Addressing Poverty and Violence against Women

international | crime and justice | opinion/analysis Sunday April 06, 2008 14:29 by C Murray

Limited media coverage-Governments must introduce measurable reform.

On a day when the UN released a report that 70% of women suffer poverty and only own 1% of the world's
titled land, which is a common inheritance of all people I decided to look at media coverage of the issues.
The Irish Times had the report in small paragraph without title or reference to the committee release.
And I could not find it elsewhere. Addressing the root cause of women's poverty is not a simple
prospect, afterall, National Governments do not listen to women. If they did they would hear what they say
to me everyday...

GEA Architecture Reform

The women who cope with poverty in Dublin through the raising of their children want hospitals and
schools. It's that simple, they often say that they spend most of their lives caring for young kids and
it is getting harder. The health policies and the HSE , for example tend to support listening to the
drug companies and the interests of consultants. There is a report on this newswire about CF
services, one woman I know in Dolphin's Barn has a CF daughter and the prospect of losing the
Crumlin Hospital is making her sick with concern for the nights she must get help. She says she
must get a taxi or bus to the Mater, if amalgamation goes ahead. Now the intelligence of a 16 billion
reform programme by a woman minister for health who does not listen to the concerns of people who
have used the services of the Hospital in Crumlin for generations is suspect?

The women in this area do not have a say in the health care of their children , nor in the
obvious discrimination in provision of services to schools. instead an unholy row broke out
between the board who cut off from the amalgamation talks and the archbishop of Dublin.

Who is listening to those who are raising up the next generation, when all the women say is
that a nation's health is in the future of the children and not in greed and corporate management of health
care issues?

Tackling the root of poverty begins with addressing it.

In Ireland accomodation disadvantage, healthcare and education are the services that are our
infrasturcture, every single one of them has been lessened through greed. Not one woman I have spoken
to said that she was consulted on any aspect of the issues- but the problems begin at that level.

We are the most gender-imbalanced nation in the EU.
it is not about focus groups taking ideas and making them national policy , it is about representation.
mostly women say that the elections are not worthwhile- cos they all talk shite.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/08/2208905.htm

Another group of civil society women in Bali told me that the conference attended by Gormley did not allow
access to them on sustainability and bi-lateral trade agreement.

and on it goes.. There is less women's voice in issues on eco and sustainability, including
on corporatism and the feeding of children ,than there is of the voice of those who attempt to represent
national policy at international level. It's insulting to many and many have just divorced themselves from
the systems that seek to speak on behalf of community without in any way adequately mirroring the
deep concerns of community.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86426

In Britain the row about the HFE and reduction of the upper abortion limit was made without consultation
with NGO's and women's rights organsiations, in which the causes of poverty feed quite neatly into
the corporate buying of women's eggs at a low profit to ameliorate the lives of the rich. in the prisons
british women have suicided and left their children whilst on remand cases and soon to be released.
The London Independent says that stories of British poverty are not making the media.

Ban Ki- Moon called on the women's poverty and VAW NGO's to collate data on how governments
actually deal with these issues to effect change throughout gender reform architecture, this includes
access to education, to medical abortion rights, to political voice.

Most Western representative democracies proceed on the issue that we are 'gender neutral', no-one is
and no-one wants parliaments and decision-making committees making decisions on behalf of their
communities through a lack of consultation with a sizeable proportion of those communities.

and listening alone to the lobbies whose concern is in profit alone.

I have scattered a myriad amount of stories on this wire in relation to dis-empowerment through violence
in language, image and non-representation of women's issues. The states in South America particularly
show how disempowerment strips the eco futures and next generation of people from their dignity
and rights. Guatemala and Chile being the most under-representative, with problems and political
interferences in Nicaragua too.