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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
(Photo: Pope Benedict addresses the Curia, 22 Dec 2008/Max Rossi)
"(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."
