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Contribution from Valli Boobal Batchelor, Australia
Recently returned from a simply awesome experience at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I am writing to reflect on dance choreography of a controversial biblical story titled Bathsheba’s Voice which premiered at the 42nd International Choreographers Showcase -a high profile art event.
Valli Batchelor
As the choreographer, I felt that I was able to challenge many minds (especially my own) under the creative and safe zone of artistic expression. A review from the British Theater Guide published that “Valli Boobal Batchelor’s Bathsheba’s Voice uses Australian and Indian dance forms to tell the biblical story of Bathsheba as a metaphor for violence against women. There are arresting moments, such as Bathsheba’s seduction by David which here is portrayed as rape…”
My choreography was inspired by the UN’s White Ribbon pledge “not to commit, condone or remain silent on violence against women and children” and is a dedication to the reclaimed voices of Australian victims of clergy sexual abuse. It explores a biblical story on the sexual violence and subsequent cover up by King David against Bathsheba, his loyal soldier’s wife. It symbolizes the reclaimed voices of violated survivors of gender based violence by spiritual leaders in churches. The choreography draws from traditional dance forms yet allows freedom from the constrictions of techniques to enable the expression of experiences. It consists of intricate steps in varying speeds and rhythmic measures of various counts. The dancers portrayal of emotions are communicated through the slower tempo and high melodic vocals of Rasa [experience] and Bhava [expression] adapted from the south Indian Bharata Natyam classical dance style. Read the rest of this entry »
This morning, I attended ECOSOC’s special event, “Achieving the MDG’s and coping with the challenges of climage change.” It was of course interesting, as I usually find most things related to climate change, but what I found particularly moving were the comments spoken by the delegate from Belgium (who did not speak on behalf of Belgium, but for the committee for CSW). He outlined how climate change disproportionately and negatively affects women, and spoke about how women can acts as agents of change in the mitigation of global warming.
Of course, this year’s 52nd session of the CSW chose as it’s emerging issue “Gender perspectives on climate change“, where we learned that women’s lives are effected in large part due to their domestic responsibilities. As the moderator’s summary stresses,
In Africa, for example, women have primary responsibility for food security, household water supply, and the provision of energy for cooking and heating. Conditions such as drought, deforestation and erratic rainfall have a disproportionate negative affect on their ability to carry out these duties. As climate change causes African women to work harder to secure these basic resources, they have less time to secure an education or earn an income. Girls are more likely than boys to drop out of school to help their mothers gather fuel, wood and water.
The unequal effects that climate change already has, and will likely continue to have, along the lines of gender, are rarely mentioned. As we move towards mitigation and adaptation to climate change, we must do so with a lens that prioritizes women as the large majority of those greatly affected by climate change.
The 41st session of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) will be taking place at the United Nations in New York City, commencing on the 30th of June. CEDAW, an international human rights treaty for women, was first adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. Since then, 185 nation states have become party to it, including Afghanistan, Chile, China, Iraq, and the Congo. Although the United States of America has not yet ratified the treaty, this has not prevented it from becoming one of the most highly ratified international human rights conventions.
During the upcoming 41st session, the CEDAW committee will review the reports submitted by Iceland, Finland, Lithuania, Nigeria, Slovakia, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and Yemen. The Committee, upon considering the reports, will also present recommendations for each government and, under the statutes of the Optional Protocol to CEDAW, may further investigate into any countries whose reports they find inadequate due to contradictory or additional information.
The full text of the convention can be found at the International Women’s Rights Action Watch website, which also has good information about how NGOs can participate. Want a historical perspective? Consider ordering and reading “The Circle of Empowerment“, edited by Hanna Beate Schopp-Schilling.
To date, governments which have yet to ratify include Iran, Somalia, Sudan, and the United States of America.
In light of International Women’s Day–which falls on a weekend this year, Saturday March 8–Ecumenical Women coalition members have been issueing articles and resources about women. The United Methodist Board of Church and Society wrote an article on Women’s History Month in their eNewsletter, Faith in Action. Episcopal Life Online released an article about financing for gender equity, the theme of this year’s CSW, while the ELCA Advocacy department made recommendations on how best to observe International Women’s Day. Finally, the NCC’s program for women’s ministries also wrote an article honoring women’s history month, adding helpful resources and links at the bottom of the page.
Apart from the ecumenical scene, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said today in the UN programme commemorating International Women’s Day, “I am deeply convinced that, in women, the world has at its dosposal the most significant and yet larglely untapped potential for development and peace… Women are still severly hampered by discrimination, lack of resources and economic opportunities, by limited access to decision-making and by gender-based violence.” He called on everyone in the international community to increase investments in women and girls.
Ecumenical Women wishes you a fruitful and informative International Women’s Day!
“Theology must have an expression of desire, attraction, eros. This dimension will be combined with poetry and contemplation and also be prophetic and sapiental–a theology of play and free creation, capable of evoking God’s mystery and human justice.”
Ecumenical Women, offering delegates a space for reflection and theological dialogue on the topics gender equality and justice for women, organized three “Red Tents” throughout this year’s CSW. EW women applied energy to Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s “In Memory of Her,” spoke about the theological ramifications of women’s art from the global South, and practiced yoga that was centered around women’s prayers.
by Ann Tiemeyer
From February 22 – 26, 2008, seven young women between the ages of 21 to 28 years old participated in the first Young Women’s Leadership Experience facilitated by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC). The group received intensive orientation about the NCC, Ecumenical Women at the UN, Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO’s) at the UN and the history of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). More>>
by Jocelyn Tengatenga
The imperative to act on gender equality and development is an integral part of the mission of God. God’s mission and vision for humanity is one of peace, prosperity and justice. We believe that because women and men are made equally in the image of God they are equal players and equal beneficiaries in God’s bounty. This is the new life as God intended it to be, a life of equality which is spelt out in Galatians 3:28, “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female for all are one in Christ Jesus”. It is therefore a calling on each one of us as women to be involved in the fight for liberation from all forms of oppression and marginalization. We can only do that if we are united and collectively speak out. As women of faith we have been silent for a long time and now is the time to raise our voices together and join hands in working towards a better tomorrow. As Mercy Amba Oduyoye said,
“As a woman who feels the weight of sexism I cannot go again and again to the stories of the exodus, exile and to other biblical motifs in which the “least” are recognized and affirmed, are saved or held up as beloved by God or at least are empowered to gnaw at the fundaments of the structures of injustice until these fundaments cave in on themselves.”
Read the rest of Josie’s speech here.
Ecumenical Women delegates to Commission on the Status of Women were given the opportunity to translate Ecumenical Women’s input into the agreed conclusion into prayers of confession, petition and thanksgiving during morning worship on Thursday, February 28th.
This document contains excerpts from the draft of the agreed-upon conclusions. Ecumenical Women suggested additions and changes to the draft agreed upon conclusions, followed by prompting questions. Then three short sentence prayers were created from the thought around those agreed-upon additions: a prayer of confession, a prayer of petition and a prayer of thanksgiving.
We hope you might pray these prayers with a deep and committed heart for the sake of the disproportionate number of women suffering abject poverty. On Monday, governments began to determine the language needed within the agreed-upon Conclusions. By augmenting the agreed-upon conclusions in such a way as Ecumenical Women have desired, it is just possible that we will begin to rebuild an economic system which has at its core a desire for more resources for development, more decisions for development, and less injustice in the financial mechanisms, in the hands of those who are unable to access them under the current mechanisms: the poor.
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 (IPS) - When women activists lash out against gender discrimination, one of their longstanding complaints is also directed at the U.N. Secretariat, where senior level posts are still largely a virtual monopoly of men. Despite a 1997 General Assembly resolution calling for 50:50 gender parity in decision-making jobs by 2000, the elusive goal is long past that deadline. A coalition of some 600 women’s groups and non- governmental organisations (NGOs) is now complaining that the pervasive gender discrimination in the U.N. system may also be responsible for the lack of an executive director at a key body dealing with women’s issues: the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
Since its former executive director Noeleen Heyzer was appointed executive secretary of the Bangkok-based U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacifi c (ESCAP) last September, UNIFEM has remained headless, but functions under an acting executive director, Joanne Sandler. ”We need an appointment now”, says Ana Agostino, coordinator of the Feminist Task Force of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), who points out that the six-month-long delay is unacceptable. She said that women’s groups were expecting an announcement during the current two-week session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which concludes Friday. But there are no indications it will happen.
A Study of The Kingdom of God within the “Monterrey Consensus” framework
….for the sake of all persons male, female, black, white, young, old, rich, poor,
There is a heart within those of us who yet believe in the coming of the Kingdom of God which will not rest. ”
(adapted from Augustine, 300 AD)
This study is born from that unrest. It analyzes the six themes of the Monterrey consensus. It can be used as a discussion guide for groups to analyze the concept of the Kingdom of God or the Monterrey consensus.
An excerpt:
One look at the world as we see it today with its vast inequities of privilege, power, ease of life, and economics, and we know something is vastly wrong. When we understand that women bear the disproportional burden of our erroring ways, the problem is thicker. And when we realize that women of color and indigenous women are excessively loaded with troubling powerful inequity, we must cry out. “This is just wrong.”
As the bearers of children, women have always needed the protection of community. Except for perhaps small pockets of the world, we can not escape this fact. And yet, more and more, around the world, with the direction our economy is taking us, women’s only hope of survival is to be used as a cog in a “liberalized, non-regulated economy”. And the problem? The value system of that economy has little consideration for the unique needs and the multiple responsibilities placed upon women. To see so many suffering at such extraordinary levels is unacceptable in God’s Kingdom and should be unacceptable in any ethical system of governance.
Download to read more….
A Study of The Kingdom of God within the “Monterrey Consensus” framework
