“It would take (…) years and feminism — and multiple (…) times when my body was groped, pinched and touched without my permission during the nine years that I wore hijab — to know unwaveringly that sexual assault has nothing to do with how you’re dressed. It has everything to do with the predator who assaults you.”
Inspiring Thursday: Tarana Burke
Tarana Burke is an African-American civil rights activist. She’s most well-known as the founder of the “Me Too” movement in 2006 which has turned into a worldwide campaign to raise awareness about sexual harassment, abuse, and assault in society.
Women´s reproductive rights in Italy: obstetric violence as a human rights violation
Obstetric violence is an intersection between institutional violence – condoned, endorsed and/or perpetuated by the state- and violence against women during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum. It can be manifested in several ways:
• the denial of treatment during childbirth
• forced coerced medical interventions that accelerate the natural process of birth, such as the Kisteller manoeuvre, without a free, informed and expressed consent of the woman,
• disregard of a woman’s needs and pains and/or verbal humiliations before, during and after birth,
• invasive practices,
• physical violence,
• unnecessary use of medication,
• forced unnecessary caesarean section,
• forced unnecessary episiotomy,
• forcing a woman to give birth lying on her back with her feet in stirrups,
• dehumanizing or rude treatment,
• exposing a woman naked in front of many subjects,
• separating a mother from her newborn without medical reason,
• not including a woman in decisions concerning her body and her birth.
Inspiring Thursday: Una Marson
Jamaican poet and journalist, Una Marson, was a role model for women within the Black Internationalist community and her work contributed greatly to the recognition of West Indian literature – her own writing included.
Inspiring Thursday: Margherita Hack
Known as the “Lady of the Stars”, Margherita Hack, the most famous Italian astrophysicist, was the first woman to lead an astronomical observatory in Italy. Committed atheist, feminist, and vegetarian, Margherita publicly advocated for laws in favour of abortion, euthanasia and homosexual couples’ civil rights.
Trafficking and Vulnerability
Women are not vulnerable simply because they are women, nor do the women we support in our trafficking provision lack the capacity or the intelligence to make life choices. Many of these women come from societies that do not recognise their equality or view them as “lesser” human beings and they have been made vulnerable due to circumstances over which they have no control.
Inspiring Thursday: Ana Mendieta
During her short life, Ana Mendieta created art that portrayed many different themes of life, focusing on incorporating natural elements in her pieces, which she felt brought her closer to nature. At the same time, her work was bold and challenged restrictive ideas of normative categories like gender and race.
Inspiring Thursday: Nadia Murad
Born in 1993, Nadia was a high school student when ISIS militants overran her village. She was one of an estimated 3,000 girls and women who were victims of rape and other abuses by the IS army.
Women´s reproductive rights in Italy: the new government nostalgic for the old times
“Abortion is the number one cause of femicide in the world”: this is what a pro-life organization declared on the black-and-white posters that have appeared in several areas of Rome, in May 2018. Feminist groups condemned the posters as “disgraceful” while others disapproved of the wrong use of the word “femicide” which means the killing of women by men. Even though the posters were removed, it was definitely an awful way of attracting attention to a campaign against abortion besides being offensive to women, especially those who experienced abortion or gender-based violence.
Inspiring Thursday: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“I am a feminist. And when I looked up the word in the dictionary that day, this is what it said: Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. A feminist is a man or a woman who says – Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it. We must do better.“
