7 steps to empowering women - across the globe - to participate fully in all sectors and throughout all levels of economic activity... starting with strong corporate leadership - through to community initiatives and advocacy.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Thursday, October 28, 2010
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For all my latest columns, articles and event news, please go to my website www.virginiahaussegger.com.au
Friday, May 21, 2010
When young Afghan girls learn to fight
(Najeeba, the Taw kwon do champion, training at Hope House, Kabul. photo 2009)Sporting chance for girls
By Virginia Haussegger
The National Times 6 April 2010
The Canberra Times
(see The National Times for this article, or my Website)
Friday, April 2, 2010
The Baby Boom and 'having it all'
Whiff of defeat in the air
By Virginia Haussegger
The Canberra Times 27 March 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
An inconvenient truth: women are just not that important
(Report by the Ministry of Women Youth and Children Affairs, Solomon Islands)Acts of shame as girls die
By Virginia Haussegger
The Canberra Times, 20 March 2010
See Website for this article and leave your comments below.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Grief, sorrow and gifts from the dying
Good grief in dying acts
By Virginia Haussegger
The Canberra Times 13 March 2010
See website for this article and leave your comments below.
Women's pay - are we there yet?
(Photo: Zelda D'Aprano chained to the doors of the Commonwealth Building 1969)It's back to the future
By Virginia Haussegger
The Canberra Times 6 March 2010
See website for this article and leave your comments below.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Young feminist awakening
(Photo: A hardly "hairy" Germaine Greer)Energised by entitlement
By Virginia Haussegger
The Canberra Times, 20 Feb 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Tony Abbott - God's gift to women
(Photo, ABC. Tony Abbott learns to iron a shirt).Beware the iron fist
By Virginia Haussegger
The Canberra Times, 13 Feb 2010
See website for this article and add your comments below.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Self-immolation in Afghanistan
(Photo by Amin Palangi, from his film "Hidden Generation")A witness to horror
By Virginia Haussegger
The Canberra Times, 6 February 2010.
See website for this article and add your comments below.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Virginity - the "ultimate gift"
Virgin on absurd, Tony
by Virginia Haussegger
The Canberra Times, 30 Jan 2010
Saturday, December 19, 2009
The spirit of giving... and donating
(Photo: World Vision, Thailand)Special gifts in giving
By Virginia Haussegger
See website for this article ... and add your comments below.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Feminism, Bo-Tax and the Beauty Myth lives on ...
Feminists buy into myth
By Virginia Haussegger
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 12th Dec 2009
Every time I use the “f” word in public I get walloped. Feminism is a funny thing. Just when you think you’ve got the old dear worked out, she throws off the knee rug, leaps up from the rocker and pulls your hair. Nasty. It’s usually the result of some profound disagreement. And if we’ve learnt nothing else during feminism’s third wave, we’ve certainly learnt that hell hath no fury like a feminist scorned. So I tread with trepidation.
But I take refuge in the knowledge that feminism is indeed a “broad church” as writer Elizabeth Farrelly once put it, “its cults many and varied”. Which is a kind way of saying – it takes all sorts. Yet, I would never have thought the head of the most famous feminist group in the US, the National Organisation for Women, was the sort of feminist to fall victim to the beauty myth – all over again. But she has.
Last week Terry O’Neill, the President of NOW, came out swinging against a proposed US tax on Botox, arguing that it was a “tax on middle-aged women”. If Naomi Wolf was dead, I’d be saying that she’d be turning in her grave right now. Fortunately she’s not dead, but perhaps her 1990 treatise on how “images of beauty are used against women” has been laid to rest – and long forgotten.
As chief of NOW, O’Neill leads a massive organization that has long been one of the most powerful voices for women in the US. Founded by Betty Friedan, NOW has been instrumental in groundbreaking legislative reform, and the organisation’s energetic campaigns have served as a model for women’s groups around the world, including in Australia. The most famous NOW action - burning a trash can full of bras and girdles outside a Miss America beauty pageant – became the stuff of folklore, and made ‘bra-burning’ a universal symbol of women’s liberation. As a symbol it’s perhaps been over-hyped, but at least it grabbed attention and made a point.
So what on earth is O’Neill doing now by falling backwards into the bottomless pit that is the beauty myth? When quizzed by Judith Warner in The New York Times as to why a tax on botox was “devaluing” women “for being middle aged”, O’Neill argued that access to cosmetic surgery – botox, breast enhancement, face lifts etc – is an important contemporary feminist issue. In a nutshell, this leading feminist is suggesting that if middle aged women are serious about getting - or keeping - a job, then they must buy into the myth that they are only as good as they look, and spend money on a good plastic surgeon. “I know a lot of women whose earning power stalled out or kicked down as they entered into their 50s, unlike their male counterparts’, whose really went up”, she told Warner. And no doubt that is very true. But is cosmetic surgery really the answer? And are women really the problem?
This issue is hot in the US right now because the massive health care reform bill currently before Congress includes a 5 percent excise tax on cosmetic surgery and “related procedures”. It’s been dubbed the ‘Bo-tax’. O’Neill is arguing against it because she says it hits middle aged women hardest: which it no doubt does. But her claim that cosmetic surgery is not a luxury, but rather a modern day necessity is where she comes unstuck. Her argument that it’s up to women to nip, tuck and enhance themselves as much as they can afford, because “we live in a society that punishes women for getting older”, is where her particular brand of feminism not only falls apart, but shatters with contradiction.
As President of NOW, surely O’Neill is aware of her own organizations “Love Your Body” campaign? In its website blurb women are told how dreadful it is that Hollywood and the fashion, diet and cosmetic industries “make each of us believe that our bodies are unacceptable and need constant improvement”. The campaign calls on women to rally and “Together we can fight back”. So, where’s the ‘fight back” in encouraging middle age women to believe that the battle has been lost, and their best weapon of defence is the cosmetic surgeon’s scalpel, or the beautician’s syringe?
There is no doubt cosmetic surgery is no longer an ‘if’ but a ‘when’ proposition for many women. And as a dull ‘sameness’ pervades celebrity circles, where its getting increasingly harder to tell one puffed lip and expressionless brow from the other, perhaps it just doesn’t matter. Perhaps it’s just an exercise in choice. But where is the feminist scrutiny of that choice?
What hope is there of women receiving any respect and admiration for the wisdom and maturity they’ve achieved by middle age, if even NOW is telling them they’re old hags? Ironically the NOW “Love Your Body” campaign appears aimed at girls and young women, rather than those in their 40s, 50s or beyond. And yet it’s that older demographic most at risk of being socially sidelined and rendered invisible.
**
Monday, December 7, 2009
Tony Abbott's women woes
The New Face of Politics
By Virginia Haussegger
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 5 Dec 2009, and The National Times.
Picture this. And it's worth it, because it says something about what's happening to Australian politics.
Thursday night, Kristina Keneally and Carmel Tebbutt front an excited media pack. New South Wale's newest Premier and Deputy face a barrage of questions and lob back short, sharp answers. Keneally has just ousted her bigger, boofy colleague Nathan Rees. Unfazed by the scrum, she takes charge. Ever the pro, the long serving Tebbutt stands strong and sturdy by her side. She's done this before. First question to Keneally suggests she's not the real goods, but just a stand-in with strings attached: "Are you Eddie Obeid's puppet?" a journalist asks. "No," is the constrained reply.
Flick back a day to Wednesday late afternoon, and another attractive duo face the cameras. This time it's acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong at her side. Both field questions from the press gallery, without the verbal flourish we've come to expect from the foppish PM and his predecessors. They're clear and concise, with just a hint of angry refrain. The Government's ETS legislation has failed in the Senate, yet again, and both women are choosing their words carefully. You get the sense they're gearing up for a major showdown, but not right now.
Flick back now to Tuesday, and it's another leadership duo in front of the cameras. This time it's the perennial Liberal bridesmaid Julie Bishop, standing next to her newest partner Tony Abbott. The impeccably dressed Bishop smiles awkwardly as Abbott throws an arm around her shoulders, squeezes a few times, and tells the media mob before them, "She's a loyal girl". His grin is wide and goofy. And just in case we haven't all caught the message about who is boss, he squeezes Bishop one more time. She didn't show it on the outside, but surely Bishop flinched on the inside, knowing she wasn't a "loyal" girl at all. She hadn't voted for Abbott in the leadership ballot, and only the night before she'd been mocking him with her ex. She'd been laughing about his budgie smugglers and – according to a jilted Malcolm Turnbull – saying a whole lot more.
So what's wrong with Tuesday's leadership picture? And what does it tell us about where political power is heading?
The selection of Tony Abbott as Opposition Leader and prime ministerial aspirant took everyone by surprise, including him. "It's the last thing I would have expected a week ago," he told the media, still panting from the rush. But in choosing him, his Liberal colleagues have taken a giant leap backwards. It's as if the deep, conservative core of a befuddled and wounded party is making a desperate, last ditch attempt to return to the "good old days". The days when a soft lens image of mummy, dad, two kids and a white picket fence was considered an appropriate way to sell Liberal party policy. It flopped backed then. And it's eons out of date now.
Tony Abbott might be an affable kind of bloke: good-looking, energetic and certainly not boring. At a social gathering, over a drink, some might even find him charming. The way he wears his heart on his sleeve, says what he thinks, and reaches out to people he's concerned about can be quite endearing. But Abbot's era has passed us by. Thankfully.
Australia no longer has room at the top for men who hug their female colleagues like baby sisters and call them loyal girls. Or mutter "that's bullshit" to their female opponents, while smiling for the cameras and refusing to look them in the eye. We've long passed the time when women will tolerate having their reproductive choices taken away from them: when they will accept a male health minister blocking their access to safe termination options. Women are well beyond being lectured to by men about unwanted pregnancies and told they must be "ashamed". And as economic and careers pressures continue to force women to delay childbearing, women are angry to hear the likes of Tony Abbot tell them that a woman at 43 is too old to deserve Medicare support for IVF. It may well be a difficult age at which to have a baby, but it's a woman's choice, not Abbott's. We all know that.
Such public patronising of women doesn't wash with the general public anymore. They vote it down.This is not a "red-fanged rage" against Tony Abbott, by "aggressively secular, paelo-feminists" as columnist Miranda Devine shouted. In fact, no one is shouting but her. This is simply a broad rejection by Australian women of old-fashioned patronising and a daddy-takes-charge style of politics. Daddy is no longer in charge. Nor is mummy, for that matter.
What we have in political leadership circles now is an emergent understanding that a diverse range of women have taken a place at the top table. And they're not all "working mothers". They can be single, childless, lesbian, Asian and atheist. The world has moved on since the conservative chorus — with Abbott's mindset — was in charge. Women know that. Pity the federal Liberal caucus hasn't worked it out.
**
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Malalai Joya's battle for Afghanistan
(Photo by RAWA; Malalai Joya)Land of withering hopes
By Virginia Haussegger
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 28 Nov 2009, and The National Times
She's pint sized, but she goes like a rocket and talks like a threshing machine. And for the past month Malalai Joya - dubbed by western media as “the bravest woman in Afghanistan' - has been raising her voice across North America to send a strong and unambiguous message to Barack Obama, ahead of his decision next week on Afghanistan.
Her message is simple - pull out now. Malalai Joya shot to international fame when she won a seat in Afghanistan's new Parliament, at just 27 years old. By 2007 her ranting against government corruption, misogyny and the presence of criminal warlords in parliament, eventually got her thrown out of office.
The US President has been accused of 'dithering' as he's taken several months to consider whether to commit the extra 40,000 troops General McCrystal has requested to fight the Taliban. He's under considerable domestic pressure to cease the inordinate spending – 100 million US dollars a day on the military alone – and is grappling to convince a disbelieving public that the war in Afghanistan is winnable, or worthwhile.If he wants an easy out, Malalai Joys is certainly handing him one.
She insists the “occupation” of her homeland by US, NATO and allied forces – including Australia – is doing nothing to help the most vulnerable and innocent victims of war - the women and children. In fact, she argues the reverse: that foreign troop occupation has destroyed many more civilian lives than it has helped. She blames the US and NATO for providing succour to criminal warlords, by propping them up with government positions and fattening their coffers with foreign money and resources.
She also blames the US for the massive increase in poppy production since 2001, which now has Afghanistan supplying 93 percent of the world's opium.
Joya argues that “democracy cannot come from war” and that Afghanistan can never be “liberated” by foreign forces. She insists that only Afghans can find a way towards a peaceful and secure future. While she is stridently anti-American, and its imperialist allies, Joya nevertheless reserve her strongest bile for Afghanistan's warlords and fundamentalists who treat women like “caged” animals.
To hear Joya rail is compelling. I've sat before her and was struck by her youthful passion and fearless dedication to her country. Those darting dark eyes have a way of pinning you down, and making you listen.
But at this stage of the war there is a hole in her argument, and it starts with some simple numbers.Yes, atrocious acts of war have killed innocent civilians. The cluster bombings in Farah province in May massacred at least 150, mostly women and children. It was a shocking act – for which the US later apologised. But women are dying across Afghanistan in much bigger numbers from basic neglect. They're dying because there is no government system that provides basic care and protection to help them when they're sick, when they're beaten, abused, or even when they're hungry.
The Karzai Government is criminally negligent in its failure to support its people. The UN's 2009 Human Development Index ranks Afghanistan at 181 out of 182 countries: almost the worst place in the world in which to live. By the time you've finished reading today's newspaper, another woman will have died from reproductive complications, due to a lack of health care. One dies every 30 minutes; that's 17,376 women a year. According to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, 80 percent of those deaths are preventable. This is a human rights scandal, and yet the Karzai Government has not built a single hospital for women.
More than 70 percent of women submit to forced marriages, and according to UNIFEM more than half the female population marry before the legal age of 16. Female depression is widespread and the rate of self immolation has skyrocketed. Domestic violence is endemic, with one UK report suggesting it affects 80 percent of households. Yet the Karzai Government has not built a single shelter or welfare centre for women.
However, some gutsy Afghan women activists have stepped in where the limp and useless government won't.
Since 2003 six women's shelters have been quietly established by local women, with the financial backing of international NGOs and donors. One of the board members of the Afghan Women's Network, Orzala Ashraf, was clear about this when she told me “the opportunities to support women have increased tremendously with the resources available now through NGO supports”.
During the Taliban regime Ashraf ran underground schools. Now she heads a large network of health and education programs for women and children: “Before we didn't have any grants or funds to do this work," she said.Loosely networked, there is a plethora of small internationally supported women's advocacy groups doing vital work across Afghanistan.
Should foreign troops withdraw, even Malalai Joya has conceded there will be civil war, before a new regime is established. With such instability and lack of security, it's most doubtful international NGOs and donors will stay the course.
As the world pulls away from Afghanistan, the support funds will dry up. Then, as history has proven, the women of Afghanistan will be forgotten – again.
**
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Colonel Gaddafi calls attractive girls to Islam
(Photo: Gaddafi with one of his all female bodyguard team 2009)
Mad Dog's Muslim rant exposes hidden pain
By Virginia Haussegger
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times, 21 Nov 2009, and The National Times.
So the mad dog of the Middle East is after Berlusconi’s beauties. And not just one or two high paid hookers. Colonel Gaddafi wants them in their hundreds and he’s happy to pay around 50 Euro’s a piece. Which sounds cheap, if it’s sex he’s after; but he’s not. He’s after the soul of their sex.
The story doing the international rounds this week about the crazy Libyan despot’s attempts to convert Italian women to Islam is funny. But like much tragi-comedy, beneath the slapstick lurks something that makes us very uncomfortable, even while we laugh.
Having ruled his fiefdom with unchallenged power for some 40 years, Gaddafi remains utterly contemptuous of the West; its traditions, rule of law, and its various religions. Most importantly, he is contemptuous of Western women.
He ranted like a demented fool during his last appearance in the US, demanding to know who killed JFK. And at an international gathering earlier this year he roared into the microphone that he was the one and only “king of kings of Africa and imam of Muslims”.
But this week, while attending a United Nations global food summit, Gaddafi grabbed the headlines not for raving, but for chasing girls. On the face of it that’s hardly shocking, particularly given the craggy faced 67 year old tyrant insists on travelling with 40 female bodyguards: all of whom are young, beautiful, and supposedly virgins. But it wasn’t his sexual urge that led to 200 women patiently sitting before him; it was Gaddafi’s mad and dangerous spiritual urge.
The crazed Libyan leader who celebrates appalling acts of violence and mayhem, wanted to turn these women away from their “Christian” god, and their “wrong” religion, and towards Islam instead. “God’s religion is Islam” he reportedly bellowed at the surprised young crowd.
The women had unwittingly answered an advertisement calling for attractive, “pleasant” females, aged between 18 and 35, and at least 1.7 metres tall. It also stipulated “well dressed” and no mini-skirts. Given the ad was placed by a ‘hostess’ agency, the women assumed they were to be glamorous extras at some high class party. Instead they were corralled onto buses and taken to the Libyan ambassador’s residence in Rome for a long, booming lecture by Colonal Gaddafi about Islam’s appeal to women. “It is not true that Islam is against women” he told them.
It’s tempting to make a joke about Gaddafi’s god embracing all women - except the short, unattractive ones, with drab wardrobes. But this isn’t the climate for such jokes.
Two important books by Muslim women have just crossed my desk, both highlighting – yet again – the shocking injustice and appalling treatment some Muslim women are made to suffer under the name of Islam.
In the compelling read “Cruel and Usual Punishment”, author Nonie Darwish adds her voice to the likes of Ayyan Hirsi Ali, Shirin Ebadi, Malalai Joya, and Phyllis Chesler, in detailing despicable levels of violence and humiliation against women in Muslim nations. Yet the gender apartheid these women highlight is taken to a whole new level of fury by Wafa Sultan, in her new book “A God who hates”. This powerful and relentless repudiation of Islam’s preoccupation with violence, and its subjugation of women, is the latest addition to a growing body of literature exposing the systematic oppression of women in Muslim countries.
Sultan’s much anticipated book was released in the United States just last month. But already she has had to go into hiding for her own protection. A Syrian born psychiatrist, Sultan is famed as the first and only Muslim woman to shout at a cleric to shut up. It was back in 2006, during a live television interview telecast across the Muslim world on Al Jazeera. Fed up with being lectured, Sultan told the revered man raving at her to “Be quiet! It’s my turn!” Such a public put down of a Muslim holy man by a woman was unthinkable.
No cleric wanted to hear Sultan then, and they certainly don’t want to hear her now. Calling herself a Muslim who no longer believes in God, Sultan accuses Islam of extreme misogyny. She speaks of “A God who subjugates women in the ugliest ways possible” and calls the “authenticity of that God” into question.
Sultan is forceful and unforgiving as she argues “The status of women in Muslim countries is a human catastrophe that the world has ignored for centuries and for which it is now paying a high price for ignoring”. But perhaps most controversially, she insists that women living in Muslim states have become complicit in their own oppression by accepting their inferior status. Pulling no punches, Sultan says her Muslim sisters are like “worms” who allow themselves to be “crushed underfoot”.
It’s a tough read, and far from the story about Islam that mad dog Gaddafi was preaching to the young women of Rome. And yet, according to an undercover journalist in the crowd, he won a convert. The Guardian reported that Beko Rea left the lecture saying “He convinced me”.
One can only wonder - was it the murderous tyrant’s charm, smile, or logic that won her over?
Virginia Haussegger is a columnist for The Canberra Times
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