Protests are being planned at urinals across Amsterdam over the lack of female public toilet facilities after a judge criticized a woman for not using public male toilets after getting caught short on the streets of the city. Geerte Piening, 23, was fined after she asked her friends to cover for her as she urinated off a street on a night out in Amsterdam’s Leidseplein district. Amsterdam has 35 public urinals for men and only three public toilets for women. It was past the closing time of local bars, and Piening was a couple of kilometers from the nearest women’s toilet facilities. Piening decided to fight the charges in court, only to be criticized by the judge who said that despite the lack of toilets available for women she should have made use of the facilities made available to men. “It would not be pleasant but it can be done,”…

A new women-only transport service launching in Paris aims to tackle the problem of sexual harassment and assault in taxi cabs. For many women taking a taxi isn’t always the stress-free option for getting from A to B that it should be, and Paris is no exception. But a new company launching in the French capital is hoping to make that a thing of the past. Women drive promises transport without “indiscreet looks, delicate questions, or ambiguous proposals”. It also promises a luxury experience, with concierge and personal shopper services offered in addition to standard drivers, and water bottles, makeup kits, and computer tablets in each car. The goal of the service is to “prove that transporting people is not a profession reserved for men and that women have the right to be transported in peace,” founder Sarra Boubchir told Le Figaro. She said the inspiration for the startup came…

The Turkish government is planning to reduce the ratio of underage as well as forced marriages in the country from five percent to one percent through an action plan regarding the issue prepared by the Family and Social Policies Ministry for 2018-2023, daily Milliyet reported on Aug. 31. According to the data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), of the 602,982 official marriages in Turkey in 2015, over 30,000 girls aged 16-17 were forced into marriage, the daily said. This figure corresponds to 5.2 percent of all marriages that year, whereas this ratio was determined to be 7.3 percent in 2002, according to Milliyet. The Family and Social Policy Ministry has held meetings regarding its action plan called “Strategy document and action plan for prevention of early and forced marriage.” In these meetings, the officials reportedly said the issue of child marriage was still an important problem in the…

The Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, has introduced a bill to legalize gay marriage, a move that follows a string of liberal reforms in one of Latin America’s most conservative nations. In 2015, Chile’s Congress approved same-sex civil unions after years of legislative wrangling. In March, Bachelet, a centre-left politician, pledged to send a full marriage bill to legislators before the end of the year. “We can’t let old prejudices be stronger than love,” Bachelet said in Chile’s La Moneda presidential palace. “We do this with the certainty that it is not ethical or fair to put artificial limits on love, or to deny essential rights just because of the sex of those who make up a couple.” The move comes a week after Chile’s constitutional court approved a landmark bill that will allow abortion in some circumstances. Chile was one of only a handful of countries in the world that…

India’s Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Wednesday said that 30 per cent of his ministry’s budget would be invested on the country’s women farmers. “There will be at least 30 per cent of the budget allocation for women beneficiaries in all ongoing schemes, programmes, and development activities,” he said in his address at the National Consultation of Women Farmers, organised by the National Commission for Women, UN Women and Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch, a forum for women farmers’ rights. In the consultation, women farmers and their collectives from 24 states across India shared a comprehensive framework for establishing gender responsive laws, institutions, policies and programmes in the agriculture sector with the ministry. Singh said that the ministry would be initiating women centric activities to ensure benefits of various beneficiary-oriented programs/schemes reach them. “We will be focusing on women self-help group to connect them to micro-credit…

By: Janene Pieters Women in the Netherlands are more likely to give birth during the week than on the weekend, according to Statistics Netherlands’ analysis of the birth and mortality patterns in the country last year. The stats office partly attributes this to the fact that more women give birth in hospitals – less than a quarter of last year’s births happened at home. Remarkably, there are also fewer deaths in the Netherlands over the weekends than on weekdays. In 2016 only 7 percent of the deaths happened on a Sunday and there is a peak of deaths on Fridays. It is not clear why. According to Statistics Netherlands, Dutch demographics show week- and season patterns. Friday, July 8th, and Friday, September 16th were the days on which the most babies were born last year, 610 and 599 respectively. Over the weekends, significantly fewer babies were…