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Countries around the world are marking the first International Day to End Obstetric Fistula today, 23 May 2013, in an effort to raise support and awareness of a devastating injury that can occur during childbirth. For more information check out the Campaign to End Fistula and watch a short video from UN TV here.
In honour of International Women’s Day, The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, in collaboration with Washington Post On Faith, released a blog series entitled Is religion good for women? A fine example of the work from this series is the embedded video below from Grace Lee Baughan of the Faith and Global Engagement Initiative at Hong Kong University. If you find Grace’s video helpful, you can check out the entire series from experts around the world here.
The diverse opinions expressed in the Is religion good for women? series do not necessarily represent the views of Ecumenical Women, but rather are provided simply as a resource for our readers.
In a broken and fearful world
the Spirit gives us courage
to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in Church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.
- A Brief Statement of Faith, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Participants in March 3 Ecumenical Women’s orientation for the 57th Commission on the Status of Women remembered our sisters whose voices are and have been silenced.
In worship, we remembered.
In prayer, we remembered.
In art, we remembered.
As we marched in silence from The Salvation Army International Social Justice Commission to the Church Center for the United Nations, we remembered.
Remembering, may we act.
Photo by Andrew Nam Chul Osborne
Photo credit: UN Women/Felix Eldridge
Hi everyone, with only 3 days remaining before the 57th Commission on the Status of Women begins on 4 March at United Nations Headquarters in New York, we at Ecumenical Women will be providing you with daily thoughts, video, quotes and prayers that inspire our work.
Today we’re posting a link to a powerful story from Kenya that was recently shared by UN Women. In the run-up to Kenyan national elections on 4 March, students at the Kinyanjui Road Primary School in Kawangware have been participating in an interactive series of plays addressing domestic violence. Here’s an excerpt from the story:
As the play unfolds, the 700-strong audience is packed into the school auditorium, some leaning in through doors and windows to catch a glimpse of the play. They are captivated. The children in white and blue uniforms wince in collective unison at the violence being portrayed on the stage before them then cheer together as justice is served.
You can check out the story in it’s entirety here: “As elections approach, school kids cast their vote against violence in Kenya.” The work done at Kinyanjui Road Primary School provides a great example of how we can build societies where violence against girls and women is not acceptable.
Ecumenical Women will be working throughout CSW57 to support the creation of such societies. See you soon!
Hi everyone, with only 5 days remaining before the 57th Commission on the Status of Women begins on 4 March at United Nations Headquarters in New York, we at Ecumenical Women will be providing you with daily thoughts, video, quotes and prayers that inspire our work.
Today’s post is an amazing video from PreciiousSiikh, a young vlogger from Canada we recently began following on YouTube. Through word, image and music, PreciiousSiikh presents a powerful message about why we need to eliminate all forms of violence against girls and women.
Hi everyone, with only 6 days remaining before the 57th Commission on the Status of Women begins on 4 March at United Nations Headquarters in New York, we at Ecumenical Women will be providing you with daily thoughts, video, quotes and prayers that inspire our work.
Today’s post is from The Episcopal Cafe, a website “where Episcopalians and those interested in our church can read, watch, listen and reflect upon contemporary life in a context informed by faith and animated by the spirit of charity.”
One article on the Episcopal Cafe’s Lead news blog reports on a flash mob that took place at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland on 14 February 2013 as part of the One Billion Rising movement to end violence against girls and women. Take a minute to watch video footage of this powerful event:
For more information, you can read the article in full here.
Hi everyone, with only 7 days remaining before the 57th Commission on the Status of Women begins on 4 March at United Nations Headquarters in New York, we at Ecumenical Women will be providing you with daily thoughts, video, quotes and prayers that inspire our work. Today’s post is a video of Leymah Gbowee’s inspiring words at last year’s CSW about men, religious leaders and radicalizing the church.
Click here to view Ecumenical Women’s recommendation document to member state governments at CSW57. Our Advocacy Team has been hard at work to make sure each individual recommendation cites previously agreed upon language in a number of UN resolutions.
As Ecumenical Women is busy making last minute preparations for the 57th Commission on the Status of Women that begins on Monday, 4 March, we wanted to highlight a recent article by Vandana Shiva entitled: “Our Violent Economy is Hurting Women.” The article, which you find in it’s entirety here, discusses the relationship between unjust economic policies and the recent intensification of violence against girls as women. Here’s a short excerpt:
Violence against women has taken on new and more vicious forms as traditional patriarchal structures have hybridized with the structures of capitalist patriarchy. We need to examine the connections between the violence of unjust, unsustainable economic systems and the growing frequency and brutality of violence against women. We need to see how the structures of traditional patriarchy merge with the emerging structures of capitalist patriarchy to intensify violence against women.
As the priority theme for CSW57 is “elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls,” we thought Ms. Shiva’s article was particularly timely. Happy reading, and we hope to see you at CSW57!
In addition to the group Ecumenical Women Advocacy Statement that is submitted to the United Nations and shared with member states each year for CSW, some of our individual member organizations prepare and submit advocacy statements as well. This year for CSW57 there are two EW member organization advocacy statements, which you can check out below:
- Anglican Consultative Council CSW57 Advocacy Statement
- United Methodist Women CSW57 Advocacy Statement
Thanks so much, and we can’t wait to see you at CSW57!
In order to promote civil society and public participation in a June 2014 thematic report, the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Discrimination against Women has created a survey on discrimination against women in economic and social life, available here. Survey responses will inform the report, which will specifically focus on women’s economic and social lives during times of economic crisis. The deadline for contributions is 1 March 2013, so please contribute soon. Depending on your expertise and experiences, you might want to respond to only some of the questions or some of the sections of the survey. Please be assured that all responses will remain confidential.
The Working Group on Discrimination against Women is a special procedure established by the Human Rights Council in 2010. It has been tasked to identify, promote and exchange views on good practices to eliminate discrimination against women in law and in practice.
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Por primera vez, Mujeres Ecuménicas ha lanzado una versión de su comisión sobre la Condición de la Mujer en la página del evento españolas. Lo puedes ver aquí. EW se compromete a hacer más de nuestro sitio web bilingüe en los próximos meses también. Nos vemos en CSW57!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 23,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 5 Film Festivals
Check out the video below which features Christine Mangale and Mia Adjali, members of the Ecumenical Women Worship Committee. The video provides a great and concise update of all that we’ve been working on at Ecumenical Women to prepare for CSW57 this past month. We’d love to hear your feedback!
Check out this video of a performance of The Daughter of Jepthah, a retelling of the Bible story from Judges by Rev. Kathleen Stone. It was performed in the chapel of the Church Center for the United Nations on Thursday, October 25th, 2012.
The ancient story of the rise of Jepthah to a judgeship (Judges 10 and 11) in Israel is attested to by the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 11:39) as a story worthy of the label “faithfulness.” Yet, the unresolved effects of harsh judgement upon Jepthah because his mother was not his father’s wife (a harlot) (Judges 11:2), his degenerate rampant raiding of villages (Judges 11:3), his eventual official warrior/leader status in Israel (Judges 11:5-11), his ability to sacrifice his own daughter (Judges 11:29), along with his rise to judgeship (Judges 12:7)? From womens’ eyes in the 21st century, all these “qualifications” must be questioned.
And so we did. In this retelling of the ancient story during the World Council of Churches’ expert consultation on the upcoming CSW 57 topic “violence against women,” we perused the effect of men’s decisions on the lives of women. While the story went on around them, three dancers represented the lives of women, their bodies, minds, children and community suffering disproportionately. A Greek chorus also provided commentary.
When Jepthah’s messenger (11:12-28) shares with the King of the Ammonites the extensive reasons they must go to war, we find Jephthah harboring three hundred years of injustice which the King of the Ammonites must acknowledge and respond to or even more violence will take place. We know that violence will disproportionately affect women and children. When does it end?
Jepthah holds onto his vow to sacrifice whoever comes to him first when he returns home IF God will make his battles a success– His vow is made not from God’s request (such as Abraham) but his own need to win battles at the expense of his daughter’s full life. He destroys twenty villages before arriving home to find that he must now continue to live violently, making of his daughter a sacrifice.
In Hebrews, Jephthah is named as a faithful ancestor. How deeply should we question such traditional interpretations and definitions of actions of faithfulness? And when do women’s eyes begin to transform traditional interpretations? We know that this definition of faithfulness violently humiliated men, women and children. Is that what faithfulness is about?
