Stone Age
Female Statue Unearthed. [ANSA, Italy] Archaeologists have unearthed the
largest Neolithic female figurine ever found in Italy. The 7,000-year-old stone statuette,
discovered during excavations of a burial site near the northern Italian city of Parma, is
over 20 centimeters tall. It depicts a woman with an oval face, slit eyes, a prominent
nose and long hair. Her arms are bent at her elbows, sticking out at right-angles to her
body. Although such statuettes are fairly common, it is rare to find figurines this old in
Europe, and the majority represent a mother earth divinity with a swelling belly
symbolizing fertility. Archaeologists have instead linked this female to the goddess of
death and rebirth, who is usually represented as slender, with a large, beak-like nose and
rigid posture. The statuette joins a list of important female figures dug up across Europe,
which archaeologists believe indicate some of the earliest concepts of divinities. The
first such figures date back to the 9th millennium BC and were found in the Near East.
They then spread across the area that is now eastern Turkey and gradually through the
Mediterranean, to Crete, the Cyclades Islands, Malta and Sardinia, before moving up
through mainland Europe.
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- Anti-Poverty
Efforts Face Child Marriage Hurdle. [Women's eNews] Around the world, 51
million girls and teens are married so young that they face special health risks and
higher rates of poverty. A Senate bill asks for more funding to fight child marriage and
advocates say the practice hinders development goals.
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- Female
Millionaires on the Rise. [Malaysia Star, Malaysia] For the first time, young
females worth £1mil (RM6.5 million) or more have overtaken their male counterparts in Britain.
And the trend is set to continue with some predicting that nearly two-thirds of the
nation’s wealth will be in women’s hands in 20 years. Interestingly, the
seemingly unstoppable rise of powerful businesswomen in Britain include Tamara Mellon -
the multi-millionaire boss of the Jimmy Choo shoe empire – whose personal fortune is
reportedly estimated at £60mil pounds (RM390 million).
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- Women Key in Water
Management: Experts. [Times of Oman] Women in poor countries are often better
at managing water resources and should therefore play a bigger role in policy-making to
ensure access to safe drinking water and sanitation services, the World Water Week
conference in Stockholm heard.
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- World Bank Launches Plan to
Help Women. [Houston Chronicle] The World Bank on Saturday launched a
four-year plan to promote greater economic opportunities for women in developing
countries. The $24.5 million initiative will fund new World Bank efforts to further gender
equality in areas of development that traditionally have not addressed women's
empowerment, the Washington-based institution said. The announcement came as officials
from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund held their annual meetings in Singapore.
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- Kofi Annan Hopes His
Successor is Female. [Pravda, Russia] U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
revealed his hope for a female successor by repeatedly referring to the next
secretary-general as "she." Pushed by a reporter to elaborate on his choice of
pronoun, Annan said he hoped a woman will be considered for the job. "Obviously, the
decision is out of the Security Council, but I hope the door will be open to a he or a
she," he said. "A she has never had it."
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- Gender Goes Wiki. [INSTAW]
As a groundbreaking initiative, the United Nations International Research and
Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) launches today the first-ever
Gender “Wiki”, an online tool facilitating and increasing the exchange of
knowledge-sharing on capacity-building activities and resources worldwide.
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- Women
'Form Half of All Migrants'. [BBC News] Women and girls now make up half of
all international migrants, totaling 95 million, a UN report says. The report urges better
protection of a population that it says is more vulnerable to abuse and trafficking. It
also says more young people are deciding to move countries, but because of their age
cannot migrate legally and are also at risk of being exploited.
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- Protection
Urged For Women Migrants. [Reuters.uk] Governments worldwide must do more to
protect a growing number of women from exploitation when they venture overseas to work and
earn money for their families. Almost half of the world's 191 million migrants are women,
mainly from developing countries in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, the U.N. Population
Fund (UNFPA) said. These women send a larger chunk of their typically lower wages back
home to support relatives than male migrants, making them a key factor in global poverty
reduction.
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- UN Agency Criticizes
Countries for Ignoring Plight of Women Migrants. [People's Daily Online, China] The
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Wednesday criticized countries for not exerting
enough effort in dealing with the plight faced by women migrants. UNFPA country
representative to Zambia, Deji Popoola, said the plight of women migrants has remained
outside public laws and policies of most countries. "For a long time, the issue of
women migrants has been low on the international policy agenda. Migrant women face double
discrimination all over the world, as women and as migrants," Popoola said here at
the launching of the State of the World Population 2006 report "Women and
International Migration". He said many migrant women were facing discrimination
throughout the migration experience as they face unequal access to jobs and wages. The
enslavement of women, he said, in the form of trafficking, sexual servitude and the gross
exploitation as domestic workers, is an abomination that needs to be dealt with.
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Female Immigrants
Earn Less, But Send More Home. [Boston Herald] A recent United Nations
Population Fund report shows that Gutierrez is not alone. Although female immigrants
generally earn less than men, they tend to send home a larger portion of their earnings,
playing an important role in poverty reduction and development in their countries of
origin and upending many traditional mores. About 95 million women around the world have
left their home countries to live and work in a foreign land; they account for nearly half
the world’s immigrants. But until now little research had been done on how men’s
and women’s immigration experiences differ. According to the report, titled “A
Passage to Hope: Women and International Migration,” they send up to three-quarters
of their income home, contributing substantially to the approximately $232 billion the
World Bank estimates was transferred last year to immigrants’ countries of origin.
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