Still no guarantees, but at least Azanin Fatehi, the 19-year-old Iranian sentenced to hang for defending herself against a would-be rapist, has a new trial, after an international outcry. But what this exposes about Iranian law is horrific.

…232,492 signatures have been delivered to the Iranian government, and a trust fund set up which has enabled Ms Fatehi to have access to one of the best lawyers in the country. The young woman’s sentence was stayed in June last year and a retrial ordered. The first stage of this was held last August, and the case continues on Wednesday. If it upholds the first verdict, it will need to be approved formally by Iran’s Supreme Court.
Under Iranian law, self-defence is a valid defence in a murder trial, but its application depends largely on the circumstances. Negar Azmudeh, a Canadian lawyer who has previously spoken out on Ms Fatehi’s case, said that the fact that she and her niece were in a park in the evening may have some bearing on whether the defence is considered valid.
Ms Azmudeh cited a case where a woman was prosecuted for injuring her boss as he tried to rape her at work: “Because she had showed up at work on a Friday [a weekend day in Iran] they could not claim ‘self-defence’ because her presence at the office on a Friday when she knew the boss was there constituted her ‘invitation’ to be raped.

Just found an interesting message board thingy (yes that is a technical term) labelled “women in London” but actually containing messages of interest to feminists around the UK and beyond. It was while I was exploring the Feminism and the Body conference, Jan 25-27, that I’m hoping to get to at least part of.

Well, OK, it might not be the most significant post in the world in the overall scheme of things, but it is nice to know that the first female Beafeater (the formal guards at the Tower of London) has been appointed. (Or to give her the full title, she is to be made a Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, and Members of the Sovereign’s Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary.)

Among her duties she will, of course, be looking after the ravens… (and yes, The Times has repeated the old Charles II line.)

In today’s Times – Why getting hitched is the real hitch for women:

Politicians of every stripe profess to despair of the decline of marriage, even though we know they would be bereft without such a convenient — if wholly unproven — scapegoat for all ill. I suspect that they need not worry; that the decline will continue with or without their help. The scale of the exodus of young women from orthodox union, along with their reasons for it, are such that it will take an awful lot more than a tax break here or there to change their minds.