Women of the World
COMPILED BY DANIELLE TATE-STRATTON
Researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK have shown that wearing heels five days a week for two years or more causes the Achilles tendon to thicken and stiffen permanently. Subsequently switching to flat shoes may cause calf muscles, which can be shortened by nearly 15 percent by regularly wearing heels, to stretch painfully. The researchers suggest alternating wearing heels and flats, or stretching calf muscles daily to avoid painful tightening.
Syria has recently passed a ban on women wearing the niqab, or full-face veil, at universities, stating that the practice was “inconsistent with the values and ethics of academic traditions.” The ban does not pertain to women who wear headscarves as opposed to the face-covering veils.
The Vatican recently stated that the attempted ordination of women is a “crime against the faith,” and that anyone who attempts to ordain a woman, as well as the woman seeking ordination, should be immediately excommunicated. This statement puts the ordination of women in the same category as clerical sex abuse of minors, heresy, and schism, and makes it one of the most serious crimes within the clerical system.
Argentina legalised same-sex marriage in mid-July, making it the first Latin American country and tenth in the world to do so. The Senate voted 33–27 in favour of the bill.
After Iceland legalised same-sex marriage in June, Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardotti married partner Jonina Leosdottir and became the world’s first head of state to enter into a same-sex marriage. Sigurdardotti is also Iceland’s first female prime minister, having taken office in 2009.
Abortion in Pakistan is illegal unless the mother’s life is at risk and, as a result, many women die each year due to unsafe, back street abortions. To help combat this, a new telephone hotline has been launched by several Pakistani organisations and a Dutch non-profit, Women on Waves. The controversial project plans to give women advice on how to safely and effectively induce abortion using a prescription drug meant for other purposes, as well as how to prevent haemorrhaging. The hotline also plans to make trained staff available to spread information about abortions to rural areas.
Caster Semenya, the South African runner whose competitive career and previous results were called into question over the past year due to concerns over her true sex has been reinstated in competition, having been ruled “female enough” by track and field’s governing body. The practice of gender testing in athletes has been around since the ‘60s, and remains controversial as chromosomal abnormalities may cause a female to fail the test, even though she is receiving no benefits from her genetic variance.
A study led by scientists at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre has shown that women who are more physically active at any point during their lives have a lower risk of developing dementia later in life, and also found that being active as a teenager has the most significant impact on lowering the risk of dementia in later life.
Certain doctors in Vancouver’s South East Asian community are seeing an increase in the number of requests for hymenoplasty, a surgical procedure which reconstructs a woman’s hymen, making her appear to be a virgin even if she is not. The procedure is typically carried out prior to traditional arranged marriages, often in the Muslim community. Women request the procedure to protect themselves from divorce or even physical abuse, repercussions they fear from their conservative communities for having had pre-marital sex.
After four years of development, the UN recently created a new body for promoting equality for women around the world, known as U.N. Women. The organisation brings together four smaller, fragmented bodies into one unified group.
Researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago studied mental sharpness in 8,700 women between the ages of 65 and 79 and showed that those who are apple shaped, that is heavier around their waists, are able to perform better on memory tests than those who are pear shaped and carry their weight around their hips. In both cases, women with higher BMIs had lower performance levels than those of a healthy body weight.
Suraya Raml and Rafidah Abdul Razak recently became the first female judges appointed to Malaysia’s Islamic Court, presiding over Sharia law in that country, which ranked 96 in the 2008 Global Gender Gap Index. The appointments were made to help give equal voice to women and to appropriately mediate cases of family law.
A survey of over 1,500 women in the UK showed that nearly 50 percent of women prefer to keep at least one piece of clothing on while having sex, with 56 percent of those women saying it is in order to improve body confidence. However, only 36 percent of the men surveyed said they preferred their partners to wear at least one item of clothing.
JAL recently hired its first female pilot, JR East is now hiring female station masters, and the Bank of Japan now has its first female branch manager in its 128 years. Yet some critics worry that Japan’s gender equality measures are falling instead of improving, as suggested by a recent World Economic Forum ranking that placed Japan at 101 of 134 countries, down from 80th place in 2006. However, though women make up just 1.2 percent of all senior executive positions in Japan, Shiseido is hoping to have 30 percent of its senior leadership be women by 2013, up from a current 19 percent, a trend other companies are slowly starting to follow.
