters want more and more handouts. I am thinking of abandoning the campaign altogether. It is proving to be a very expensive mission. I have already spent 1,500 dollars since I launched my campaign two months ago," the 53-year-old from the southern district of Mulanje told IPS.MORE

PARAGUAY Women Manage Dairy for Self-Sufficiency

ASUNCIÓN, Jul 14, 2010 (IPS) - A year ago, Ramona Pereira was stuck with humdrum domestic drudgery in a rural village in Paraguay. Now she is the leader of a committee of women dairy producers in her community, and at 38 she feels like a new woman.

"This is where I work," Pereira told IPS with a mixture of pride and shyness, as she opened the door to the small dairy in Aveiro, a village 40 kilometres southeast of the capital city, near the town of Itá.

The "tambo", the term used in the southern cone of South America for a small dairy farm which sells unpackaged milk directly, is run by a partnership of a dozen women working in three shifts.MORE

PERU Women Combine Invention, Tradition to Improve Rural Diets

PAUCARÁ, Peru, Feb 7, 2010 (IPS) - Although Huancavelica is the poorest region of Peru, it has more than just poverty, malnutrition and unmet needs. There are also women using their creativity, efforts and traditional indigenous knowledge to improve the diets of their families and communities.

"Have you ever had coffee made from chuño (freeze-dried potatoes)?" a young villager asks with a smile before introducing this reporter to the creator of this culinary invention, Marina Huamaní.

She lives in Padre Rumi, a village in the district of Paucará in Huancavelica, a department (province) in south-central Peru, where 86 percent of the total 400,000 inhabitants live in poverty and approximately 45 percent of children are malnourished.MORE

Afro-Brazilian Communities in the Shadow of Space Facility

ALCÁNTARA, Brazil, Jul 6, 2010 (IPS) - A space launch centre built in their territory has altered the way of life that members of "quilombos" - village communities originally founded by runaway slaves - have maintained for a century and a half in this municipality in the Brazilian state of Maranhao.

Women quilombolas, as residents of the quilombos are known, participate alongside men in the struggle to defend the trampled rights of their Afro- descendant communities. They now face an additional battle to maintain women's activities particularly affected by the space base, to improve conditions in their new environment, and to be included in the reparations demanded from the Brazilian state. MORE

SWAZILAND Women MPs Limited by the Patriarchal System

MBABANE, Jul 8, 2010 (IPS) - Minah Ndzinisa spends every day selling fruit and vegetables at the outdoor Mbabane Market, braving the rain, wind and cold for almost 20 years. "I was in the same cold even in the 1990s when we used to have only one woman Member of Parliament."

Ndzinisa regrets that she voted twice for a woman candidate who eventually secured a seat for the second time in the House of Assembly. For her it no longer makes a difference whether her representative from Mbabane East is a man or woman.

"I thought life would improve for poor women like me if a large number of the womenfolk occupied more seats in Parliament," said Ndzinisa. "I was wrong."There are many reasons for this state of affairs

Czech Republic: Women resist all male Cabinet

PRAGUE, Jul 7, 2010 (IPS) - Women’s rights campaigners say the Czech Republic’s new government has effectively told women they have no relevance to the country’s future after the new cabinet was formed – without a single female minister.

Despite a record number of women elected to parliament in elections in May and pre-election pledges by party leaders that they wanted more women in politics, women’s rights activists said they had been given a "slap in the face" after the make-up of the new cabinet was finally agreed last week.MORE

LATIN AMERICA Time to value Women's unpaid work

SANTIAGO, Jul 9, 2010 (IPS) - The time has come for Latin American countries to put an economic value on the work that women do as they take care of households, children and the elderly, says ECLAC, the United Nations regional economic agency.

That recommendation, to be presented at the 11th Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, Jul. 13-16 in Brasilia, is stated clearly in the report "What Kind of State? What Kind of Equality?" prepared for the intergovernmental meet by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.MORE

Venezuela starts its own Zero Hunger Programme

Several families in this tiny hamlet are eligible for the "Zero Hunger" programme, launched this year by the state government of Miranda, an 8,000-square-kilometre province comprising mountains, plains, rivers, Caribbean beaches, part of the Caracas metropolitan area and some of its outlying dormitory towns.

The programme includes vouchers worth between 5,000 and 15,000 bolivars (1,170 and 3,500 dollars at the official exchange rate) to exchange for building materials, as well as distribution of food packages, health care and education, job training and support for micro-businesses.

The plan targets the lowest-income households that are not in receipt of pensions, allowances or subsidies provided by the social programmes established by the national government of President Hugo Chávez, in office since 1999.

"The plan is inspired by Brazil's programme; we adapted it to local circumstances in Miranda, and this year we implemented it, benefiting the first 7,500 families who were in a situation of critical poverty," Juan Fernández, its coordinator, told IPS.

"As in Brazil, we don't want to just give out charity handouts, but to integrate people into society, with a plan that brings hope to the needy," he said.

The Zero Hunger Plan that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva launched in 2003 consists of up to 60 programmes aimed at five large groups of families living in extreme poverty. They receive cash transfers, land for cultivation, education and health services, integration into the labour market and, of course, food. MORE

PAKISTAN: Slowly, women gain ground through Land Ownership

BADIN, Pakistan, Jul 13, 2010 (IPS) - "I told my husband if he ever hits me (again), I’ll pack up and go to my parents who live just round the corner, and he will lose the land I got," says Jannat Gul of Tando Bagho village here in this southern Pakistani district. Her husband has not hit her for the past six months – since Gul became the owner of some 1.6 hectares of land.

Gul is one of the beneficiaries of a project of Pakistan’s Sindh province, initiated in 2008, to distribute 91,000 hectares of cultivable state land to 80,000 poor and landless peasants, many of them women.

Indeed, President Asif Ali Zardari has decreed that the 21,000 hectares of land for distribution during the project’s second year be reserved for women, who are traditionally left out of land reform schemes and have less opportunities to own land.MORE

UGANDA Getting the Common Market to Benefit the Common Woman

KAMPALA, Jul 2, 2010 (IPS) - July 1 marked the moment when the East African Community common market protocol kicked into operation. But Ugandan women face several obstacles before they will benefit from the boost that the protocol gives to the free movement of goods, labour and capital.

Regional integration, which began with the signing of the east African customs union protocol in 2005, has increased export opportunities and expanded production in the agricultural sector where women predominate, cultivating 80 percent of agricultural products taken across borders.

It should give women the opportunity to be more active as traders, to raise their incomes and reduce poverty. But "the odds are against women, especially rural women, when it comes to competing regionally", says the executive director of the African Women’s Economic Policy Network (AWEPON), Daisy Owomugasho.MORE

IOC Joins U.N. to Level the Playing Field for Women

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 1, 2010 (IPS) - The sight of girls and boys playing cricket and skateboarding together in the streets of Afghanistan and Iraq may be unexpected to some, but it is a homegrown effort aimed at fostering gender equality.

"It's amazing. It's been at the encouragement of the elders. It's not an imposition, they've asked for it," Amir Dossal, executive director of the U.N. Office for Partnerships (UNOP), told IPS.

"Sport is one of the greatest equalisers…where young people can play, live together and grow up to be better citizens. They learn to understand that adversarial situations do not mean you are enemies. You actually look at the best of the other side through sport," he added.MORE

USA "Excluded Workers" Move from Shadows to Negotiating Table

DETROIT, Jun 24, 2010 (IPS) - The U.S. labour movement needs to be reorganised from the bottom up to include domestic workers, day labourers, restaurant workers, taxi drivers, farm workers, incarcerated workers, guest workers and those in the "right to work" states.

That is the message the Excluded Workers Congress, a coalition of labour groups, brought to the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit this week. In addition to state-by-state advocacy, they are pressing hard for reforms at the federal level, particularly to the National Labour Relations Act.

The coalition held a fierce discussion at the Social Forum about the need for reform and how workers who are not part of the federally recognised labour movement in the country are being denied decent wages and benefits.
MORE

BRAZIL Brick by Brick, Women Builders Make Their Way in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 28, 2010 (TerraViva/IPS) - It looks like any other construction site: wheelbarrows full of bricks, boards and steel bars trundling back and forth to a soundtrack of hammering, sawing and drilling. But there is a difference: some of the construction workers underneath the hard hats are women.

The women -- who represent just seven of the 90 workers -- are a new face of the labour market in Brazil, and they worked hard to reach the top of the scaffolding surrounding this eight-floor building that is going up in Rio de Janeiro.MORE

HONDURAS Miskito Women Fight on Nature's Side

TEGUCIGALPA, Jun 18, 2010 (IPS) - Seven years ago, in the isolated Honduran region of Mosquitia, on the Caribbean coast, a group of women, mostly single mothers, elderly or widowed, overcame their fear and timidity -- thanks in part to a waste recycling project.

They decided to break from the "machismo" of the local culture and organised themselves in the Association of Indigenous Miskito Women on the Atlantic coast (MIMAT - Miskito Miskitu Indian Mairinka Asla Takanka, in the Miskito language).

MIMAT took on the clean-up of the largest lagoon in the area and the streets of the six municipalities that make up eastern Mosquitia, a natural region shared with Nicaragua, with the Honduran part covering 16,630 square kilometres.

They also classify, pack and ship the garbage to a private company that has agreed to purchase the material.

"We began little by little and I'm pleased because we've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go," said MIMAT leader Cendela López Kilton, 58, who has six children and 18 grandchildren.MORE