"Is this Caribbean idyll the worst place in the world to be a woman?"

"Last year, this “jewel of the Caribbean” ranked 8th in the world for refugee claims to Canada, surpassing India (population 1.2 billion) and Pakistan (population 187 million).

The population of St. Vincent and the Grenadines? An estimated 104,000.

The majority of Vincentians flocking to Canada are women. And it appears most are fleeing domestic violence.

“There is something very wrong in the relationship between men and women in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” wrote Canadian Federal Court Justice Sean Harrington in a 2009 ruling. “Year after year, woman after woman washes up on our shores seeking protection from abusive, violent husbands or boyfriends.”

It turns out the vacationer’s idyll, with its turquoise waters and verdant hills, is one of the world’s worst places to be a woman."

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1084791--video-is-this-caribbean-idyll-the-worst-place-in-the-world-to-be-a-woman

"Argentina Gender Rights Law: A New World Standard"

 "The gender identity law that won congressional approval with a 55-0 Senate vote Wednesday night is the latest in a growing list of bold moves on social issues by the Argentine government, which also legalized gay marriage two years ago."

 ""The fact that there are no medical requirements at all — no surgery, no hormone treatment and no diagnosis — is a real game changer and completely unique in the world. It is light years ahead of the vast majority of countries, including the U.S., and significantly ahead of even the most advanced countries," said Eisfeld, who researched the laws of the 47 countries for the Council of Europe's human rights commission."
 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=152470558

 
Other articles: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenni-chang-and-lisa-dazols/argentina-transgender-law_b_1506166.html
http://feministing.com/2012/05/11/friday-feminist-fuck-yeah-argentina-makes-history-with-new-gender-identity-law/

"Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen"

"A country tries to banish gender."

"In 2010, the World Economic Forum designated Sweden as the most gender-equal country in the world.  But for many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal but gender-neutral. The idea is that the government and society should tolerate no distinctions at all between the sexes. This means on the narrow level that society should show sensitivity to people who don't identify themselves as either male or female, including allowing any type of couple to marry. But that’s the least radical part of the project. What many gender-neutral activists are after is a society that entirely erases traditional gender roles and stereotypes at even the most mundane levels."

...

"Social Democrat politicians have proposed installing gender-neutral restrooms so that members of the public will not be compelled to categorize themselves as either ladies or gents. Several preschools have banished references to pupils' genders, instead referring to children by their first names or as "buddies." So, a teacher would say "good morning, buddies" or "good morning, Lisa, Tom, and Jack" rather than, "good morning, boys and girls.""

...

"But not everyone is keen on this political meddling with the Swedish language. In a recent interview for Vice magazine, Jan Guillou, one of Sweden's most well-known authors, referred to proponents of hen as "feminist activists who want to destroy our language." Other critics believe it can be psychologically and socially damaging, especially for children. Elise Claeson, a columnist and a former equality expert at the Swedish Confederation of Professions, has said that young children can become confused by the suggestion that there is a third, "in-between" gender at a time when their brains and bodies are developing. Adults should not interrupt children's discovery of their gender and sexuality, argues Claeson."

...

"Ironically, in the effort to free Swedish children from so-called normative behavior, gender-neutral proponents are also subjecting them to a whole set of new rules and new norms as certain forms of play become taboo, language becomes regulated, and children's interactions and attitudes are closely observed by teachers."

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_sweden_s_new_gender_neutral_pronoun_causes_controversy_.html

Important Swanee Hunt Articles

Bosnia Still Needs Fixing

"Dayton also divided the country itself into two separate statelets — a Bosniak-Croat federation and a Serb republic — governed by the same legislature and presidency. At the time, many Bosnian women’s groups, religious leaders, civil society activists and students warned that the arrangement wouldn’t work because the country historically had been integrated. But they weren’t at the negotiating table; only those with the power to fight or to lay down their weapons were invited.

In retrospect, perhaps we could have done better to engage politically unrepresented groups who craved stability, so that they could sit alongside those who knew how to fight."

Sex Trafficking: Swanee Hunt interview 
Fox 25, Boston News: "Prostitution and sex trafficking is a problem for any big city across America.
Over 60 criminal justice professionals from all over the U.S. will gather right here in Boston.
Their main goal is to find ways to eliminate the demand for illegal commercial sex.
Ambassador Swanee Hunt Founder and Chair of the Hunt Alternatives Fund joined us in studio to tell us more about it."

Ending the 'hot or not' factor for Nikki Haley and female candidates: Sexist attitudes in the media toward female candidates don't just hurt women, they hurt all of us – lowering public discourse and damaging political representation. It's time to push back.

Political Parity Launches Year of Women Campaign
"A coalition of women's rights leaders has launched a bipartisan campaign to double the number of women elected to the highest levels of government by 2020. Political Parity held a press conference on January 19th to announce the initiative chaired by Swanee Hunt and Kerry Healey. Healey dubbed the campaign a "grand experiment"."
 
Swanne Hunt, former Ambassador to Austria under the Clinton Administration, is an important political figure "at the forefront of the protection, encouragement, and advancement of women in US and across the world." http://www.swaneehunt.com/publicpolicy.htm

Women's Political Movements in Cameroon by Mitzi Goheen

"Women throughout West Africa have always had the right to protest, individually or more powerfully in group, when they perceive that men have acted in ways which show disrespect for women and for women's role in society."

...

"And in neighboring Nigeria, Igbo women have long had an institution called "Sitting on a Man" where women collectively, in costumes again very much like the women I have described here in Nso, could corner a man who they thought had insulted women or who had beaten his wives in his house--or wherever they found him, and yell obscenities and threaten him physically until he recanted publicly and paid a fine."

...

"Within the context of a commodity economy, women have had to bear the largest burden of the economic crisis which has debilitated much of Africa. Becoming especially acute in Cameroon over the past decade where it has been exacerbated by structural adjustment programs attempting to curtail the overspending and corruption of its government in a number of ways, one of which has been a fifty percent devaluation of the CFA--a move which caused prices for most household essentials to triple within a few months.. During this time women's formerly inalienable rights to particular resources such as land have been increasingly threatened as commodification of land and of food crops has proceeded apace--with an increasing population and with the possibility of a civil service job shut off for most men--and with drastic salary cuts within the civil service, many men have taken over available farm land as commercial enterprises and many have been selling ancestral land to be able to maintain a middle class life style. The burden of women's responsibilities to earn a cash income to pay school fees, medical bills and other obligations formerly paid by men who no longer have access to any kind of work--essentially to fulfill what has always been women's role--to reproduce the household and underwrite the rural standard of living-- has grown almost exponentially."

Mitzi Goheen is a Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Amherst College.  
http://www3.amherst.edu/~mrhunt/womencrossing/goheen.html

"Ariz. Bars Funding For Groups Providing Abortions"

As The Arizona Republic reports:

"The law aims to prevent contracts with or grants to any group that perform abortions that do not meet the federal requirements under Title 19 of the Social Security Act, which reimburses in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment. It also prioritizes how public money for family planning will be distributed — such as to state-owned health-care centers and rural hospitals."

In a statement in April, Planned Parenthood Arizona said the law "could reduce access to a wide range of preventive health care for thousands of Arizonans."

The governor signed the legislation during an event for the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List. In her press release, she adds:

"This is a common sense law that tightens existing state regulations and closes loopholes in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to fund abortions, whether directly or indirectly."

"The Wage Gap Over Time: In Real Dollars, Women See a Continuing Gap"

Unfortunately, we really haven't come that far:  http://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html

"Rachel Maddow Clashes With Alex Castellanos Over Women And The Economy On 'Meet The Press' (VIDEO)"

 Alex Casellanos is really scary in this clip, but Rachel Maddow is brilliant - definitely worth watching!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/rachel-maddow-alex-castellanos-meet-the-press-women-economy_n_1464039.html

Checking Rachel's facts:
 - The National Committee on Pay Equity states on it's website that:
"The wage gap remained statistically unchanged in the last year. Women's earnings were 77.4 percent of men's in 2010, compared to 77.0 percent in 2009, according to Census statistics released September 13, 2011 based on the median earnings of all full-time, year-round workers."http://www.pay-equity.org/

- A TIME magazine article from April 20120 explains: 
"Once you control for factors like education and experience, notes Francine Blau — who, along with fellow Cornell economist Lawrence Kahn, published a study on the 1998 wage gap — women's earnings rise to 81% of men's. Factor in occupation, industry and whether they belong to a union, and they jump to 91%. That's partly because women tend to cluster in lower-paying fields. The most-educated swath of women, for example, gravitates toward the teaching and nursing fields. Men with comparable education become business executives, scientists, doctors and lawyers — jobs that pay significantly more.  
Still, workers don't choose their industry in a vacuum. "Why do you think [male-dominated industries] are sex-segregated?" says Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. "Very often women aren't welcome there." Real or perceived, discrimination in certain sectors could discourage women from seeking employment there. A dearth of role models might, in turn, influence the next generation of girls to gravitate toward lower-paying fields, creating an unfortunate cycle.
But industry doesn't tell the whole story. Women earned less than men in all 20 industries and 25 occupation groups surveyed by the Census Bureau in 2007 — even in fields in which their numbers are overwhelming. Female secretaries, for instance, earn just 83.4% as much as male ones. And those who pick male-dominated fields earn less than men too: female truck drivers, for instance, earn just 76.5% of the weekly pay of their male counterparts."http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.html

- Catalyst* analyzes median weekly earnings, education levels, the wage gap broken down by age, marriage economics, women's earnings as a percent of men's by industry.... very thorough and strongly conclusive - women still make less than man anyway you look at it!
*"Founded in 1962, Catalyst is the leading nonprofit membership organization expanding opportunities for women and business."http://www.catalyst.org/publication/217/womens-earnings-and-income

Looks like Mr. Castellanos needs to do a little more research...