Global Roundup: Botswana Elections Women Representation, Thailand Women & LGBTI Activists, Nepal Women Music Group, Nigeria Women’s Rights Pioneer Biopic, Queer Black Writer Memoir
Global Roundup: Botswana Elections Women Representation, Thailand Women & LGBTI Activists, Nepal Women Music Group, Nigeria Women’s Rights Pioneer Biopic, Queer Black Writer Memoir
Curated by FG Contributor Samiha Hossain
A woman casts her ballot at Moshupa village in the Southern District of Botswana on October 23, 2019. PHOTO | REUTERS
As Botswana prepares for general elections in October, the number of women running for office remains low. Political parties have finalised their list of candidates for the 2024 vote, and the majority of contestants are male. In the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), out of nearly 200 candidates for the National Assembly, only 20 are women.
The pertaining state of affairs in women’s political participation in Botswana is saddening. While statistically, women make [up] more than 50 percent of voters, women’s representation in elected positions remains very low. I have serious doubt that we will see an improvement in the upcoming October elections. -Pamela Dube, gender activist
Dube said the governing BDP should create gender quotas in order to push for legislated seat allocation.
Botswana has no such laws, or even constitutional provisions. It is even sadder that the constitution review bill that is before parliament is silent in this regard. -Pamela Dube
Spokesperson for opposition coalition the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), Moeti Mohwasa, said the country’s electoral laws do not favor women. Botswana uses the first-past-the-post system, where voters choose a single candidate, as opposed to a list – which Mohwasa calls conservative and patriarchal. He believes the list system empowers women more. Maputo-based Women in Political Participation (WPP) programs officer Sifisosami Dube said Botswana should have amended its electoral laws under a recent constitutional review process.
There is a need to handhold women in political leadership from the time they are campaigning, or when they are thinking about campaigning, to the time they will be in elections and to the time they are in political leadership positions. Because once they are in political offices, it is quite cold out there; they need to be continuously motivated. -Sifisosami Dube
Women and LGBTI activists in Thailand are being subjected to an online onslaught of abusive speech laced with misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic language, sexualized content and other forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TfGBV), according to Amnesty International. The report, “Being Ourselves is Too Dangerous” highlights how women and LGBTI activists have been unlawfully targeted with digital surveillance, including Pegasus spyware and online harassment, by state and non-state actors, in an effort to silence them.
Following the 2014 military coup, activists at the forefront of peaceful protests in Thailand have leveraged digital technology to speak out about human rights amidst the shrinking civic space. However, the report shows how this tool is being used to harass them as well. The report is primarily based on in-depth interviews with 40 women and LGBTI activists, including many young activists and those living in the country’s Malay Muslim-majority southern border provinces.
Niraphorn Onnkhaow, a 22-year-old student activist, was shocked when she received an Apple threat notification informing her that her device might be a target of “state-sponsored attackers.” In fact, her iPhone was infected 14 times with Pegasus spyware – the highly invasive spyware developed by Israeli cybertechnology company NSO Group. Onnkhaow believes this was linked to her participation in the youth-led pro-democracy protest movement that began in 2020.
As a woman, having my privacy invaded is frightening. If I have private photos on my phone, they could be leaked to smear my reputation and hurt me to the extent that I’d have to stop my activism. I believe women and LGBTI activists are being watched, monitored and scrutinized more closely. -Niraphorn Onnkhaow
Some activists faced violence in the form of doxing. Non-binary youth feminist activist Nitchakarn Rakwongrit said that when they were 17 years old, an anonymous X (formerly Twitter) account publicly posted their private information, including their ID card number, and criminal charges that they faced due to their involvement in peaceful protests. The doxing appeared to be aimed at intimidating and discouraging them from continuing their activism. Many LGBTI activists in the Muslim community have faced violent online backlash for their activism.
The ultimate goal of these attacks is to assassinate the activists’ character, undermine their credibility, delegitimize their role and isolate them from the rest of society. It is a pervasive tactic that sends a clear warning: women and LGBTI activists will be punished if they dare to challenge the status quo. -Elina Castillo Jiménez, Amnesty International’s Security Lab Researcher on targeted digital surveillance.
Amnesty International found that digital violence created a chilling effect among many women and LGBTI activists who began self-censoring and, in some cases, disengaging from human rights work altogether. Some activists also suffered serious mental health repercussions. The organization calls on the Thai government to take meaningful steps to better protect activists and to ban highly invasive spyware and establish a human-rights compliant regulatory system for other types of spyware.
All-women traditional music band ‘Sirjanshil Mahila Naumati Baja’ at Padmalaya, Nawalpur in Nepal. Photo: UN Women/Sangharsha Panta
Women in Nepal are using music to defy gender and caste stereotypes: the musical group is named Sirjanshil Mahila Naumati Baja. Bal Kumari Bhusal plays the Narasingha, a long, curved horn-like pipe instrument.
This music that we play represents the sound of our struggle, our rebellion. Playing Naumati Baja has always been considered a responsibility of men from the Dalit community. They never thought that a woman, let alone from a different caste, could also play the instrument with the same grace and pride. -Bal Kumari Bhusal
Naumati Baja has traditionally been played by Damais, a subgroup of the Dalit caste, on auspicious occasions such as weddings, religious ceremonies and different celebrations. In 2021, when her all-women group was founded, Bhusal, along with fellow musicians from different castes – Rai, Limbu, Chaudhary, Brahmin, Chettri, etc. – faced significant resistance. Their struggle started from within: first, to learn how to play and stay determined; then, to build up the courage to stand up to their families and then society in order to break these gender and caste stereotypes. But, after challenging traditions, the 16 members of Sirjanshil Mahila Naumati Baja are now making a living by playing these instruments, and have managed to establish themselves as respected musicians.
They were among the more than 150 feminists from 37 districts of Nepal who travelled by bus to Padmalaya to attend the nationwide “Anupam Abhiyan” women’s gathering organized by the Inter-Generational Feminist Forum (IGFF), to celebrate and support fellow women. Every participant, including the Naumati Baja group, shared their stories and efforts to challenge and change gender stereotypes in their families and communities.
Bolanle Austen-Peters's acclaimed biopic 'Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti' came to Nigerian cinemas on Friday © Leslie FAUVEL / AFP
Generations of schoolchildren have grown up being taught that Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was the first woman to drive a car in Nigeria but the director of a new film about the pioneering women's rights activist says that the anecdote offered a very limited view of Ransome-Kuti's achievements. Bolanle Austen-Peters acclaimed biopic "Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti" shows Ransome-Kuti's extraordinary life.
It begins in 1977, with soldiers hurling an elderly Ransome-Kuti from a window during a military raid at the home of her son, the legendary protest musician and "King of Afrobeat" Fela Kuti. Ransome-Kuti would later die from her injuries, aged 77, after a lifetime at the forefront of fighting for rights and shaping Nigeria's history. The film zooms in on a formative episode in the 1940s when Ransome-Kuti led women at a market in Abeokuta city north of Lagos in protest against heavy taxes demanded by a traditional king and the British colonial authorities.
In the age where there was no social media, she rallied over 10,000 women from different parts of Western Nigeria. Traditional rulers were very powerful, and she confronted them. And then, she also confronted colonial governments. -Bolanle Austen-Peters
Austen-Peters said that shooting a powerful scene where 600 actresses storm the king's palace under a blazing sun had left her in tears for the first time on a film set. The film does not cover the whole scope of her career, which included campaigning for women's voting rights, education for the less wealthy and Nigeria's independence from Britain – and drew the wrath of the Nigerian government and Western allies over contacts with China and the USSR at the height of the Cold War. Austen-Peters hopes her film will help young women take inspiration from the life of the feminist and anti-colonialist activist.
We can't underestimate the power of narratives and narration. Young women who see this will begin to challenge the status quo. It should inspire us to want to make a change. -Bolanle Austen-Peters
"Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti" has already won several awards, including Best Screenplay and Best Feature Film at the Africa International Film Festival and Best Screenplay at the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards.
In Carvell Wallace’s new memoir, Another Word for Love, he writes about his early life with (and without) his mother and chronicles his addictions, becoming a parent and a writer, and coming into his own as a queer Black man in the U.S. Wallace didn't start writing until he was 40 years old, beginning with an impassioned Facebook post in response to the death of Black teenager Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. He's since written profiles of musicians, athletes and politicians for publications like The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. He's also the co-author, along with basketball star Andre Iguodala, of The Sixth Man, which chronicles Iguodala's NBA career.
Wallace says he's careful to avoid what he calls "trauma porn" when writing about his own experiences with poverty, racism and homophobia. For his own memoir, he says his focus is on the root of his pain and his recovery from it, rather than the nature of the pain.
There's a weird kind of ghoulish fascination with watching people suffer under oppression for art and for people writing about their oppression and reliving it over and over again. -Carvell Wallace
In an interview with NPR, Wallace shares his complicated relationship with his mother. He says that writing the memoir helped him relieve himself of some lingering resentment that he was carrying toward her. He also discusses forgiving his mother before she passed away and how it allowed him to be empowered. He also shares how he wrote about what his mom's life could have been if she had an abortion – a process that helped him understand her better.
The ways in which we harm one another can never be undone. You cannot un-harm a person. And that is a heavy realization to have, and yet, to me, absolutely necessary. Because if you truly want to make amends and make right, you have to fully embrace the fact that I can't un-harm a person. -Carvell Wallace
Samiha Hossain (she/her) is an aspiring urban planner studying at Toronto Metropolitan University. Throughout the years, she has worked in nonprofits with survivors of sexual violence and youth. Samiha firmly believes in the power of connecting with people and listening to their stories to create solidarity and heal as a community. She loves learning about the diverse forms of feminist resistance around the world.