I want to bring to your attention a wonderful online resource for women’s news, Women’s eNews (http://www.womensenews.org/join.cfm). I receive a daily update entitled Cheers and Jeers.

Women’s eNews is a prize-winning nonprofit daily Internet-based news service supported by its readers, events, foundations and resale of its content. It is the definitive source of substantive news–unavailable anywhere else–covering issues of particular concern to women and their allies. Launched in 2000, the independent media outlet provides women, and those who care about women, the news they need to know. Rita Henley Jensen is founder and editor in chief.

Cheers to Women’s eNews for this valuable resource. It is important to expand our awareness of what is happening around our globe, and even more important to jump in to serve the process of positive change in whatever ways we feel called. Most important is to focus on the possibilities rather than remain a victim of our circumstances.

Celebrate every Cheer, and within every Jeer focus on being a part of the miracle of change that comes when women hold hands with the common intention to make a difference.

Here I share a sample from the Cheers and Jeers newsletter on July 12, 2008:

Cheers

Three prominent women’s rights activists will share the $500,000 Gruber Women’s Rights Prize from the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, the philanthropy organization announced July 8.

Yanar Mohammed, co-founder of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, has opened shelters and safe houses for women threatened by domestic abuse and so-called honor killings from their families. She is also publisher of Al Mousawat, the only Iraqi print publication that calls for full equality for women.Sapana Pradhan Malla, a lawyer and president of the Forum for Women, Law and Development, fights for legal reforms to protect women’s reproductive rights in Nepal. Malla helped initiate legislation to criminalize rape in the country.

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a Palestinian feminist scholar, therapist and activist, has worked to end violence against Palestinian women, especially honor killings. She has trained female activists in the West Bank and Gaza, where she also established a hotline for reporting abuse.

More News to Cheer This Week:

The governing body of the Anglican Church in Britain approved the consecration of women as bishops on July 7, the BBC reported. The decision was not billed as final; church legislation to implement the change is to be debated next year, and Church of England officials say a female bishop will most likely not be consecrated before 2014.

India’s lesbian and gay rights movement had its first large public parade display May 29 in New Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore, the San Francisco Chronicle reported July 2. Indian activists are fighting to reform a 19th century law that bans homosexuality.

New York Gov. David A. Paterson said he will sign into law a change in the state’s domestic violence law that will permit everyone in dating relationships, including same-sex couples, to seek civil protection orders from abuse in family courts, the New York Times reported July 10. Currently, the state’s domestic violence law allows protective orders only from spouses and former spouses, blood relatives or the other parent of an abused person’s child.

Henry Morgentaler, a leading abortion rights activist, received the Order of Canada for his contributions to the country on July 1. Morgentaler, 85, opened Canada’s first abortion clinic in 1969. In 1988 the Supreme Court overturned a law requiring three doctors to approve abortions.
Jeers

Women’s issues failed to climb to the top of the agenda of the Group of Eight global summit this week. The group, composed of the eight wealthiest nations, met in Japan to address the world food crisis but the status of women was not a focus despite an acknowledged inability to meet the United Nations millennium development goals to improve women’s health and reduce poverty before the 2015 target date.

The New York-based international women’s rights organization MADRE called on world leaders to recognize gender discrimination as a threat to global food security. In a memo sent out July 8, the organization noted women are the majority of the world’s farmers–growing and processing 80 percent of all food–but are often denied the right to own land and excluded from government programs.

The Washington-based White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood criticized the summit’s failure to detail specific actions for fighting the world’s maternal death rate. Over 500,000 women die annually in pregnancy and childbirth, a rate unchanged in more than two decades. The goal to reduce those deaths by 25 percent is unlikely to be met by 2015.

The U.N. Population Fund also called on global leaders to address population issues since 200 million poor women in developing countries want smaller families but lack necessary information and access to family planning, the Maxims News Network reported July 5.

More News to Jeer This Week:

Domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are subject to serious human rights abuses as they experience months or years of unpaid wages, forced imprisonment, physical and sexual abuse, and lashings for false charges of theft, adultery or “witchcraft,” according to a July 8 report from Human Rights Watch. Saudi households employ approximately 1.5 million domestic workers, mainly from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Nepal. The report is based on 142 interviews with domestic workers, senior government officials and labor recruiters in Saudi Arabia.

Human Rights Watch also criticized the Peruvian government for refusing to provide accurate information about the availability of therapeutic abortions to protect women whose health is endangered by pregnancy, Reuters reported July 9. As a result, the human rights group says women are compelled to undergo unsafe abortions.

In a memo to Mexico’s Supreme Court, Amnesty International is pushing the country to endorse the law passed last year by Mexico’s City’s Legislative Assembly that legalized first-trimester abortions, the Catholic World News reported July 4. The memo is the first time Amnesty has taken a stance on the legality of abortion as a choice for women rather than a humanitarian right in cases of rape and danger to health.

In Cambodia, Mu Sochua, a woman running as an opposition candidate for parliament, said she was assaulted by an army general on June 30 and accused the government of violating fair-campaign rules by allowing the military to support government candidates and interfere in campaign activities. An activist group also said a local official attempted to run over Mu Sochua with his motorcycle, then repeated his threats over Radio Free Asia.

Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu of the human rights activist group Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise were arrested in the capital Harare and have been in jail since May 28, the Associated Press reported July 2. They were charged for disturbing the peace and publishing statements prejudicial to the state. In a political crackdown stemming from President Robert Mugabe’s disputed victory in the June 27 election, about 900 camps set up by his party are detaining women and girls and keeping them as sex slaves, the Los Angeles Times reported July 7.

Presidential candidate John McCain misrepresented his position on equal pay on the campaign trail, according to Americans United for Change. The advocacy group said McCain told an audience at a Hudson, Wis., town hall meeting that he was “committed to making sure there’s equal pay for equal work.” But the group points out that the senator from Arizona publicly criticized the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and was absent from Congress when the bill came up for a vote. U.S. women earn 77 cents for each dollar a man earns.

Workplace violence is highest among nurses and personal care workers and the most dangerous places to work are psychiatric units and nursing homes, the New York Times reported July 8. The health care workplace has an injury rate 12 times higher than the overall private sector and 86 percent of respondents in a 2006 survey by the Emergency Nurses Association were assaulted on the job. Attacks are most often due to patients who are disoriented, confused or angry because of long waits in the emergency rooms.

Golf for Women magazine will cease publication in August since it is struggling to attract advertising, reported Sports, Media and Society blog July 8. The magazine has a circulation of 600,000 and was purchased by Conde Nast in 2001. The conglomerate has also shuttered Sports Illustrated for Women and Women’s Sports and Fitness.