A calendar of International Women’s Day events in London.

And the horror: a nine-year-old girl, victim of incest, pregnant with twins. And the Catholic Church thinks she should have continued the pregnancy.

Well done to the Thai women’s rugby sevens team, which has in a run of astonishing victories won its way to the World Cup Rugby Sevens.

Given the extremely strong stereotypes in Thailand about “appropriate” female behaviour, that’s a huge, brave achievement.

(Although I’m not quite so surprised as I might have been had I not played in the Bangkok Rugby Sevens of about 1998 for the British Club. The women’s rugby then was, at least theoretically, “touch” rugby, but as a member of the British Club team I came up against a Thai army team that hadn’t really got that message. Having played full contact rugby myself it didn’t worry me too much, but some members of our team found it a bit of a shock.)

Ah – memories – I’d still love to have played more rugby, but I’m afraid my time for that has passed….

Good news today from the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled that the Portugese government had breached the right to freedom of expression when it refused to allow a vessel of the campaigning group Women on Waves into its waters – (and sent a warship to make sure this dangerous ship of women couldn’t get anywhere near).

The Court considered that in seeking to prevent disorder and protect health, the Portuguese authorities could have resorted to other means that were less restrictive of the applicant associations’ rights, such as seizing the medicines on board. It highlighted the deterrent effect for freedom of expression in general of such a radical act as dispatching a warship.

Women on Waves is in some quarters controversial, because it provides pills for early abortion over the internet for women in countries where abortion is otherwise illegal. All the medical evidence I’ve seen of this says it is nearly as safe as abortion under medical supervision, and a lot better than “traditional” backstreet methods, or obtaining dubious pills from other sources.
There’s recently been complaints about this in Northern Ireland – but of course the answer to that is simple: provide women in Northern Ireland with the same access to abortion as is available to women in the rest of the UK.

Women have found employment opportunities (maybe not great, well-paying opportunities, but something) in retail and service industries in huge numbers, and now they are being made redundant in huge numbers, from the counter workers in Woolworths to the domestic cleaners of Canary Wharf workers. In fact double the rate.

What’s more, it may be that they are even in the same jobs being differentially laid off more often than men – clearly this is something that needs to be monitored, and if necessary prevented (unions and government need to keep a very close count).

And one of the things we know can be a trigger, if not a cause, of divorce is financial stress – and there is now definitive evidence showing how the divorce law still leaves women worse off, and men better off. Maybe now the Fathers For Justice types will stop bleating?

Jenkins found that the positive effect on men’s finances is so significant that divorce can even lift them out of poverty, while women are far more likely to be plunged into destitution. Separated women have a poverty rate of 27% – almost three times that of their former husbands.
Maintenance paid by former partners also has little impact, said Jenkins, as just 31% of separated mothers receive payment from the father of their children.

BUt there is a positive message for women in there: don’t give up your job! “The percentage change in income is less if they have worked beforehand and continue working afterwards.”

I’m steaming after reading the story of the pregnant 12-year-old who had no idea how she got that way: “they had been “playing house” when the pregnancy occurred.”

I’m usually have great sympathy with the writers of the very powerful Abortion Clinic Days blog on which this account is written, but not in this case. They say this is a “very religious family” – well no surprise there. But also that “there is no evidence of parental neglect”.

Well, NO – to fail to give a child the information about the facts of life, about the facts of how her body works and what might be done to it – is the most profound neglect. (And presumably this child was menstruating – I dread to think what she might have been told about that.)

This is not so very different from the father who sent his 11 and 12 year old children to walk 10 miles home in the snow. The girl, 11, died and her brother very nearly did – and if this pregnant 12-year-old were to die (and the pregnancy is described as high risk), then the family would be equally culpable.

“A young girl was raped not long ago while doing her paper round. In the news report, the police officer in charge stated: ‘This young woman’s life has been ruined.’ A rape counsellor was quoted and used exactly the same words…
My thought is this: if the act of rape is an expression of a need for power, wouldn’t that man — or any potential rapist — reading the report, receive confirmation that he has succeeded in what he has set out to do?… those most concerned for the victim seem, in a dreadful paradox, to be colluding in fulfilling his fantasies. And to what extent are we inadvertantly disempowering the child (and the rest of the female population) when we tell her that what has befallen her is irreparable? Every act of physical violence will have traumatic effects but what do we mean when we tell a young woman that her sense of self-worth can be destroyed by an act of enforced penetration? Are we really meaning to say that a woman’s central identity resides in her genitals?”
From Don’t by Jenny Diski, Granta, 1998, p. 137