This week, the world plastered messages of love and affirmations across our screens. Document Women has gathered stories from around the world on love, safety and women’s agency.
- Global
A BBC investigation this week revealed that women’s intimate pictures were being shared to harass, shame and blackmail them on a massive scale, on the social media app Telegram. The BBC has been monitoring 18 Telegram channels and 24 groups in countries ranging from Russia to Brazil, and Kenya to Malaysia.
The investigation found that personal details like home addresses and parents’ phone numbers were posted alongside explicit pictures. They also saw group administrators asking members to send intimate images of ex-partners, colleagues or fellow-students to an automated account, so they could be published without revealing the identity of the sender.
Read more here;
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60303769
- South Africa
Sex workers and organizations representing sex workers in South Africa are optimistic about recent talks to decrimialize the profession, after years of fighting for their rights. Currently, the buying and selling of sexual services is a crime in the country. However, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development began engagements with representatives of the pro-decriminalization sex work sector last week
Read more here;
- Taiwan
On Valentine’s day, LGBT+ couples in Taiwan gathered to protest for true marriage equality on Valentine’s Day.
Taiwan allows citizens to enter into same-sex marriages with partners from other countries – but only if that country also recognizes same-sex marriage, leaving many couples forcibly separated.
As of 2022, three couples have successfully won their cases and been allowed to marry a foreign partner from a country where same-sex marriage is not legalized.
Read more here;
- United States of America
According to a new survey conducted by reproductive health company Modern Fertility and shared with Marie Claire exclusively, 58 percent of women have adjusted their family planning because of concerns about climate change. These women are worried, in particular, “about the world [their] kids will inherit,” per the results. A third say they want to have fewer children because of it.
Read about how climate change and the rising cost of living will affect birth rates here;
https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/climate-change-fertility-modern-fertility-survey/
- Global
More than 200 million girls and women globally have undergone Female Genital Mutilation. It is practiced in more than 30 countries – largely in Africa, but also in parts of Asia and the Middle East, and by diaspora communities in the West.
The world has pledged to end the practice by 2030, however, the pandemic has created a perfect environment for continuing the harmful practice: vulnerable girls stuck at home without teachers’ protection, anti-FGM groups grounded by lockdown and hard-pressed health services diverted to COVID-19 efforts.
The United Nations Population Fund(UNFPA) has predicted that extra 2 million girls will be cut in the next decade.
Read more here;