A recently released report by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Bangladeshi rights group Odhikar calls for greater respect for the rights of women workers in the ready-made garment and construction sectors in Bangladesh.
The Women’s Federation of Xuhui District in Shanghai has made great efforts in the battle against poverty in the district’s pairing-up counties in Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
Nepal’s top e-wallet app, Khalti, has cemented its place in the country’s digital payment market within two years by getting women on its side, empowering them to reduce the digital gender gap and improve their entrepreneurial skills.
Women’s rights activist Dr Aparajita Gogoi tells us how the lockdown has impacted women and girls and what can be done to address their issues
Throughout history, whenever there has been a crisis, it has always taken a larger toll on girls, women and children. The COVID pandemic has resulted in women and girls facing the brunt of it. Dr Aparajita Gogoi, Executive Director of the Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3) and the National Coordinator of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood India, has been working for the rights of women and young girls. She explains how this pandemic and the subsequent restrictions have placed women and girls at more risk and what they are doing about it. Excerpts…
National Commission for Women chairperson Rekha Sharma is against the use of TikTok in India and she plans to write to the Government with the demand to ban social media.
55-year-old Tokiko Shimizu, has been appointed as an executive director of Japan’s Central Bank, making her the first woman to fill one of the six executive posts, since the Bank’s inception in October 1882.
Shimizu was appointed as part of a sweeping reshuffle at the Bank of Japan, becoming one of a team of six executives responsible for running the central Bank’s daily operations.
She joined the Bank of Japan in 1987, taking up roles in the financial markets division and foreign exchange operations, and was general manager for Europe and chief representative in London between 2016 and 2018.
Women make up 47% of the Central Bank’s workforce but only 13% of senior managerial posts and just 20% of expert positions dealing with legal affairs, payment systems and banknotes, according to the Bank’s data.
Women have been represented on its policy board — the highest decision-making body responsible for setting monetary policy —since it was established in 1998. But only one of the board’s nine members is a woman, and the Bank has never had a woman governor, unlike the Federal Reserve or European Central Bank.
Over the past decade, demographic challenges and the growing number of women in higher education has slowly begun to change Japan’s male-dominated management structures.
But while women account for 51% of the Japanese population, according to 2018 World Bank data, the country is ranked 121 out of 153 countries in the World Economic Forum’s latest global gender gap index.
The country also ranks at the bottom among the G7 countries for gender equality, according to the WEF, despite Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s pledge to empower working women through a policy called “womenomics.”
CNN
The mayor of Japan’s Osaka has come under fire for suggesting men should do grocery shopping during the coronavirus outbreak because women are indecisive and “take a long time”.
Japan is under a state of emergency over the pandemic, and residents in some areas have been asked to shop less frequently and only send one family member out to get supplies to limit contact.