Gender Justice

Via Andrew Sullivan, the organization See Jane recently released a study of the portrayal of males in G-rated movies titled "G Movies Give Boys a D: Portraying Males as Dominant, Disconnected and Dangerous". Some of the highlights:

• There are three male characters for every female.
• Fewer than one out of three (28 percent) of the speaking characters (real and animated) are female.
• Less than one in five (17 percent) of the characters in crowd scenes are female.
• More than four out of five (83 percent) of films' narrators are male.

...males are less likely than females to be portrayed as parents and...nonwhite males are way less likely to be portrayed as parents. In addition, Black and Hispanic males are extremely scarce in G-rated films (they appear at well under half their actual rate in the general population), and when they are present they're far more often portrayed as violent than white males.

Previously I mentioned India's 10 million missing daughters. From a story by the BBC News:

A doctor in India and his assistant have been sentenced to two years in jail for revealing the sex of a female foetus and then agreeing to abort it. This is the first time medical professionals have been jailed in such a case. Under Indian laws, ultrasound tests on a pregnant woman to determine the gender of the foetus are illegal. It has been estimated that 10m female foetuses may have been terminated in India in the past 20 years. Dr Anil Sabhani and Kartar Singh were caught in a sting operation in the northern state of Haryana. Government officials sent in three pregnant women as decoy patients to find out if the clinic would carry out abortions based on sex selection. Audio and video evidence showed the doctor telling one woman that tests had revealed that she was carrying a "female foetus and it would be taken care of". But convictions are rare due to lax and corrupt officials and the slow judicial system.

From a post by Diane E. Dees on MoJo Blog:

According to the Women's Rights Association, a Baghdad NGO, since 2003, the number of women in Iraq attacked because they were not wearing headscarves has more than tripled. Between 1999 and March of 2003, there were 22 attacks and one death; since then, there have been 80 attacks and 4 deaths, with no figures are available yet for 2006. The decision to not wear a headscarf is concentrated in the area around Baghdad because that is where Iraq's modern society has grown. According to a WRA spokeswoman, there are now significantly fewer women and girls around Baghdad wearing headscarves, but many have been threatened by relatives or have been imprisoned inside their homes. A year ago, insurgents took an Iraqi woman in Western dress out of a local pharmacy and executed her. She was found with two bullet holes in her head, and she had been covered with a traditional abaya veil with a message pinned to it that said "She was a collaborator against Islam." She was not the first woman to have a "collaborator" label pinned to her clothing. Human Rights Watch points out that--though the new Iraqi constitution permits women the right to transfer citizenship to their children, it fails to give women equal rights within the family. HRW also confirms that Iraqi women are being attacked for dancing, socializing with men, and not wearing headscarves.

From an AP story on abcnews.com:

Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday he will consider increasing women's "institutional" role in the church but reiterated that they would remain barred from the priesthood, Italian news agencies reported. Benedict said he would begin reflecting on the possibility of giving "institutional" recognition to women after noting that women's "charisma" had always played an important role in the church, the agencies said. He mentioned Mother Teresa and Saint Catherine of Siena, among others, and did not say what type of institutional roles he had in mind.

According to a Reuters article on MSNBC.com, it looks like Jamaica is going to get its first female prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller. From the "Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership," a summary of the current female heads of state and government:

There are 191 members of the United Nations and a few independent states outside. 17 have got female leaders. Of the monarchies, there are reigning Queens in Denmark, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom - and the latter is represented by female Governor Generals in Canada, New Zealand and Saint Lucia, who function as their countries' de-facto Heads of State. The 5 female Presidents are in Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Liberia and The Philippines. And a President-Elect in Chile who takes office in march There are also 5 woman Prime Ministers; in Bangladesh, Germany, New Zealand, Mozambique and São Tomé e Princípe and women are designated to take over as chiefs of government in both Jamaica and The Netherlands Antilles.