25 Aug 2015 - NPWJ News Digest on FGM and women's rights

Articles

Women managers in Wales 'work hour for free'
By the BBC news, 25 Aug 2015

Women managers in Wales are effectively working for free for nearly an hour every day, a professional body claims. The management gender pay gap stands at an average of £3,188 - or 13%. Although this is less than the UK average of 22%, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) said it was still "unacceptable". The findings are in its annual salary survey of more than 72,000 professionals across the UK. The findings are reflected in the most recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures. These show women in professional occupations in Wales received an average of £678 gross pay a week in 2014 - compared to men on £794 a week. 

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Women, minorities still underrepresented in medical specialties
By Reuters, 24 Aug 2015

Too few women and minorities are entering certain medical specialties in the U.S., researchers say. Diversifying the physician workforce may be key to addressing health disparities and inequities, Dr. Curtiland Deville of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who worked on the study, said in an email. "Minority physicians continue to provide the majority of care for underserved and non-English speaking populations,” Dr. Deville added. Yet "in no specialties . . . were the percentages of black or Hispanic trainees comparable with the representation of these groups in the US population," he and his colleagues wrote in JAMA Internal Medicine. Medical schools have been trying to increase the diversity of their students, "with perhaps the assumption that this increased diversity will translate downstream to all specialties," Dr. Deville told Reuters Health. 

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Kurds Fighting the Islamic State Enraged at Turkey Over Brutal Killing of Female Fighter
By Vice News, 22 Aug 2015

As photos of the naked and bloodied corpse of a female Kurdish militant recently trended on Twitter, women's rights groups in Turkey reeled at an act of sexualized torture committed by Turkish police, who also allegedly leaked the images. The pro-Kurdish group Save Kobane identified the body as Kevser Elturk, known by her nom de guerre Ekin Van. Elturk was a commander in the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), an organization that has fought an armed campaign for a independent Kurdish state since 1984 in the area where Turkey, Syria, and Iraq meet, and which has recently been instrumental in repelling advances in the region by Islamic State (IS) militants. Turkey, NATO, and the United States have classified the PKK a terrorist organization. Elturk was killed in clashes with Turkish security forces near the town of Varto in eastern Mus Province on August 10. The images of her remains and a description provided by those who later prepared her body for burial indicate that she was stripped of her uniform, dragged by the neck with a rope through town, and abandoned in the town square. 

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Almost 90 percent of India's rapes committed by people known to victim
By Reuters, 21 Aug 2015

 Almost 90 percent of rapes in India in 2014 were committed by people known to the victims such as relatives, neighbors and employers, government statistics showed, as activists called for more focus on tackling sexual violence in the home and at work. In its annual report, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) said there were 337,922 reports of violence against women such as rape, molestation, abduction and cruelty by husbands last year, up 9 percent in 2013. The number of rapes in the country also rose by 9 percent to 33,707 in 2014 - with New Delhi reporting 1,813 rapes, making it the city with the highest number of such cases. Mumbai and Bengaluru recorded 607 and 103 rapes respectively. The data showed that 86 percent of rapes had been committed by close family members such as fathers, brothers and uncles, as well as neighbors, employers, co-workers and friends. The report indicated that 14,102 - 38 percent - of rape victims were below the age of 18.

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India's few policewomen battle sexism at every level
by re, 19 Aug 2015

 India's police force is not only drastically short of women, it is also plagued by sexism, with women given menial duties, bypassed for promotion and scared to report sexual harassment by male colleagues, a Commonwealth study said on Wednesday. The report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative found that despite a federal government call for the force to raise the proportion of women to 33 percent, women make up only 6.11 percent of India's 2.3 million police. In countries like the United States, women account for 12 percent of the police force, compared with 0.9 percent in Pakistan and 7.4 percent in the Maldives. Interviews with male and female police officers in five Indian states found that women faced a deep-seated gender bias across the police force which started at recruitment and carried on throughout their career, said Devika Prasad, co-author of the report "Rough Roads to Equality: Women Police in South Asia". "Everywhere that we went, women police across ranks told us one of the most discouraging things for them is that there are no women on recruitment and interview boards and selection panels," Prasad said at the launch of the report.

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