U.S. health advisers recommended a revision of labels for the widely used new generation of birth control pills, based on data showing they may put women at a higher risk of dangerous blood clots.
Although all common birth control pills increase women’s chances of getting blood clots, concerns have recently been mounting about an even higher risk linked to a newer generation of pills that contain the compound drospirenone, such as Bayer AG’s popular Yaz and Yasmin.
Read the article...
A report given to a high-level advisory group in Saudi Arabia claims that allowing women in the kingdom to drive could encourage premarital sex, a rights activist said Saturday.
The ultraconservative stance suggests increasing pressure on King Abdullah to retain the kingdom’s male-only driving rules despite international criticism.
Rights activist Waleed Abu Alkhair said the document by a well-known academic was sent to the all-male Shura Council, which advises the monarchy. The report by Kamal Subhi claims that allowing women to drive will threaten the country’s traditions of virgin brides, he said. The suggestion is that driving will allow greater mixing of genders and could promote sex.
Read the article...Jewish women in Britain and the US are being urged to send photographs of themselves holding signs saying ”women should be seen and heard” in a campaign against efforts by the ultra-orthodox to remove female images from advertising billboards in Jerusalem.
The New Israel Fund said it was planning to compile the photographs into posters to display in Jerusalem to show ”this struggle is not just waged by the women of Jerusalem alone. It is the struggle of people of conscience everywhere.”
Read the article...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pk-bFWzsfg
Online misogyny is currently hitting the headlines, with prominent women columnists testifying to an unrelenting tide of sexually motivated aggression. It’s a narrative with which I have an enormous amount of sympathy, for as a female blogger I find that my comments box fills up with remarks of a sexually abusive nature with alarming alacrity. Read more
A sixteen-day campaign against gender violence is being supported by the Pacific Conference of Churches. A Recent AusAID report on violence against women in Melanesia and East Timor, and a UN report, provides the backdrop. In Papua New Guinea, 67 per cent of women are beaten by their husbands – 100 per cent in the Read more
Women with attractive eyes may be forced to cover them up under Saudi Arabia’s latest repressive measure.
The ultra-conservative Islamic state has said it has the right to stop saudi women revealing ‘tempting’ eyes in public.
A spokesperson for Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, Sheikh Motlab al Nabet, said a proposal to enshrine the measure in law has been tabled.
If women do not wear an abaya, cover their hair, and in some regions conceal their faces while in public, they face punishments including fines and public floggings.
Read the article...
A leading priest in Ireland has launched a stinging shower against the Catholic Church hierarchy, accusing them of sticking their heads in the sand over a number of crucial issues. Fr Joe McGuane warned that if the current church regime continued, financial problems facing the church could leave some clerics “filling supermarket shelves at night or Read more
Catholic women are being urged to write to their bishop to protest at sexist language in the new version of the Roman missal. Fr Sean McDonagh of Ireland’s Association of Catholic priests said it was obvious from the language of the new missal that not a single woman had been consulted while it was being Read more
