Women detainees and rights groups have accused Egyptian troops and prison authorities of sexual assault in the latest crackdown on demonstrations.

More than a dozen women were detained among some 300 protesters following a demonstration outside the Defense Ministry in Cairo last week.

Rights activist Aida Seif al-Dawla said Wednesday that female prison guards sexually assaulted some women by inspecting their vaginas under the pretext of searching for drugs.

A recently released female detainee told a parliamentary committee that soldiers groped her, knocked her unconscious and threatened her with sexual assault.

The was no immediate comment from the ruling military.

There was outrage last year against "virginity tests" by a military doctor on female detainees.

Source: AP

Sex workers in the Bolivian city of El Alto have gone on hunger strike to demand a solution to the month-long doctor's strike which has forced the closure of public hospitals across the country.

About a dozen male and female sex workers, many with their faces covered, crowded into the lobby of a neighbourhood health centre on Sunday, vowing to continue their action until the situation is resolved.

At times they chanted "Useless minister, we want a solution!", a reference to Bolivian Health Minister Juan Carlos Calvimontes.

The workers claim their personal health, as well as that of the wider community, is at risk as they are not receiving their weekly check-ups at local public hospitals and clinics because of the doctor's strike.

Bolivian doctors are on strike over the length of their working hours.

"We used to have our weekly check-ups, but now that there's a strike, it's been more than a month since we've been checked," explained Lilli Cortez, president of the Organisation of Night Workers, a local group formed by sex workers to defend their rights.

"There could be an outbreak of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) or HIV/AIDS if the women aren't checked," she added.

There are about 45,000 sex workers registered in Bolivia.

The country's laws require that they undergo free weekly check-ups in order to work on the streets and in brothels.

"We hope this will be solved once and for all because they are playing with our lives, with our health," said Jacqueline, one of the sex workers participating in the hunger strike.

"You can't play with health," she said. "It's a time bomb that is going to explode at any moment. The lives of the entire population is at stake here."

According to authorities in El Alto, a town 12km from the capital La Paz, there are about 2,500 bars and brothels in the local area, only 350 of which are legal.

Source: Aljazeera

Although Ms. Khatun’s husband repented the next morning, the head cleric of their mosque in Delhi insisted that the divorce was binding. According to his reading of Islamic law, Ms. Khatun would need to marry another man, consummate the marriage and then divorce before she could remarry her husband.

For more than a decade, Muslim women’s organizations in India have been fighting for changes in the body of Islamic law that governs marriage, divorce and the property rights of women. But as the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board held its annual convention in Mumbai last week, the battle lines had never been so starkly drawn. Although the Indian Constitution guarantees equal rights to all citizens irrespective of their religion, Muslims are governed by the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937. Attempts to apply a common civil code have often been viewed as interference in the practices of India’s largest religious minority.

The Personal Law Board is one of the country’s more influential Muslim groups. Its chiefly male membership of clerics and scholars has rejected proposals to change Muslim personal law, and is opposing a demand by women’s groups that marriages be legally registered, as is mandatory for non-Muslims.

Zeenat Shaukat Ali, a professor of Islamic Studies at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai and the author of “Marriage and Divorce in Islam,” is blunt in her assessment of the current situation.

“We are asking for codification of the legal system within the framework of Koranic law,” she said. “The Koran does not support a system that is controlled by the patriarchy, and the government has to treat this matter on a war footing if they truly mean to bring about gender justice.”

The changes that women’s organizations have been discussing for more than a decade — with major meetings held across India over the last three years — include the compulsory registration of marriages with the state, the abolition of the triple talaq on the grounds that violates the Koran and the establishment of a more reliable system of financial support for wives.

“There is no political will to change this law even though we are a secular democratic republic,” said Ms. Ali. “Politicians refuse to move ahead because some males have objected.”

Her view is echoed by several Muslim women’s rights groups. Many of these, like the breakaway All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board, which was founded in 2005, have attempted to introduce changes in their own way. In 2008, this group, led by Shaista Amber, proposed a “shariat nikahnama,” or Islamic marriage contract. This called for mandatory marriage registration and proposed more rights to the wife, within the guidelines of Koranic law. The All-India Muslim Personal Law Board dismissed the proposed changes.

Two years later, in 2010, the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, an organization of more than 20,000 Muslim women in 15 states across India, staged marches in the streets of Lucknow to support three women who had assaulted Muslim clerics after their husbands had obtained fraudulent divorce decrees by bribery. Now, the B.M.M.A. is urging legislation to address Muslim family life, arguing that “in the absence of codified law, customary practices that have diverged from the values and principles of the Koran have emerged.”

Zakia Soman, a founding member of the B.M.M.A., has spent much of the last three years listening to what Muslim women — and a growing number of Muslim men — have said in support of changing the laws.

“The clerics are ignorant about what the Koran has to say on the subject of women’s lives,” she said. “The Muslim Personal Law Board is not representative of all Muslims. Nobody elected them, and they have very few women in their organization. They don’t consider women equal, which is extremely un-Islamic. God doesn’t distinguish between men and women.

“In our three years of consultation around the country, nowhere have we found any voice saying we don’t need a codified law.”

But the larger argument is not limited to the question of family law, important as that might be. What has been raised often, especially in the past year, is the question of whether male Muslim clerics can speak for Muslim women.

Daud Sharifa Khanum, who founded a women’s empowerment group called Steps in rural Tamil Nadu State in 1991, wrote eloquently of the dissatisfaction many Muslim women felt: “Many women said that they were very unhappy with the way women were treated by community organizations such as the jamaats, the federations attached to mosques. Women’s lives were discussed, problems were addressed, without the women being present.”

In 2001, Steps formed a jamaat for women that has a strong presence today, and says it may even build a women’s mosque. The mosques, Ms. Khanum has argued, were “not really of the people.” Rather, she said, they were “male spaces that discriminated against women.”

“We shouldn’t forget that the Prophet himself was one of the first feminists,” said Ms. Ali, of St. Xavier’s. “We need to settle the legal reform debate. Let the clerics and male scholars come and discuss this, with the women’s activists on the other side.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Khatun’s story had a relatively happy ending. Faced with the prospect of marrying a strange man, Ms. Khatun found an innovative solution to her marital troubles. She took her woes to the head cleric’s wife, who exerted gentle pressure on her husband until he remembered a loophole that allowed him to declare the divorce — which neither Ms. Khatun nor her husband wanted — null and void. But not all Muslim women in similar situations have been this fortunate.

“It was 1,400 years ago that the Koran gave women equal rights,” Ms. Soman said wryly.

“We have waited a very long time for justice in this country.”

Source: New York Times

Footage shows an officer squeezing the breast of Ingrid Turinawe of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) during her arrest ahead of a rally last week.

Deputy police chief Andrew Kaweesa has apologised, saying the incident will be investigated.

Uganda's opposition says police regularly harass them during protests.

Since President Yoweri Museveni's controversial 2011 re-election, there has been a wave of opposition demonstrations - many of which have ended in violence and arrests.

But correspondents say Ugandans are outraged by the arrest on Friday of Ms Turinawe, who is the head of the Women's League of the FDC led by Kizza Besigye.

Ugandan television footage clearly shows that, as several officers tried to pull her out of her vehicle, another grabbed and squeezed her breast - and she is heard shouting out in pain.

The BBC's Siraj Kalyango in the capital, Kampala, says a group of about 15 women marched through the town to the main police station waving placards, including one that read "How would you feel if we squeezed your balls?"

Six protesters were arrested after they refused to put their tops back on - but they were released two hours later without charge.

"We wanted to ask the police if they are there to do their jobs or there to pinch breasts," event organiser Barbara Allimadi told the AFP news agency.

Source: BBC News

In "Porn Stars Against Santorum," Vivid employees dressed in street clothes (save for the leather jacket open to reveal the actress' orange bra) speak directly to camera, taking on the role of victims, explaining to the American public what life would be like without porn ("pizza delivery boys with nothing to dream about") and asking Americans to take action on May 1 with "Wank Out 2012." It's a call to action -- masturbation, that is -- aimed directly at Santorum, who posted a statement on his website last month supporting the enforcement of federal obscenity laws.

"America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography," the statement read. "A wealth of research is now available demonstrating that pornography causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences." In "Porn Stars," an actress argues that Santorum's criticisms are not supported by facts and then, addressing the "negative consequences," asks, "Wouldn't the opposite be true?"

The candidate's comments created quite a stir on the campaign trail during a time when polls show that voters are more concerned with the economy than social issues.

"We try to make videos about what's going on in the news," says Jeff Rubin, editor-in-chief of Jest, a sister site of College Humor. "We kept hearing about Rick Santorum's stance on porn, an obvious unpopular one and started thinking, These are real people whose jobs he's trying to shut down."

Jest pitched the story to Vivid, which signed up immediately. Rubin says it's all about making people laugh and doesn't think anything will actually happen on May 1. But making a point in their videos that viewers can identify with is what drives traffic to the site. (Recent Jest videos include "9 Cheesy Animated Passover Videos" and "The Passion of Tebow.")

"Porn Stars Against Santorum" is one of the most popular videos for the six-month-old site, with over 150,000 views.

"Sharing this video is a way of showing your support for this point of view without doing it publicly. If it was a really serious video about pornography, people wouldn't pass it around," says Rubin.

In the video, porn stars also explain how eliminating porn would be impossible and that it's best to "Vote Romney." After a few seconds of thought, the statement is retracted to push support to Santorum "because if he wins the primary, he would definitely get crushed by Obama."

And, adds one of the stars, "Obama would never try to stop the porn industry."

The site plans to do more videos about the 2012 election and is currently working on one involving the GOP candidates and a game of monopoly.

Rick Santorum's campaign could not be reached for comment.

Source: ABC News

Obama, a Democrat, slammed the election-year budget plan that cleared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives this week as "thinly veiled social Darwinism" that would pare down social services including health and retirement assistance.

Senior administration officials said the deficit blueprint that Republicans, including the party's likely 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, would put teachers out of work, take away funds for violence prevention and cut medical care for millions of poor and elderly women.

Republican calls to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Obama's flagship 2010 healthcare restructuring, would make it even harder for women to get prenatal and postnatal care, mammograms and bone density scans as well as nursing home assistance, they told reporters.

"It would be devastating for women," one official said the day before a White House forum on women and the economy.

Another said that one-third of babies born in the United States are now delivered with Medicaid assistance for the poor, and that among Medicare beneficiaries over the age of 85, some 70 percent are women.

Medicare and Medicaid are government-run healthcare programs for the elderly, the poor and the disabled.

"Anything you do to Medicare is going to disproportionately affect women," the official said. "Medicaid disproportionately benefits women at every stage of the life cycle."

Republicans say Obama's spending has put the country on a dangerous fiscal path, and that tighter controls are needed to avoid a crisis from spiral ling health and retirement costs. The budget proposal that passed the House is not expected to clear the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Obama administration officials denied suggestions that Friday's forum was timed to draw attention to Obama's record on women's issues at a time when contraceptive rights have become a major campaign theme.

The administration angered Roman Catholic bishops and other social conservatives when it adopted in February a policy that requires most employers to provide free coverage for women's birth control under the healthcare overhaul.

Although churches and other places of worship are exempt, the rule applies to religiously affiliated hospitals, universities, charities and other institutions. To accommodate their concerns, the administration has called for third-party administrators including insurers to handle contraceptive coverage for self-insured groups.

Obama is keen to secure strong support from women voters for his November 6 re-election bid.

A USA Today/Gallup poll released on Monday showed Obama now holds a wide margin over Romney among women voters in electoral battleground states such as Ohio, Florida and Virginia.

Source: Reuters

Amerigo Incalcaterra, head of the UNCHR's regional office for South America, said in a statement that last week's decision by Brazil's Superior Court of Justice creates a dangerous precedent and discriminates against victims.

"The sexual life of a child cannot be used to revoke its rights," he said.

The court ruled that a man accused of having sex with three 12-year-olds couldn't be convicted of rape because of extenuating circumstances, including the fact that the girls had previously worked as prostitutes.

Incalcaterra said governments must protect minors from all forms of violence, including sexual abuse.

"International human rights guidelines make it clear that a woman's sex life cannot be taken into consideration in trials regarding her rights and legal protection," the statement said.

One week ago, Amnesty International called the appeals court's decision "outrageous" and said it was an "affront to the most basic human rights."

"This shocking ruling effectively gives a green light to rapists and if it prevails could dissuade other survivors of sexual abuse from reporting these crimes," the head of the group's Brazil branch, Atila Roque, said in a statement.

Calls to the appeals court for comment went unanswered.

Source: AP

The president's "personal opinion is that women should be admitted", White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

He added that it was up to the club in the US state of Georgia to make changes to its membership policy.

The new female IBM head was not invited to join, even though the firm's last four chief executives were all asked.

Throughout its 80-year history, Augusta National has permitted only men to become members.

The exclusion of Virginia Rometty, chief executive of IBM, from the all-male club gained attention since the giant technology company is a major sponsor of the club's annual golf tournament.

'Long past'

IBM declined to comment, but noted that Mrs Rometty plays golf occasionally.

The BBC's Steve Kingstone says it is a statement that Mr Obama hopes will play well on the campaign trail."We're kind of long past the time when women should be excluded from anything," Mr Carney told reporters on Thursday.

Polls already give him a significant lead among women voters over his likely Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.

Mr Romney also endorsed the idea on Thursday.

"Well of course," he told reporters after a Pennsylvania campaign stop. "Certainly if I were a member... of course I'd have women in Augusta."

The chairman of Augusta National has said the club should be allowed to make its own decision on the matter.

But correspondents say Augusta National's all-male policy could conflict with the non-discrimination goals of many sponsor companies.

The last time Augusta National's membership policy came under scrutiny, the club stood firm and hosted its golf tournament without sponsors for two years.

Source: BBC News

Everyone practices a little bit of self-delusion, every once in a while, when it comes to the opposite sex. But Mitt Romney and the folks around him are living in a dream world when it comes to women. Clearly female voters are just not that into Romney – and his troubles get worse by the day.

It’s not that Romney’s backers don’t see the problem. Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich counsels patience: Women will warm to Romney once they know his “real views” on the issues. This comes just after Ann Romney quipped, “I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out.” Note to Romney team: Having “supporters” continue to suggest that we don’t yet know Romney’s “real views,” with or without Etch A Sketch metaphors (or icky zipper imagery), isn’t helping your guy, with anyone.

Female Romney surrogates like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte are specifically trying to minimize the role the damaging birth control battle will play among women in November. “Women don’t care about contraception,” Haley insisted, a little bit delusionally, on Tuesday, while Ayotte insisted Romney will be fine in November because  “women voters very much care about the state of the economy.”

Let me concede something to Romney’s defenders: His troubles with women aren’t mainly about contraception. They’re mainly about Romney.

The latest Gallup poll shows how bad things have gotten for the former Massachusetts moderate. He now trails President Obama in 12 swing states, largely because of the defection of independent women. Female independents now back Obama 51 to 37 percent – and that’s a 19-point swing just since the end of 2011, when they preferred Romney. But here’s a little data point for Haley: Only two in 10 independent women polled by Gallup even knew Romney’s stance on contraception. Those who did disagreed with Romney 2-1. More independent women – four in 10 – knew Obama’s contraception position, and they were divided about evenly. Still, 60 percent didn’t know either candidate’s stance. That suggests contraception matters, but it’s not the only thing  driving independent women away from Romney and the GOP. But that’s not good news for Republicans, either.

Ayotte is right: Women care about the economy. And that’s hurting Romney in two ways. First, the economy is getting better, which always helps the incumbent, with both genders. But also, women have been more reliable Democratic voters since the age of Ronald Reagan largely because they support safety net programs and they dislike candidates who pledge to eviscerate them. Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney thinks is “marvelous,” shreds the safety net into lint, and it will turn off at least as many women as the GOP’s contraception policies.

Bob Ehrlich may be correct; women might like Romney better if they knew his “real views.” If he has any. The man who once supported abortion rights because a relative died of a botched illegal abortion, whose wife gave money to Planned Parenthood, and who signed Massachusetts’ innovative universal healthcare plan might well have fought Obama among women voters. But that guy is long gone. In his place is a man who will say virtually anything to get elected. Women know that guy, and they don’t like him. I’m not sure what Ann Romney sees when she “unzips” her husband, but the man who’s running for president is a turn-off.

Source: Salon

While the Ontario Court of Appeal’s March 26 decision to legalize brothels is a landmark ruling that will make life safer for many sex workers, it does little to support those who still work on the streets, say sex-work advocates. 

The ruling also failed to remove the indecency clause, a provision of the bawdyhouse law that has historically been used to target gay men.

Five judges ruled on the appeal of a September 2010 Ontario Superior Court decision by Justice Susan Himel, which struck down three Criminal Code provisions related to sex work.

While Ontario’s highest court agreed with Himel on two provisions, striking down the bawdyhouse law as it relates to sex work and modifying a law that makes it illegal to live off the avails of sex work, three of the five judges chose to uphold a law that governs communication for the purposes of prostitution.

“I do worry about my street colleagues,” commented Valerie Scott, one of three litigants in the case, at a press conference following the decision. “What are they going to do? We have to figure out something to make these women and men safe.”

However, she calls the overall decision a huge victory.

“I would like to thank the Ontario Court of Appeal justices for pretty much declaring sex workers persons today,” said Scott, who has been fighting for sex workers' rights since the early '80s. “I didn’t think I would see it in my lifetime, but here we are.”

The court’s overturning of the bawdyhouse law will make it possible to operate indoor sex-work businesses. Meanwhile, the modification of the law concerning living off the avails of prostitution makes it possible to hire employees — including drivers, receptionists and bodyguards — without legal consequences or threat of interference from police.

“The government lost their appeal,” says Terri-Jean Bedford, another litigant. “The laws are changing, and the authorities are now engaged.”

The decision, which is binding in all regions of Ontario, will likely be used as a precedent for other provinces and territories in order to work toward the decriminalization of sex work. Both sides will be allowed to appeal as the court stayed its judgment for 30 days.

Alan Young, who acted as counsel on the case, has indicated that the group will most likely not appeal the decision unless the government does.

Meanwhile, Maggie’s, a Toronto-based advocacy group organized by and for sex workers, released a statement calling the ruling a letdown.

“The anti-prostitution laws work together to jeopardize sex workers’ safety. It is not tenable to have a safe place to see a client if you can’t screen him first or clearly set out what you offer, your rates and your safe-sex requirements,” says Kara Gillies, a long-time sex worker and activist for legal reform. “Further, many street-based workers don’t have access to an indoor place to work.”

Laurentian University professor Gary Kinsman agrees, noting that while the legislation is a step forward for those working in private spaces, it makes life even harder for street sex workers.

“For the bottom rungs of sex workers . . . indigenous women and non-white women, this means that the type of major policing and the sweeps of sex workers will continue to exist,” he says. “It is a very incomplete decision.”

Kinsman also worries about the continued criminalization of communication surrounding sex work. “There is more vulnerability for sex workers,” he says. “You have to do it really rushed and size up whether a client is safe or not. It is the criminalization of speech surrounding a possible activity that hasn’t yet taken place. It is an incredible violation of freedom of speech.”

He says failing to remove the indecency clause in the bawdyhouse provision is another missed opportunity, noting it has been used by police against gay establishments since the mid '70s, including during the Toronto bathhouse raids of 1981.

Since money is not usually exchanged for sex in gay bathhouses, the “indecent acts” clause has long provided a legal excuse for raids and bawdyhouse charges.

“It goes back to when we were fighting against the bawdyhouse laws,” Kinsman says. “We made it clear we wanted to get rid of the section as a whole.”

The case has come at a time when at least two major Canadian cities are changing how they police sex work.

In Vancouver, a draft policy proposing new policing guidelines was put to the police board on March 21. It would “increase the safety of the workers, reduce victimization and violence and, where appropriate (such as with children and teens), assist with exit strategies.”

The policy calls for the appointment of a sex-industry liaison officer in cases involving sex workers and for limiting invasive enforcement such as street sweeps to situations deemed “high risk” due to human trafficking, violence or the involvement of sexually exploited children or youth.

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) has explicitly stated that invasive enforcement of sex-work laws is now seen as a “last resort.”

“The VPD does not seek to increase the inherent dangers faced by sex trade workers, especially survival sex workers,” says a report by the VPD deputy chief, Warren Lemcke.

According to the draft policy document, the VPD would also “monitor and maintain intelligence reports to identify and track potentially violent sex industry consumers, exploitive abusers, identify trends and assist in day-to-day operational planning.”

Meanwhile, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) has also been altering its approach to sex workers following a Dec 9, 2011, announcement of a “pattern of violence” and string of homicides involving sex workers. OPS Chief Charles Bordeleau, however, says he is not willing to commit to a policy that would end sweeps or other invasive strategies.

“We are in the process of assessing and evaluating the Court of Appeal decision, but with respect to the prostitution sweeps themselves, we will continue our current practice of only conducting them when we have a number of complaints where we need to be responsive to our community,” Brodeleau says. “[Sweeps] are not our primary focus; they’re not our primary activity. We will continue to work with sex-trade workers . . . to ensure we can better collaborate together.”

The government has 12 months to make changes to the laws that have been amended as a result of the case.

Source: Xtra