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On this day in 2001, Sila Maria Calderón became the first female Governor of Puerto Rico

02/01/2023

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Imagine dropping out of school, not being able to

Imagine dropping out of school, not being able to cook or work, and being forced to marry at an early age – just because you menstruate.

This is the reality for millions of girls and women around the world who lack access to toilets, clean water and hygienic menstrual products, and therefore don’t know how to effectively manage their periods.

To address this, Marie-Claire Kuja created @kujaecopads_ , an initiative with a mission to end period poverty by producing eco-friendly, affordable and accessible sanitary pads.

“I grew up in Cameroon, in a very small village. And prior to having my period, I didn’t have sanitary pads to use or the appropriate knowledge about menstruation. I fumbled a lot using rags, which caused a lot of infections and rashes,” she says.

Years later, things haven’t changed much. “Girls skip three to five days of school a month, and eventually drop out, which perpetuates a cycle of early forced marriages, early pregnancies, prostitution, illiteracy, poverty and shame. Women are isolated and treated like dirt: they cannot cook, or sleep in the same bed with their husbands when they have their periods. Some are kept in huts for three to five days a month. This shouldn’t happen.”

Kuja spent years researching how she could tackle period poverty in her country. Eventually she landed on an innovative idea: creating sanitary pads from banana stems.

“I found out that mainstream disposable pads are made from 90% plastic and other chemicals, which is a hazard to the environment and to women’s health as well. I really didn’t want to bring that to women who were already vulnerable.

"In the 18th century, Japanese women used a cloth made of banana stems to hold menstrual blood," she explains. "They would also use them as wipes for babies. I had it tested in labs and it turned out that it absorbs eight times more than a regular menstruating product, – and it’s natural."

Read more about how Kuja is making her eco-friendly products available via the link in our bio

#RethinkTheNews #EndPeriodStigma #EndPeriodPoverty #Periods #MenstruationMatters #WomensRights #Cameroon @kujaecopads #endperiodshame #menstrualhealth #menstrualhealthmatters #womenvoice

The latest research on the climate states that the

The latest research on the climate states that the world is on track for a rise in temperature of 2.7C by the end of the century. This will put one-third of the global population in uninhabitable conditions, forcing up to 1 billion people to migrate to cooler regions.

It represents the failure of 27 successive Conventions on Climate Change (COP), where pledges have come, failed to be adopted and gone - leaving it to people to try and affect change at a local level.

Dr Jane McCarthy, from Buckinghamshire, England, is protesting her local council's role in fossil fuel investments by withholding council tax.

The council's pension fund is held by Barclays Bank, the biggest lender to fossil fuel companies in the UK and Europe. Residents have repeatedly written to councillors to ask for the council to terminate its contract with the bank, but say they are failing to accept responsibility and instead send responses that ignore the questions they ask.

McCarthy says she chose this form of protest because she has been shielding since the pandemic began, and wanted to continue campaigning. It is not a decision she took lightly, and she has set the money aside to pay council tax for a time when the council does decide to divest from Barclays.

She has since been taken to court, and her case has been passed on to an enforcement team. Despite the risk, she has no plans to back down just yet.

“We want Buckinghamshire Council to give very clear direction to remove all investments from fossil fuels, and have a very clear schedule for doing that,” McCarthy says.

“What we’re able to do with this campaign is make it very clear to the council that we’re not going away."

Read the full story via the link in our bio.

#rethinkthenews #nadjamedia #womenvoices #womenvoicesmatter #ClimateCrisis #FossilFuels #PensionFunds #BuckinghamshireCouncil
#CouncilTaxStrike #StrikeForClimate #climatejustice #climateemergency #climateactivists

Artist Karima Al Shomely (@karima.uae ) has create

Artist Karima Al Shomely (@karima.uae ) has created an exhibition offering a glimpse of the UAE's wedding traditions, displaying “Sahhara”, the boxes traditionally used by would-be brides to keep treasured jewellery, gifts and clothing.

Al Shomely began collecting these ornate wooden chests and their possessions as part of her doctoral thesis on Emirati women as icons of UAE culture. “I wanted to represent my culture in a different way – it is contemporary, it is modern, and it is unusual,” she said.

A series of photographs show the intricacy of the Burqa, once typically worn by married women. Not to be confused with the garment used in Afghanistan that covers the whole body from head to feet, in the UAE the Burqa is worn more like a piece of jewellery, and is made from a metallic-coloured cloth dyed blue or purple, and then rubbed down with a ball of glass until it gets a shiny, metallic finish that is often mistaken for gold.

Al Shomely wanted to introduce this item to younger generations as a custom that is gradually dying out, illustrated by a video featuring a Burqa in water.

“When I submerged the Burqa in water, the indigo escaped immediately, as if the fabric was bleeding, much like the disappearance of the Burqa in contemporary society,” she said.

“The bleeding Burqa is both an object and a subject; a metaphor for a changing society. Representing the narrative of memory, it is an active witness of a lost past.”

Read more via the link in our bio.

#Culture #UAE #ArabCulture @emiratesfinearts

Far more people around the world support women’s

Far more people around the world support women’s rights than it is generally believed, according to new research from the Norwegian School of Economics (@nhh_no)

Academics found that in 41 countries, more than 90% of respondents support basic rights for women.

There were surprising results from countries usually considered to be less gender-equal, such as Saudi Arabia, where the research found that “the vast majority of men privately support women working outside the home, but underestimate the extent to which others share this view.”

So why is support for women's rights so greatly underestimated?

The researchers presented various theories, including the fact that support from men is often heavily underestimated, as well as the role of mainstream media.

Earlier this year, a survey by YouGov found that people in Western Europe and the US did not identify as feminists, even though they believed women should have the same rights in society as men. These results showed that the word "feminism" is misunderstood by a majority of the public.

As this new research points out, these misperceptions are additional obstacles to advancing gender equality.

Read the full story by clicking the link in our bio.

#WomensRights #Media #MediaBias #Research #RethinkTheNews #Disinformation @unbiasthenews

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