Tag: Women

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Politics

Harris and Pelosi Are First Girls Behind a President at Joint Session

Harris and Pelosi Are First Women Behind a President at Joint Session

President Biden began his address to a joint congressional session with a series of words no American president had said before: “Madam Vice President and Madam President.”

For the first time, the President addresses two women – Vice President Kamala Harris and Spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi of California. While Ms. Pelosi has made several speeches on the state of the Union behind the President on the podium, this is the first time Ms. Harris.

The two women greeted each other with a friendly elbow before the President arrived.

For an event characterized by pomp and circumstance, the pictures from such nights can leave a lasting impression. And this tableau – a visual representation that the first and second in the line of presidential succession are both women – shows the advancement of women in American politics.

Hours before the speech, when asked about the historic moment on MSNBC, Ms. Pelosi said that while it was “exciting” it was also “about the time”.

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Health

What Do Girls Need? For Males to Get Covid Vaccines.

What Do Women Want? For Men to Get Covid Vaccines.

Holly Elgison and Len Schillaci are a mixed couple, and they are far from being alone.

“I always wanted to get 100 percent of the vaccine,” said Ms. Elgison, a medical claims investigator in Valrico, Florida.

Her husband, a disaster insurance expert, said he would pass. “To be honest, I think the worst of Covid is behind us,” said Mr Schillaci. “I’m good.”

With the Biden administration trying to immunize 80 percent of adult Americans by the summer, the continued reluctance of men to get a shot could hamper that goal.

Women are vaccinated at a far higher rate – around 10 percentage points – than men, although the gap between men and women is roughly the same across the country’s population. The trend is worrying for many, especially as vaccination rates have dropped somewhat recently.

The reasons for the gender gap in the US are diverse, reflecting the roles of women in certain occupations who received vaccination priority early, political and cultural differences, and longstanding patterns of women using preventive care more often than men.

The gap also exists when worldwide deaths from Covid-19 were around 2.4 times higher in men than women. And the department explains the reality of the disproportionate role women play in caring for others in American society.

“It might be important to pinpoint herd immunity,” said Alison Buttenheim, an associate professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on vaccine reluctance. “While most experts resent larger gaps by race, political party, religion and occupation,” she said, many of which overlap with gender differences, “I have not heard any specific initiatives to combat men.”

What You Need To Know About The Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Break In The United States

    • On April 23, an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to lift a hiatus on Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine and put a label on an extremely rare but potentially dangerous bleeding disorder.
    • Federal health officials are expected to officially recommend states lift the hiatus.
    • The vaccine was recently discontinued after reports of a rare bleeding disorder surfaced in six women who received the vaccine.
    • The overall risk of developing the disorder is extremely small. Women between the ages of 30 and 39 appear to be most at risk, with 11.8 cases per million doses. There were seven cases per million doses in women between 18 and 49 years of age.
    • Almost eight million doses of the vaccine have now been given. There was less than one case per million doses in men and women aged 50 and over.
    • Johnson & Johnson had also decided to postpone the launch of its vaccine in Europe for similar reasons, but later decided to continue its campaign after the European Union Medicines Agency announced the addition of a warning. South Africa, devastated by a contagious variant of the virus, also stopped using the vaccine, but later continued to use it.

In Los Angeles County, where 44 percent of women over 16 got their first shot – compared to 30 percent of men – officials are trying hard to figure out how exactly to do that.

“We are very concerned about this and plan to establish targeted contact with men,” said Dr. Paul Simon, science director for the Los Angeles county’s health department, said the differences are of particular concern to Black and Latino men. Only 19 percent of black men in Los Angeles County and 17 percent of Latino men received at least one dose of the vaccine, compared with 35 percent of Asian men and 32 percent of white men by month.

“We don’t quite get it,” said Dr. Simon. “One of our messaging strategies will be that the vaccine is not only important to you, but also a means of protecting others in your family.”

The early breakdown of vaccination rates by gender could largely be explained by demographics. Americans over 70 got their first doses, and women make up a greater proportion of this age group. Healthcare workers and teachers have also been given precedence over vaccines in many states: three-quarters of full-time healthcare workers are women, and over 75 percent of public school teachers in the United States are women.

The differences show both where women do the paid and unpaid work of life. For example, women lost the majority of their earliest jobs in the food, retail, healthcare, and government professions. The mothers among them have done most of the work in moving to distance learning and caring for parents and sick relatives.

The combination may have boosted their vaccine motivation in two ways: they are trying to protect the rest of their family, and they are desperate to get back into work. Just as women caused job losses last year, they are now leading the economic recovery. Around half a million women entered the world of work in March, partly because personal schooling was resumed in large parts of the country.

Updated

April 24, 2021, 7:32 p.m. ET

“In addition to the disproportionate representation of women in various important occupations,” said Pilar Gonalons-Pons, University of Pennsylvania assistant professor of sociology who specializes in gender issues, “they are also disproportionately represented in their work as unpaid caregivers for older adults and communities, and this can also be an additional motivation for the vaccine. “

In many ways, the pattern in vaccines reflects longstanding gender differences in terms of health care. Women, on average, are more likely to receive annual exercise than men, even when adapted to pre-existing health conditions and other factors, and are more likely to receive preventive treatment than men.

Men are more likely than women to engage in harmful behaviors such as heavy drinking, smoking and illegal drug use, and are more overweight than women. According to federal data, men are less likely to see doctors regularly, go to the emergency room, and receive basic dental care in a crisis. Vaccines are no exception: historically, influenza vaccination is much higher in women – about 63 percent versus 53 percent – although the gap is narrowing among Americans over 75 years of age.

The coronavirus vaccine “is the latest expression of the proven gender gap we have long seen in the search for preventive health services,” said Lindsey Leininger, health policy researcher and clinical professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

However, experts say that even related to the general dissatisfaction with male health care, there may be some factors specific to this vaccine that prevent more male shots in the arms. Because signing up was cumbersome and confusing, men may have had less patience navigating the system, which was largely online. This process may be easier for women as they tend to get more information about their health care online.

“We have to find out whether there are differences in access, whether men have greater difficulty finding their way through the appointment systems,” said Simon from Los Angeles.

When it comes to the coronavirus, which has been the subject of rampant misinformation, evolving medical advice, and politicization, another dynamic may be at work.

“Some men feel that they are not necessarily vulnerable,” Simon told health care workers. “You have survived this for more than a year and have a sense of omnipotence.”

Public health experts and scientists have long been concerned about the “macho” effect that is preventing men from receiving all types of health care and fear that this vaccine will make it worse. (Particularly in the military’s most masculine service division, the Marines, about 40 percent of those offered the vaccine by the Department of Defense have turned it down.)

“This avoidance has been linked to ideals of masculinity, where men are strong and invincible and don’t ask for help,” said Kristen W. Springer, associate professor at Rutgers University, New Jersey’s sociology institute who studied this trait.

“In other words, these cultural ideals lead men to avoid essential health services in order to act masculine,” she said. “Now that the vaccine is available to everyone, it will be interesting to see the differences between men and women in vaccine intake, as these reflect more social and cultural ideas about gender and health, such as the cultural idea being the ‘real’ Men ‘don’t have I don’t need preventive health care. “

At this point in time, U.S. health officials have not released data on non-binary adults and vaccinations.

There can also be political connections. Women are far more likely than men to register as Democrats, and polls show that Republicans across the country are far less likely than Democrats to take the vaccine.

Who will people listen to? Apparently not their wives and friends or doctors. Leah Witus and Erik Larson, professors at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, watched videos of men and women with identical information about the vaccine for their recent preprint study. Of the 1,184 Americans who observed them, most were positively influenced by the male narrator, while the female narrator received a far more mixed response.

“The male-narrated version of the video increased viewers’ vaccination intent,” Ms. Witus said, “but the female-narrated version had mixed associations with vaccination propensity and, for some viewers, those identified as conservative actually decreased vaccination intent . ”

This could mean a victory for Mr Schillaci as he and his wife subtly fight to influence the vaccination decision of their 20 year old son. Mr Schillaci shared his views with his son, whom his wife nudges to get a shot.

“I would prefer if he got the shot and I hope he will think about it,” said Ms. Elgison.

But Ms. Elgison’s own decision can benefit her son even if he chooses not to have the vaccine.

As is so often the case in life, men can find that their gaps are being filled by women. “To the extent that most people live and socialize in a mixed environment, men will benefit from higher coverage among women,” said Ms. Buttenheim.

However, Ms. Elgison still has one trump card that she hopes could work. “I want my son to have it so we can all travel together,” she said. “I explained to him that it was possible that we could protect his father.”

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Business

CDC recommends pregnant ladies get Covid vaccine after examine reveals it is secure

CDC recommends pregnant women get Covid vaccine after study shows it's safe

A health worker doses the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine to a pregnant woman on January 23, 2021 at Clalit Health Services in the Israeli Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv.

Jack Guez | AFP | Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend Covid-19 shots for pregnant women after preliminary data from the largest study of coronavirus vaccine use in expectant mothers showed that Pfizer and Moderna shocks were effective for both women and men are safe for their babies.

The researchers did not find “obvious safety signals” in any of the 35,691 women followed in the peer-reviewed study published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. The data used in the study were self-reported and the ages of the participants ranged from 16 to 54 years.

“No safety concerns for third trimester vaccinees or safety concerns for their babies were observed,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Friday. “Therefore, CDC recommends pregnant people to receive Covid-19 vaccines.”

Researchers used the V-Safe Post-Vaccination Health Checker monitoring system, the V-Safe Pregnancy Register, and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System to characterize the initial safety of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines in pregnant women.

Pregnant women were more likely to report injection site pain than those who weren’t, but fewer other side effects such as headache, myalgia, chills, and fever. Of the 827 participants who completed their pregnancies, the miscarriage rates were the same as before the pandemic.

The results are preliminary and only cover the first 11 weeks of the US vaccine rollout from December 14th to February 28th.

Pregnant women are more likely to be hospitalized and have a higher risk of death if they become infected with Covid-19. According to CDC data, vaccination is particularly important for this population group. Pharmaceutical companies have not included pregnant women in early efficacy and safety studies, but recent studies suggest that the vaccines are safe for them.

The researchers said “more longitudinal research, including tracking large numbers of women who were vaccinated earlier in pregnancy, is needed to inform mother, pregnancy and child results.”

Categories
Entertainment

Documentary Celebrates Girls in Digital Music

Documentary Celebrates Women in Electronic Music

What kind of person do you imagine when you hear the phrase “electronic musician”? A pale, wildly dressed young man bent over an imposing smorgasbord of equipment?

I suspect the person you are imagining doesn’t look like Daphne Oram, with their cat-eye glasses, low-key dresses, and the respectable haircut of the 1950s librarian. And yet Oram is a pivotal figure in the history of electronic music – the co-founder of the BBC’s incalculably influential Radiophonic Workshop, the first woman to set up her own independent electronic music studio and now one of the worthy focuses of Lisa Rovner’s enchanting new documentary ” Sisters with transistors: The unsung heroines of electronic music. ” (The film will run through Metrograph’s virtual cinema from April 23 to May 6.)

Oram was born in 1925 and was an accomplished pianist who had been offered admission to the Royal Academy of Music. But she turned it down after recently reading a book that predicted, as she brought to the film with a palpable sense of wonder, that “future composers would compose directly in sound rather than use orchestral instruments”.

Oram wanted to be a composer of the future. She found fulfilling work at the BBC, which in the late 1940s had become a clearing house for tape machines and other electronic equipment left over from World War II. Gender norms liquefied during the war, when factories and cutting-edge corporations were forced to hire women in jobs previously reserved for men only. Suddenly the rules no longer applied for a fleeting and liberating moment.

“Technology is a tremendous liberator,” says composer Laurie Spiegel in Rovner’s film. “It blows up power structures. Women were naturally drawn to electronic music. They did not have to be accepted by any of the male-dominated resources: the radio stations, the record companies, the concert halls, the funding organizations. “

But in recent years pioneers like Oram and Spiegel have largely been written out of the genre’s popular history, mistakenly leading people to believe that in its many iterations, electronic music is and was a boys’ club. At a time when significant gender imbalances persist behind studio consoles and in DJ booths, Rovner’s film raises a still worthwhile question: what happened?

The main goal of “Sisters With Transistors” is to enliven the fascinating life stories of these women and to present their music in all its dazzling splendor. The film, personally told by Laurie Anderson, is a treasure trove of fascinating archive material from decades. Early theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore gives a private concert on this ethereal instrument, which one writer said sounds like “a soul singing”. Synthesizer wizard Suzanne Ciani demonstrates what the Prophet 5 synthesizer can do to a very astounded David Letterman in an episode of his 1980 morning show. Maryanne Amacher rattles the eardrums of her younger acolyte Thurston Moore with the sheer house-shaking volume of her compositions.

Most hypnotic is a 1965 clip of Delia Derbyshire – Oram’s colleague at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop who is perhaps best known for bringing to life the eerie original theme song, “Doctor Who” – visibly in love with her work as she is a tutorial on creating music gives From ribbon loops to the punch she just pulled out of the air.

Like Oram, Derbyshire’s fascination with technology and emerging forms of music came from the war when she lived in Coventry as a child during the Blitz of 1940 and experienced air raid sirens. “It’s an abstract sound, and it’s meaningful – and then the all-clear,” she says in the film. “Well this is electronic music!”

These 20th century girls were enchanted by the strange new sounds of modern life. In France, a young Éliane Radigue watched intently the overhead planes that were being made as they approached and retreated. Across continents, both Derbyshire and American composer Pauline Oliveros were drawn to the crackling hiss of the radio and even the eerie noises between stations. All these frequencies lured her to new kinds of music, freed from the weight of history, tradition and the impulse, as the composer Nadia Botello puts it, Amacher paraphrased, “pushing the notes of dead white men around”.

From Ciani’s crystalline daydreams to Amacher’s quivering drones, the sounds they made of those influences and technological advances proved as diverse as the women themselves. Oliveros, who wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in 1970 entitled “And name she did not write Lady Composers “would probably deny that there was anything essential that linked their music together. But the common thread that Rovner finds is a palpable sense of awe – a certain exuberance on every woman’s face as she explains how she works to curious camera teams and confused interviewers. Every woman in this documentary looks like she has a precious secret that society has yet to decipher.

Putting awe and affect on the origins of electronic music can be a political act in and of itself. In her 2010 book, Pink Noises: Women About Electronic Music and Sound, writer and musician Tara Rodgers called for an electronic music story “that motivates wonder and a sense of possibility rather than rhetoric of struggle and domination.” suggested that the early, formative association of electronic sound with military technology – the vocoder, for example, was first developed as a spy device – contributed to its steady and limiting masculinized stereotyping over time.

And then there is the commodifying power of capitalism. In the 1970s, when much of the equipment used to make electronic music was prohibitively expensive, Spiegel worked on her compositions for a while in the Bell Labs, then a hotbed for scientific and creative experimentation. As she recalls, the sale of AT&T in 1982 had an unfortunate aftereffect: “Bell Labs became product-oriented rather than pure research. After I left there, I was utterly abandoned. I had lost my main creative medium. “

Eventually, Spiegel took matters into its own hands and created the early algorithmic music computer software Music Mouse in 1986. “What all these women have in common is this DIY thing,” says Ramona Gonzalez, who records as Nite Jewel, in the film. “And DIY is interesting because it doesn’t mean that you have specifically voluntarily chosen to do it yourself. There are certain obstacles that prevent you from doing anything. “

When I saw Rovner’s documentary, I saw unfortunate parallels with the film industry. In the early silent era women were more stable and often employed in more powerful positions than many years later, as Margaret Talbot noted a few years ago in a play for The New Yorker: The early industry had “not yet become bogged down” a strict division of labor by gender ” but as time went on, Hollywood became “an increasingly modern, capitalist company,” and opportunities for women diminished.

The masculinization of electronic music likely resulted from a similar type of streamlined codification in the for-profit 1980s and beyond, although Rovner’s film doesn’t take long to delve into what went wrong. It would perhaps take a more ambitious and less inspiring documentary to capture the forces that contributed to the cultural obliteration of these women’s achievements.

But “Sisters With Transistors” is a worthy correction to a persistently short-sighted view of music history and a call to rekindle something new from what it sparked in Daphne Oram’s revered “Composers of the Future”.

“This is a time when people have the feeling that there are many dead ends in music, that there is not much more to do,” thought Spiegel a few decades ago in a clip used in the film. “With technology, I experience the opposite. During this time we find that we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what is musically possible. “

Categories
Health

Ladies and the Covid-19 Vaccine: What You Have to Know

Women and the Covid-19 Vaccine: What You Need to Know

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in February looked at the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and found that 79 percent of the side effects reported to the agency were from women, although only 61 percent of the vaccines were administered to women.

Women could be more likely to report side effects than men, said Dr. Sabra L. Klein, Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Or, she added, women may experience side effects to a greater extent. “We’re not sure what it is,” she said.

If women actually experience more side effects than men, there may be a biological explanation: women and girls can make up to twice as many antibodies after flu shots and vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), and hepatitis A and B, probably due to a mixture of factors including reproductive hormones and genetic differences.

One study found that women accounted for 80 percent of all adult allergic reactions to vaccines in nearly three decades. Similarly, the CDC reported that most anaphylactic reactions to Covid-19 vaccines, although rare, occurred in women.

In a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine describing people’s experiences with redness, itching, and swelling that began four to eleven days after the first shot of the Moderna vaccine, 10 of the 12 patients were women. However, it’s not clear if women are more prone to the problem.

If you have mild side effects like a headache or low fever, this is a good thing, said Dr. Small as it means your immune system is going up. However, a lack of side effects doesn’t mean the vaccine isn’t working.

You can share your symptoms or concerns through the CDC’s V-Safe app, which records symptoms and provides post-vaccination health check-ins. Medically important reports sent with V-safe are followed by a call from a representative.

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Health

Might the Pandemic Immediate an ‘Epidemic of Loss’ of Ladies within the Sciences?

Could the Pandemic Prompt an ‘Epidemic of Loss’ of Women in the Sciences?

Like many women during the pandemic, Alisa Stephens found working from home to be a series of tired challenges.

Dr. Stephens is a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, and the technical and detail-oriented nature of her work requires long, uninterrupted deliberation. Finding the time and mental space to do this work at home with two young children proved impossible.

“That first month was really tough,” she recalled of the lockdown. Her young daughter’s daycare was closed and her 5-year-old was at home instead of school. Since her nanny could not come into the house, Dr. Stephens looked after her kids all day and worked late into the evening. Schools did not reopen in the fall, when her daughter was about to start kindergarten.

Things relaxed when the family was sure to bring in a nanny, but there was little time for the deep thought that Dr. Stephens had left every morning for work. Over time, she has adjusted her expectations of herself.

“Maybe I’m 80 percent versus 100 percent, but I can get things done at 80 percent to some degree,” she said. “It’s not great, it’s not my best, but it’s enough for now.”

Dr. Stephens is in good company. Several studies have found that women published fewer articles, conducted fewer clinical trials, and received less recognition for their expertise during the pandemic.

Add to this the emotional upheaval and stress of the pandemic, protests against structural racism, concerns about children’s mental health and education, and lack of time to think or work, and an already unsustainable situation becomes unbearable.

“The confluence of all these factors creates this perfect storm. People are at their breaking point, ”said Michelle Cardel, an obesity researcher at the University of Florida. “My great fear is that we will have a secondary epidemic of losses, especially from women in early STEM careers.”

Women scientists had problems even before the pandemic. It wasn’t uncommon for her to hear that women weren’t as smart as men, or that a woman who was successful must have received a handout along the way, said Daniela Witten, biostatistician at the University of Washington in Seattle. Some things are changing, she said, but only with great effort and at an Ice Age pace.

The career ladder is particularly steep for mothers. Even while on maternity leave, they are expected to keep up with laboratory work, teaching requirements, publications, and mentoring PhD students. When they return to work, most of them do not have affordable childcare.

Women in science often have little recourse when faced with discrimination. Your institutions sometimes lack the staffing structures that are common in the business world.

The road is even more difficult for color scientists like Dr. Stephens, who encountered other prejudices in the workplace – from everyday reactions, professional reviews or promotions – and now dealing with the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on black and Latin American communities.

Dr. Stephens said a close friend, also a black scientist, has five family members who have contracted Covid-19.

Updated

April 13, 2021, 6:10 p.m. ET

The year was a “break” for everyone, added Dr. Stephens added, and universities should find a way to help scientists when the pandemic ends – perhaps by adding an extra year to the time they have to earn a tenure.

Others said while additional tenure may help, it will now be far from enough.

“It’s like you’re drowning and the university is telling you, ‘Don’t worry if you need an extra year to get back on land,” said Dr. Witten. “It’s like,’ Hey, that is not helpful. I need a flotation device. ‘”

The frustration is compounded by outdated ideas about how to help women in science. But social media has allowed women to share some of those concerns and find allies to organize and exclaim injustices when they see this, said Jessica Hamerman, an immunologist at the Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle. “It’s just a lot less likely that people will sit still and hear biased statements that concern them.”

In November, for example, the influential journal Nature Communications published a controversial study on women scientists, suggesting that female mentors would hinder the careers of young scientists and recommending that young women seek men to help them instead.

The reaction was intense and unforgiving.

Hundreds of scientists, men and women, abandoned the paper’s flawed methods and conclusions, saying they had reinforced outdated stereotypes and failed to account for structural biases in science.

“The advice from the newspaper was essentially similar to the advice your grandmother gave you 50 years ago: get a man to look after you and you’ll be fine,” said Dr. Cardel.

Nearly 7,600 scientists signed a petition asking the journal to withdraw the paper – which it did on December 21st.

Class disturbed

Updated March 29, 2021

The latest on how the pandemic is changing education.

The study came at a time when many women scientists were already concerned about the impact of the pandemic on their careers and were already nervous and angry about a system that offered them little support.

“It was an incredibly difficult time being a woman in science,” said Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. “We’re already down, we’re already on our knees – and then the newspaper comes and kicks us to say, ‘We have the solution, let’s take the PhD students to an older man.'”

Some people on Twitter suggested that the Nature Communications paper had been withdrawn because a “feminist mob” requested it, but in fact the paper was “a dumpster fire of data,” said Dr. Vosshall.

According to several statisticians, the study was based on incorrect assumptions and statistical analyzes. (The authors of the paper declined to comment.)

Dr. Vosshall said she felt compelled to push back because the paper was “dangerous”. Department heads and deans of medical faculties have used the research to direct doctoral students to male mentors and to roll back all advances in equality of science. She said, “The older I get, the more windows I have for this job that really works.”

She used some of her wisdom to bring about change at Rockefeller University, one of the oldest research institutions in the country.

A few years ago Rockefeller University invited news anchor Rachel Maddow to present a prestigious award. On the way into the auditorium, Ms. Maddow pointed to a wall adorned with pictures of Lasker Prize and Nobel Prize winners – all men – who were affiliated with the university. At least four women at the university had also won prestigious awards, but their photos were not on display.

“What’s up with the guy wall?” Mrs. Maddow asked. And Dr. Vosshall, who had walked past the wall a thousand times, suddenly saw it differently. She realized that it was sending the wrong message to all the high school students, undergraduates, and graduate students who routinely walked by it.

“As soon as you notice a guy wall, you see them everywhere,” she said. “They are in every auditorium, in every corridor, in every departmental office, in every conference room.”

Rockefeller University eventually agreed to replace the display with a display more representative of the institution’s history. The pictures were taken on November 11th, announced Dr. Vosshall on Twitter and will be replaced with a more comprehensive set.

The departments at Yale University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have also rethought their buddy walls, said Dr. Vosshall. “There are some traditions that shouldn’t be perpetuated.”

Categories
World News

Girls, 86 P.c Absent From Jordan’s Work Pressure, Are Left Behind

Women, 86 Percent Absent From Jordan’s Work Force, Are Left Behind

AMMAN, Jordan – Marwa Alomari’s compassionate and patient style made her a popular English teacher who filled her classes in Irbid, Jordan with eager students and her free hours of private tuition.

As a college graduate, she received up to $ 3,000 a month, far more than most other Jordanians.

But after she married an army officer and moved in with his family, he began to get annoyed that she was paid more than he was. Although she contributed to the household with both money and housework, he and his family discouraged her from work and the marriage almost collapsed, she said.

“I was absolutely convinced that I would not stop, but at some point I found no support and just got tired and gave up,” said Ms. Alomari, 35. “I cooked, cleaned and gossiped with women again. And that wasn’t my ambition. “

Her story mirrors what is happening across Jordan – a small Arab monarchy that has been an unwavering ally of Western countries – where women’s status in terms of labor force participation, health and politics has declined for years, and even behind more conservative countries in the US remains region.

For the past 10 years, the country has been at the bottom of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which highlights gaps between women and men in employment, education, health and politics.

After large increases over the past three decades, more women than men have graduated in the country, and women also have higher literacy rates.

Nevertheless, according to government data and the latest Global Gender Gap Report, 86 percent of women in the country are inactive. According to the World Bank, this is the highest rate in the world for a country not at war.

In contrast, Western Europe has moved and continues in the direction of gender equality the most, followed by North America.

And the effects can be felt far beyond the economy.

“As long as women are absent from the labor market, they are not represented in public,” said Asma Khader, president of the non-profit group Sisterhood is Global Institute in Jordan. “Top officials are afraid to make decisions in favor of women because society is conservative. But I believe if there are real economic reforms, women will be empowered and challenged. “

With its close ties to the West, an outspoken queen, female MPs and police officers, Jordan has long had the image of a relatively progressive kingdom in a conservative neighborhood. Recently, however, some golf neighbors have seen an increasing number of women-run startups and changes in labor legislation that have resulted in growing opportunities for women.

In Jordan, the head of household is usually defined as a husband unless he is dead, missing, or has lost his citizenship. This gives him sole guardianship over children, with authority over matters such as travel, citizenship, and opening bank accounts. In Saudi Arabia, due to the recent changes, at least in theory, women could also be viewed as “householders”.

Traditional attitudes, discriminatory laws, lack of access to public transport and wage differentials are hindering the advancement of women in Jordan.

The November elections to the country’s 130-seat parliament were testament to the declining role of women. Turnout was low and female candidates lost heavily. Women did not occupy a single seat beyond the quota of 15 female legislators, compared to 20 in the previous parliament.

Sara Ababneh, assistant professor of politics and international relations at the University of Jordan, said the problem extends beyond the elections.

“Sometimes we talk about women’s representation – we say there should be more women ministers,” she said. “But we never talk about universal rights and real political empowerment.”

Recent research by the World Bank has shown that men in Jordan are paid up to 40 percent more than women for the same job in the private sector. In the public sector, the gap is 28 percent.

The employment gaps – 53 percent of men are employed compared to 14 percent of women – are almost twice as high as in neighboring countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

The traditional roles in Jordan are enshrined in laws that distinguish between the rights and duties of women and men. There is no law that prohibits gender discrimination in the workplace. And while the constitution provides that “every worker must receive a wage commensurate with the quantity and quality of their work”, there is no right to equal pay for women and men.

For Muslims, who make up the majority of Jordan’s nearly 11 million population, marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance issues are governed by Sharia or Islamic law and are decided by Sharia courts rather than civil or military courts. For example, under Sharia law, women can inherit property, but daughters receive half as much as sons.

And during the Arab Spring a decade ago, many women and human rights defenders attacked a parliamentary committee for breaking its promise to include the word gender in Article 6 of the Constitution, which aims to ensure equality for all Jordanians. It states: “There must be no discrimination between Jordanians with regard to their rights and obligations on the basis of race, language or religion.”

Despite the obstacles, some women have managed to be successful in their careers.

Jamileh Shetewi is an exception among Jordanian women in every way. She grew up with her eight siblings and parents in a mud-walled one-room house and spent her childhood picking tomatoes, eggplants and bananas with her four sisters on hot and shadowless farms.

The odds were against them.

She dropped out of school at the age of 17 and married at the age of 18. As a young farmer, she was paid $ 3 less a day than the men she worked with from 1997 to 2002 and had to cook for them on top of her job.

She decided to go back to school and did her PhD. in archeology. Today she heads the antiques department in the Jordan Valley region.

“Yes, I defied all expectations,” said Ms. Shetewi, 50. “I fought and destroyed the culture of shame.” But without changing laws and perceptions, most women will not be able to move forward.

“I didn’t care what people had to say and I said to my husband, ‘I need your support to make our lives better,” she said. “We are not the enemy. Believe that a country without half of its population can reform and prosper? “

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Health

Three Ladies Working to Vaccinate Kids Shot Useless in Afghanistan

Three Women Working to Vaccinate Children Shot Dead in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan – Three health workers, all women working for the government’s polio vaccination campaign, were shot dead Tuesday in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, local officials said just weeks after three television women were killed in the same city .

The women, all in their twenties, were working in the busy city near the border with Pakistan when they were gunned down in two separate attacks.

Semin, 24, and Basira, 20, who like many Afghans had only one name, were shot dead by two armed men when they entered a house in Jalalabad to vaccinate the children living there, the governor’s office said.

The two walked door-to-door in the city, a practice that the Taliban have banned in areas under their control in the past.

It was Semin’s first vaccination campaign; said Ahmad Faisal Nizami, the victim’s cousin. She was recently married and trained as a teacher.

Negina, 24, who was in charge of the polio vaccination campaign that began in Afghanistan on Monday, was shot dead elsewhere in the city about an hour later.

No group immediately took responsibility for the murders.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied any involvement in the incident in a WhatsApp message.

Afghanistan, which recorded 56 cases of polio in 2020 according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, is one of two countries where the disease has not been eradicated, trailing Pakistan.

Around the same time as Tuesday’s shooting, there was an explosion at the city’s regional hospital, officials said outside the compound where the vaccines are stored. There were no victims, but the windows were broken.

The recent killings – part of a wave of targeted attacks that often singled out women, journalists, professionals, activists and doctors – came at a difficult moment for Afghanistan as the Taliban have made steady military gains and those considered to be with the Afghans work together, relentlessly attack government. In addition, the remnants of the Islamic state operating in the region have focused on carrying out less large-scale bombings and smaller but targeted attacks.

The United States has yet to say definitively whether it will meet the May 1 withdrawal deadline for all American forces. This emerges from an agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in February 2020.

“My niece Basira was a poor girl,” said Haji Moqbel Ahmad, a tribal elder in Jalalabad, who added that the woman had not previously been threatened. “She was shot while she was doing her job.”

A vaccination worker since her youth, Basira had been signed up for a five-day vaccination campaign for which she would receive less than $ 30.

The month began with the murder of three women who worked for a television station in Jalalabad. A TV and radio presenter from the same station was shot in the same way in December. The Islamic State took responsibility for both incidents.

The New York Times documented the deaths of at least 136 civilians and 168 security personnel in such targeted killings in 2020, more than in almost any other year of the war. Until 2021 there has been no reprieve from the same type of violence.

The Taliban are exerting increasing pressure on the government and society and claiming dominance as stuttering, intermittent negotiations are taking place to resolve the Afghan conflict.

Jalalabad is one of the hardest hit cities. One day after the murders of television workers, a doctor was killed there by a roadside bomb.

Ross Wilson, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in Kabul, condemned the murders Tuesday.

“Such attacks are a direct violation of Afghans’ dream of building better lives for their children,” Wilson wrote on Twitter. “My deepest condolences to the families of the victims as we seek justice,” he wrote. “The attack on vaccines is as heartless as it is inexplicable.”

Humanitarian aid organizations were also outraged. Henrietta Fore, Managing Director of Unicef, issued a statement calling victims “courageous vaccines that have been at the forefront of efforts to fight the spread of polio and protect the children of Afghanistan from this disabled disease”.

Zabihullah Ghazi reported from Jalalabad and Fahim Abed from Kabul, Afghanistan.

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Entertainment

Oscars Nominations 2021: For the First Time, Two Girls Are Up for Finest Director

Oscars Nominations 2021: For the First Time, Two Women Are Up for Best Director

For the first time in Oscars history, more than one filmmaker was nominated for an Oscar for best director in a single year.

On Monday, Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”) received nominations alongside Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”), David Fincher (“Mank”) and Thomas Vinterberg (“Another Round”). The honor is also remarkable because women are rarely represented in the category: Before this year, only five women filmmakers had been recognized.

Zhao was the first Asian woman to win Best Director at the Golden Globes in February when Nomadland, the story of a widow who joins the country’s migrant labor, also picked up best in the Drama category. The film is a strong contender for best picture at the 93rd Oscars on April 25th.

“Promising Young Woman,” about seeking revenge after raping a friend, was nominated for four Golden Globes, including Best Director and Best Picture. In the end, it was ruled out.

“Nomadland” received almost universal reviews, and New York Times co-chief film critic AO Scott praised Zhao’s attention “for the interplay of human emotion and geography, for the way space, light and wind reveal character “.

Promising Woman received more mixed reception, although USA Today’s Brian Truitt characterized Fennell, who also wrote the script, as “a stunning new voice in the movie with a cunning heroine who cannot be adored.”

If either Zhao or Fennell won, they would only be the second woman to be named Best Director – and the first in more than a decade. In 2010 Kathryn Bigelow won for her Iraq war film “The Hurt Locker”. Next year, Zhao may also have the chance to become the first female director to be nominated twice – she’s directing the Marvel superhero film Eternals, currently slated for release in November.

The other women who were nominated are Lina Wertmüller (1977 for “Seven Beauties”), Jane Campion (“The Piano”, 1994), Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation”, 2004) and Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird, “). ”2018).

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Entertainment

Podcasts About and Hosted by Girls

Podcasts About and Hosted by Women

Wondering how to participate in Women’s History Month from home? There’s the perfect way to celebrate women from all over the world right in your pocket (assuming your phone is there): podcasts. On the go, in the house or at work, these are the perfect stories to get involved with all things feminine. From comedic deep dives into some of the cutting edge topics to stories about women ignored in history books to interviews with Jane Goodall about what it means to be human, podcasts can be amazing resources.

While there are so many great shows out there – and they’re premiering all the time – here are 11 of my favorite podcasts celebrating badass women.