Angela Waweru decided to withdraw her candidacy for a Kenyan civic seat on nomination day, frightened by slaughterhouse workers carrying butchers knives. Her male opponent had managed to force her out of the race.
“The polling station was near a slaughterhouse, very many boys from the slaughterhouse came wearing their blood splattered clothes, carrying big sharp butcher knives and they just hang around looking menacing,“ said Waweru, 48, struggling to keep her composure as she recalled the day, Reuters reported.
“I was so afraid, they were shouting at me, ’mama go home and take care of your husband’. I gave up,“ she said of her decision to pull out of the running to become a councilor for her district.
Waweru is one of the unprecedented number of women running in Kenya’s December 27 election, when Kenyans cast their votes for a new president and parliament.
Of Kenya’s 14 million voters, 6.7 million are women, yet only 18 out of the 224 members of the current parliament were women.
In contrast, neighboring Tanzania has 61 women, Uganda 75 while Rwanda has almost secured a 50-50 parity representation--gains mainly due to women-friendly legislation.
“I know many Kenyans feel more women MPs would strengthen the performance of the next parliament. Yet this is threatened by the unacceptable levels of intimidation facing many female aspirants,“ British High Commissioner Adam Wood said.
East Africa’s biggest economy is a flashpoint for violence which has escalated as the campaigns for the election become more frenetic.
Hundreds of women have received threats through short text messages and phone calls, while others have been beaten, and had groups of young men shout “prostitute“ as they speak at rallies.
During the campaign period since September, at least 51 women have reported 255 attacks to the Gender Rapid Response Unit (GRRU), funded by the British government and set up to respond to and deal with attacks on women.
But for some women, the violence and hostility has given them the impetus to go on.
Her face swathed in bandages, and wincing in obvious pain, Martha Kibwana says a brutal attack by a gang of men who stabbed her, kicked her and left her for dead will not stop her running for councilor in Taveta, a town in Kenya’s coastal province.
“I have to continue, otherwise this will have been for nothing,“ she said from her hospital bed. Kibwana has undergone surgery to repair her jaw, shattered during the attack.

Thousands of older British women could now face a retirement in "poverty" following a "devastating government U-turn" on pensions reform.

The UK government has been accused of “abandoning“ a generation of older women after ruling out a scheme to extend the ability of people to make up for missed National Insurance (NI) contributions.
Age Concern said thousands of older women could now face a retirement in “poverty“ following a “devastating Government U-turn“ on pensions reform, said The Press Association.
The government suffered an overwhelming defeat in the Lords earlier this year, when an amendment to the 2007 Pensions Bill was passed by 179 votes to 86.
The amendment, supported by Age Concern, was designed to give people the chance to buy back up to nine years of NI contributions, potentially boosting the income of thousands of women and carers, previously penalized by an unfair and outdated system.
Age Concern said the government had “quietly backtracked“ earlier this week by announcing that no changes to the current rules would be made.
Michelle Mitchell, Age Concern’s communications director, said: “This is a slap in the face for thousands of women in or approaching retirement who are being penalized for taking time out of work to care.“
She added, “There’s no doubt that reforms to the pensions system from 2010 will be good news for women born after April 1950 but this will be cold comfort for the thousands born before this date.“
Even when the reforms come into effect in 2010, a quarter of women reaching state pension age will still not receive a full basic state pension.
“Everyone approaching retirement should be given the opportunity to make more flexible National Insurance contributions, to ensure an adequate income in later life. The government’s shameful U-turn on this important amendment will condemn many more women to poverty,“ she said.

Families at risk of domestic violence in Northern Ireland could soon have panic rooms installed in their homes.
A reinforced safe room has been fitted in a Housing Executive home in Antrim to protect a mother and her children.
The room--the first of its kind in Northern Ireland--is designed to keep a violent partner out long enough for the police to arrive.
The scheme means women fleeing a violent partner can stay in their homes instead of having to seek refuge, BBC reported.
It is the result of a joint initiative by a number of agencies including the Housing Executive and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Patsy Smyth of the Housing Executive said the rooms provided a place of sanctuary.
“Depending on the victims needs, we would include locks, security doors, film on the windows, grills, high sensing cameras--anything that they need which would make them feel safe in their own home.
“In the past, the victim has had to leave their home and we have to find them temporary accommodation and it means uprooting the children, finding new schools; a whole new way of life.
“This now gives the tenant a choice--to remain in their homes, to remain in their own community, in their environment.“
It costs in the region of £1,500 to kit out such a room but that compares to the £6,500 it costs to move a mother and her child into temporary accommodation for one year.
The pilot scheme in the Antrim/Ballymena area will run until next July.
However, it is hoped to offer the tailor-made panic rooms to all Housing Executive tenants in Northern Ireland, and subsequently extend the scheme to the private sector.
Similar schemes already operate in parts of England. They also include fireproof letterboxes, strengthened doors and second phone lines.

Pakistan’s Federal Shariat Court (FSC) has declared that the Pakistani Citizenship Act, 1951, to be discriminatory against women and asked President Pervez Musharraf to amend it within six months.
The court asked the President to carry out the amendments so that a woman’s foreign husband could get Pakistani citizenship, like foreign women married to Pakistani men, wrote ANI.
“We are of the view that Section 10 of the Citizenship Act is discriminatory, negates gender equality and is in violation of Articles 2-A (Objective Resolution) and 25 (equality of citizens) of the Constitution,“ a 26-page judgment announced.
It said that Section 10 of the Citizenship Act is also against international commitments of Pakistan and, most importantly, is repugnant to the Holy Qur’an and Sunnah.
The three-member bench comprising FSC Chief Justice Haziqul Khairi, Justice Dr Fida Muhammad Khan and Justice Salahuddin Mirza had taken suo motu notice of a news report.
According to the report, a woman was denied the right to get Pakistani citizenship for her foreign husband, though the law entitled a man to obtain citizenship for his alien wife.
The decision came despite government’s opposition on the grounds that a foreign woman marrying a Pakistani man could not be equated with a foreign man married to a Pakistani woman because it would legalize the stay of a large number of illegal immigrants.
The government stated that the amendment to the law would add to unemployment and a foreign husband, after obtaining the citizenship, could divorce the woman and move around freely in the country.
Besides, it would also be a blanket approval for all foreign nationals to marry Pakistani women and obtain nationality, and majority of them could even misuse this provision, especially Afghan refugees and illegal Bengali, Bihari and other South Asian immigrants.
But the FSC judgment held that Pakistan was committed to giving equal and indiscriminate treatment to its women and to enforce equal rights.

A woman prays in a Tehran mosque.

Some 17 percent of Zambia's adult population are living with HIV and 57 percent of them are women.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Zambia’s government of failing to stop escalating violence against women and prevention of access to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for AIDS sufferers.
A researcher for the global human rights watchdog, Nada Ali, told reporters at a briefing that Zambia lacked specific legislation on violence against women despite the high number of cases reported in recent years.
She said most women in Zambia are scared to undergo HIV testing because of fear of disclosure of their status to their abusive partners who obstruct them from accessing treatment, AFP reported.
“Unless the Zambian government introduces legal and health system reform and removes barriers to HIV treatment that women face, gender-based abuses will continue to shatter the lives of countless Zambian women,“ Ali said.
In a report titled “Hidden in the Mealie Meal: Gender-based abuses and women’s HIV treatment in Zambia“, HRW said 17 percent of Zambia’s adult population are living with HIV and 57 percent of them are women.
“Healthcare facilities can play a key role in responding to violence and other abuses of women. Unfortunately, this is not happening in Zambia,“ Ali said.
United Nations secretary-general’s special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, Elizabeth Mataka urged women organizations in Zambia and other parts of the continent to begin pushing for the implementation of legal reforms to address the problem.
“Let us go beyond talking now. We need to push for implementation so that these problems can be addressed,“ Mataka said at the briefing.
HRW acknowledges that Zambia is one of the few African countries that have made an overall progress in scaling up HIV treatment by offering free life-saving ARV drugs.
“But ignoring these abuses will mean that Zambian government’s goal of universal access to HIV treatment by 2010 will fail,“ Ali warned.

Children and women trafficking is on the rise in China, authorities said as they announced a five-year plan to combat the problem.
The nationwide campaign, to begin next year, will seek to step up monitoring of the problem from the grass-roots level, as well as help victims, according to a circular posted on the central government’s websites, AFP reported.
“There are new trends... in crimes that involve women and children trafficking, the situation is not optimistic. Organized criminal activities and cross-border cases are on the increase,“ the circular said.
He said, “[We] must minimize the physical and psychological harm suffered by women and children who have been kidnapped and sold.“
Under the plan, local government departments will be required to clamp down on illegal job markets by closing unlicensed job and marriage agencies, which often lure women and children into the sex trade and forced labor.
Transport departments must also step up monitoring at railway and bus stations, ferry docks, airports and entertainment venues to prevent women and children from being kidnapped.

Women are likely to make up 60 percent or more of Democratic primary voters and caucus goers in many states, including the crucial first state of Iowa, according to pollsters, political analysts, and campaign organizers.
While women have long been a majority of Democratic primary voters, stronger efforts this time by candidates to attract women who either haven’t voted in primaries or who voted Republican in the past mean that female voters are expected to dominate the nomination process more than ever before, reported Boston.com.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in particular, are wooing first-time female caucus goers in Iowa, who could determine the outcome because the contest is so close. A new poll released by CNN showed a three-way statistical dead heat among Clinton, Obama, and John Edwards among likely Democratic caucus goers.
“I think women are going to turn out and be the engines of this election, so it could be historic,“ said Kate Michelman, a prominent feminist leader who is a senior adviser to Edwards.
She added, “It’s not because we have a woman running, but because of what’s at stake.“
Clinton’s presence in the race first sparked the unusual level of attention to women’s issues across the field of candidates, several political observers agreed. And her campaign is in overdrive trying to bring out working-class and single women who are less likely to vote or to caucus, but who polls indicate tend to favor Clinton.