"Because We're Women"
was written by Australian Feminist
Joyce Stevens
in the early 1970's

BECAUSE     WOMAN's     WORK IS UNDERPAID OR UNPAID &    WHAT WE LOOK LIKE iS MORE IMPORTANT THAT WHAT WE DO & iF WE GET RAPED IT'S OUR FAULT &    iF WE LOVE WOMEN IT'S BECAUSE WE CAN'T GET A REAL MAN &     iF WE EXPECT COMMUNITY CARE    FOR OUR FAMILY WE ARE SELFISH & iF WE STAND UP FOR OUR RIGHTS WE ARE LOUD & iF wE DON'T WE ARE tYPICAL WEAK FEMALES & iF WE WANT TO GET   MARRIED   WE ARE OUT TO TRAP A MAN & iF WE DON'T WE ARE UNNATURAL & BECAUSE     WE     AREN'T     DEEMED     RESPONSIBLE      ENOUGH TO DECIDE    iF,   WHEN   AND   HOW   WE   WANT   TO   GIVE   BIRTH   ..
WE ARE FEMINISTS

Why dedicate a day exclusively to the celebration of the world's women?

The United Nations General Assembly, composed of delegates from every Member State, celebrates International Women's Day to recognize that peace and social progress require the active participation and equality of women, and to acknowledge the contribution of women to international peace and security.

For the women of the world, the Day is an occasion to review how far they have come in their struggle for equality, peace and development.

You might think that women's equality benefits mostly women, but every one-percentile growth in female secondary schooling results in a 0.3 percent growth in the economy. Yet girls are often kept from receiving education in the poorest countries that would best benefit from the economic growth.

In recent decades, much progress has been made. On a worldwide level, women's access to education and proper health care has increased; their participation in the paid labor force has grown; and legislation that promises equal opportunities for women and respect for their human rights has been adopted in many countries. The world now has an ever- growing number of women participating in society as policy-makers.

However, nowhere in the world can women claim to have all the same rights and opportunities as men.

The majority of the world's 1.3 billion absolute poor are women.

On average, women receive between 30 and 40 per cent less pay than men earn for the same work.

And everywhere, women continue to be victims of violence, with rape and domestic violence listed as significant causes of disability and death among women of reproductive age worldwide.
 
 
In my local paper today, a well known sporting identity said this: "If we're going to have International Women's Day, then we also need an international men's day because they face an awful lot of issues, too."

and it's true...men DO face alot of issues. For those of you who question WHY there is an international women's day...read the following articles.Nowhere in the world are men used as breeding machines to create a new generation of a race, to exterminate the genes of a race, nowhere are men arrested because they created a child out of marriage, or put to death because they were raped and fell pregnant by their attacker. What kind of Government attempts to have reports about widespread rape witheld from the public?

Report reveals mass rape horror
By Opheera Mcdoom in Khartoum, Sudan
08mar05
ABOUT 500 women in Darfur have been treated for rape in recent months and most said their attackers were militiamen or soldiers, according to an aid agency report.

However, the number of rape victims was probably higher as many were afraid to report the crime for fear of stigmatisation and mistreatment, said the study prepared by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

UN aid chief Jan Egeland said he fully supported the report, which he said included some of the first documented medical evidence of the widespread abuses against women in the arid region in western Sudan.

The Government could not continue to allow impunity for the crimes and the guilty must be brought to justice, he said.

"The problem is acute - it's wide-ranging. Sudan never had this kind of systematic rape before," said Mr Egeland, the UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs.

 
"Now Sudan has the same problem that we see in many other African and other conflicts, and the Sudanese government has to face up to this."

The Government in the predominantly Muslim country has accused media and aid groups of exaggerating the extent of rape during a more than two-year-old rebellion in Darfur.

The MSF study said more than 80 per cent of the victims reported that their attackers were militiamen or soldiers. It did not specify whether the militiamen included rebel factions.

In anonymous accounts, it described how three women in West Darfur state were beaten and raped by five men last October.

"After they abused us, they told us that now we would have Arab babies; and if they would find any Fur women, they would rape them again to change the colour of their children," the women said in the report.

The Fur is one of three non-Arab tribes which form the majority of the almost 2 million people displaced in Darfur, where rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing Khartoum of neglecting the western region and favouring Arab tribes.

Darfur rebels say the Government armed Arab militias to help put down their uprising and they have conducted a campaign of village-burning and rape. The Government denies links with the militia, known as Janjaweed.

The MSF head of mission in Sudan, Paul Foreman, said the Government had asked the agency not to publish the report.

"They have expressed their strong desire that we don't publish it, and I politely declined," he said.

The report said that in one of the three Darfur states between October and mid-February, MSF clinics treated 297 rape victims between the ages of 12 and 45.

Given the victims' sense of shame and the threat of imprisonment for illegal pregnancy in Sudan, where Islamic sharia law is enforced, the MSF "strongly believes that the numbers recorded are only a partial representation of the real number of victims".

Women were held captive for days and raped by multiple attackers, and many were beaten, the report said. Some were ostracised from their communities and others had been arrested.

Mr Egeland said he did not expect MSF would be threatened with expulsion, as aid groups Oxfam and Save the Children UK were for reports the authorities disagreed with last year.

Tens of thousands raped
By David Lewis in Bunia, Congo
07mar05
GOVERNMENT soldiers and rebels have raped tens of thousands of women and children in eastern Congo but are going unpunished, a leading rights group said today.

Fighters on all sides of Congo's war have raped civilians on a massive scale since the conflict broke out in 1998 but only a handful have been tried, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

"Sexual violence has shattered tens of thousands of lives in Congo but fewer than a dozen victims have seen their assailants prosecuted," Alison Des Forges, senior adviser to HRW's Africa division, said.

Sheltering in a refugee camp protected by UN peacekeepers with tanks and machine guns, Therese Yeda, 32, described how a militia group gang raped her last week as she walked between two villages.

"One was at the checkpoint and the others were hiding in the bushes before they jumped out and pointed their weapons at me," she said.

 
The people she was with ran away terrified but Yeda was unable to run because of all the things she was carrying.

"Ten of them had guns, the other two had machetes," she said.

" All 12 of them raped me ... I am eight months pregnant but the baby doesn't seem to be moving any more."

Her five children were also beaten by the gunmen.

An upsurge in clashes since January has displaced 70,000 civilians in Democratic Republic of Congo's remote north-eastern Ituri district, and reports of rape are frequent.

Ethnic warfare has killed more than 50,000 people in Ituri since 1999.

Children as young as eight have taken part in the most recent fighting, refugees said.

Medecins San Frontieres (MSF) said it had treated more than 2500 rape victims, from four months to 80 years of age, at its hospital in the regional capital Bunia since June 2003.

The true number could be 50 times higher as victims are afraid to speak out, the organisation said.

"We have been here for two years and we have not seen any improvement," Patrick Barbier, head of the MSF mission in the region, said.

"It is so systematic – whenever there are attacks by armed groups, there is rape.

"Sexual violence is so stigmatised. The victims don't come and seek medical care ... It is not taken seriously by the authorities so there is complete impunity."

HRW said an increasing number of sexual abuse victims wanted justice but rape trials that had taken place in Congo had fallen woefully short of international standards, with support for victims virtually non-existent.

While the International Criminal Court may prosecute the occasional case, the vast majority would have to be tried in Congolese courts, HRW said.

One woman told HRW how she watched her 13-year old niece being raped by fighters loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda, who launched a short-lived rebellion in the eastern town of Bukavu last June.

"Four men raped her," the woman told HRW.

"They had spread her arms and legs and held her down.

"I had been with her but hid in a banana tree and watched what happened. Afterward she started to vomit blood. We brought her to hospital and she died two days later."