Today we did some brainstorming about inequality in New Zealand. This was very helpful as it allowed us to unpack all the elements under the subheadings. By refining down our ideas it will be easier to create posters that effectively represent the message we are trying to give.
We then played Pictionary which was enjoyable as well as made us think about how we can represent something simply and quickly and get straight to the point of the message. it made us think about what elements are most important to show the meaning.
For homework, I have created my own mind map with words relating to some of the key topics I am thinking about doing. I have also been using key words from this to find posters that create a visual solution for these inequalities and use rhetoric devices that create bold statements.
Precedents:
I have begun to research my possible topics. I want to do gender inequality but I am still deciding which direction I want to go in out of either abortion, sexual abuse or domestic violence.
Abortion:
Control of fertility varies widely between income groups. Most unmarried women are sexually active, regardless of income. But women with higher incomes are much more successful at ensuring that sex does not lead to an accidental baby. This almost certainly reflects their brighter economic and labour market prospects: simply put, they have more to lose from an unintended birth. Improving the economic and educational prospects of poorer women is, therefore, an important part of any strategy to reduce unintended birth rates. But there are more immediate solutions, too. Affluent women use contraception more frequently and more effectively, and there is a clear case for policies to help close this income gap, including increasing access to long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs). But access to affordable abortion also matters, and this is currently limited for many low-income women. There are of course strongly-held views on abortion, but it should be hard for anyone to accept such inequalities by income, especially when they are likely to reverberate across two or more generations. Abortion is a difficult choice, but it is not one that should influenced by financial status.
In New Zealand, the law says it is legal to have an abortion if two certifying consultants (doctors) agree that continuing the pregnancy would result in serious danger to a woman’s mental or physical health.
international covenants recognise people’s rights to decide whether and when to have children and how many children to have, and to have the information and means to do so, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. Human rights bodies increasingly find that denying or obstructing a woman’s access to abortion can amount to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (“CIDT”) under multiple human rights treaties,” that “the State’s failure to act to prevent de facto restrictions are unjustifiable and disproportionate to lawful State aims,” and that “deprivations of autonomy in reproductive rights context can lead to the kind of pain and suffering that is unacceptable in modern societies.”
Abortion restrictions depress women’s incomes, deepen and entrench poverty for women and children, and increase income inequality. One study found that women denied abortion were three times as likely to end up below the federal poverty line two years later, compared with similar women who sought and obtained an abortion.
Each year, an estimated 22 million women and girls have an unsafe abortion, almost all in the developing world. As a result, 47,000 lose their lives and millions more suffer serious injury. The economic and social costs of unsafe, delayed, or illegal abortions include maternal mortality, long-term complications from damage to reproductive organs, pelvic inflammatory disease, and secondary infertility, and potential harm to a woman’s existing children. The economies suffer from diminished economic participation in countries where women experience these preventable injuries.
The World Health Organisation asserts that safe abortion services should be available and accessible to the fullest extent of the law for all women—regardless of geography, ability to pay, age, gender, race, and ethnicity.
Public health and international covenants recognise that access to reproductive health services, including abortion, is a fundamental human right, enabling the right to decide whether and when to have children and how many children to have and to have the information and means to do so, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. The reproductive justice framework calls for recognition and redress for compounded economic, cultural, and structural disparities resulting from race, gender and class.
To criminalise women over what is essentially, crucially and fundamentally a health issue is outrageous.
I'm not even going to get into the outdated language.
The law needs to be completely scrapped from the books, removed from the Crimes Act and totally redrafted from scratch as a female health (physical and mental) issue, by women, for women.
I volunteered for Women's Refuge for two years, and in that time I saw many cases that would support a woman's right to choose. They include:
- A 13-year-old girl, who had only had three periods in her whole life, raped by a stranger and pregnant as a result. A violent, brutal man forced himself and a pregnancy on a child.
- A 17-year-old girl, raped by her uncle, pregnant as a result.
- Several women who attempted suicide when they found out they were pregnant, because they could not handle the pregnancy as well as the violent circumstances of their lives.
- Women who successfully committed suicide.
- Several cases of women who were pregnant as a result of their husbands/partners raping them, or who at least were too afraid to deny him sex in case they got a hiding. Many of these women already had more children than they could care for, who were being abused by their fathers. In one case, she was badly beaten when he found out she wanted to go on the pill, because the more kids she had, the more money he got from social welfare.
Sexual abuse:
A ‘double standard’ governed sexual activity, slowly lessening in strength in the later 20th century. It allowed men, but not women, to be sexually active outside marriage. Blame for prostitution and illegitimate births was laid squarely on women. Sexual violence and sexual harassment were common, but were seldom discussed or reported.
Marital rape was not a crime; wives did not have the right to refuse their husbands sex – and neither, until the 1960s, did they have independent access to effective contraception. Domestic violence was common, and in the 19th and early 20th centuries was seen by many as a man's right. Before 1896 the age of consent was 12, allowing men to take advantage of girls. Prosecution and conviction for rape were rare, and incest was not a crime.
The age of consent was raised to 16 in 1896, and incest was criminalised in 1900. The gap between the law and life remained wide. As any prosecution for sex with an under-age girl had to be brought within one month of the offence, the law was little more than an ineffective threat. Incest, like other forms of sexual violation, continued to have a low reporting rate.
The first legal measure aimed at protecting women from violence by male partners came in 1982, and in 1985 marital rape became a crime.
The 2006 Crime and Safety Survey found that approximately 29 percent of women and 9 percent of men experience unwanted and distressing sexual contact over their lifetime. Sexual offences were the fifth most common offence disclosed in the survey.
Gender is a major predictor of sexual victimisation, with women having a disproportionately higher risk of sexual victimisation than men.
It is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality. Figures reported to New Zealand Police indicate 99% of adult sexual violence is perpetrated by men.
Violence against women is a violation of women’s basic human rights. Not only are women denied their right to live free from violence, but they are also prevented from claiming their economic, social and political rights.
Worldwide, one in every three women are beaten, forced to have sex, or otherwise abused during their lifetimes, often by a member of their own family.
Here in New Zealand the statistics are staggering. 20 percent of women will be physically abused by a male partner (UNICEF) and one in five women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime (WHO)
Domestic violence:
One in four women experience violence in their lifetime. It is costly to victims, communities and the country as a whole, and is a major barrier to gender equality.
Gender equality will have been achieved when women do not experience violence in their homes, share unpaid care work with men and are represented at the highest levels of business and politics.
Violence towards women and children are gendered crimes with serious health effects that can be lifelong. Violence is one of the most significant challenges to the health of women and girls. The prevalence of gendered violence is supported by current cultural norms, gender inequalities and institutionalised misogyny. It is exacerbated by various factors including economic inequality, poverty, high crime levels, alcohol and drug abuse, sexist portrayal of women and girls in various forms of media, poor victim support from both the police and the judiciary and the underfunding of support services. The impact of sexual and domestic violence on survivors, families and communities is serious and long-term with costs to both individuals and society. In 2003 a New Zealand Treasury report estimated the economic costs to the New Zealand economy at $1.2 billion each year.
power inequalities between men and women
domestic violence was tied tightly to inequality because it was the effect of men having greater power over women.
"Violence of any form, physical, financial, emotional is a way of controlling women and keeping them in their place."
