On Balance 09 October 2015
On Balance 09 October 2015
Kia ora koutou, welcome to On Balance - the National Council of Women of New Zealand's weekly round-up of the latest gender equality news, research and events. Please share it with anyone you think might be interested and let them know they can subscribe here.
News from
around the country:
• The
Māori Women's Welfare League is disappointed that no government ministers
accepted invitations to its National Conference this
week
•
• A transgender woman has allegedly been raped
by her cellmate at the male-only Wiri Prison. The inmate
says the attack took place overnight on Thursday at Auckland
South Corrections Facility, prompting dual investigations by
police and the Department of Corrections. The rape was
described as an “inevitable outcome of flawed state
policy” by lobby group No Pride in
Prisons
•
• Women's organisation YWCA Auckland announced
the winners of its 2015 Equal Pay awards on Wednesday
night, with bank ANZ taking out the supreme
title
•
• Women may be under-represented in the
IT workforce, but that doesn't worry some Waikato teens who
took part in a girls-only web design workshop at the
University of Waikato
•
• “We need to stop looking at it solely as a
workplace issue, but society's issue," said NCWNZ
President Rae Duff on the gender pay gap."We need to change
our way in which we get young women into careers - we need
to make them look wide and be free in their choice of
career”
•
• The Boobs on Bikes parade held in
Auckland on Wednesday met with protesters. Those coming out to watch the Boobs on Bikes
parade are those most likely to need help, said a health
professional running a program treating sex
offenders
•
Latest
research:
• Men classified as
obese earn around $140 more a week than those with a normal
BMI, and women who were classified as obese earn $60
less than women with a normal BMI, according to an Otago
University study. NCWNZ CE Sue McCabe said there's more
stigma attached to weight for women. "In a nutshell, our
society says that men need to be big, and women need to be
small"
•
• It may not come as a surprise to find
there's a gender gap in who makes the news -
but research now confirms the shocking rate at which men
dominate the conversation. A study from McGill
University in the US has found five out of six names
mentioned in news outlets are male. That's 82% of the people
we read about in the news
•
• The proportion of women on Australian government
boards has slipped for the second year in a row,
remaining just below the gender diversity target of 40%,
according to the Gender Balance on Australian Government
Boards 2014-15 report
•
• One in 10 Australian adults has had a
sexually explicit image of them sent to others without their
permission, prompting fresh calls for the federal
government to outlaw revenge porn
•
• While men
who express anger are more likely to influence their peers,
the opposite is true for women found a
US study
•
• Women are less confident then men
when it comes to planning finances for their retirement,
according to a survey by GfK, a consumer marketing research
firm. Women in the United States are much more uncertain or pessimistic about
their retirement finances, with 60 percent saying they
were unsure or not confident, compared with 41 percent of US
men
•
• Flexible working hours are increasingly
becoming the norm for Kiwi workers – but there are concerns many employees are not
aware of their right to ask for them. A survey by
workplace provider Regus found three-quarters of respondents
thought the Government should promote flexible working by
offering tax incentives to firms that encouraged
it
•
International
news:
• A US high school went into temporary lockdown Wednesday after
a 15-year-old boy reportedly threatened online to bring a
gun to school and “kill all the girls” for refusing
to send him nude photos
•
• As debate rages over
gun control, media portrayals of shooters, and other
factors, one topic doesn't get enough discussion, those who
study mass shootings say: masculinity
•
• A V8 Supercar
driver competing at this weekend's Bathurst 1000 has beenfined A$25,000 (NZ$27k) for a "disgraceful"
comment about an all-female team. Team Bottle-O driver
David Reynolds referred to a car driven by the women as a
"pussy wagon"
•
• US federal officials are investigating Hollywood movie studios over
allegations of widespread gender
discrimination
•
• The publicity campaign for
Meryl Streep's upcoming feminist movement movie Suffragette
has hit controversy, with online commenters slamming the racist
overtones of a quote used on a promo T-shirt for the
film
•
• Additionally, more than a hundred
feminist protesters jumped the barriers onto the red carpet at
the premiere of Suffragette in Leicester Square in protest
of cuts to domestic violence services. A handful of the
protesters staged a lie-in on the red carpet chanting
“dead women can’t vote”
•
• Australia is refusing to grant an abortion to a Somali
woman who was raped after Canberra sent her to Nauru.
Lawyers for the woman are pleading with the Australian
government to bring her to Australia so she can have an
abortion as the procedure is illegal in
Nauru
•
• UFC fighter Ronda Rousey made history this week as she became the
first woman to make the cover of Australian magazine Men’s
Fitness
•
• Actress Ashley Judd has spoken out about her alleged sexual
harassment. The star, who wrote exclusively for Variety
magazine, says she was sexually harassed by "one of our
industry's most famous, admired - reviled
bosses"
•
• Should the number of female
characters in films and television rise at the rate of the
past 20 years, reaching parity with their male counterparts
onscreen will take 700 years, according to Oscar winning
actor and equality campaigner Geena Davis
•
• A
French TV station has pulled an advert boasting about the number
of women among its presenters after the ad was widely
criticised as sexist. The ad shows a family home in
disarray and asks: "Where are the women?" The answer is "on
France 3"
•
• Female workers in California will
get new tools to challenge gender-based wage
gaps under legislation signed into law Tuesday that
supporters say offers the strongest equal-pay protection in
the nation
•
• Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom
has explained one of the key reasons that the company
censors pictures of female nipples: Apple’s App Store has strict guidelines on
what kind of content is allowed, and violating these rules
could cause the app to be removed
•
• For the
first time in Indian military history, women will be permitted to take up combat
positions in the Indian Air Force. “We are now
planning to induct them into the fighter stream to meet the
aspirations of young women of India,” Air Chief Marshal
Raha announced on the IAF’s 83
anniversary
•
• The New York Historical Society
unveiled plans for a new Center for the
Study of Women’s History. The society says that this
makes it one of the first institutions to devote a permanent
space to women’s history
exhibitions
•
• Sibling trio Haim are hoping to start their own music festival
featuring only female artists
•
• Japanese
women now outnumber American women in participation in
the labour force – sixty-four percent of working-age
women in Japan are employed, compared with 63 per cent of
American women
•
• The five most popular
Instagram accounts all belong to
women
•
• Singer Rihanna’s interview with
Vanity Fair, in which she opened up about being a 'poster
girl' for domestic violence after being assaulted by her
boyfriend Chris Brown in 2009, has been hailed as a “triumph for
women”
•
• Women seeking an abortion in
some parts of Texas now have to wait up to 20 days on average
for an appointment, due in part to a restrictive law
that has forced a number of clinics in the state to
close
•
• Actress Kate Winslet urged young women to be more complimentary
to their female friends during a dinner held in her
honour at the New York film festival on
Tuesday
•
Events:
• The
Fantail Network spreads its wings and takes
flight to Wellington next week, with an inaugural
Wellington pop-up event for women in business offering a
trio of entrepreneurial speakers. The event will be held at Xero’s offices on
Wednesday 14 October
•
• On October 23,
Superu is holding an event in Wellington to discuss
the findings from the NZ Crime and Safety Survey
(NZCASS). The presentation will explore interpersonal
violence both by type of violence and by the victims’
relationship to the
offender
ends