Gender in the News #5

Change is on its way! Great news on Obama setting up the government mechanisms necessary to promote and monitor gender equality in the US. Only 29 years after President Carter signed CEDAW (the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) and nearly 14 years after Beijing, we may actually be ready to move forward on women's rights as human rights.

On the domestic front, President Obama creates a Council on Women and Girls that will work throughout the executive branch. This is precisely the requisite gender machinery that the rest of the world has in place, including the many developing countries where I conduct gender assessments.

And internationally, the President names an ambassador-at-large for international women's issues. Melanie Verveer, a Clintonista of Vital Voices fame.

Why should we care? SF experience makes the case for the US to finally ratify CEDAW. Of all the nations in the world, the US is the only industrialized nation not to ratify CEDAW. And the company we keep in this failure? Iran, Nauru, Palau, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan and Tonga.

Other gender news of note:

Muslim women in the US are already trying to promote more gender equality in their communities. Trying to shatter the "Glass Minaret."

Change continues with the FDA approving the next generation of the female condom. I was skeptical when I first heard about it, but in the field - especially in many heavily HIV-affected countries in Africa - the female condom has been welcomed as a way for women to better control the risk of STDs/STIs when they cannot always control the decision to have sex.