Women Worldwide

by Artemis

In May 2006 in Iran, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a mother of two, was convicted of an "illicit relationship" and received 99 lashes. Despite this punishment, the court gave her a new charge of "adultery" and sentenced her to death by stoning. An international outcry forced the court to grant a reprieve, but she is still awaiting execution along with 12 other women and three men sentenced to stoning. Her plight has provoked international demonstrations and campaigns against stoning. To sign a petition go to: freesakineh.org.

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Mothers in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero die in childbirth 70% more often than the national average in Mexico. Indigenous women are three times less likely to survive childbirth than non-indigenous women. Transportation difficulties cause one-third of indigenous women to give birth without medical help, which is also often too costly. In cities, 40% of maternal deaths are caused by wrong medications, botched surgeries, and other forms of malpractice.

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The International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria, in July, saw a strong presence of sex worker rights activists, with booths, a networking zone, films, panel discussions, and participation in the Human Rights March. They demanded that funders, researchers, and organizations support the human rights of sex workers, ending police violence, acknowledging sex work as real work, and changing the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief so that organizations no longer have to sign a pledge opposing prostitution.

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After years of struggle the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights passed the New York State Legislature in June. Domestic Workers United fought for the bill, the first to protect the state's 200,000 domestic workers, documented and undocumented immigrants. It corrects the 75-year exclusion of mostly Black domestic and farm workers from labor law protections. It requires minimum wages, overtime pay, and sick, holiday, and vacation pay as well as 14-day notice or termination pay before firing a domestic worker.

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On Aug. 17 Dorothy Height died at 98. As a social worker with the Harlem YWCA in the 1930s she brought attention to the "slave markets" on New York street corners where white suburban housewives hired Black women as domestic workers for 15 cents an hour. She fought to end lynching and to desegregate the armed forces, and initiated programs in the South to fight hunger and secure decent housing.

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