Large firms sued for sexual discrimination
THIRTY-THREE women from three people's organizations filed sexual discrimination suits against Korea's giant corporations—the first such suit filed against the country's conglomerates.
Members of the National Teachers' Labor Union, the Korea Women's Association for Democracy and Sisterhood, and the Citizens' Group for Genuine Education lodged discrimination charges against 44 representatives of major industries last May 25. They complained against the conglomerates' hiring practice of requiring physical attributes such as a certain range for the heights as well as weights of prospective female staff.
The complainants argued that the industries seriously violated the Equal Employment Opportunity
Act in specifying qualifications such as 'over 160cm, under 60kg and good appearance' in their advertisements for female emplo-yees. Some of the establishments involved even stipulate these recruitment guidelines to high schools that recommend their graduates, the complainants added.
(Korean Women Today, Summer 1994)
Women sidelined by economic liberalization
IN SOUTH Asia, where half of nearly one billion people live below the poverty line, governments have yet to take steps that will help millions of women workers in the informal economy.
The worst hit by such neglect is the textile and garments industry, which employs the second largest number of women in the region, after farming. Yet, the industry, however, is the region's top export earner and fastest growing sector.
Instead of improving livelihood, the strategy of economic liberalization has worsened the conditions of women in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.'Global Trading Practices and Poverty Alleviation in South Asia—A Gender Perspective' revealed.
The growth of exports in the textile sector has pushed up local yarn prices, forcing handloom cooperatives, where the bulk of women are employed, to reduce their workforce. Women are fast losing jobs and incomes as a result.
The growth of exports in the textile sector has pushed up local yarn prices, forcing handloom cooperatives, where the bulk of women are employed, to reduce their workforce. Women are fast losing jobs and incomes as a result.
A field study by India's Self-employed Women's Association (SEWA), which is based in the western state of Gujarat, found that women workers were often turned away because of a shortage of yam in factories run by the Gujarat Handloom Corporation.
New US program to keep girls in school
THE CLINTON administration has created a program to help keep girls in school in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The first year of the 10-year-program will cost about US$11.7 million, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), program administrator, said.
"Investing in the health and education of women and girls is essential to improving local prosperity," Hilary Clinton said during the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen last March.
The program has several broad aims, said Dr. Nils Daulaire, chief policy adviser to the USAID. At primary school level, it will pay for expert help in determining the reasons for the low enrollment rate among girls. "In some countries, especially as they reach adolescence, girls don't attend school because parents fear they are not safe," Daulaire said. Teachers will be trained to accept and integrate girls into a classroom, where they are usually ignored.
For older girls and young women, new literacy projects will incorporate lessons in health and sanitation to benefit the family, the USAID officer said. (Today. 9 March 1995)
Year of the Family-fiction only
PAPUA NEW Guinea should not be celebrating the International Year of the Family when women in the country are being raped, beaten and treated like animals, the National Council of Women said.
Council president Dame Josephine Abaijah stressed during a Family Life Seminar in Port Moresby that women are the central point of any family life and should be treated with respect. In Papua New Guinea, however, women have been subjected to various forms of subordination and abuse by their own spouses. Abaijah challenged Papua New Guinea's men to recognize women as human beings and accord them the dignity and equality they deserve. (WINA, Vol.1, No. 1, 30 November, 1994; WINA-Women, Information & News Agency, P.O. Box 439, Republic of Nauru)
Perverse preferences in Tokyo
CATERING TO sadomasochists, fetishists and perverts, Tokyo's myriad sex clubs offer almost every conceivable perversion that degrades women.
For example: One club allows customers to abuse pregnant women; another sells female excrement. A third allows men to grope girls made up as old ladies. "The fee is ¥30,000 (US$316), everything included. You can choose up to two girls and play with them for two hours," answered a male voice on the telephone.
Another place was a five-story condominium on a back street in the Shinjuku district. In one of them, the room resembled a magnificent drawing room of a daimyo's mansion.
Men pay between ¥50,000 and ¥160,000 (US$526 and US$1,684) to tie, whip or burn women with dripping candle wax or give them enemas. (Today, 11 March 1995)
Lesbian celebration—an art spree
More than a hundred women came to take part in 'Women-Loving-Women Celebration', which turned out to be a major cultural and literary event, complete with music, story-telling, poetry reading, improvised theater and dancing.
The huge turn-out of friends and supporters at the affair proves "once again that women-loving-women do support and reach out to help each other grow," the lesbian publication Switchboard raved.
The occasion was held last February 13 in the New Age-style Dreams Cafe, located in the heart of Manila.
Women artists who performed included the popular singer Susan Fernandez-Magno. Writer Tezza Parel read an excerpt of 'Every Full Moon' (by Nice Rodriguez) from Throw it to the River. Former spokesperson of the National Democratic Front Bobbie Malay read an obit-poem while Pia Arboleda silenced the crowd with a reading from Jeanette Winterson's erotic collection Sexing the Cherry. Activist-writer Aida F. Santos gave the opening remarks and read a number of her poems in the anthology Woman to Woman, the first lesbian anthology to be published in the country.
Lesbond gave a mime performance which essayed the travails of a modern-day lesbian heroine. Ome Quijano was inimitable in her coming-out.The complex comic-advise portion done by Cris Brigoli as a counselor gone wrong was likewise hilarious.
More songs were rendered by Tess Raposas, PaMaSa and activist singer-song writer Aster Delgado.
Dancing lasted until the wee hours of the morning after the program ended at about midnight.
Writer-columnist Ellen Goodman finds something amiss in current Congress discussions on the US welfare program which, when approved, will deny minor mothers any cash welfare benefits. Why are the fathers, who are usually much older, left out in this debate? By mistake, by design, or by instinct?
Jailbait
by Ellen Goodman
Do you ever get the feeling that someone is missing from the debate about US welfare reform?
The other parent? The father? The sperm donor? Men?
As the US Congress writes ever more punitive scenarios for mothers and children, the male of the species barely gets a cameo role. The only part he plays is as deadbeat dad. The only interest the lawmakers have shown is in establishing his DNA. The only policy they are talking about is getting a better grip on his wallet.
I have no problem with these proposals. But much of the welfare debate is focused on the never-married poor mothers—the women who get on welfare the earliest and stay the longest. The men in their lives don't exactly have deep pockets.
The favorite proposal of the moment, to deny cash benefits to any minor mother, comes with a prayer that it will prevent other pregnancies. The theory is that if the government gives girls an economic reason to say no, they'll control male sexual behavior.
But in real life, as opposed to think tanks and hearing rooms, the picture is a little different.
In real life, three quarters of the girls who have sex before they are 14 say they were coerced. In real life, two of every three teenage mothers are impregnated by a man over 20. In real life, 30 percent of the 15-year-old mothers have partners who are at least six years older.
We are not talking about powerful girls in equal relationships. In the inner-city culture that sociologist Elijah Anderson describes with terrible poignancy, a sexual 'game' goes on.
"The girls have a dream," he says, "the boys have a desire. The girls dream of being carried off by a Prince Charming who will love them, provide for them and give them a family. The boys often desire sex without commitment or babies without responsibility for them."
In this game, the older male is an easy winner. A 13-year-old girl is by no means on a level playing field with an 18-year-old boy. Nor is a 15-year-old on a par with a 26-year-old.
To put it bluntly, a substantial number of the men are what can only be called sexual predators. A substantial number of the teenage mothers are what we used to call jailbait.
Remember jailbait? Maybe we ought to think about changing the sexual behavior of men as well as women. Maybe statutory rape is an idea whose time should return.
Statutory rape was the creation of a double standard. It implied that a girl below a certain age was too young to consent to sex. The object of the law was to protect female virtue. The subject of the law was likely to be a 17-year-old boy hauled to court by the irate parents of a 15year-old girl.
But in the era of sexual liberation and equality, the old laws were rewritten. We went from a double standard of gender to a single standard of power.
"The girls have a dream, the boys have a desire. The girls dream of being carried off by a Prince Charming who will love them, provide for them and give them a family. The boys often desire sex without commitment or babies without responsibility for them"
Today the object of the law is not female chastity but sexual abuse. And the subject is generally an older man or woman who has sex with an underage child.
I know that dusting off the laws and applying them to men who father children with young teens has its limits. We have different views of coercion and of consent than we used to. Teenage mothers could become more reluctant to point the paternity finger. I'm wary of matching policy that throws mothers on the streets with one that throws tattlers in jail.
But look at the figures. Look at the culture. We're talking about adult men and adolescent girls.
We're talking about 'the game.' You don't have to be a Victorian to believe that society has an obligation to defend our young. Or that we have an obligation to state this clearly, publicly, unequivocally.
These days we are quick to attack teenage mothers. How about trying to protect them? Tell the girls they're too young. But send the word out to men. The word is 'jailbait'.
Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines
The glass is really there
Three years ago, Elizabeth Dole, then US secretary of labor, initiated an investigation into the so-called glass ceiling. The glass ceiling, women and members of minority groups charged, was what they crashed their heads against as they climb up the corporate ladder. You can go only this far, the men on the top rungs seemed to say, and no farther.
The bipartisan Glass Ceiling Commission has now reported that, yes, indeed, such an invisible barrier exists. Despite 30 years of affirmative action, 95 percent of senior management positions are still held by white men, who constitute only 43 percent of the workforce.
Affirmative action has borne more fruit at lower levels. White women hold close to 40 percent of the jobs in middle management, but black women hold only 5 percent and black men even less.
Something blocks their further advance up, other than a lack of qualifications or capable candidates. Thirty years since, and the number of women and minority members who have acquired the education and skills to move up has risen considerably But the time lag appears still not long enough to erase the fears and stereotyped preconceptions employers bring to female and minority candidates. No employer would assume that a white male is too lazy or ill-trained, or even genetically bound to fail. Yet those assumptions are constantly brought to bear on Hispanic, black and female applicants, the report suggests. Moreover, women and minority members have no access to the kind of mentoring and other forms of support that white men automatically receive from other white men.
The commission report should be required reading for Senator Bob Dole, who sponsored the legislation establishing the commission but is now trying to end the very programs that may one day demolish that glass ceiling. He might also reread the autobiography he wrote with his wife several years ago. On her first day at Harvard Law School, Elizabeth Dole recalled, a male classmate asked her what right she had to take the place of a man who could be counted on to make good use of a high-powered legal education. Although Mrs. Dole later crashed through the glass ceiling, right at that moment, she had a very clear view of its reality.
from International Herald Tribune. 18-19 March 1995