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.

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Comments (3 of 3)

Links

Sun Apr 06, 2008 16:21

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/05/2208905.htm

This works....

The Pic is of the caucas in Latina America and link to Law-makers story, these women addressed poverty
in a manner that was at all levels of consultation and respect.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/82315

PD http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84946
HFE http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86934

Campaigns for equality in voice

It's not just women who are disenfranchised on these matters

by ScumbagHetrosexualMale

Sun Apr 06, 2008 17:34

Its men too. This is about all poor people being disenfranchised not just women.
I'm poor, I have no property and I have no say in any of these things either.
My penis doesn't enter into it!
And all these focus groups have women on them. Just not poor women.

Perhaps this is an issue both poor men and poor women need be united on.
Implying that it is purely a womens issue is misleading and divisive.

am used to this

Sun Apr 06, 2008 18:45

since the UN attempted to bring issues of women's poverty to the fore and asked that
National Governments begin to look at the systems that mitigated against women (2005)
no national governments have responded... so I would not worry too much.

I would think that national Governments whose interests are solely profit-driven do not
like community,but whenever I bring up the issue it's sidelined, trolled or attacked. The
most basic attack being of the 'Skeptic' variety where the language that is used is
always of the political variety and tends to hide meaning in well-chosen words that
obfuscate issues. especially on the PD thread. So I will put it simply enough in this case:

Political representation begins in the micro-unit: the individuals needs and rights.
They are not adhered to for political convenience, many base their fear of societal breakdown
in words of violence and in words of control.like it or not the hierarchies that govern us
are male dominated . The HSE is not interested in community medicine and care
with the drawing of arbitary lines for cancer care centres and the creation of super hospitals
in built up areas. there has been no plan proposed for the areas which lose hospital
services. My mother, a feminist, explained the situation as 'fur coat, no knickers'policy.
and its true. I don't see a mad rush on for ordinary women to be taking the corridors of
power but a disinterest in the mechanisms of power- that is leading to a lack of
negotiation on issues on health and education. Not one person, male or female, that
I know supports this 16 billion euro fiasco of Harney but no-one knows how to deal
with it , so alienated are they from the system.

anyway. One of the ways of dealing with it is by recognising that we are not gender
neutral and by increasing (maybe) the volume on women's political voice and input.
Niamh Brennan, for example is an unelected board member of the HSE.
She is the wife of the ex-minister for justice. I would like to see someone like her
sit with the women of the Dolphin's barn community who have inadequate housing, education
access and healthcare and forming opinion on hospital provision in that and not
in the desire of the ex-taoiseach to have the national children's hospital based
in a car-park site in his constituency?

it does not happen. it won't happen either. The HSE was designed as an executive
which reduced Health board input to community level access to parity of treatment
access. Of the 16 billion allocated to healthcare, one billion is going to public
hospitals. one thousand beds have been removed from the public system as a result
of the Private hospitals on public lands legislations. the IMO have accused DOHC
of Health Apartheid.

i do not own property either, nor do I want to but thats different to providing
communities with homes in which to raise their kids. communities with growing kids
need hospitals, schools, parks and greenfield sites.

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Comments (3 of 3)