J&J Giving $200 Million For Health Of Women, Kids

TRENTON, N.J. -- Health giant Johnson & Johnson is donating about $200 million in cash and medicine to a sweeping United Nations program created to improve the health and lives of people in poor countries.

J&J is launching a five-year program called "Every Mother, Every Child," meant to help almost 400 million women and children in developing countries. The maker of No More Tears Baby Shampoo will donate its medicine for treating intestinal worms in children, send pregnant women messages on prenatal health on their cell phones, and work to make childbirth safer. J&J also will continue research on new treatments for the AIDS virus and tuberculosis, both of which disproportionately affect women and children in developing countries.

"It's a natural extension of our commitment to improve the health of mothers and children everywhere," Johnson & Johnson CEO Bill Weldon said in prepared remarks. "For several decades, we've worked in partnership with dozens of nonprofits and governments in every region of the world to help treat and prevent diseases that place mothers and children at risk."

The J&J effort addresses part of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. That's an ambitious international effort, begun in 2000, to bring everyone in the world basic needs and rights, from good health, shelter and education to equality between men and women.
J&J, based in New Brunswick, announced the program Wednesday and discussed it with reporters during a conference call Thursday with Weldon, UN Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr and officials of three health projects.

"Our company's credo stresses the importance of giving back to the community," Weldon said. "We want every woman and every child, in every country, to know that they belong to that community and that we dedicate ourselves and our resources to their good health."

Weldon has spent recent months trying to refurbish J&J's once-golden reputation, which has been tarnished by 11 recalls of medicines, contact lenses and hip implants in the last year. The largest recall involved 136 million bottles of children's and infants' liquid medicines that might have contained tiny metal particles or had too much of their active ingredient. Congress, federal prosecutors and the Food and Drug Administration are looking into J&J's handling of the recalls.

J&J's announcement of the "Every Mother, Every Child" program comes just ahead of the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals Summit, to be held in New York Sept. 20-22.

Source: Huffington Post

Win With Women Newsletter | Summer 2010

From: Win With Women [mailto:winwithwomen@ndi.org]
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 10:35 AM
To: Joyce Warner
Subject: Win With Women Newsletter | Summer 2010

Win with Women Global Initiative

Summer 2010

three blocksNews

U.S. Congress Looks to Women as Agents of Change

Kenneth Wollack Testifies

  

Despite gains around the world, women continue to be vastly underrepresented in politics and excluded from decision-making in many places. In a June hearing before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, NDI President Kenneth Wollack and other experts testified on concrete ways that women help democracy deliver to all citizens. They also stressed the role that the United States must play in promoting gender equality and empowering women politically and economically.

"Women's political participation results in tangible gains for democracy, including greater responsiveness to citizens' needs, increased cooperation across party and ethnic lines and more sustainable peace," said Wollack. Read more»


Afghanistan: Women Seek Major Role in Peacebuilding Efforts

  

Afghan women's conference

At a symposium organized by NDI in June, Afghan women leaders from around the country came together to ensure that women's interests were integrated into the nation's peace and reconciliation process. The women offered 13 recommendations to the government, highlighting peace and stability as a top priority, but not at the expense of women's rights. The women demanded that they be represented in future peace negotiations and insisted on the precondition that peace cannot be negotiated at the cost of diminishing women's rights. Read more»


Middle East: Young Women Gain Inspiration From Women Leaders in Wisconsin

YWLA goes to Wisconsin

  

Participants in a Young Women Leaders Academy (YWLA) attended a two-week retreat in Madison, Wisc., as part of a year-long program to inspire and empower young Middle Eastern women to pursue political careers. In Madison, they received advanced training and learned from women experienced in politics. The women attended events with U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton, among others. The participants have since returned to their home countries to pursue projects ranging from starting their own advocacy campaigns to running for elected office. Read more»


Mexico: Women and Men Work Together to Elect More Women to Office

 

Burkinabe Women

In a country where women hold only 5 percent of municipal and state elected positions, over 300 men and women received training to improve women's chances of being elected to local office. The trainings were organized by NDI, in conjunction with the Fox Center and Mexico's three major political parties. Participants attended workshops on message development, targeting women and young voters, and recruiting and retaining campaign volunteers.  Read more»


Lebanon: Women Gain the Confidence, Skills and Network to Win Elections

Shariky candidates

  

After recent municipal elections in Lebanon, the number of women holding local office more than doubled, from 201 to 530. The increase is particularly noteworthy because it came without the help of a quota law, a technique often used to ensure a specified number of seats for women. One factor in the women's success was the help provided by the Shariky program, a project, in partnership with NDI, that supports women candidates through training and mentoring. Shariky means participation in Arabic — in this case, women's participation — and works by recruiting potential candidates as well as building a strong network among elected women leaders and those seaking office.   Read more»


Burkina Faso: Coalition Boosts Effort to Implement Gender Quota Law

 

Burkinabe woman

Last year, the legislature in Burkina Faso passed a gender quota law requiring 30 percent of candidate lists to be women. Despite local and legislative elections being held in 2011 and 2012, respectively, there has been little progress on implementing the law, and questions remain on how it will be enforced. The Coalition for the Implementation of the Quota Law — a group NDI helped establish — held a forum that identified a number of challenges and agreed on recommendations for overcoming them.  Read more»


Georgia: Political Parties Agree to "Win With Women"

Georgia panel

 

Eleven Georgian political parties endorsed the Win with Women Global Action Plan, a tool created by NDI that provides practical recommendations to political parties on ways to increase the role of women within their ranks. Over 100 members of parliament, government officials and civil society leaders attended a conference on the benefits of including more women on candidate lists and in party leadership. The participants discussed strategies, such as creating a gender equality department within the party, to promote women leaders within the organization. Read more»


New Resource on Gender Commissions and Caucuses

 

One Size Does Not Fit All cover

One Size Does Not Fit All: Lessons Learned from Legislative Gender Commissions and Caucuses, a new publication by NDI and International IDEA, is now available in English and Spanish. The publication offers a comprehensive look at different models of gender commissions and caucuses employed throughout Latin America and provides information on global best practices on establishing and working with a gender commission or caucus. Read more»


About Win With Women

The Win with Women Global Initiative is a complement to more than two decades of work by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in pursuit of an equitable, democratic society where women’s needs are meaningfully addressed. Some of its latest activities are presented here.

The Initiative is aimed at increasing women’s leadership in elected office, political parties and in civil society. It was launched in 2003 by NDI and its Chairman Madeleine K. Albright to promote strategies for increasing women’s political leadership worldwide. The anchor of the Win with Women Global Initiative is the Global Action Plan, a document that outlines practical recommendations for political parties to broaden their appeal by addressing women’s role as voters, candidates, party activists and elected officials. Women and men from more than 100 countries are active supporters of the Initiative and Global Action Plan.


three blocksGet Involved

Visit the Win with Women Website
Refer Colleagues to Win with Women

 

Download the Global Action Plan
Email the Win with Women Initiative

 

NDI - Two Decades of Working with Women Worldwide

© National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). All rights reserved.
2030 M St., N.W. 5th Floor Washington, D.C., 20036
This work may be reproduced and/or translated for non-commercial purposes provided that NDI is acknowledged as the source of the material and is sent copies of any translation.
 

 

You received this message because you opted to receive updates from the National Democratic Institute. To opt out of this email list, follow this link:
Opt Out
To unsubscribe from all updates from the National Democratic Institute, follow the link below:
Unsubscribe

Posted by email

Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health (Brief)

jwarner@irex.org has shared the following link with you via AddToAny:

http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1424363?utm_source=nl_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_weekly_08182010

Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health (Brief)

Improving adolescent girls’ health and wellbeing is critical to achieving virtually all international development goals, from reducing infant and child deaths to stimulating economic growth and encouraging environmental sustainability. Governments and donors seem to recognize this, but they have yet to take the specific actions needed to genuinely invest in adolescent girls’ health and, thereby, the health and wellbeing of generations to come.

Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health shows why doing so is a global must and identifies eight priorities for international action: implementing comprehensive health agendas; eliminating marriage for girls younger than 18; focusing maternal health investments on adolescent girls; focusing HIV prevention on adolescent girls; making health systems work for girls; making secondary school completion a priority; creating an innovation fund for girls’ health; and increasing donor support for adolescent girls’ health.

Posted by email

How settling with the Taliban puts women at risk

FYI- Written by one of the US-Russia C2C Co-Chairs --Joyce

 

How settling with the Taliban puts women at risk

By Tom Malinowski
Sunday, August 15, 2010; A13

"If you had to choose between saving a girl's life or enabling her to go to school, which would you do first?" This was Afghan President Hamid Karzai's reply when I asked him last month if the rights of Afghan women might be sacrificed for a peace settlement with the Taliban.

While real peace talks may not begin for a long time, it was clear to me on a recent trip to Kabul that the political and intellectual groundwork is being laid for "reconciliation" with insurgents. Karzai seems tired of the war's carnage and uncertain of the international community's staying power. Many of his foreign allies, meanwhile, have become so cynical about Afghanistan's present state that they can't imagine how a deal with the Taliban could make it worse. Yet the prospect is deeply unnerving to those Afghans who suffered most under Taliban rule -- women and ethnic minorities, above all.

Afghan women have fought with some success -- and strong support from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- to be included in discussions about reconciliation with the Taliban. But the Obama administration has not ruled out supporting a process in which Taliban commanders who have a track record of atrocities against Afghan women and men are offered government positions or even de facto control over some areas, so long as they have no ties to al-Qaeda and promise to respect the Afghan constitution. As one Western diplomat recently told Time magazine: "You have to be realistic. We are not going to be sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made."

If we're going to be realistic, let's at least face what those sacrifices would be. The Taliban is not just another warlord militia fighting for a piece of the action; it is an ideological movement whose leaders believe they were right to plunge Afghanistan into darkness when they ruled in the 1990s. In many parts of the country where they hold sway, they continue to kill women who go to school, work or participate in the political process, as well as the men who support them. If a Taliban provincial shadow governor with such a history were made the real governor of a province, the "night letters" the Taliban now delivers to threaten women would become daytime edicts.

Perhaps that should not be enough to determine America's strategy for ending the war. But before resigning ourselves to compromising our principles for peace, we must ask: Would such a trade-off bring the security it promises? This is where the realist argument collapses.

The same argument, after all, was made by Pakistan when it negotiated its 2008 settlement with the Taliban, giving it control of Swat Valley in exchange for pledges to recognize the writ of the central government and let women work without fear. The Taliban broke those promises; Pakistanis were horrified by images of women being whipped and schools being torched. Within months, the Pakistani army launched a massive military operation to retake what it had given away.

Much the same happened when Colombia ceded territory to the FARC insurgent group in 1999 (the FARC continued its kidnappings and killings, and war resumed); when Angola brought the UNITA party of brutal warlord Jonas Savimbi into its government in 1994 (the deal collapsed, and UNITA went back to fighting); when the international community helped broker a peace deal in Sierra Leone in 1999 that gave Foday Sankoh's vicious rebel group a share of power (Sankoh's forces continued to conduct attacks until a British intervention restored order). Each time we were shocked to learn that abusive, predatory movements, when given power, continue to behave in abusive, predatory ways.

The same is likely to happen in Afghanistan if those Taliban leaders who have committed the worst atrocities are given control over the communities they terrorized. Images of abuses against women are likely to be broadcast around the world, raising the painful question of whether this is what foreign and Afghan troops sacrificed for. There could be retribution against perceived U.S. and government collaborators, and people fleeing areas where insurgents are given power. Afghanistan's ethnic minorities (who together constitute a majority) are especially fearful of a deal that increases the Taliban's influence; many Afghans believe that a hasty process could lead to a broader civil war.

None of these appalling consequences would speed a U.S. withdrawal. Quite the opposite. And it is not realism, but a leap of faith born of desperation, to think they could be avoided simply by requiring "reconciling" Taliban forces to renounce violence and support Afghanistan's constitution.

Some suspect that talking about women's rights is a pretext for keeping the United States in Afghanistan forever (ironically, the part of President Obama's constituency that would normally be most concerned about defending women in Afghanistan is also the part most wary of the U.S. commitment there). But whether one believes in Gen. David Petraeus's strategy of counterinsurgency for as long as it takes, or a more limited counterterrorism mission with fewer troops, there is no need for hasty deals that give the Taliban a share of power.

Whatever one's vision of the way forward in Afghanistan, the answer to Karzai's heartfelt question must be: You must help that girl stay alive and go to school at the same time. For if you try to settle the conflict in a way that sacrifices human rights in the name of peace, you will end up with neither.

The writer is Washington director for Human Rights Watch.

 

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

 

 

Posted by email

At the Kabul Conference: Protecting Women's Rights, and Prospects for Peace and Justice

At the Kabul Conference: Protecting Women’s Rights, and Prospects for Peace and Justice

Posted by Melanne Verveer / August 16, 2010

Image001

About the Author: Melanne Verveer serves as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues.

The July 20, 2010, Kabul Conference, hosted by the Government of Afghanistan and co-chaired by the United Nations, brought more than 70 officials from governments and international organizations around the world together in Kabul for the first time in thirty years. Together, they launched the “Kabul Process,” which reflects the Afghan Government's commitment to the people of Afghanistan, and to the international community, toward ensuring good governance, security for its people, and greater accountability, including clear benchmarks and milestones for an Afghan-led strategy to improve development.

Secretary Clinton and Lady Ashton, European Union Foreign Minister, met with Afghan women leaders to listen to their concerns. Secretary Clinton recognized the heroic work the women are doing to strengthen their communities and country, and reiterated the United States Government's commitment to ensuring that women are directly involved in all aspects of Afghanistan's development.

At the end of the meeting, Secretary Clinton also expressed U.S. intentions to work with the Danish government to improve women's access to justice in Helmand province. The joint initiative will target two priority areas: women's right to justice, and strengthening rule of law and civil society at the provincial level. Following her meeting, the Secretary emphasized the importance of President Karzai's statement that the rights of women, Afghan ethnic groups, and civil society “will not be sacrificed” in the course of reintegration. She reiterated that “building a strong, prosperous, and peaceful Afghanistan cannot be done without the full participation of women and girls.”

The U.S. Government supports the National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan (NAPWA), which calls for the promotion of women's economic participation, increases in women's employment opportunities, and a greater role for non-governmental organizations and civil society groups, including religious leaders, in carrying out public awareness campaigns on health and women's rights. At the conference, Secretary Clinton expressed continued support for these measures, and announced several new programs that the United States will fund to support Afghan women and families. These include a $37 million program focused on maternal and child health, which will nearly double the number of midwives in the next four years and increase the number of female community health nurses. The program will support health advocacy campaigns featuring leadership roles for religious and community leaders: in the coming months, the campaign will provide outreach and training to more than 700 religious leaders throughout Afghanistan who will in turn reach over 600,000 individuals in their local communities. The Ambassador's Small Grants Program, which I announced with Ambassador Eikenberry in July 2009, will also be expanded to include all 34 provinces in the country. This program gives small grants to local Afghan-led organizations working to improve the lives of women and girls, not only in the field of health but also education, economic opportunity, equal access to justice, and political advocacy.

Secretary Clinton ended her remarks at the conference by noting that protecting women's rights during the peace and reconciliation process is a concern for Afghan women, the international community and the United States. “If women's groups are fully empowered to help build a just and lasting peace, they will help do so,” she said. “But if they are silenced and pushed to the margins of Afghan society, the prospects for peace and justice will be subverted.”

http://blogs.state.gov/sgwi/index.php/site/entry/kabul_conference_womens_rights

Data on Lives of Sudanese and Egyptian Muslim Women Released

Forwarded by Mike Clarke. Mike said that IREX works with D3 in Iraq, Egypt, and Moldova. FYI. 

From: D3 Press Release [mailto:pressrelease@d3systems.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 2:41 PM
To: amy.boerner@d3systems.com
Subject: Press Release: D3 Data on Lives of Sudanese and Egyptian Muslim Women Released

VIENNA, Virginia, August 11, 2010 – Survey data contrasting the desires and daily lives of Muslim women in Egypt and Northern Sudan was released today by D3 Systems.

The paper explores the similarities and differences in the lives of women in the two neighboring countries.  Egyptian women are far more likely to participate in societal functions; 86% voted in the last major election compared to only 19% in Sudan.  They are one-third as likely to be unemployed (39% in Sudan, 13% in Egypt). 

Northern Sudanese women, however, have more say about daily purchases for the home.  Thirty-eight percent say they are responsible for such daily purchases (compared to only 8% in Egypt).  They are also more than twice as likely (33% v 15%) to be in control of the household’s savings.  The report can be found in its entirety on D3’s website.

The paper, entitled “A Comparison of Women’s Aspirations and Daily Lives In Common Practice in Northern Sudan and Egypt”, is the tenth installment of D3’s Women in Muslim Countries (WIMC) Survey.  Conducted in twenty-three Muslim majority countries, the WIMC study is designed to measure women’s empowerment in actual daily practice, providing a deep look into the oft-perceived gap between current public policy and empowerment initiatives and actual practice on the personal and local level.

WIMC is conducted and sponsored by D3 Systems of Vienna, Virginia, USA.   The survey was administered to a random sample of 692 women in Sudan and 500 women in Egypt via face-to-face interviews.  Field work was conducted by Ipsos Egypt, between July 29 and August 18, 2009 in Sudan and March 10 and April 1, 2007 in Egypt. Interviewing was conducted in Arabic by Egyptian and Sudanese interviewers, respectively. The margin of error in each country is ± 4% at the 95% confidence level.  The response rate for Egypt was 64% while the response rate in Sudan was 36%.

For more information about D3 Systems, please visit: http://www.d3systems.com. 

Contact Information: Amy Boerner

D3 Systems, Inc.

8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Suite 1350

Vienna, VA 22182

Office: (703) 255-0884

 

Are you a gender expert?

To continue to build IREX’s community of practice on gender, we’re looking for staff who have programmatic and/or academic experience on gender issues. For example, have you:

  • Conducted a gender audit or gender assessment?
  • Trained others in gender mainstreaming or gender integration?
  • Designed or had a significant role in programs on women’s leadership, girls’ education, human trafficking prevention, etc.?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above and are willing to be a resource for your IREX colleagues during proposals and program implementation, please send me your name, title, office, contact information, and a short gender bio of around 50-75 words. (See the example below.)

Name, Title, Office

Contact Info

Gender Bio

Katie Sheketoff

Program Officer
Washington, DC

 

Email: ksheketoff@irex.org

Phone: 202.628.8188 x189
Skype: ksheketoff

 

Katie has several years experience working on programs focused on anti-trafficking, women’s legal rights, and women in conflict.  Katie has experience conducting anti-trafficking assessments, trainings, and research and writing, and has written several (sometimes winning) proposals focused on anti-trafficking, women in conflict, and women and technology.

I’ll compile all of the entries into a simple table that will be saved on the IREX Extranet. Then, when any of us can contact our in-house experts directly.

Thanks,
Randal

Volunteers for World Pulse needed!

Dear Colleagues, If you have some free time between September 15-October 13th, you want to volunteer for this!

My friend at the World Pulse http://www.worldpulse.com/ (focusing on citizen journalism for women) is recruiting for volunteers to help evaluate applicant assignments and aid in choosing the 30 women who will join the Voices of Our Future citizen journalism and empowerment training program. Attached is the press release that explains the volunteer position more in depth, as well as the short application to volunteer. Please e-mail your inquires and applications to lydia@worldpulse.com. Please pass this along to anyone who you think may be interested in being involved in this program.

Many thanks and regards, Clare

Click here to download:
Call for Listeners.pdf (150 KB)
(download)

Click here to download:
Listener ApplicationVOF2010.doc (155 KB)
(download)

Posted by email

Women Spend 30% More Time on Social Web Than Men

I'm cross-posting this to both GenderDev and TechForDev since, as the article says, “Understanding gender-specific differences in Web usage is valuable to any digital stakeholder looking to successfully reach and engage both women and men in the online environment." --Randal

Women Spend 30% More Time on Social Web Than Men

Posted by Neil Glassman on August 2nd, 2010 11:57 AM

global report from digital market measurement company comScore, found that social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men, with 76% of women visiting a social networking site versus 70% of men. Women spend significantly more time on social networking sites than men, with women averaging 5.5 hours per month compared to men’s four hours, demonstrating the strong engagement that women across the globe share with social sites.

Using May 2010 data, Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet reported that although women account for 48% of total unique visitors to the social networking category, they consume 57% of pages and account for nearly 57% of total minutes spent on these sites.

Image001

The relative importance of social networking varies across countries — reflective, perhaps, of overall cultural differences. However, no matter the region, women are consistently more social on the Web than their regional, male counterparts. Social Networking’s reach among women is highest in Latin America, where it reached 94% of females online, and in North America, where it reached 91% of females. Europe saw 86% of its female online population visit a social networking site, while in Asia Pacific, where parts of the region still face low broadband penetration and site restrictions, reported a 55% reach.

In the U.S., women are more active than men when it comes to socializing on the Internet. According to comScore nearly 56% of adult women say they use the Internet to stay in touch with people, compared to 46% of adult men.

Image002

Interestingly, the 45+ female segment is driving the greatest proportion of growth for social networking sites, for both visitation and time spent. Users aged 15-24 have the highest reach and the heaviest usage in this category. Meanwhile, older women have similar reach and usage as the women 25-34 and 35-44, with all groups spending a significant amount of their total online time on these sites.

Although men are in the majority across the global Internet, women spend about 8% more time online, averaging 25 hours per month on the Web. The divergence between male and female behavior in social network usage also becomes more pronounced in the older age segments — while male and female social networkers aged 15-24 have very similar reach numbers, in the 55+ age segment, their respective reach is separated by more than 10% points. For older women, social networking is a new frontier they are embracing; men are doing so to a much lesser degree.

Image003

The rise of social networking has prompted women of all ages to engage in a host of associated online activities, such as photo-sharing, gaming, video viewing and instant messaging. All of these activities have benefited from their linkage with social networking sites for their ability to attract new female users. comScore speculates that social retail, since it combines two activities that are already firmly in the mainstream of women’s Web activity, may be the next frontier in this evolution.

Image004

“Understanding gender-specific differences in Web usage is valuable to any digital stakeholder looking to successfully reach and engage both women and men in the online environment,” said Linda Boland Abraham, comScore chief marketing officer and executive vice president for global development. “We have seen that women across the globe share some similar usage patterns online, such as strong engagement with social networking sites, but it’s also important to understand gender differences on a regional, country and local level, where cultural differences are continually shaping online usage and content consumption.”

http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/08/women-more-on-social-web-than-men/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+socialtimes+(SocialTimes.com)

Tags: MarketingSocial MediaStatisticswomen