The Great Debate UK

Sarah Brown on Ada Lovelace Day

- Sarah Brown is the wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a charity campaigner and Twitter enthusiast.  Follow her on Twitter @SarahBrown10.  The opinions expressed are her own. -

On the 8th of March, the web lit up with blogs and tweets and facebook messages to mark International Women’s Day. I joined thousands of women on London’s Millennium Bridge as part of a global effort to unite women to serve the causes of peace and development and was very pleased to discuss our shared aspirations for women with U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama in a web exclusive for Number 10.

But somehow one day doesn’t seem enough to reflect on what women have achieved, and on how far we still have to travel along the road to equality. So we have extended International Women’s Day to a whole month of focus on gender at Downing Street and today I’m blogging for Reuters in honour of Ada Lovelace Day.

You might not have heard of Ada – but you wouldn’t be reading this without her. Everybody knows about the fathers of computing – people like Charles Babbage and Alan Turing – but it’s time to celebrate the mothers too.

Ada Lovelace was one of the first ever computer programmers and Ada Lovelace Day (tagged as #ALD10 on Twitter) is our chance to draw attention both to what she achieved, and to the women who stand on her shoulders today.

I have been thrilled to discover a full length portrait of Ada hanging in No 10 and was very pleased to help host more than 100 of Britain’s most inspirational women at a reception last week with her gazing down upon us.

from Global News Journal:

EU to tackle gender pay inequality

By Sangeeta Shastry

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding

Men are still paid more than women in Europe but the European Union is promising to narrow the gap.

The executive European Commission set out its plans to address the pay gap between men and women at a news conference to coincide with International Women's Day, saying women were on average earning only 82 percent of male rates in the EU.

European Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Commissioner Viviane Reding said the Commission would work with member states to raise awareness and did not rule out using legislative measures to promote wage equality.

"We will all work together to make sure the gender dimension is visible and integrated in all policies which come out of this house," Reding said.

UN resolution on women, peace and security: anniversary worth celebrating?

- Donald Steinberg, Deputy President for Policy of International Crisis Group, is a board member of the Women’s Refugee Commission and served on the UNIFEM executive director’s advisory council. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Preparations are now starting for the 10th anniversary of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. This groundbreaking resolution was passed unanimously in October 2000 to address abuses against women during armed conflict, including sexual violence and displacement, and to bring women more fully into conflict prevention and peacemaking.

Resolution 1325 was properly hailed as a road map to promote, among other steps, women’s full engagement in peace negotiations, gender balance in post-conflict governments, properly trained peacekeepers and local security forces, protection for displaced women and accountability for sexual violence. It urged the Secretary-General to bring a gender perspective to all peacekeeping operations and other UN programs, and called for greater funding for measures to protect women during armed conflict and rebuild institutions that matter to women.

The key problem with the celebration plans is that there really is not that much to celebrate. The promise of Resolution 1325 is so far largely a dream deferred. Women continue to be raped and trafficked in conflict situations with impunity, both by rebel forces and by government militaries charged with protecting them. Women peace builders still face severe legal and cultural discrimination; coupled with sexual violence and threats against them, this imposes a victimization and danger that makes even the most courageous women think twice before stepping forward.

In recent peace negotiations in Indonesia, Nepal, Somalia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Philippines and Central African Republic, not a single woman served as a negotiator, mediator, signatory or witness. Men leading peace conferences still exclude women or shunt them off to ante-rooms while “real” negotiations take place, thus producing agreements that are disconnected from ground-truth and less likely to be successful and enjoy popular support.

The absence of women’s participation still silences their voices on issues of internal displacement, trafficking in women and girls, sexual violence, abuses by security forces, maternal health care and girls’ education. Such concerns are typically given short shrift in peace processes and reconstruction efforts, and provided inadequate funding. The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) estimates that less than 6 percent of funds committed in donors conferences after peace accords are targeted in any way towards women.

The UN has failed to lead by example. The UN’s gender architecture on armed conflict is a hodgepodge, with no lead agency and no clear division of responsibilities between UNIFEM, the Special Adviser for Gender Issues, the Division for the Advancement of Women, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UNDP’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (BCPR) and others.

Investing in the women of the future: girls

- Laura Currie is director of international communications at Right to Play. The opinions expressed are her own. _

On the occasion of International Women’s Day on March 8, each year, the inevitable questions always arise: Have women made enough change? Are things as good as they are going to get?

I think that by definition, there will always be change; this will never stop. But what I find compelling is the amount of progress that women have made and that those who’ve had the opportunity to progress, continue to lead the charge and champion this chance for others.

Some women pursue this quietly and discreetly and others, in a more vociferous way. Some speak out and others take action. Some spend time with women or girls who need support and others perhaps educate boys on the role that they can play. It’s inspiring to see so many people working in their own personal way to further social and economic prospects for women.

When I joined Right To Play about a year ago, one of the things that struck me the most was the amount of focus that we, as an organisation, place on ensuring the inclusion of girls in our work and our programs. Right To Play is an international humanitarian organization that uses sport and play programs to improve health, develop life skills, and foster peace for children and communities in the most disadvantaged areas of the world.

Inclusion, as one of Right To Play’s two guiding principles (along with sustainability), is one of the key focuses of our programs. As many of the communities in which we work traditionally prioritize the education of boys over that of girls, and tend to view girls’ participation in sports and physical, public activity as negative, Right To Play has made it a primary goal to address gender equality in sports and education.

Many of Right To Play’s resources, especially “Youth as Leader” and “Team Up,” contain activities and educational games that specifically target gender equality in schools, in sports and in the community as a whole. These activities aim to encourage girls to take an active part in community life and to take on leadership roles within their schools and communities, increasing their own development and confidence and also inspiring other young girls as role models.

Taking stock of women’s roles in New Zealand

- Sandra Dickson is a feminist studying journalism at Whitireia Journalism School. She has worked to prevent violence against women in organizations in the UK and New Zealand, helping establish the counter-trafficking Poppy Project where she wrote “Sex in the City, Mapping Commercial Sex across London,” the first attempt to map the commercial sex industry. Now living in New Zealand, she is active in the Women’s refuge movement. She blogs as Luddite Journo. The opinions expressed are her own -

New Zealand was formally colonised late in world terms, after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed with indigenous Maori in 1840. Colonists came with grand ideas of building a “better Britain.” All could aspire to own property, and the most advanced indigenous people in the world were to be treated the best by the most humanitarian settlers.

This “better Britain” included fewer restrictions on women’s roles, partially shaped by Maori societies with quite different gender norms about what it meant to be a girl.

By 1893, New Zealand became the first nation-state to enfranchise women, congruent with the developing self-image of an egalitarian society with no class divisions, racism or sexism.

According to politician William Pember Reeves, “they simply asked for the vote, and we simply gave it to them.”

New Zealanders largely continue to believe girls can do anything. Inequality and gender conflict are minimized, while women’s successes are well-noted and often receive world renown.

International Women’s Day events on March 8 will be attended by women working hard to ensure the rhetoric matches the reality. Power is never “simply given” away, and despite legislation promoting equality, New Zealand women face particular battles precisely because power imbalances are unacknowledged, often neutered by “de-gendering.”

from FaithWorld:

Pope says saving heterosexuality like saving the rainforest

Pope Benedict took an unconventional approach today to stand up to what he sees as gender-bending, saying protecting heterosexuality was as important as saving the rainforest.

"(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed," the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration."The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."

The Pope stressed that the Church would defend the traditional roles of "a man and woman, and to ask that this order of creation be respected".

He turned his attention to those people who call themselves in Italian "gender" or "transgender" -- a broad term that includes anyone who doesn't identify entirely with their assigned sex and can include homosexuals, bisexuals, pansexuals and others.

"What's often expressed and understood with the term 'gender', is summed up definitively in the self-emancipation of man from the created and the Creator ... But in this way, he lives in opposition to truth, he lives in opposition to the Creator," the pope said. Here's a link to the full text in Italian and a report on it by the leading daily Corriere della Sera (also in Italian),

The New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission reacted promptly, saying: "In a season in which the immorality of genocide, lawless governments, lust for money and power and the destabilization of the world's economy are destroying the lives of hundreds of millions around the world, the Pope's obsessive focus on gay, lesbian and trans people who simply seek the right to live and love is out of touch with what humanity needs right now from its religious leaders."

What do you think of Benedict's idea of an "ecology of man"?