Hundreds of Afghan women participate in a peace march in southern Afghanistan, Dec. 10.

In the heart of southern Afghanistan, hundreds of women gathered on Dec. 10 to do something extraordinary: They raised their voices in prayers for peace.
The idea of women doing anything aside from tending to home and family is fairly shocking in provinces like Kandahar and Helmand, where the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban control most of the countryside.
Yet the assembling of an estimated 1,000 women in six southern provinces is a compelling development, women’s rights experts said, reported Csmonitor.com.
At the meetings, the women recited the holy Qur’an and shared stories of how the war has torn their families apart.
In doing so, they got a taste of what it means to at least participate, if not to lead, in a broader world.
People in these areas “are used to seeing women in the four walls of their houses,“ said Massouda Jalal, former head of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul, who was reached by telephone. “This is all they know.“
Giving women a taste of a broader life is the only way to begin to empower them, she says: “If women leaders are sitting at home, it will not happen.“
Other parts of the country have made important strides toward greater rights for women in recent years.
Women are members of parliament, and in some large cities--such as Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, and Herat--many women choose not to wear the burqa. In the south, however, bare faces are almost unheard-of, and the notion of a woman working remains the fantastic invention of heretical foreigners.
“For the traditional society, it is something new to see women active,“ says Jalal. “They need to get used to it and have their mentality changed.“
The moment represents an important time--set between a more traditional past and an uncertain future. “We Afghan women should take this opportunity,“ says Jalal. “These women did a good job in coming together.“

Palestinian female police officers listen to instructions at the police station.

Palestinian pedestrians gawked at the unusual sight of female police officers directing traffic in Ramallah, the first batch of women to venture into a job traditionally reserved for men in the West Bank.
The women wore uniforms of navy blue pants and light blue shirts and many donned navy blue headscarves, a sign of Muslim modesty, AP said.
The new recruits are part of the first class of Palestinian policewomen who recently completed a European Union-sponsored training program, part of a broader EU effort to improve ill-equipped Palestinian law enforcement agencies.
In addition to directing traffic, their duties also include conducting traffic patrols, house searches and security checks on women in prisons and universities.
Roles of authority for women are widely frowned upon in conservative Palestinian society, but several bystanders said they were impressed.
“This is wonderful--watching Palestinian women enforcing law and order,“ said Fuad Murar, 59.
Ashjan Abu Srour, a 23-year-old policewoman, wore an Islamic headscarf as she coaxed an elderly couple to walk on the sidewalk, not on the road.
“I was a little afraid in the beginning, because our society imposes a certain lifestyle for women,“ Abu Srour said. “But now, after spending some time in the street, I am not afraid.“
According to the most recent EU count, the overall number of females in the Palestinian civil police service was only 500 compared to more than 18,000 men.

India’s booming IT and IT-enabled services industry is a favorite destination of job-seeking women, whose employment in the industry is set to rise dramatically to 45 percent in 2010 from the current 30 percent, says an industry survey.
A survey by National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the representative organization of the Indian software firms, says this is due to the inclusive human resource (HR) policies of Indian IT firms, which recruit, train, retain and promote women employees as a strategic business plan, IANS reported.
“As the IT-ITeS sector moves up the value chain, more women are joining the industry. The male-female ratio is expected to improve to 65:35 by this year-end from 76:24 in 2005,“ outgoing Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said.
He added, “Even as the industry braces up to achieve this healthy gender ratio, the job trend indicates more and more educated young women, including housewives, are joining the industry due to its progressive and flexible HR policies.“
He also said that, “For empowering the women workforce and creating conducive environment to grow equally at their workplace, we have commissioned Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to conduct a fresh study on the status of women employees in the IT industry and avenues for their growth in the value chain,“ Karnik told about 300 women delegates participating in the Nasscom-IT Women Leadership Summit on Dec. 12, 2007.
The study, expected to be completed in the next five-six weeks, will focus on additional measures to be taken by the industry to empower women employees and create opportunities to absorb more of them increasingly.
“It is a survey of what the IT industry does and can do more in terms of attitudes, perception and best practices for an inclusive growth. Women are a key and vital part of a progressive industry, which promotes gender diversity and empowerment,“ Karnik pointed out.
As the nature of their occupation, which includes looking after domestic chores, is different and burdensome, the study will explore prospects of employing women with flexi-timing so that they could divide their work between office and home.

South Korea has the most unfriendly work conditions for women among the world’s more advanced economies, said a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The report cited by the National Statistical Office (NSO) showed that South Korean women work more hours than others in the 30-member OECD, while getting paid less than their male counterparts, wrote Yonhap.
The findings showed that 77 percent of women workers put in more than 40 hours a week at their jobs in 2005. This, the report said, is much higher than the average 49 percent tallied for the whole of the OECD in the same year.
The NSO said the percentage was 13 percent points higher than the United States where 64 percent of women put in more than 40 hours a week at work. The figure for Japan was 48 percent, while that for Sweden was 40 percent.
The report also showed that women workers were paid far less than male workers. It said male workers were on average paid two times more than female workers in South Korea. The low salaries may help explain the lower percentage of well-educated Korean women who join the workforce compared to other countries.
As of 2004, the OECD report said the employment rate for South Korean women with college degrees or above stood at 57 percent compared to 59 percent for those with high school diplomas.
South Korea is the only OECD member where the participation of well-educated women in the workforce is below that of those with high school diplomas or less.
In the case of the United States, Australia, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands, the percentage of women with college degrees or above in the workforce is 20 percent higher than those with less education.

European Parliament (EP) on Dec. 13 approved a resolution on Justice for the “Comfort Women“--those forced into sex slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army before and during World War II--and urged Tokyo to formally apologize and compensate the victims and their families.
The US House of Representatives as well as the Canadian and Dutch parliaments adopted similar motions in late July and November, Xinhua said.
Records show that up to 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines and other Asian countries were enslaved by the Japanese military before and during the war. Many survivors have described their horrifying experiences.
However, the Japanese government has never fully accepted responsibility for their suffering or paid compensation.
At a session in Strasbourg, France, 57 Members of the European Parliament voted on the resolution, with 54 in favor and three abstentions.
The document calls on the Japanese government “to formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical and legal responsibility, in a clear and unequivocal manner, for its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery--known to the world as ’comfort women’ --during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s until the end of World War II“.
Author of the resolution Raul Romeva, a member of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance in the EP, urged Tokyo to comply with international law to do justice for the victims.
“We are talking about 200,000 women who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army... Sixty-two years later, survivors are still waiting for justice to be done,“ Romeva told the parliament.
“Throughout their lives, they have suffered from mental and physical ill-health and extreme poverty,“ Romeva said.
He noted it is shocking that the Japanese government has neither complied with international law regarding reparation, compensation and rehabilitation to “satisfy their basic needs“, nor formally apologized.
The resolution urges the Japanese government to implement effective administrative mechanisms to provide reparation to all surviving victims and the families of deceased victims.
It also urges the Japanese parliament (the Diet) to take legal measures “to remove existing obstacles to obtaining reparation before Japanese courts; in particular, the right of individuals to claim reparation from the government should be expressly recognized in national law, and cases for reparation for the survivors of sexual slavery--as a crime under international law--should be prioritized“.
It asks “the government of Japan to refute publicly any claims that the subjugation and enslavement of ’comfort women’ never occurred“.
The resolution encourages the Japanese people and government to take steps to recognize the full history of their nation and foster awareness in the country of its military past in the 30s and 40s.

A rural woman near the southern Iranian city of Kerman, bakes bread in a traditional way.

To protect babies against birth defects such as spina bifida, Canadian experts are recommending women of childbearing age increase their intake of folic acid to five milligrams a day.
Previous guidelines recommended one milligram daily--the amount found in many prenatal vitamins, Canada.com said.
The new recommendations, which come from experts with the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) and the Motherisk Program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, are based on recent findings that show increased folic acid consumption can drastically reduce neural tube defects and other problems such as congenital heart disease, oral facial clefts, limb defects and some pediatric cancers.
“The good news is that a lot of this heartache can be very easily prevented. Women just need to take multivitamins containing a little more folic acid, and they need to start taking it at least three months before becoming pregnant,“ said Dr. Vyta Senikas, the associate executive vice-president with the SOGC.
Because many pregnancies are often unplanned, the guidelines recommend all women of childbearing age take folic acid supplements and eat foods rich in folate, such as spinach, chick peas and asparagus.
Experts are also calling on the government to dramatically increase folic acid supplementation in products that are already fortified, such as white flour, cornmeal and enriched pasta.

Austrian women on average live almost six years longer than men, but are more prone to a lonely old age, Austria’s statistics office said, reported Monstersandcritics.com.
In 2006, the average life expectancy of Austrian women was 83 years, compared with 77 years for men.
However, more than 38 percent of women between 70 and 74 live alone compared to only 15 percent of males in the same age bracket.
The situation is more pronounced in the over 75 age group--49 percent of women and 22 of men percent are single.
Women remained disadvantaged in Austria’s job market, the study said, earning only 74 percent of an average male income. Only 31 percent of leading positions were filled by women. In the education sector, women university graduates overtook their male colleagues.
However, there was still a significant lack of female university teachers (14 percent) and the share of women in technical fields also remained low.

Notwithstanding a protracted delay, tough new laws against sexual abuse finally went into effect on Sunday in South Africa, which is often called the “rape capital“ of the world.
The Justice Ministry said that the Sexual Offenses Amendment Act would help the country “fight the scourge of sexual offenses head-on“ and would at last give greater protection to victims of sexual crimes, AP said.
For the first time, victims will be able to go to court to force their attackers to take AIDS tests. An estimated 5.4 million South Africans are infected with HIV--the highest number of any country in the world.
More than 50,000 rape cases were reported last year, almost 150 per day. Based on reported cases alone, South Africa has 114 rapes per 100,000 people, compared with a rate of 32 rapes per 100,000 in the United States, according to police figures. Women’s rights groups estimate that only one in nine rapes is reported to police.