Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from February, 2014

Vani custom: Traded like animals - the blood feuds settled with 'gift' of a wife

Outlawed custom that parcels out young women in marriage survives in rural Pakistan. Vani (Urdu: ونی‎) is a cultural custom found in parts of Pakistan wherein young girls are forcibly married as part of punishment for a crime committed by her male relatives.Vani is a form of arranged child marriage, and the result of punishment decided by a council of tribal elders named jirga. The custom became illegal in Pakistan effective 2011; however, the practice continues.Recently the courts in Pakistan have begun taking serious note and action against the continuation of the practice. Vani is sometimes spelled as Wani. It is a Pashto word derived from vanay which means blood. Vani is also known as Sak, Swara and Sangchatti in different regional languages of Pakistan. Some claim Vani can be avoided if the clan of the girl agrees to pay money, called Deet (Urdu: دیت‎). According to a legend this custom started almost 400 years ago when two northwestern Pakistani Pashtun tribes fought a bl

Do men really hate women?

Are men misogynists? The answer is not a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ Betty Friedan was perhaps the first feminist to call it “the problem that has no name.” But nail it she did in the end after deconstructing the lives of several housewives from around America who were unhappy despite being married with children and living in material comfort during the mid-20th century. Her research ballooned into a blockbuster called Feminine Mystique published in 1963. Pregnant with her second child, Betty Friedan got fired from her job. Angry at how women always got the rough end of the stick, her book stirred the second wave of feminism that ripped wide open taboo subjects like sexuality, marriage, violence, domestic abuse, marital rape, discriminatory laws, sexual harassment at workplace and women’s reproductive rights. Billed as the most ‘sweeping social revolution’ in American history, Friedan’s feminist manifesto fired the first shot at American husbands and bosses whose mistaken belief of male sup

4 Women's Issues That Haven't Changed Since 1911

Over 100 years ago,  radical writer and activist Emma Goldman  penned the essay "The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation." In the piece, which  the Atlantic unearthed on July 12th , Goldman explores issues of equal pay, the tension between family life and home life, and the roadblocks that prevent true gender equality. Essentially, Emma Goldman sparked the original "having-it-all" debate. So many of the issues Goldman raises feel nearly as relevant now as they must have then. Here are four things Goldman touches on that we're still working on today: 1. Men dominate many of the most esteemed professional fields -- and get paid more for their work. "It is a fact that women teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are neither met with the same confidence as their male colleagues, nor receive equal remuneration," Goldman wrote. Today, women are still severely underrepresented in many fields -- especially in leadership positions. In

Female circumcision un-Islamic

A Egyptian conference of Muslim scholars from around the world declared female circumcision to be contrary to Islam and an attack on women, and called today for those who practice it to be punished. Regarding religious differences, it is now generally recognized that even though a number of the countries where female genital surgeries are found are predominantly Muslim, the practices are not prescribed by Islam and are, in fact, found among non-Muslim groups such as Coptic Christians of Egypt, several Christian groups in Kenya, and the Falasha Jews of Ethiopia. In CDI [Côte d'Ivoire], the prevalence is 80 percent among Muslims, 40 percent among those with no religion and 15 percent among Protestants, and in Sudan the prevalence is highest among Muslim women ... In Kenya, by contrast, prevalence is highest among Catholics and Protestants compared with other religious groups ... Thus, there is no unequivocal link between religion and prevalence. - Carla Obermeyer, 1999. Th