One Geek

I was having a conversation on Sunday with someone about micro finance and development. I made some comment about how it was only good if given to women, and she said she had heard that too but didn’t understand it. I don’t claim to have a good understanding of why poor men are so much worse then poor women with loans.

I think in part it is because of the power differential. When you are used to having no control over money and suddenly get access to some of your own then you really value it.

The other thought I had is that if you as the “male provider” are so poor as to need a loan then you have “failed your family” and are likely to just want to drown your sorrows rather then seek active change. There is also the unwillingness of a man to seek help rather then just rely on himself. I know personally that many times I try too hard to do things myself rather then ask for help.

I’m not sure where this all fits in, but I am starting to think that maybe I need to think more about gender and it’s role in poverty. I think I need to develop a more holistic view rather then my rather simplistic current view that men are crap.

Men still earn more then women in Australia based on this report. Makes me a bit sad.

We desperately need gender equality.

At an anti-slavery event I went to today I found out that their are over 27 million slaves. Of these 80% are women that’s 17.6 million women. Out of these women the sample that the speaker had talked to (which would of been hundreds at least), all had been used as sex slaves. This is simply unacceptable.

We need to change this world. We need to change the way men look at women. How is it that we somehow have developed a norm that sexual exploitation is acceptable. Now I know it is not only one way, and I know that some males face sexual exploitation from both men and women. The majority of the abuse seems to be of women by men though so that is why I am focusing there.

I don’t know how exactly we work on such a huge issue. I imagine that the place to start is to refuse to be part of exploitation and degradation of women. Some of it is very subtle, some less so.

As an Australian male I have heard far too many degrading remarks about women. I have been silent and even participated in too many of these conversations. I wonder if I would have the guts to walk away from such conversations or speak up. I know that as of today I haven’t got a good record. I want to fix that.

The next big topic in this area is sex. With my Christian upbringing I find it a little difficult to talk about sex openly. I feel like there is so much judgement attached to it, and guilt as well. I think I need to dedicate more time if I am going to blog properly about it. It’s a cope out I know, but don’t want get judgemental, and I don’t want google to index me saying something stupid on this topic. So stay tuned. If you really want a big post on sex and gender equality comment here and I will do it.

Today is International Women’s Day.

I would like a day like this to be about celebrating the great things that women do everywhere. However it is not really like that, it is a day of social action. It is about action to promote gender equality.

There is a real need for gender equality, particularly in developing nations.

Out of this inequality much violence comes. This violence can takes many forms physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic. Some of the sexual violence is infecting women with HIV/AIDS The statistics on violence against women are so depressing.

I read today that only 50% of women in India and are consulted about decision relating to their own health care.

Female infanticide is still very much alive.

I have heard that TB is the number one killer in India of women of child bearing age. TB is treatable this is really not acceptable.

I hope to explore some of these issues more fully on my blog over the next few weeks and months.

Right now I am tired and it is time to go and watch a DVD. Life is all about priorities.

Why is it so hard to embrace both diversity and equality?

Class, race, gender, sexual preference, intelligence, charisma, health, compliance with social norms and so many other things are used to try and define and determine the value of people.

Why do people do it?

Why do I find myself sometimes thinking the same way?

In the last 20 years the government of India claims that 10 million girls have been killed by their parents. I am sure the real figures are many orders of magnitiute, particularly when you include abortions. Then there is also the slow death of just not investing in female childeren that leads to them dying young anyway.

It all makes me rather mad.

19 million women experience an unsafe abortion worldwide each year; 18.5 million of these occur in developing countries:
Africa (4.2 million), Asia (10.5 million), Latin America & the Caribbean (3.8 million).

59 % of all unsafe abortions in Africa are among young women aged 15-24 years

68 000 women die from complications of unsafe abortion each year - all in developing countries:
Africa (30 000), Asia (34 000), Latin America & the Caribbean (4000)

WHO Stastics on Unsafe Abortions

I have a few friends who work with some NGO’s on HIV/AIDS issues. Through my discussions with these friends I have found out many interesting things. Two in particular have caught my attention. The first HIV/AIDS and TB co-infection that I have covered a lot in the past and seems to slowly be getting more coverage in mainstream press. The second one is a lot more uncomfortable for people, gender inequality and HIV/AIDS. This seems to be largely neglected by the popular press, it is this I am going to write a little about today.

Women now account for more then half the people living with of HIV. This in its self is alarming but in sub-Saharan Africa young women(15-24 years) are 3 times more likely then young men to contract HIV. I find this very alarming. How can it be that high?

There are 3 factors leading to the higher rates according to the WHO

# Women are probably more susceptible than men to infection from HIV in any given heterosexual encounter, due to biological factors – the greater area of mucous membrane exposed during sex in women than in men; the greater quantity of fluids transferred from men to women; the higher viral content of male sexual fluids; and the microtears that can occur in vaginal (or rectal) tissue from sexual penetration. Young women may be especially susceptible to infection.

# Gender norms may also have an impact on HIV transmission. For example, in many places, gender norms allow men to have more sexual partners than women, and encourage older men to have sexual relations with much younger women. In combination with the biological factors cited above, this means that, in most places where heterosexual sex is the main mode of HIV transmission, infection rates are much higher among young women than among young men.

# Forced sex, which all too many women (and some men) experience at some point in their lives, can make HIV transmission even more likely, since it may result in more trauma and tissue tearing.

Gender and HIV AIDS WHO

I don’t see that there is much we can do about the first biological cause. The other two though are able to be worked on.

Globablly 6-47% of women in different countries have reported being sexually assaulted by intimate partners. It is primarily by people who are known to them that women are assaulted. There are many more statistic regarding this and other violence against women. These other forms of violence include physical, emotional and economical, I am not going to quote them here, but trust me they are not pretty. In fact they are unacceptable to me, and show to me a clear need for change.

One of my friends as part of her HIV/AIDS work is doing gender sensitivity workshops with men and women. The goal of these workshops is to challenge the linking of sex(physical) and gender(the cultural roles of men and women). This is an interesting way to work at trying to bring change and encouraging equality between sexes. This in turn will hopefully reduce violence, and bring empowerment to women. These workshops are of course is only a small part of the work being done and that needs to be done.

This brings me to one of the big criticism I have heard of the Millenium Development Goals(MDGs) is their failure to adaquately address gender issues. Some people on the basis of this suggest that the MDGs are just a big distraction. The argument is that failure to address gender issues means that most of the goals would fail. I think though the problem is just in how the goals are used. I think that the goals should be seen as integrated and inseperable. I don’t think any one of them can truly be achieved in isolation.

I don’t know what this means exactly when it comes to advocacy and the MDGs. I think that from what I’ve seen when I was back in Australia there was a tendency towards believing that you could focus on each goal in isolation. I also think that Goal 3 (premote Gender Equality and Emowering Women) is often neglected. I think part of it is that it requires challenges to other cultures, and even some religious practices which is seen as very difficult politically. I believe though few people today would say female infanticide is acceptable. So I don’t see why we should accept other forms of violence against women.