This story is very powerful evidence for the need for self-defence classes in schools for all girls (in fact why not for all pupils?)

The writer was attacked by a would-be rapist, armed with a box-cutter, but managed to fight him off and escape, which she put down to the self-defence classes she had done years earlier – not so much any particular trick or technique, but because they had her rehearse what she would do if attacked, think about fighting back, which gave her the mental toolkit to cope with the situation.

So many women (and some men) have never been involved in a physical struggle, that when the first time it happens it is in an unexpected situation of social terror they don’t cope, and frequently they “freeze” and are unable to fight back.

Surely this is an essential coping skill that schools should teach.

The fact that “minister for women” is listed as the fourth of her responsibilities worres me, but Janice Turner has a spirited defence of the Labour Party’s new deputy leader. A sample:

The response to Harman’s election, the language used to describe her, the hydrochloric acid of hate that rained upon her, reveals – for all our incoming female Home Secretary or the outgoing Foreign one – how uneasy we remain about women participating in public life.
How retro, how Seventies sit-com for a woman politician to be judged as humourless! True, Harman is that dread thing that most women know only to whisper softly, a feminist. And a campaigning one at that, who even used the stuffy old job of Solicitor-General to get domestic abuse treated with more judicial severity and to stop the trafficking of women into prostitution. Yeah, more bloody wimmin’s issues. And it’s true, Harman is a serious person: doesn’t – on the couple of occasions I’ve met her – crack too many funnies.
Neither is she the type who flatters men by laughing at their jokes. She is a woman’s woman, not much fussed about male approval….

Egypt has _finally_ fully banned (it says anyway) female genital mutilation after a 12-year-old died during the operation.

In 2005, research by Unicef found that 96% of Egyptian women aged 15 to 49 who had ever been married reported they had been circumcised. The Egyptian government says a more recent study found 50.3% of girls aged 10 to 18 had been circumcised.

Even on the government’s figure there is still a very, very long way to go, but maybe the death of Budour Ahmad Shaker will help to educate parents.

… and lots of other places: advocate the advancement of women. The president-nominee of India (a much less powerful post than it sounds), Pratabha Patil, said:

“Women have always been respected in the Indian culture. The purdah system was introduced to protect them from the Muslim invaders. However, times have changed. India is now independent and hence, the systems should also change,” she said.
“Now that women are progressing in every field, we should morally support and encourage them by leaving such practices behind.”

Now her history might be a bit ropey (if entirely traditional), but not a lot there, you would have thought, to cause a huge row. But it has.

The Economist has summarised the current birth rates of European states. The conclusion:

…only countries with many births outside wedlock and with high female participation rates have reasonably high birth rates. Those that have sought to maintain traditional family ties have seen fertility collapse.