07 August 2015

Kia ora koutou, welcome to On Balance - the National Council of Women of New Zealand's weekly round-up of the latest gender equality news, research and events. Please share it with anyone you think might be interested and let them know they can subscribe here.

News from around the country:
• Justice Minister Amy Adams launched a discussion document which “takes a hard look at the way the law prevents and responds to family violence”. The document was welcomed by many organisations working in the area, including White Ribbon andWomen’s Refuge. New Zealanders have been invited by the Ministry of Justice to have their say on the document.
• The pay difference between male and female chartered accountants in New Zealand has grown to $45,000 and is “getting worse”.
• Following claims that the Gloriavale Community Christian School has a strict gender divide in subjects and steers girls toward domestic roles within the community, the Education Review Office is set to be questioned by the Education and Science Select Committee on its assessment that the school meets review requirements.
• In a grading by Amnesty International on its performance on the UN Security Council so far, New Zealand received a C- for championing women’s rights.
• An Auckland woman admitted “pimping out” her young daughter to an elderly neighbour regularly over the course of six years.
• To mark World Breastfeeding Week (1-7 August), UNICEF New Zealand called for governments, employers and families to support women to breastfeed their infantsthrough paid parental leave, flexible and supportive employment practices, and a national culture of encouragement and acceptance of breastfeeding.
Latest research:
• About one in ten junior doctors reported being sexually harassed in the workplace. Doctors who responded to the survey said humiliating younger doctors was considered a "rite of passage", and that abuse and sexual harassment were "deeply ingrained" in the medical community.
• Women had less than a third of speaking parts in the most popular films from 2007 to 2014, according to a new study that gives further evidence of persistent inequality in Hollywood, on-screen and off.
• Researchers found that the birth control pill can help reduce women’s risk of developing cancer, even long after they stop using it.
• Body shaming may actually be making women sick, suggests a US study. It found that women who had higher levels of body shame reported decreased self-rated health and an increased number of infections since their teenage years.
International news:
• A government computer glitch in Queensland, Australia has caused more than 600 cases of suspected child sexual abuse to go unreported. It was revealed that, since January, a coding error in a departmental computer program had stopped some public school principals' reports of suspected abuse from being received by police.
• Sexism in the publishing industry is rife, as highlighted by author Catherine Nichols when she decided to submit her manuscript under the name “George”. She found thatsubmitting her manuscript under a male pseudonym brought her more than eight times the number of responses she had received under her own name.
• A teenage girl in the US has been left with horrific injuries after she was attacked by catcallers.
• The UK Government has failed to ratify pan-European convention protecting the rights of women and girls three years after signing up to it and 12 months since it came into force.
• Experts on gender violence in South Africa have reported that the country’s crimes against women have almost become a normal occurrence and only received attention when they were exceptionally gruesome. The unaltered attitudes towards violence and crimes directed at women as well as a prevailing sense that men could get away with crimes against their spouses were believed to be the underlying problems leading to such incidents.
• Ten young basketball players in the US returned home feeling pretty low after their five-game winning streak at a national tournament was cut short when they were disqualified – all because one of their players is a girl.
• The hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer went viral on social media this week after platform engineer Isis Wenger was told she did not look like an engineer when she appeared in an ad that was part of her company OneLogin's recruiting campaign. Thousands of engineers from underrepresented groups used the #ILookLikeAnEngineer to recast how people view them.
• In Canada, topless protesters marched to defend women's rights to go bare-chested, after three sisters were stopped for bicycling semi-nude.
• In Hong Kong, hundreds of angry citizens – both men and women – took to the streets with their bras to fight the arrest of a woman for assaulting a police officer with her breast during a protest.
• Netflix announced that it will grant unlimited leave to both mothers and fathers with full pay within the first year after their child's birth or adoption.
• The US Senate blocked an attempt by Republicans to terminate federal funds for Planned Parenthood. This follows on the intense scrutiny faced by Planned Parenthood after an anti-abortion group released a series of videos which allegedly show that the non-profit group is making money off of the sale of fetal tissue, a practice Planned Parenthood denies.
• Barbara Walters, a trailblazer for women in media, has opened up about the sexism she faced as a young journalist working in television media, which she describes as having been very much "a man's world".
• The Australian Press Council found The Courier Mail in breach of its standards following the reporting of the death of young transgender woman Mayang Prasetyo at the hands of her husband. It was found to breach two principles: first, that factual material be presented with reasonable fairness and balance; and second, that causing offence, distress or prejudice should be avoided - unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest.

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