International Women's Day 2019: US women's soccer team sues over discrimination - as it happened (original) (raw)

US team celebrate after scoring a goal against Brazil during She Believes Cup in March 2019.

US team celebrate after scoring a goal against Brazil during She Believes Cup in March 2019. Photograph: Douglas DeFelice/USA Today Sports

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Thank you to everyone who followed our liveblog of International Women’s Day. Women around the world staged protests against abortion restrictions and gender violence, and for equal labor rights.

Demonstrators in Paris, France lay on the ground holding banners reading “I’m not a walking uterus” during a demonstration for the international women’s day in Republic Square.

Demonstrators in Paris, France lay on the ground holding banners reading “I’m not a walking uterus” during a demonstration for the international women’s day in Republic Square. Photograph: Lewis Joly/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock

Before we go, here’s a summary of events from all over the world today (with thanks to the AP for some of this reporting):

Europe

Spanish women went on strike and staged an enormous protest, as women’s rights have become a hot topic in the run-up to a general election.
In France, the first Simone Veil prize was awarded to a Cameroonian activist who worked against forced marriages, Doumara Ngatansou, after she herself was married against her will at 15.
The Portuguese Cabinet observed a minute of silence in mourning of victims of domestic violence. Twelve women have died this year in domestic violence incidents, the highest number in 10 years.
Topless protesters in Germany tore down a metal barrier intended to keep women out of brothels in Hamburg, one of the nation’s most famous red light districts.
Pope Francis hailed women’s “irreplacable contribution” to fostering peace. “Women make the world beautiful, they protect it and keep it alive,” the Argentine Jesuit said. Women are not able to obtain priesthood in the Catholic Church, and as a result the highest levels of power.
Far-right activists in Kiev, Ukraine were detained after they tried to provoke activists protesting sexual violence.

Asia

Hundreds of women marched in New Delhi, India, demanding an end to domestic violence, sexual attacks and employment discrimination. Thousands of women are killed each year there, often when a groom or his family feel a bride’s dowry is inadequate.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, several hundred men and women carried placards calling for an end to discriminatory practices which end employments when women get pregnant.
In South Korea, women wore pointed hats and cloaks, marching against a “witch hunt” of feminists in deeply conservative society.

Indian women shout slogans at a march to mark International Women’s Day in New Delhi, 2019.

Indian women shout slogans at a march to mark International Women’s Day in New Delhi, 2019. Photograph: Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images

North America

First Lady Melania Trump saluted women from 10 countries on Wednesday evening, including human rights activists, police officers and an investigative journalist.
In Puerto Rico, hundreds of protesters in purple T-shirts demanded safer housing, as the US territory struggles to recover from Hurricane Maria. Some held up signs with the names of more than 20 women reportedly killed by their partners on the island last year.

South America

In one of the most dangerous countries to be a woman, El Salvador, three women jailed on charges of abortion had their sentences commuted. El Salvador has a total ban on abortion. Reproductive rights advocates said the move from the country’s supreme court was a hopeful sign.
Women in Argentina took to the streets after a bill that would have legalized abortion was rejected last year. They prepared for a large march from Congress to the country’s historic Plaza de Mayo square later in the day, during which they were set to protest against violence.
In Bolivia, women rallied in main cities, carrying giant underwear bearing messages such as, “underwear of an irresponsible and abusive father” and “underwear of a child molester.” Chilean women demanded access to free and safe abortions.
In Ecuador, President Lenin Moreno took the day to announce the creation of a bonus of about $300 per month for the children of victims of femicides.
The bonus will help an estimated 88 orphans.

International Women’s Day in Bogotá
epa07423712 Indigenous women participate in a ritual, during the commemoration ‘Women in Bogota We Weave Changes’ for the work of indigenous women, in the framework of International Women’s Day, in Bogota, Colombia, 08 March 2019. International Women’s Day celebrates worldwide the achievements of women in the social, economic, cultural and political spheres and also urges society to accelerate all elements to achieve gender equality. EPA/OSKAR BURGOS Photograph: Oskar Burgos/EPA

Africa

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who named one of the world’s few “gender-balanced” Cabinets last year, told a gathering that “women are the pillars of the nation and the least recognized for their sacrifices.”
The US Embassy in Niegeria hosted talks on sexual harassment, which included a founder of the recent #ArewaMeToo campaign among women in the country’s conservative, largely Muslim north.
In Niger, first lady Aissata Issoufou Mahamadou oversaw the awards in the Miss Intellect Niger contest.
Women in Kenya protested against gender-based violence in the nation’s capital.
“We haven’t gotten to a stage where women are comfortable to come out and say, ‘I was sexually abused,’” said protester Esther Passaris.

International Women’s Day has also been a reminder about some of the pioneering women in history, including Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, who in 1864 became the first African American woman physician in the US.

Today and always, let’s remember these female pioneers in medicine:

Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African-American woman to be a doctor in the U.S. in 1864.

Fe del Mundo, a Filipina who was the first woman to attend Harvard Medical School in 1933.#InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/dkoiKcwKPs

— Stanford Radiology (@StanfordRad) March 8, 2019

Although Crumpler practiced in Boston, some modern-day activists are hoping her likeness might one day grace New York City’s Central Park. They hope it might replace a statue removed earlier this year.

Activists also floated the idea of creating a statue of Helen Rodríguez Trías, a Latina pediatrician and women’s rights activist who died in 2001.

“These are the ‘sheroes’ that residents would prefer to learn about as they stroll near Central Park, confident in the understanding that black lives matter,” Marina Ortiz, founder of the local group East Harlem Preservation, told the Guardian.

In El Salvador, hundreds of women marched in the capital San Salvador today, protesting for reproductive rights, against violence, and in celebration of the release of three women jailed on abortion charges.

Just a few hours before the official start of International Women’s Day, three women sentenced to 30 years in prison for abortion were freed. El Salvador is one of six countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in which abortion is illegal in all circumstances, Thomson Reuters reports.

The women had served about 10 years in prison. Upon being released from prison in San Salvador, Alba Lorena Rodríguez, 31, said: “We hope the government will recognize that a lot of women in here are innocent and, God willing, they will be freed.”

There are 18 more women in prison in El Salvador, convicted of abortion. According to Amnesty International, the countries high rates of gender-based violence and abortion ban make it one of the “most dangerous countries to be a woman”.

Hundreds of Salvadorian Women demonstrated in San Salvador to demand decriminalization of abortion in four cases, the cessation of acts of violence against women and the full respect of their rights, during the International Women’s Day.

Reproductive rights advocates in the country said the women’s release is a positive sign. From Thomson Reuters:

The court’s ruling sets an important precedent for the other women in jail,” said Catalina Martinez, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

“Freedom for these women who have been sentenced to prison for felonies they did not commit is just one of the steps that El Salvador has to take to guarantee women’s rights.”

Campaigners for women’s rights also vowed to continue to campaign to overturn El Salvador’s total ban on abortion, in place since 1997, even when the life of the mother is at risk.

There are two bills before congress aimed at allowing abortion under limited circumstances, including in cases of rape or a risky pregnancy. But no date has yet been set for lawmakers to debate the bills.

Morena Herrera, the head of a local rights group Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion (CDFA) said, “It’s a conservative congress and country, but it’s not impossible.”

Women march to celebrate the International Women’s Day in San Salvador, on March 8, 2019.

Women march to celebrate the International Women’s Day in San Salvador, on March 8, 2019. Photograph: Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images

Women in Spain went on strike earlier today, including Barcelona, where demonstrators brought the city to a “standstill”. Here’s a report from the scene from Stephen Burgen:

Hundreds of thousands of women marched in Barcelona in a noisy but good-humored demonstration Friday evening. Police figures of 200,000 seemed conservative for a crowd that filled a 1.5km (nearly a mile) stretch of the city’s six-lane Gran Via and brought much of the city to a standstill.

Chanting “No means no”, “Without women there will be no revolution” and “They didn’t die, they were murdered”, women of all ages – along with several thousand men – sang and whistled their way slowly towards Plaça Catalunya in the city centre.

As many placards celebrated womanhood as those that condemned patriarchy. “We are not submissive, we are not keeping quiet. Strong women empowered” read one, while another said “ I don’t want flattery, I want respect”.

Others read: “I shit on your phony equality,” “They clip your wings and then complain that you can’t fly,” and “We are the granddaughters of the witches you didn’t burn”. One said simply: “Everything is pussyble”.

Outside of protests, women are also being celebrated in the arts. In New York City, classical radio station WQXR is playing 24 hours of music composed by women.

WQXR's 24-hour marathon of women composers starts today, as does our initiative to increase the number of women composers we regularly play on air. https://t.co/D1nVnzfcdL

— WQXR Classical (@WQXR) March 8, 2019

Included in the marathon earlier today were compositions by Mahler – Alma Mahler – who ended her composing career early at her husband Gustav’s insistence. But, as English mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly wrote for the Guardian, Alma “was far from a tragic victim of misogyny.”

The music is in part voluptuous, coquettish, Wagnerian in intensity and harmony, yet intimate, sensual, charming and surprising. Among the poets whose texts she chose to set were Richard Dehmel and Rainer Maria Rilke. They expressed a visceral, sensual empathy with nature, magnifying emotions, yet they were also suspenseful, remote and ghostly. There is often a sexual charge to Dehmel’s poetry, which must have seemed perverse at the time.”

Just 14 of Mahler’s lieder compositions remain today. They are believed to be her early works. Mahler outlived her husband by 50 years.

Photos and video are emerging on social media from the demonstrations in Istanbul, where riot police fired tear gas at the crowds.

David Agren, reporting from Mexico City, writes on how Mexico marked International Women’s Day with a push to expand access to abortion across the country. There were alsocounterproposals from lawmakers, including some in the left-leaning ruling party, to further restrict a woman’s right to choose.

Women in major Mexican cities tied green handkerchiefs around their necks and hung banners from overpasses reading “legal and safe abortion in all of Mexico.” They also draped green handkerchiefs over seats in the Senate on Thursday – drawing strong reactions from both sides.

A pair of lawmakers – including a former governor, who is accused of showing a crushing indifference to spate of femicides in his state – promised to introduce constitutional amendments to ban abortion.

Abortion is legal Mexico City, where it was decriminalised in 2006. Mexico’s supreme court upheld the Mexico City law, but a majority of states have subsequently approved constitutional prohibitions on abortion.

The northern state of Nuevo León approved an initiative 6 March to “recognise the right to life from conception.”

International Women’s Strike on Women’s Day take place at the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City, Mexico

International Women’s Strike on Women’s Day take place at the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City, Mexico Photograph: Mario Guzman/EPA

On the same day, however, interior minister Olga Sánchez Cordero said Mexico could introduce a single criminal code, in which each state and Mexico City would have the same laws on the books. Under such a scheme, abortion would be legal during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy – as it is currently in Mexico City.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has promised to “moralize” Mexican public life, has a history of avoiding sensitive social issues such as abortion and marriage equality.

When asked about abortion in his morning press conference on Friday, he responded, “There are many important issues and at this time I think the most important is cleaning corruption from government.”

Analysts attribute the reticence to his own personal conservativism and the broad coalition built before his election – which includes everyone from progressives to a party of Evangelicals.

Women’s groups give the president mixed grades on women’s issue since taking office 1 Dec López Obrador appointed a gender-balanced cabinet – a vast improvement over his predecessor. But he cut funding for daycare centres and women’s shelters, saying he preferred to give the money directly to women using such services.

“All of this reflects a lack of perspective on gender and commitment to the rights of women,” Regina Tames, director of Gire, a reproductive rights organisation, wrote in Letras Libres.

The Guardian sport desk has more details on the lawsuit the United States women’s soccer team filed against their own governing body alleging years of “institutionalized gender discrimination”.

US Soccer has maintained that the disparity between the women’s and men’s teams is due to separate labor agreements. For example, male players get more money when they play for the national team but are only paid when selected, whereas female players receive less money but their wages are guaranteed. US Soccer also points out that bonuses from World Cups are set by Fifa rather than national federations.

But it is undeniable that the US women’s team – who have won three World Cups and four Olympic titles – have often been treated shabbily. According to US Soccer’s own financial disclosures, the women’s team brought in more revenue than their male counterparts over the last three years, and their victory in the 2015 World Cup final was the most-watched soccer match in US history. Despite those facts, the US women’s coach, Jill Ellis, was paid less than the men’s Under-23 coach until last year.

Riot police in Istanbul fired tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators who tried to march along the city’s main pedestrian avenue to mark International Women’s Day, according to the Associated Press:

Thousands of people, most of them women, gathered near Istiklal Street on Friday for a march that police said was unauthorized.

Thousands of women shout slogans as Turkish police block the roads during a rally marking the International Women’s Day at Istiklal Street in Istanbul, Turkey

Thousands of women shout slogans as Turkish police block the roads during a rally marking the International Women’s Day at Istiklal Street in Istanbul, Turkey Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA

Police had set up barricades at the entrance to the street and fired several rounds of tear gas to push back marchers.

Authorities have restricted protests in the country in recent years, citing security.

Earlier, hundreds of people in Istanbul protested against the imprisonment of women and children in Syrian penitentiaries.

Separately, four female members of Turkey’s gendarmerie units rappelled hundreds of feet down from Istanbul’s 15 July Martyrs’ Bridge and into the waters of the Bosporus.

Thousands of women shout slogans as Turkish police block the roads during a rally marking the International Women’s Day at Istiklal Street in Istanbul, Turkey

Thousands of women shout slogans as Turkish police block the roads during a rally marking the International Women’s Day at Istiklal Street in Istanbul, Turkey Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA

National Movement of Nurses stage a “White March” during a day of national strike for better working conditions in Lisbon, Portugal.

National Movement of Nurses stage a “White March” during a day of national strike for better working conditions in Lisbon, Portugal. Photograph: Horacio Villalobos - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

A woman uses make-up to paint a venus symbol during a women’s demonstration held to mark the International Women’s Day, at Place de la Republique in Paris

A woman uses make-up to paint a venus symbol during a women’s demonstration held to mark the International Women’s Day, at Place de la Republique in Paris Photograph: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images

People hold banners while they take part in a rally during the International Women’s Day in Brussels, Belgium.

People hold banners while they take part in a rally during the International Women’s Day in Brussels, Belgium. Photograph: Stéphanie Lecocq/EPA

El Salvador’s Supreme Court has commuted the 30-year sentences of three women imprisoned for abortion convictions, lessening their punishment to time served and ordering them to be released immediately, according to the Associated Press:

The three women had spent about 10 years in prison on aggravated homicide charges for allegedly having abortions. All claimed that they had miscarriages. The court found that the women were victims of social and economic circumstances and ruled that the original sentences were unreasonable.

“In all three cases, the court recognised that the women have had adverse social, economic and family situations, and the sentences were disproportionate and immoral,” said the Foundation for Research on the Application of the Law.

Eighteen more women remain behind bars for abortion convictions in El Salvador, where abortion is illegal in all circumstances.

The Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Center for Reproductive Rights, Catalina Martínez Coral, said:

Freedom for these women who have been sentenced to prison for felonies they did not commit is just one of the steps that El Salvador has to take to guarantee women’s rights. This wonderful news helps us remind the world that El Salvador has very discriminatory legislation against women because a woman can suffer an obstetric emergency and be sent to prison for aggravated homicide.

El Salvador continues to ignore its international responsibilities which call for all countries to eliminate every form of discrimination against women and to recognize that forcing women to continue a pregnancy that puts her life or health at risk is cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. El Salvador must make stronger efforts to guarantee that reproductive rights are recognized as human rights in the country.

London’s delightful Horniman Museum and Gardens is celebrating today by sharing photos and details about items women and girls have used all over the world. The items range from instruments to celebratory headwear to fighting knives.

This headdress, or kupas, is worn by Kalasha women at festivals. The kera symbol (the roundal) used to relate to the status gained by killing an enemy (the rank of lay-mach), although today they are understood more as decorative devices. https://t.co/XZQZaXVy3P #IWD2019 pic.twitter.com/W52xx630oi

— Horniman Museum and Gardens (@HornimanMuseum) March 8, 2019

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) identified the five most dangerous places to be an adolescent girl in an analysis published on Thursday. Indicators such as child marriage, child labor, rates of violence and adolescent birth rates helped the group determine the final list: Niger, Yemen, Bangladesh, South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR).

Nicole Behnam, senior director of IRC’s Violence Protection and Response unit, said the analysis showed a need for humanitarian aid suited to the unique needs of adolescent girls.

“They are amongst the most marginalized populations on earth, and efforts to support and empower them are lifesaving, not optional,” Benham said in a statement. “Until we achieve true gender equality, young girls will suffer the most.”

Data points that helped IRC determine the five include:

The Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh has left 77% of women and girls in refugee settlement sites feeling unsafe.
Up to 65% of women and girls in South Sudan have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime.
More than 75% of girls in Niger are married before the age of 18.

At IRC, we’re proud to be there for women & girls—whenever & however they need us. But even with this support, it’s important to acknowledge that there is no easy place to be a girl. Ahead of #WomensDay, here are the 5 most dangerous places to be a girl according to IRC experts. pic.twitter.com/LALc2kaSMH

— IRC Intl Rescue Comm (@theIRC) March 7, 2019

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