Women’s Rights News in Brief (2016/10/09)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/10/09
Tunisian women fight for their rights
According to CBC New: World, Tunisia had a revolution in 2011 that ended a 22-year long dictatorship, which created a series of “popular uprisings” across the Middle East. This was the Arab Spring.
Tunisians overthrew President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. That “spurred a jubilant sense
of unity.” However, women, in general, developed “dread” post-revolution over the status,
or potential non-status, of their rights. What if an Islamist conservatism swept the country?
President Ben Ali’s reign for over two decades had rampant “corruption, human rights abuses and tight restrictions on free speech and political opposition.” 1957 marked the instantiation of women’s rights, and 2014 the re-affirmation, in Tunisia.
Polish abortion law debated in European parliament
According to European Parliament News, the recent events in Poland, the protests over the proposed abortion law called Black Monday, “sparked a heated debate in the Parliament on Wednesday.”
Poland has the most regressive abortion policies in the continent of Europe. The proposed bill or law would make them even more regressive with respect to women’s rights, which means even
more “stringent sexual and reproductive health laws.”
The European Parliament is in a contested moment over the debate of the subject matter. Justice Commissioner, Věra Jourová, opened the debate with a declaration that “the European Union has no powers over abortion policy and cannot interfere in member states’ policies in this area.”
Saudi male-guardianship laws treat women as second-class citizens
According to The Guardian, Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system imposed on women is a “set of bylaws and state-sanctioned discriminatory policies and practices that restrict a woman’s ability to have a wide range of choices unless permitted by her male guardian.”
That male can include the son, brother, husband, or father of the woman in question, or simply women in general. Women lack full recognition as “full legal adults” by this standard. That is, women in Saudi Arabia are nor recognized as adults by the state.
Female activists have joined forces in the country to abolish the system through “a petition and massive online support. “Women activists submitted a letter to the Royal Advisory Council” during 2014 in the hopes that there would be change, but the council members expressed no support for “significant change.”
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