off our backs back issues from March 2004:
From the collective.(Editorial)
Mar 01, 2004 ... In working on this issue (our 34th international issue in 34 years of publishing!), we have been encouraged, heartened and empowered by seeing so many examples of women's strength, resistance, and determination--often under horribly difficult conditions--in the fight for social justice ....
Nigeria: report criticizes death penalty.(Africa)(Amnesty International report)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Amnesty International released a report showing that the death penalty in Nigeria is being used unfairly to punish women for crimes against Islamic law, including abortion-related offenses, adultery and other forms of sexual "transgressions." The recent case of Amina Lawal, a ...
Senegal: countering FGM.(Africa)(female genital mutilation )(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... With the help of a public health awareness program, female genital mutilation may be eradicated from Senegal within the next two to five years. The program, called Tostan, fights FGM through educational empowerment. Founder, Illinois native Molly Melching, did not create the program with ...
Zimbabwe: love protest banned.(Africa)
Mar 01, 2004 ... HARARE-Women of Zimbabwe Arise, a women's rights group, had been planning a march against political violence and hatred in Zimbabwe. The march was slated to occur in Harare on Valentine's Day, but was stopped by police who allegedly threatened to shoot and kill if the protests went ahead ....
Afghanistan: women trained as police.(Asia)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... For the first time since the fall of the Taliban regime, seven women have joined a U.S.-sponsored police training course. The women will be taught the same things as male students, including how to make arrests, interview and patrol. This marks the first time women have been ...
China: Korean women forced into sex slavery.(Asia)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... At least 100,000 women refugees have fled from North Korea to China in recent years to escape hunger; most of them are forced into sexual slavery. According to human rights groups quoted in a recent article in The Washington Post, North Korean men in China can find jobs as laborers, but ...
India: Indian women used as guinea pigs.(Asia)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Pressure from women's advocacy organizations has spurred the Indian government to draft a law to protect women from unethical and exploitative clinical testing. The groups claim that large multinational pharmaceutical companies prey on the poor, using young women to participate in medical ...
Iraq: interim constitution sets "goals" for women in assembly.(Asia)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... BAGHAD -- Iraqi's U.S.-appointed Governing Council has adopted an interim constitution that would be the law of the land until at least 2005, when an assembly chosen by elections would draft a permanent constitution. The draft constitution does not require the inclusion of women in the ...
Iraq: women's rights activist receives death threat.(Asia)(Yanar Mohamed)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Yanar Mohamed, an Iraqi women's rights activist living in Canada, has received a death threat from a group called Jaish al-Sahaba for her efforts to overturn the Iraqi Governing Council's Resolution 137. Resolution 137 places family law under the enforcement of Sharia (Islamic) law, which ...
Pakistan: girls' schools burned.(Asia)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... CHILAS -- Three people have been arrested for torching a school building in the remote village of Akhrot in Pakistan's northern region, the ninth school destroyed in five days. Eight of the nine schools destroyed in this spree were all-girls schools. Non-governmental ...
South Korea: former prostitutes sue pimps.(Asia)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... SEOUL -- Nine former prostitutes are filing lawsuits demanding damages from the pimps who prostituted them. The women all were pressed into prostitution as minors. They are suing for "wages" that were promised but never paid and for punitive damages for emotional distress. The ...
Australia: aboriginal women's tradition outlawed.(Australia)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Police in Alice Springs have banned an aboriginal dance that involves women dancing topless in a public place. The dance is a cultural tradition that dates back thousands of years. The Central Land Council, an aboriginal representative ...
European Union: report hits sex industry.(Europe)(report by Swedish Parliament member attacks prostitution)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... BRUSSELS -- On January 19, Swedish Minister of Parliament Marianne Eriksson presented a report she wrote criticizing the sex industry to the European Parliament and held a hearing on the subject that was attended by 200 people. Testimony was given by Janice Raymond, codirector of the ...
United States: male stupidity at its best.(North America)(men arrested for child abuse and pornography after having photos developed at a on-hour photo shop )(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- Three male gang members were arrested and charged with child pornography, rape, and sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl after a one-hour photo shop employee developed photos of them committing the crime. By tracing a license plate shown in the pictures, ...
United States: overseas molester charged under new law.(North America)(Brief Article)
Mar 01, 2004 ... SEATTLE, WA -- An American man was charged under the Protect Act of 2003 which makes it a crime for any U.S. citizen to travel abroad for sexual services. Michael Lewis Clark admitted to being a pedophile since 1996, ...
Susan Moller Okin 1946-2004.(News)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Feminist philosopher Susan Moller Okin was found dead at her home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, on March 3rd. Okin is world renowned for her pioneering contributions to political philosophy. She was one of the first political philosophers to talk about principles of justice beyond the public ...
Women of the world.(Unite)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Things are bad for women all over the world, that's for sure. According to a new report by Amnesty International: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] * Up to one billion women--one in every three--have been beaten, have had sex forced upon them or have been otherwise abused, often ...
"A tragedy has happened in Iraq".(effect of the Iraqi War on women)
Mar 01, 2004; ... Victoria Cunningham was part of an all women's CODEPINK delegation to Iraq in late January, early February 2004. The group met with representatives of a variety of Iraqi women's organizations that are working on issues ranging from creating income-generating projects for women to ...
World Social Forum: women pave the way toward global justice.(Cover Story)
Mar 01, 2004; ... This January, around the same time the world's bastions of capitalism met in Davos, Switzerland, to strategize their own job security at the World Economic Forum, a mass of 100,000 revolutionary leaders and grassroots actors gathered in Mumbai, India, for the 4th World Social Forum (WSF) ....
Femicidio: femicide made in Mexico.
Mar 01, 2004; ... For the past decade, a sexual genocide has raged virtually unnoticed in Juarez, the largest city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Approximately 370 women have been found murdered in the State of Chihuahua over the past decade, according to an Amnesty International report published last ...
Interview: Juarez mother counters violence with activism.(mother of murdered woman fights violence against women; Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico)(Interview)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Norma Andrade is advocating on behalf of her daughter Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrade and hundreds of other young women who have been found murdered in Ciudad Juarez in the past ten years. Andrade has been traveling the globe in an effort to put international pressure on the Mexican ...
Lesbiradas: lesbian activism in Guatemala.(Interview)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Claudia Gonzalez is the General Coordinator for the Liberated Lesbians Collective of Guatemala (Lesbiradas), a lesbian activist organization in Guatemala. Karla Mantilla of off our backs interviewed her during her tour of the United States last June to highlight human rights issues among ...
An interview with: Shahnaz Bokhari; Pakistani activist against violence against women.(Interview)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Shahnaz Bokhari is the founder of the Progressive Women's Association (PWA) in Pakistan and has been helping women victims of social and domestic violence who have been subjected to rape, incest, burning by fire or acid, battering and karo kari (honor killings) since 1986. She has done ...
To be a woman in Cuba ...
Mar 01, 2004; ... The following two articles on Cuba represent divergent views of post-revolutionary Cuban society. It's 3 AM, you've been to a dance club in a foreign city with some female acquaintances and the bar is closing. One of the young hosts at the club offers to walk you back to where ...
Their revolution--and ours.(visiting Cuba)
Mar 01, 2004; ... I went to Cuba with an open heart and mind, eager to study, learn from, and embrace the Revolution. I had already read quite a bit about Cuba, so I knew about their enlightened and humane systems of education and health care. I knew that Cuba, suffering through a 40-year embargo imposed by ...
Bananas.(sex education in El Salvador)
Mar 01, 2004; ... I never imagined I'd find myself washing fake ejaculate off a penis model in a little bathroom with a tin door, tin roof, broken sink, and a bucket-flush toilet with no seat. As I cleaned spermicide from the pelvic model and wiped the penis model dry, I wondered just what I had gotten ...
Women demand legal abortion: for 14-year-old rape victim in Argentina.
Mar 01, 2004; ... A 14-year old pregnant girl raped by her stepfather in a small town near Bahia Blanca, in Buenos Aires province, was denied an abortion in a public hospital by a judge. Abortion is illegal in Argentina but it is estimated that there are half a million abortions per year. A recent study ...
Another economy is possible: women and the Venezuelan economic revolution.(Interview)
Mar 01, 2004 ... Nora Castaneda is an economist appointed by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to head the Women's Development Bank in Venezula, a bank which offers microfinancing and other consulting services to poor women in Venezuela to develop their own businesses. Castaneda was instrumental in ...
In East Timor, women call for justice.
Mar 01, 2004; ... In war, women are often targeted with violence. This was certainly true in the Southeast Asian nation of East Timor, where women are speaking out and demanding justice. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] From 1975 to 1999, the Indonesian military occupied East Timor, while ...
Women take action: against government cutbacks in British Columbia.
Mar 01, 2004; ... I live in Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada. Campbell River is a small community of about 23,000 people on Vancouver Island. Our province changed governments a year and a half ago, and the new government has cut back on funding for services needed by many low-income women. The ...
Reclaiming the paradigm.(Commentary)(ending violence against women)
Mar 01, 2004; ... The patriarchal reality of war is blatantly reflected in the staged photo opportunities that are daily paraded in front of us. Men shaking hands, men shaking fists; the decision-makers of war. Except for a few very visible tokens, the voices and lives of women are trivialized, if not ...
Women and War.(Review)(Book Review)
Mar 01, 2004; ... Women and War By Jenny Matthews, The University of Michigan Press, 2003, $29.95. How is it possible that people--historically, men, and still almost entirely men--can spear, stab, rape, shoot, burn, blast, eviscerate, poison, and disintegrate large numbers of women, ...
Women on War: an international anthology of writings from antiquity to the present.(Review)(Book Review)
Mar 01, 2004; ... Women on War: An International Anthology of Writings from Antiquity to the Present Revised and Expanded. Edited by Daniela Gioseffi. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2003. (Originally published, 1988) Like a cold drink of clear spring ...
Iron Jawed Angels.(Television Program Review)
Mar 01, 2004; ... HBO's original movie, Iron Jawed Angels, starring Hilary Swank, Frances O'Connor, Julia Ormond, Patrick Dempsey and Angelica Houston, chronicles the last eight years of the struggle to win "votes for women" in the United States. The movie begins in 1912 when Alice Paul (Swank) ...
Radicals within the pro-choice movement.(Commentary)
Mar 01, 2004; ... I am a feminist. I am also a radical. Though I believe that these two ideologies complement each other, I see vast discrepancies arising between their practical applications. The place where this incongruity is most obvious is within the pro-choice movement. As a radical, I find it ...
Do not dishonor prostitution survivors.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 01, 2004; ... To the off our backs collective, Thank you for your review of "Monster," the story of Aileen Wuornos (Jan/Feb, 2004). I was impressed by the movie, and thought they did a good job at documenting the slow, painful destruction of a human being through neglect and abuse. I have ...
Janet Jackson's breast vs. political censorship.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
Mar 01, 2004; ... Dear oob: At lunch today a friend of mine noted that the whole Janet Jackson incident took everyone's attention away from the fact that CBS refused to air the MoveOn 30-second spot "Child's Pay." I thought that was a very interesting observation. The "boob incident" ...
Correction on labor statistics.(Letters)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)(Correction Notice)
Mar 01, 2004; ... Dear oob, I would like to support the magazine. Its goals are compatible with mine. However. I was disturbed by the data in our January-February issue. p. 13.on Women and Work. The latest data on women in ...
Dykes to watch out for.(Cartoon)
Mar 01, 2004; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION ...
Feslivals & conferences.(Calendar)
Mar 01, 2004 ... March 2004 28 Berkeley, CA 6th Annual Pat Bond Memorial Old Dyke Award Welcome by Kate Kendall and Terry Baum, Trinity Ordona and folk singer Ronnie Gilbert. 3:30-6:30pm. CONTACT: web: www.patbondaward.com ...