5/9/08 Patti Dikes
I think we are on the right track here, thanks to input from Kebokile and our meeting after class. We have been emailing outside the wiki page quite a bit, but our thoughts seem to be coming together. I really like the idea of looking at the lives of young black girls in South Africa to see what is going on in their lives that will lead them (or discourage them) from aspiring to a life of public service and political leadership. Although a lot of research has been done at the national level, (quotas, political training, etc.), the issues start earlier with the local - the ways that young women are educated and socialized - and we have not found a lot of research being done at the local level. This would be exciting.
5/6/08 Sovathana sokhom
Hi Karen and all. I had difficult time to log in while I was at home. Thus, just get in when I am at school now. Anyway, I just want to thank you Karen first of all. Karen, I think you are getting the point of what I am trying to try say on this matter. Violent culture is very much matter for women in promoting themselves as equal to men at every level of the society (not just in politic). The reason I am saying this is that because I am seeing men violent against women every single day toward women. These majority of men look at their act as a justification for women's own good that they need to teach the women a lesson. We all know that violent against women is not just limit to physical, but verbale, intentional, and even premeditate act. Most of cultures put women second class citizen or some of them not citizen at all (they cannot vote). As through IPU website, as we all know it, most of women in so call democratic countries just get their rights to vote only around the middle of 20th century. I think we can talk more on this today. See you all in class.
5/4/08 Karen Harting
During my research on the obstacles for women in government, I thought it might be helpful if we narrow down our focus to one specific topic in the law, rather than a broad spectrum as vague as "the law". What I have found mostly is the problem with domestic violence that still lingers due to a variety of reasons, including that laws are in place but nothing else has been done. I am proposing that we look at this one specific issue (violence against women) and the problems encountered by women in and out of the government trying to deal with it.
4/29/08 Karen Harting
Sovathan, that's interesting you are talking about the violent culture as being an obstacle for women, as I was thinking about one of our readings and thinking it applied to our project. The article from Rakoczy about violence actually being in our hearts is very true. People like Nelson Mandela are so rare. Our own country got involved in our current war using "God language" as justification. I don't know if incoporating this idea of violence in this way is possible, but I definitely think you are on to something and it could be a valuable point in our proposal. Perhaps advocating for peace along with advocating for women in the public life would be a way to address this issue. At least South Africa does have the history of their Truth and Reconciliation as proof that something other than violent revenge works.
4/29/08 Patti Dikes
I agree that we are on the track of focusing our research on an area which needs study. Preliminary research suggests that a lot of attention has been given to the need for quotas and structural changes in the electoral system, and political party processes, and has pointed out the need to assist women in becoming effective in leadership - they need to learn the rules, use the rules, and then they can change the rules. This topic is rather broad.
4/29/08 Sovathana Sokhom
Hi all for the women and Law :~)
Finally, we are back on the kiki again:~) Yep! Just hope it wouldn't disappear again. Pertaining to our final paper. I think we heading in the right direction. Thanks Patti for all those outline. At least we are of where we are going! I hope this is can be a blue print that whoever want to try to find out more about what are the real obstical that women in politic are facing can use this to shed some light on their undrstanding.
Just can't help bringing Cambodian's case into this. I am sure by the time we finished this class, you wouldn't want to hear another word of Cambodian again :~( But anyway, I couldn't help but to relate the problems that I have been follow closely. Cambodia will has a national election on July 27, 2008 again. I hope to volunteer to monitor the election with one of the NGO, but given the security reason, it makes me fear for my safety. Anyway, this feeling, just make me feel about how those women that are working there? These kind of threat (both physical and mental assessination - I call it), does not creat the kind of democratic environment for women to run at eqaul footing with men. I think the culture of violence is another factor that keep women a way from politice. Also if the one who is already in politics, the fear of your life can be take out at any time also defer women that hold office from speaking out the thing that she really want to speak out and become for effective in that kinds of political environment setting. Thus, I think, I Africa, there might be similar to this kind of problems. I know that most African women are very out spoken and fearless and so on like that, but when one get to those kind of possition...they need to think twice of what they are saying! The trasaction cost to get their is too hight, plus, the new environoment of politic, and the culture of politic might put them a stand still from becoming that effective. What you think Patti, Kathy and Irone.
See you in class,
4/22/08 Patti Dikes
When we talk about women in positions of leadership, we are learning that just having the encouragement of the international community and sufficient numbers of women in parliament is not enough to liberate women and improve their daily lives. We need to be thinking about this as we develop our research proposal ideas. There is research complicating the issue and warning against a generalization that every woman who gains political power is concerned about improving the lives of all women.
4/22 Karen Harting
Here are the Women and Law Discussion questions for this week:
When should the law supersede religious and/or cultural traditions
and when should the law step aside and allow those traditions to
continue unimpeded? (One example: Recent child custody battle
in Texas with the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, polygamy,
underage mothers, and possible sexual abuse.)
Does increasing women’s participation in government have
a positive effect on women’s lives?
4/15 Kebokile: Please check and make sure you have weekly submissions as per sylabus. A question for this group. Do you think that the law domestic or international has a liberating effect on lives of women? Give concrete e.gs.
Week 6 3-2-08
Thanks Patti for your email! I've got both of our presentations coordinated, so I'll just have to add Sovathana and Irene's presentations on which shouldn't be a problem. I decided to focus on 5 of the countries in Eastern Europe in order to have a reasonable size without getting too large. The NGO's that did the shadow reporting for those countries all had issues with laws concerning domestic violence, so I'm going to focus on the problems they identify and their recommendations. We still need to have discussion questions for the class after our presentation, so don't forget to send them along if you have any ideas. One possible idea I have has to do with the effectiveness of something like CEDAW in the scheme of things. Does it really help?
Week 6 3-2-08 Patti Dikes:
Yeah - glad you found us, Irene! Okay, where are we? ...As we decided, our presentation is coming together. Karen has generously offered to coordinate a power point for us, so we need to email her with our materials. I just sent her an email with my part. I will be doing the overview and introduction to the CEDAW and introduce the country reports for Eastern Europe. Karen is going to cover the national and transnational NGOs in that region, highlighting some common issues and/or perhaps focus on one country as a case study. Sovathana and Irene are focusing on the Asian region. Let me know, Sovathana and Irene, how you have divided up the region (i.e., which one of you are doing the country reports and which is doing the NGOs, or if you have come up with an alternative division of labor). Unfortunately, I have class right before our class, so cannot meet in advance, but perhaps some of all three of you could meet even just a few minutes before to go over the power point with Karen. I will be driving over from CST and will get there asap and as soon as a parking space opens up...
Week 5, 2-28-08 Irene Shiao
Greetings! Group! (Patti, thank you especially for letting me know about the sign on.) Sorry, I am a bit slower with the high tech but I will learn it as we go. Will post more later~!
Week 5, 2-26-08 Sovathana Sokhom
Karen, I found the web sit that you suggested very interesting, but I also found this article that have data on women in parliament by region...I am really happy about this because we can see what are regions that have more women in parliament and whether this have any significant correlation with the economic growth in the region. I am trying to copy the graph from pd file to this conversation page, but is not successful. Anyway, the Asia and the Asia Pacific have about 16 percent of women in parliament as of 2004. While the NORDIC countries have more than 40% of women in parliament, the Arab nation only have about 4% or 5% of women in parliament. According to the reading, in the last decade, women have very little progress in the last decade since the Beijing platform. Thus, the question that come to my mind now...what are causes that prevent women from participating in the decision making body (beside the lack of education, caulture differences, and the socioeconomic that they are facing?).
If anybody else want to read this article, please let me know and can forward to you, because I don't how to post the article on our conversation yet.
Ok...see you all in class,
Week 5, 2-25-08 Karen Harting
I found a great website that has NGO shadow reports for several European and East European countries. Here it is:
http://www.minelres.lv/coe/statereports.htm
I also found a website that explains how to write a shadow report in the correct way to be usable by CEDAW and the country government. Here's that one:
http://www.iwraw-ap.org/using_cedaw/sreport_guidelines.htm
Unfortunately, I did not find such a comprehensive website with NGO reports for the Asian countries
Week 5, 2-20-08 Patti Dikes
Good meeting last night. We decided to focus our first presentation on the UN Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Two of us will focus on Asia, two on Eastern Europe. The structure of the presentation will be a one-minute introduction to the Convention and then each region will be discussed for 8-9 minutes (each member presenting for about 4-4 1/2 minutes). The first person will talk about the countries in that region that were investigated and whether they have or have not adopted the Convention, when, and any related points of particular interest or concern. The second person will talk about reports by those adopting countries about their compliance with the Convention and mention whether there are or are not transnational NGO watch organizations independently monitoring compliance. The same will occur for the other region. Depending on what we find, our second presentation may consist of reporting in more detail about transnational NGOs reports about Convention compliance.
Again, this may be the direction to take our research proposal. If there are countries without transnational NGOs involved, we may want to develop a proposal to assist groups interested in monitoring those countries from within and without. If there are countries with transnational NGOs, we may want to develop a proposal to support their abilities to monitor, or, if they have been able to monitor and have reported noncompliance, then develop a proposal to support their advocacy efforts to gain compliance.
Week 4, 2-18-08 Karen Harting
After reading other posts and also doing some more thinking and reading, I was thinking for our presentation it would be interesting to take some aspects of the UN human rights declaration and see how it has been applied, or even if it has been applied, in our topic areas. This could then include both having women in government, and any other issues we are interested in, or come across.
Week 4, 2-18-08 Sovathana Sokhom
I am wondering whether you got a chance to read articles I sent to everybody pertaining to Women in Power and Decision-making last week? I did get a some of the information from the Beijing Conference in 1995 on the "Beijing Platform for Action" on Strategic Objective G.1 and G.2. In addition, I think the article from Women Watch, which I would like to quote of why it is so importance to have women in decision making. It states that "...that women's equal participation in decision-making is not only a precondition for justice or democracy but is also a necessary condition for ensuring that women's interests and rights are taken into account..." this seems to show that women participation in decision-making would be able to bring women's issues into the policy making body which in turn would make a better policy to assist women. I read some articles that the study had done a case study in Austrailian's parliament, which showed that women in parliament be able to influence policy (domestic policy) once the women in decision making-body made up around 15 percent of parliamentary members. Anyway, we can discuss more on this issues. See you all tomorrow.
Week 4, 2-18-08 Patti Dikes
I have a great book at my office on South African customary law that I will grab and bring to class tomorrow. I had not thought of that, but it may give us some ideas. I am not familiar with "living law." It sounds like Kebokile is thinking about a more regional approach than we were thinking about, which was more nationally-oriented. Let's talk about this next class. Working on reading ahead...for our presentation?
Week 4, 2-18-08 Kebokile Dengu-Zvobgo
Additionally pse look at customary law, living law, domestic and international law, human rights laws, etc. Keep the TRANSNATIONAL focus of this class in your research and wiki submissions. How do women organize across borders on "legal" issues?
Week 4, 2-18-08 Karen Harting
I was thinking about how we might be able to do our presentations and thought it might be interesting to look at the three areas we choose and look at percentages of women involved in government in those areas. Also, it might be possible and interesting to see if those women then fight for women's issues, or if they end of toeing the party line when there are fewer women. I was doing some generic google searches such as "women lawmakers" and then adding in particular areas and I've found several web sites that would provide this type of information. Obviously we need to add in some qualifying information so it doesn't become a report on statistics. I know we mentioned doing this type of information for our research proposal as well, so perhaps by getting started this way we'll have a better idea of the direction we want to take for that project as well.
Week 3, 02-12-08 Patti Dikes
Interesting idea, Sovathana. Even if she wins, she won't take office until 2009, so I am assuming you would want to look at her past record? Since I am not a political scientist, I have no idea how to go about this, but it sounds interesting. Your article also sounds like an intriguing topic, too, Karen. I think it would be interesting to look at countries who have women legislators and the percentages. Again, I have no clue about how to do that, but the website you reference sounds like a great starting point. As far as areas where women have influenced the law, that sounds very interesting. I am not sure how to turn that into a grant proposal for women in other countries to use... In this country, women have been influential in many areas, such as pushing for equality in funding for women's sports under Title IX, pushing forward issues of sexual harassment in the workplace, influencing law enforcement policies and laws regarding domestic violence against women (might be considered another group's field).
Week 3, 02-09-08 Sovathana Sokhom
I am wondering...since there is a possibility that women is going to be a president in the most powerful country in world, can we make a prediction of how much her time will either implement or promote women (both at national and international leve?)...what is everybody think on this? She could be the agent of change to make the wave on women's issues or she would make no different from any other man that would be in the office of president. Can we follow her policy...how she has been advocate on women's issues throughout her political career and whether we can predict with certain propability that she would promote women's issue?
week 3, Feb 9, Sovathana Sokhom
Hi all, I don't know if I can be in two groups at one time. I am equally interest about women and law as well as women and pverty. There is some studies that I came a crossed that is talking about women in decision making "parliamentary"...it said that if women participate enough in the decision making-body (reaching a critical mass..around 15%), women could influence the outcome of the law. Thus most of articles, one can find through the web sit of IPU (www.ipu.org).
Week 3, Feb 8, Karen Harting:
I don't know if anyone had any specific issues in this area near and dear to their heart, but I was thinking we might want to look at women in the military and how the law affects them. Also, how do the laws in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc affect the women who are deployed there? Does this affect their ability to function in the same ways men are functioning? We could also look at the issue of rape in military academies. Does any of this sound interesting to anyone?
For those of our group who didn't make class on Feb 5, be aware that our first presentation has been moved up to March 4, instead of March 11!!!
Karen
Welcome! This is the wiki page for our Transnational Feminism T-course group, Women and Law.
Week 2, Feb. 3, Patti Dikes:
Hello Group! Interesting guest speaker, Kathryn Poethig! and the readings were great, too. Does anyone have any ideas about a Woman and Law project or research topic? I am still figuring out this whole wiki page posting thing. I started this page for our weekly postings and we can figure out later where to put more general concepts and development of our project. Any thoughts?
Feb 4, Karen Harting;
I was thinking we needed to clarify exactly what area we wanted to work in. Do we want to look at how women are affected by the laws in certain areas (women in prisons, either here or another country) or do we want to look at women working within the law (lawyers, police officers). I don't have any specific ideas yet about what would be a good topic, but I'm looking!