women’s status
Lepcha Women Gain Confidence
In many conferences, women constitute a token presence, the modest voices at tables and lecterns dominated by men, argued a South Asian lady. International Rivers, an NGO that advocates for the human and natural communities affected by harmful dams, sought to modify that dynamic by organizing the first-ever Women and Rivers Congress in Nepal at […]
Discrimination against Ladakhi Women
Anzara Anjum Khan wrote a piece for an Indian daily newspaper last week in which she emphasized that the situation for women in Ladakh is worse than she had thought. Ladakhi women are widely discriminated against, she found: they are often not given a share of their father’s or their husband’s properties. Furthermore, they are […]
Gender Violence in Peaceful Societies: The Ladakhi
One of the more significant aspects of the nonviolence that epitomizes many of the world’s most peaceful societies is the relatively high status of women and girls. Each society is different, of course, but in many of them the women and girls are considered to be equal, or nearly so, to men and boys. Males […]
Fipa Village Women Humiliate and Punish a Man
A young Fipa man was punished by the women of his village for the crime of verbally, and publicly, abusing his mother. The crimes he committed violated Fipa traditions, so the women disciplined him with harsh, traditional punishments of their own. The story was reported widely in the middle of last week in such African […]
Zapotec Women Strive for Equality
Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza has had a fruitful career over the past 10 years as a successful politician, despite the initial resistance of the men in her hometown. The opposition to her election as mayor of the community made news headlines internationally nearly a decade ago since the town “fathers” had canceled the election results—it was […]
Ladakhi Women Help their Communities
The Ama Tsogspa, the Ladakhi term for groups of local women, have been tackling such community problems as the ever-increasing trash in some towns and helping to solve them. A news story in the Indian publication Business Standard last week translated “Ama Tsogspa” as “Mothers’ Alliances.” The report on the Ama Tsogspa opened with the […]
Female Hysteria on Tristan da Cunha [journal article review]
Doctors in the 1930s described a series of fainting spells by women on Tristan da Cunha as female hysteria, a diagnosis that would no longer be acceptable to medical authorities. Instead, Lance van Sittert analyzes them as political expressions. In a recent journal article, the Associate Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Cape […]
The Study of Amish Women
Karen Johnson-Weiner, a prominent scholar from New York State, is studying the lives of Amish women during a semester-long fellowship at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. Professor Johnson-Weiner is currently a Snowden Fellow in the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at the college campus in Lancaster County. According to an article in LancasterOnline, she has […]
Improving the Status of Women in Rural Thailand
As far back as 1946, Ruth Benedict argued that the Thai culture of male dominance is based on their religious practices and on their interpretation of Buddhist doctrines (Phillips 1965). Keyes (1984) amplified those ideas by focusing specifically on Rural Thai society and on the salient fact that, in that nation, only men could become […]
Concerns for Batek Gender Equality
Although gender equality has long been a hallmark of the Batek people, the status of women in that society may be starting to fray, according to a report published last week. Patrick Mills, the author of the scholarly report, observes that recent developments, such as the employment of Batek men, may be threatening their traditions. […]
