Ormai non conto più le volte in cui ho letto che le religioni, tutte le religioni sono oppressive nei confronti delle donne. Tutte? Ma siamo cosi' sicuri? Può ad esempio essere considerata misogina la Chiesa Evangelica Luterana del Venezuela che ha eletto la reverenda Guillermina Chaparro come sua presidente?

http://www.lutheranworld.org/News/LWI/EN/2357.EN.html

The new president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Venezuela (Iglesia Evangélica Luterana en Venezuela - IELV) Rev. Guillermina Chaparro says her election as the head of the church is an indication of the IELV’s steady growth, especially in the rural areas.

The first woman to head the church, Chaparro was elected and installed on 6 February at the IELV’s 12th general assembly in Caracas, Venezuela. She said her election was the “culmination of a process that has been in gestation within the church.” She succeeds Rev. Akos Puky who has served as church president since 2002.

The Lutheran church is growing steadily in communities in the provinces, “thus it is logical that leaders emerge in these areas to contribute to church leadership,” Chaparro explained in an interview with Lutheran World Information (LWI). “I come from a grassroots community in a poor part of the (western) State of Barinas,” she said.

Nella vecchia europa, in Germania, la nazione che ha dato i natali a Lutero, Ilse Junkermann è stata eletta vescovo della Evangelical Church in Central Germany.

Oberkirchenrat Ilse Junkermann of Stuttgart has become the first woman bishop of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM). In the third round of secret balloting, the church synod in Wittenberg on 21 March elected the 51-year-old theologian by more than the required two-thirds majority.

Junkermann thus becomes the fourth woman bishop in the history of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), after present bishops Maria Jepsen from Hamburg and Margot Kässmann from Hanover, and Bärbel Wartenberg-Potter from Lübeck, who retired last year.

http://www.lutheranworld.org/News/LWI/EN/2354.EN.html

http://www.ekd.de/english/News-news_090327_first_female_bishop_east_germany.html

 

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Mentre gli Stati Uniti arrancano ancora ad eliminare il bando contro gli omosessuali nell'esercito, dall'america latina lo stato dell'Uruguay annuncia pubblicamente di ammettere senza riserve le persone gay tra le proprie fila.

Purtroppo la notizia è associata ad un'altra decisamente negativa. Il Perù ha invece adottato misure omofobe contro i polizitti gay "colpevoli" di dare scandalo.

The Uruguayan president, Tabare Vazquez, scrapped a law from the 1973-85 dictatorship that barred gay people from military academies, cementing his country's reputation as one of the most progressive in the region.

"The Uruguayan government does not discriminate against citizens based on their political, ethnic or sexual identity," Vazquez said.

The defence minister, Jose Bayardi, signed the decree this week. The ban had categorised homosexuality among the "mental illnesses and disorders" that rendered military recruits unsuitable to serve.

Latin America, long a redoubt of conservative Catholicism, homophobia and machismo, has mellowed in recent years. Colombia and Mexico City moved to grant more rights to gay couples, Buenos Aires opened a flagship gay hotel and Paraguay signalled it too would allow gay people in the military.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/15/south-america-gay-rights

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Today, Red Mujeres Chile launched the hotline "Aborto: Información Segura", marking the International Day of Action for Women's Health. The lauch took place in the Plaza Constitución, in the center of Santiago, Chile. The hotline will give information about the safe and effective use of Misoprostol to provoke an abortion. In the past weeks, members of the network have been trained in-depth about the use of Misoprostol, and have been working out legal strategies and expanding their support-network to make the hotline as effective as possible.

 

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In Argentina abortion is illegal in most cases. There are about 500,000 abortions per year, most of them clandestine. About 68,000 women enter the public hospitals each year with post-abortion complications, and annually around 100 of these women die.
The goal of the hotline, “Abortion: more information, less risks” is to democratize access to information on the correct way to have a safe abortion using misoprostol.

http://www.womenonwaves.org/set-2023-en.html

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Between 2001 and 2009, Chile registered 392 cases of murdered women. Most of the victims were killed by men with whom they had a close, intimate relationship. Only a small number of the deaths could be attributed to unfamiliar perpetrators.

In the face of this crisis, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile (IELCH) is providing a safe place for women and their children who are threatened by domestic violence.

The Vida Plena (“life in fullness”) shelter in Providencia, a suburb of the Chilean capital Santiago de Chile, offers a way out of this situation, giving protection to women and children in life-threatening situations due to domestic violence. The refuge run by the IELCH in cooperation with the Chilean Ministry for Women (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer – SERNAM) is a safe place where women can live for a period of time. 

IELCH president Rev. Dr Gloria Rojas attributes this cooperation to government recognition of the church’s commitment to defend human rights from its prophetic ministry during the period of Chile’s dictatorship.

The church is committed to equal rights for men and women, and opposes discrimination, she stresses. “In a society debating women’s abilities and the defense of equal opportunity, this stance is highly valued,” according to Rojas. 

“Violence against women is a sin,” states Rev. Dr Elaine G. Neuenfeldt, secretary for Women in Church and Society at the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Overcoming it requires a holistic, collective effort, she says, emphasizing that the church is called to be a safe place for women living and suffering in violent relations. 

http://www.lutheranworld.org/News/LWI/EN/2409.EN.html

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E ancora ci risiamo. La racchia della foto è la candidata dichiaratamente lesbica al concorso tv per fotomodelle. Dedico la foto a chi pensa che tutte le lesbiche siano brutte.

 

http://www.afterellen.com/TV/2009/8/brazil-top-model

 

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Uruguay lawmakers Wednesday adopted a trailblazing law allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt children, in an unprecedented move in Latin America.

Senator Margarita Percovich told AFP the contentious bill had passed its final hurdle with 17 out of 23 senators voting in favor of the legislation.

"Uruguay has a long tradition of leading the way in civil rights and has shown a desire to move ahead quickly on such questions," said social sciences professor Adolfo Garce of Montevideo University.

The large wave of European immigration to the country in the 20th century, particularly from Spain, has given it "a progressive and secular culture," he added.

Uruguay was the first country in the largely Catholic South American region to approve divorce in 1907, and gave women the right to vote in 1932.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gu1QYorSnG_WrGpbQ-ic2fMpxObg

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Recentemente l'Uruguay, come riportato in uno dei post precedenti, ha votato una legge che garantisce alle coppie gay e lesbiche il diritto all'adozione.Pare che questo diritto, stando ad alcuni rappresentanti della comunità legale, non sia cosi' scontato.

A closer reading of an adoptions law promoted by Uruguay's gay rights groups suggests it might not enable adoptions by gay and lesbian couples after all.

With the law awaiting President Tabare Vazquez's signature, gay rights groups have been celebrating the prospect that Uruguay could become the first country in Latin America to give gay and lesbian couples the opportunity to adopt.

But nowhere in the law does it specifically say that homosexual couples have a right to adopt. And in some places, it suggests otherwise - for example by specifying how the child should take a mother and father's surnames.

Family judge Estrella Perez said the judges association now plans to meet "to see how to resolve these doubts."

"We all have them."

And a lawyer for the institute, Edgard Marzarini, told reporters that he doesn't know how to resolve a same-sex adoption given the law's requirement that a child take a mother and father's surnames: "These are the holes that later give us problems."

 http://www.kcoy.com/Global/story.asp?S=11134632

 

 

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es députés uruguayens ont adopté mardi un projet de loi permettant aux transsexuels de modifier leur état civil pour qu'il soit conforme à leur apparence physique,

«Chaque personne a le droit au libre développement de sa personnalité conformément à l'identité de genre qui lui est propre, quel que soit son sexe biologique, génétique, anatomique, morphologique, hormonal», dit le projet qui rend possible le changement de nom et sexe sur les papiers d'identité à partir de 18 ans.

http://www.tetu.com/actualites/international/luruguay-approuve-le-changement-detat-civil-pour-les-transsexuels-15478

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Transsexuals in Uruguay will soon be able to legally register a change of name and gender after the country's senate approved a controversial bill.

The law, which was passed unanimously, is strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church and opposition conservatives.

Under the new legislation, transsexuals will be able to change their name on all official documents, from birth certificates to passports, to reflect the gender of their choice.

Under the new proposal, documents reflecting the original gender and name will not be destroyed, but archived and amended.

The amendment also restricts the change of gender and name to those over 18 and stipulates that five years have to pass before an applicant can request another change.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8304123.stm

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Per fortuna, grazie all'indignazione popolare, questa brutta vicenda ha avuto un esito positivo.

Par ordre du directeur, tout le personnel féminin de l'établissement devra se soumettre à cette mesure, rapporte La Prensa de La Paz. Cette nouvelle a fait grand bruit dans le pays. L'opposition à Evo Morales a traité le chef de l'Etat de "vendu" et le courrier des lecteurs du quotidien déborde de lettres indignées.

"Nous respectons les lois iraniennes en Iran,  les Boliviens appliquent d'autres lois que nous ferons respecter", a finalement déclaré Ramiro Tapia, le ministre de la Santé.

http://www.courrierinternational.com/breve/2009/11/27/des-infirmieres-obligees-de-porter-le-voile

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Un plauso alla Bolivia!

'My great dream has come true: half of the members of my cabinet are women, and half are men,' said a visibly moved Morales when he presented his new team of ministers Saturday, the day after he was sworn in to a second term.

'This was an impressive surprise,' Jimena Leonardo, one of the heads of the Bartolina Sisa federation of peasant women of La Paz, told IPS.

Three of the 10 female members of the cabinet are indigenous social activists.

Bolivia has thus become the second country in Latin America, after Chile, to have a cabinet with gender parity, said Mónica Novillo, head of advocacy and lobbying for the Coordinadora de la Mujer, a Bolivian umbrella organisation of more than 200 women's groups.

The new constitution, which guarantees equal rights for men and women, empowers both women and the country's historically downtrodden indigenous majority.

The proportion of women in the new parliament - in which the total number of legislators was expanded under the new constitution - will be double what it was in the previous Congress: 46 out of 166 seats (28 percent), compared to 22 out of 157 seats (14 percent).

When he announced his new cabinet, Morales also said that Bolivian women's social conscience, patriotism and dedication to defending national interests, as well as the respect he feels for his mother, sister and daughter, were factors in his decision to break with a long history of discrimination against women.

http://www.globalissues.org/news/2010/01/27/4330

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"Have you ever had coffee made from chuño (freeze-dried potatoes)?" a young villager asks with a smile before introducing this reporter to the creator of this culinary invention, Marina Huamaní.

She lives in Padre Rumi, a village in the district of Paucará in Huancavelica, a department (province) in south-central Peru, where 86 percent of the total 400,000 inhabitants live in poverty and approximately 45 percent of children are malnourished.

In late 2009, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced that the number of hungry people had crossed the one-billion mark, and FAO, which warns that global food insecurity is a growing threat to humanity, estimates that the total could rise by a further 100 million this year.

"Women are important in the raising of livestock, the preservation of crop varieties and the preparation of food," says agronomist Hernán Mormontoy, coordinator of a development project that FAO is carrying out in four villages in Paucará.

Although women's participation in the project is still weak overall, there is one exception: the village of Anchonga, where 12 of the 25 facilitators are women.

"We are trying to turn this situation around, so women and men will play an equal role," says Rivera.

"I entered the contest with a complete meal based on chuño: I made a chuño dish with onions and meat, along with soup and coffee," says a smiling Huamaní during a break in a community project, where IPS found her digging a ditch with a pick and hoe. 

It is the women who usually select the seeds. "My grandparents taught me that," says Dionicia Carbajal, who has an organic garden where she grows beets, lettuce and tomatoes to diversify and improve the family diet.

"I no longer have to buy vegetables in the market," she says.

Women also help prepare the clay for the adobe bricks used to make the local houses. And they are especially skilled saleswomen, like Máxima Silvestre, who runs a dairy products business with her family that she calls Semillas de Vida (Seeds of Life).

But water shortages and the loss of crops as a result of climate change have a heavy impact on women, who are in charge of feeding their families. "Sometimes we have to walk really far to get water," says Marina Quispe in Padre Rumi, where piped water is available just one hour a day and there is no sanitation.

Some women are forced to migrate to cities in search of jobs. "Mothers and daughters leave during the vacation months, from January to March, to work as domestics and cleaning women," says Rivera.

"Some come back, but others never do," he says, adding that the biggest challenge is getting the entire family involved in development projects of this kind, to improve their prospects in the poorest region of the country.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50244

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specialised division for victims of violence against women, children and adolescents at the seventh police precinct, one of the two stations in Asunción where the initiative has first been implemented.

The plan is to gradually set up such units around the entire country.

”Normally you receive all kinds of complaints in police stations, with domestic violence cases being mixed in with the rest, which means the people filing this kind of complaint often don’t receive the proper attention and follow-up,”

Based on 2008 data, the Paraguayan Centre for Population Studies found that 17 percent of girls and teenagers suffered physical violence before the age of 15 and 20 percent saw or heard their father or stepfather physically abuse their mother.

The new police units are the creation of an ”inter-institutional committee for integral care for victims of violence”, set up in 2008 by the ministries of the interior and public health and the secretariats of women and children and adolescents. 

Cantero said that he is now aware that domestic violence is a serious problem in Paraguay, and that a different kind of treatment by the police is needed.

”The victims are treated as vulnerable people – you have to be patient and help them feel safe and get them to understand that they will receive support,” he said with conviction.

The unit has a staff of 30 officers between the ages of 24 and 30, who after they were selected received two months of training on issues like human rights, a gender perspective and avoiding behaviour that ”revictimises the victim.”

Colmán said the abuse victims make their complaints in private, and that they are given detailed advice on what steps to take.

Since it opened, her unit has received 110 domestic abuse complaints, with the largest number coming from women, and a smaller number from youngsters. The complaints included physical, sexual and psychological abuse, as well as death threats.

http://globalgeopolitics.net/wordpress/2010/03/25/paraguay-new-police-units-for-domestic-violence-victims/

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A public hotline giving women information about safe abortion using pills Misoprostol, was launched in Lima, Peru yesterday on may 27 th, 2010,

The hotline was launched by the Colectivo para la Libre Información de las Mujeres (CLIM), or Collective for Free Information for Women, a feminist organization dedicated to democratizing vital health information. The hotline is supported by Women on Waves (Netherlands) and is one of similar initiatives that Women on Waves has supported in Ecuador, Argentina, and Chile in the past two years.

http://www.womenonwaves.org/article-2241-en.html

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It should not be too surprising that in Brazil, the country with the largest number of Roman Catholics (73% of the populace, or about 140 million), abortion is illegal except in cases of rape, when the mother's life is in danger or when the fetus has severe genetic abnormalities. Indeed, the ban on abortion is an immovable plank in the campaign platforms of the two main candidates in Brazil's upcoming presidential election. Yet a recent study revealed that 1 in 5 Brazilian women of child-bearing age has terminated a pregnancy, and statistics by the Health Ministry show that 200,000 women each year are hospitalized because of complications arising from unsafe abortions.

The study has shocked doctors, who were surprised at just how common the illegal procedures are. "I think the big conclusion we draw from this is that the woman who has an abortion is a typical Brazilian woman," says Marcelo Medeiros, the economist and sociologist who coordinated the government-funded study. "She could be your cousin, your mother, your sister or your neighbor. All the evidence shows this is a serious problem and one that is not being debated openly."

In fact, Brazil's Congress is discussing tightening legislation rather than relaxing it. A bill in the committee stage proposes criminalizing any act designed to deliberately damage a fetus and prohibiting any statements that promote even legal abortion, a move the New York City–based Center for Reproductive Rights said "totally disregards women's health and lives." Health professionals say they hope the bill will die with the end of the current legislature and are hopeful next year's new Congress will be more forward-looking.

Birth-control advocates are dismayed that Roman Catholic Church still wields considerable power.

maternal mortality has remained steady for 15 years, a fact researchers say is intimately linked to a lack of safe abortions. Specialists fear that unless the issue is treated more as a health one than as a moral one, that statistic will not change. "The Health Ministry has said all along that this is a public-health problem," says França. "It should be up to the woman to decide how many children to have."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1993205,00.html

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/06/13/abortion-human-rights-current-controversy-brazil

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The women -- who represent just seven of the 90 workers -- are a new face of the labour market in Brazil, and they worked hard to reach the top of the scaffolding surrounding this eight-floor building that is going up in Rio de Janeiro.

"They told me I wouldn't hack it as a construction worker, but here I am," says 23-year-old Daiana Aguiar, a married mother of one.

She adds that many people she knows doubt that "I really plaster or lay bricks."

She and her female co-workers can thank the Mão na Massa (roughly, Hands On) Project that has been promoting the insertion of women in the labour market since 2007.

The programme, which is also aimed at boosting the self-esteem of women workers, is an initiative of the Federação de Instituições Beneficentes (FIB), a network of close to 250 civil society organisations, with the backing of Petrobras and Eletrobras, the state-run oil and power companies.

The women received 460 hours of teaching and training: 180 hours of hands-on coursework, 120 hours of training in areas like bricklaying, painting, carpentry and plumbing, and 160 hours of classes on subjects like citizenship education, gender and health, and workplace safety.

In the last four months of the course, the women receive the equivalent of a basic basket of goods per month. 

The government's special secretariat for policy on women reports that female participation in civil construction has steadily increased in this South American country over the last decade. From 2008 to 2009 alone, it grew three percent, thanks also to the boom in construction driven by the increase in family income and the greater availability of housing loans.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51975

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Argentina has become the first country in Latin America to legalise gay marriage after the Senate voted in favour.

The country's Chamber of Deputies had already approved the legislation.

The vote in the Senate, which backed the bill by just six votes, came after 14 hours of at times heated debate.

The legislation, backed by President Cristina Fernandez's centre-left government, passed by 33 votes to 27 with three abstentions. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10630683

Sotto riporto un bellissimo video girato dalla Federazione Argentina LGBT qualche giorno prima dello storico voto.

 

 

 

 

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Flanked by representatives from the gay community, Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner signed into law a historic bill that legalizes same-sex marriage -- a Latin American first.

"We are now a more egalitarian society than we were last week," Kirchner said. "These are things that unite us and cannot divide us."

Kirchner's signing ceremony Wednesday was attended by representatives of humanitarian groups that supported the legislation, which made Argentina the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage.

"We have not enacted a law but rather a social construct," the president said, stressing that the legislation would create a more pluralistic society.

Argentina's first gay marriage is expected to take place August 13, uniting a couple who have lived together for 34 years.

 http://www.france24.com/en/20100722-argentine-president-signs-gay-marriage-law-0

"Today we are a society that is a little more egalitarian than last week," Fernandez said at the signing ceremony.

Representatives of groups for gays and lesbians cheered, crying out "Equality, equality!"

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hNaz3Yj83eVbNzTrmzTSXxpz-pBAD9H3OIE00

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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered on Saturday to provide refuge to a woman who has been sentenced to death in Iran following her conviction for committing adultery.

The case created an international outcry when Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani initially was sentenced to death by stoning. Iran withdrew that part of the sentence earlier this month, but the mother of two could still face execution by hanging.

During a campaign rally for his party's presidential candidate, Silva appealed to Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "to allow Brazil to grant political asylum to this woman."

"If she is causing problems there, we will welcome her here," Silva added, according to Brazil's official news service, Agencia Brasil.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100731/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_brazil_iran_stoning

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Thousands of women and girls in Argentina suffer needlessly every year because of negligent or abusive reproductive health care, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.  

"Women need dependable care throughout their reproductive lives," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "But in Argentina, it's more like a lottery: you might be lucky enough to get decent care but you are more likely to be stuck with deficient - or even abusive - services."

As a direct result of these barriers, women and girls in Argentina often cannot make independent decisions about their health, and many face unwanted or unhealthy pregnancies as a result.  Forty percent of pregnancies in Argentina end in abortions, which are often unsafe.  Unsafe abortion has been the leading cause of maternal mortality in the country for decades.

"Argentina's reproductive health policies are certainly not perfect, but if they were implemented they would prevent quite a lot of the suffering I saw in researching for this report," Vivanco said. "The government needs to put a lot more effort into monitoring how these policies are carried out and punishing abuse."

Human Rights Watch's report also criticizes Argentina's reproductive health policies for ignoring key constituencies such as women and girls with disabilities.  With its recent ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Argentina has taken on specific international obligations in this area that are not being met,  Human Rights Watch said.

"The Argentine government seems to be slowly waking up to the notion that laws on reproductive health mean nothing unless they are enforced," Vivanco said. "But unless changes are constant and clear, women and girls will continue to suffer and, in some cases, die."

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/08/10/argentina-guarantee-women-s-access-health-care

http://www.hrw.org/node/92124

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