Asia/Oceana
| China Picks Female Space Trainees. [China] China's space program has picked 35 women as possible candidates to be its first female astronaut, and plans to launch her into space by 2010, the government has said. The women, aged 17 to 20, will train as pilots at the Chinese's military's Aviation University, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing a school official. The government said earlier that its first female astronaut was expected to be a researcher on a planned space station. Earlier news reports said pilots of Chinese spacecraft will still be men. The female trainees were picked after officials considered more than 200,000 young Chinese women, the official said. "Those newly recruited female students ... have not only achieved the best grades during the selection exams, but also behaved fairly good in the mental tests," the official was quoted as saying. |
| It Takes a Woman to Rebuild a Village. [Indonesia] After the Dec. 26 tsunami wave receded, Deyah Mapplam became a village of men. Of 4,500 people, just 270 survived, and only one-third were women. And it is that gender imbalance, as much as the loss of homes and livelihoods, that remains a concern here. For local men like Mohammad Nur, the solution is simple: to get remarried. But female survivors and Mr. Nur's new wife, Hadijah, say it's more complex than that. Women need to be involved in the planning process to rebuild Deyah Mapplam - or else the town may not be fit for habitation. |
| Women Triumph in Court Clan Ruling. [Korea] Overturning a lower court verdict, the nation's highest court ruled that in an extended family, or clan, female adults should have an equal right to membership just adult males do. Until now, females had no legal standing as clan members. The court decision essentially reverses the practices of Korea's centuries-old patriarchal clan system. |
| The Memories
and Their
Pain Endure. [Korea] On Aug.
15, the
victorious countries will be celebrating the end of World War II," said
Yoon Mee
Hyang, head of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual
Slavery by
Japan. "But there are victims of the war
for whom nothing has been resolved. No
official apology. No legal reparation. No punishment. This
is not a time for celebration." Sixty
years after Korea was freed from colonial rule with Japan's defeat in World
War II, 40
years after South Korea and Japan established diplomatic ties, and three years after they
were co-hosts of Asia's first World Cup, bad emotions rooted in the painful
history are
intensely alive on the Korean Peninsula and bilateral relations are as volatile as ever. "After the war, I could never go
to the public
bathhouses because of shame that I was a woman raped by Japanese," Kil
said. "I never had any of the best pleasures a Korean
woman can expect: having a family, raising children and obeying a husband and his parents.
Who would take a woman like me as a
wife?" |
| Aussie
Women Step Closer to Combat. [ |