Time to amend the Constitutiom

The Straits Times

Oct 12, 2007

NON-DISCRIMINATION OF WOMEN

Time to amend the Constitution
By Radha Basu

A RECENT exchange between Singapore officials and a UN committee promoting gender equality was an interesting example of pragmatism pitted against principle.
The committee, tasked to examine member states' adherence to Cedaw (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), lauded Singapore for progress made by women here, but it also expressed concern over the lack of specific local laws proscribing gender discrimination.
Representing Singapore, Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, the Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports, gave a valiant defence of how the Republic had met its obligations under Cedaw, to which it acceded in 1995. She also called a press conference last week to give more information on Singapore's counter-arguments.
'We agree with Cedaw's objectives, but have a different way of achieving these objectives,' she said.
Rather than enact difficult- to-enforce laws, Singapore preferred to focus instead on increasing opportunities for women to excel in studies, work and public service, she pointed out.
She cited a list of priorities: getting more older women back to work, helping women to earn more and ensuring that women young and old have enough opportunities to balance career demands with the time and space to fulfil their duties as mothers, daughters or wives.
Helping older women back to work is a particularly pressing concern, with Singaporeans - particularly women - living longer than ever before. Only about 42 per cent of women in their mid- to late 50s currently work, compared to 78 per cent of men.
A tripartite committee has been formed to look into how these numbers can be improved.
Indeed, the Singapore approach of identifying problem areas and solving them in an organised way has yielded rich dividends.
Singapore has the world's lowest infant mortality rates. Maternal mortality rates too are low, comparable in most years to those in Europe.
Women graduates outnumber men. Also, women own or co-own 87 per cent of Housing Board flats.
Violence against women has been kept well in check. Despite population increases, the number of rapes per 100,000 population actually declined from 3.04 in 2000 to 2.85 in 2005.
The number of female victims of violence seeking medical help in public hospitals also plummeted - from 658 in 1998 to 297 in 2005.
And while neighbouring Asian giants China and India are facing demographic doom because of rampant female infanticide and foeticide, such practices are virtually unheard of here.
Indeed, Singapore is ranked 18th out of 175 countries in the United Nations Gender Empowerment Measure which tracks gender inequalities in opportunity.
Why then the UN committee's concern? Mainly because of Singapore's 'reservations' about - or refusal to fully accept - Articles 2 and 16 of the treaty.
Under Article 2, state parties are required to condemn discrimination against women 'in all its forms' and agree to embody the principle of gender equality in their national Constitutions or in other 'appropriate' laws.
Article 16 requires state parties to eliminate discrimination against women in all matters pertaining to marriage and family relations.
Singapore's official stance is that specific laws against gender discrimination - including a Women's Charter which some people have suggested in the past - are not necessary as the Constitution already guarantees the equality of 'all persons' before the law.
Advocacy groups such as the Association for Women in Action and Research (Aware) are not convinced that such a guarantee is enough. Despite the equality clause, practices that can be regarded as discriminatory towards women remain entrenched, it says. An example: Dependants of female employees in many organisations are seldom entitled to the same rights as the dependants of male employees.
Aware also points to the fact that while the Constitution recognises that all persons are equal before the law, it guarantees that there will be no discrimination against citizens on the basis of only 'religion, race, descent or place of birth'. Aware wants this clause to include gender and marital status as well.
Such a guarantee, says Aware president Constance Singam, would be the most 'significant acknowledgement of political will' to grant equal rights to women here.
For the Cedaw committee, Singapore's policy of allowing Muslims to defer to Syariah law in family matters is another sticking point. Certain aspects of Syariah law - which allow for men to have up to four wives, and require women to seek the consent of a male guardian before they marry - are deemed discriminatory.
Mrs Yu-Foo's explanation: Singapore has to 'respect the rights of its indigenous people' - namely the Malay-Musliims - 'to practise their personal and religious laws'.
She added that adequate safeguards had been built into the system to ensure that Muslim women are not victimised.
But these assurances cut little ice with the Cedaw committee. It urged Singapore to study statutes of countries with similar interpretations of Muslim law and 'remove the inconsistencies between civil and Syariah law'.
Aware too supports this notion. Malaysia, the group points out, is able to guarantee equality for women of other faiths under its Constitution even as it maintains Syariah law for Muslims. Other Muslim countries, such as Algeria and Morocco, have also done the same.
So what next?
In many ways, Singapore women have it better than their counterparts in many other countries, but there is probably still room to see how local laws, including the Constitution, can be revised to ensure better protection of women's rights.
For apart from punishing transgressors and providing victims with hope and avenues for swift redress, laws set the tone for the principles a society lives by. Statutes do shape attitudes.
Countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom enshrined gender equality in their statutes as early as the 1960s and 1970s, when most women stayed home to keep house and raise children while men reigned supreme in their roles as patriarch and provider.
It is true that laws guaranteeing gender equality may be difficult to enforce but, to take a parallel, this did not prevent the Government from recently deciding not to repeal a law criminalising male homosexual sex, which is not only regarded as discriminatory by some, but is also equally hard to enforce.
Some political office-bearers have gone on record to say the Government is not going to actively enforce the gay-sex law. In other words, it stays as a matter of 'principle' - largely because homosexuality is still frowned upon by most people here. Here, attitudes are shaping statutes.
But whether attitudes shape statutes or the other way round, surely society here is ready to enshrine in the Constitution a philosophy that states that no one should be discriminated against just because she was born a woman?
In a place where women make up more than half the population, are better educated than men and have been empowered to carve out their own careers, I'm hoping that the answer will be a resounding 'yes'.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Review/Others/STIStory_166192.html

Why SDU supports University Orientations!

"If you don't include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society...So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That's a problem." -Lee Kuan Yew in 1983 National Day Rally

Spartans! Prepare for Glory!

"Messenger : Who does this woman think she is that she can speak among men?

Queen Gorgo : Because only Spartan women give birth to real men. " - 300, Hollywood Film

Song Dedication to Ms. JL

"Shoes" by Shania Twain

Tell me about it... Ooh!Men.Have you ever tried to figure them out?Huh, me too, but I ain't got no clueHow 'bout you?
Men are like shoes. Made to confuse. Yeah, there's so many of 'em
I don't know which ones to choose(yeah, yeah, yeah)
Ah, sing it to me
If you agree
There's the kind made for runnin'
The sneakers and the low down heels
The kind that will keep you on your toes
And every girl knows how that feels(yeah, yeah, yeah)
Ouch, ah, sing it with me
[Chorus:]You've got your kickers and your ropers
Your everyday loafers, some that you can never find
You've got your slippers and your zippers
Your grabbers and your grippers
Man, don't ya hate that kind?
Some you wear in, some you wear out
Some you wanna leave behind Sometimes you hate 'em
And sometimes you love 'em
I guess it all depends on which way you rub 'em
But a girl can never have too many of 'em
It's amazing what a little polish will do...Men are like shoes... Some make you feel ten feet tall Some make you feel so small Some you want to leave out in the hall Or make you feel like kicking the wall(yeah, yeah, yeah)
Ah, sing it with me, girls
Ooh! (yeah, yeah, yeah)Mmm..
[Repeat Chorus]Some can polish up pretty good...Ah, men are like shoes..
[Instrumental]It's amazing what a little polish will do
Some clean up good, just like.newSome you can't afford, some are real cheap
Some are good for bummin' around on the beach
You've got your kickers and your ropers
Your everyday loafers, yeah some that you can never find
You've got your slippers and your zippers
Your grabbers and your grippersAnd man, don't ya hate that kind?
[Repeat Chorus]I ain't got time for the flip-flop kind...Men are like shoes!


Probably the theme song for the JoJo club......

Men with a lot of testosterone make curious economic choices

From The Economist print edition

PSYCHOLOGISTS have known for a long time that economists are wrong. Most economists—at least, those of the classical persuasion—believe that any financial gain, however small, is worth having. But psychologists know this is not true. They know because of the ultimatum game, the outcome of which is often the rejection of free money.
In this game, one player divides a pot of money between himself and another. The other then chooses whether to accept the offer. If he rejects it, neither player benefits. And despite the instincts of classical economics, a stingy offer (one that is less than about a quarter of the total) is, indeed, usually rejected. The question is, why?
One explanation of the rejectionist strategy is that human psychology is adapted for repeated interactions rather than one-off trades. In this case, taking a tough, if self-sacrificial, line at the beginning pays dividends in future rounds of the game. Rejecting a stingy offer in a one-off game is thus just a single move in a larger strategy. And indeed, when one-off ultimatum games are played by trained economists, who know all this, they do tend to accept stingy offers more often than other people would. But even they have their limits. To throw some light on why those limits exist, Terence Burnham of Harvard University recently gathered a group of students of microeconomics and asked them to play the ultimatum game. All of the students he recruited were men.
Dr Burnham's research budget ran to a bunch of $40 games. When there are many rounds in the ultimatum game, players learn to split the money more or less equally. But Dr Burnham was interested in a game of only one round. In this game, which the players knew in advance was final and could thus not affect future outcomes, proposers could choose only between offering the other player $25 (ie, more than half the total) or $5. Responders could accept or reject the offer as usual. Those results recorded, Dr Burnham took saliva samples from all the students and compared the testosterone levels assessed from those samples with decisions made in the one-round game.
As he describes in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the responders who rejected a low final offer had an average testosterone level more than 50% higher than the average of those who accepted. Five of the seven men with the highest testosterone levels in the study rejected a $5 ultimate offer but only one of the 19 others made the same decision.
What Dr Burnham's result supports is a much deeper rejection of the tenets of classical economics than one based on a slight mis-evolution of negotiating skills. It backs the idea that what people really strive for is relative rather than absolute prosperity. They would rather accept less themselves than see a rival get ahead. That is likely to be particularly true in individuals with high testosterone levels, since that hormone is correlated with social dominance in many species.
Economists often refer to this sort of behaviour as irrational. In fact, it is not. It is simply, as it were, differently rational. The things that money can buy are merely means to an end—social status—that brings desirable reproductive opportunities. If another route brings that status more directly, money is irrelevant.


Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Female sexuality

Female Sexuality, or rather the ability to exert it for "empowerment", is in truth a temporal facade of ego-boosting power or authority. It is my personal believe that society's perpetual over emphasis on female sexuality weakens rather than strengthens women, because in inculcates into us and consequently, our society, that a woman's ascend to power lies in her ability to unleash her sexuality upon helpless men who think with their testicles and not their brains. This mentality drills into women who won the genetic lottery, a false sense of invincibility as well as sparks off an "arms race" among females, with women competing and comparing, the number of guys who buy them a drink in a club, for example. For a variety of reasons, this would be detrimental to both females and males alike.

First, the purported benefits of propelling sexuality are merely temporal and may be a curse rather than a blessing. Conventional wisdoms suggest that beautiful women (or people in general) have it better. Statistics reveal that when it comes to selecting employees, employers consider first impressions, of which, propelling female sexuality in a fairly dignified manner helps greatly. Regardless of whether it is the entertainment industry or the sporting industry, it appears that it is beauty and sex that sells. The ravishing tennis "star" gets more endorsements vis-à-vis the plain-looking medalist. Taiwan Pop Princess Jolin Tsai (see above picture) wins the coveted Most Favorite Female Artist and the Best Female Artist awards at the 18th Annual Golden Melody Awards 2007. It is no coincidence that she was also voted the number 1 in Maxim's Hot 100, after her twin peaks "grew" from its humble background to the shocking 'G' cup presently. Success, then, it seems lies not so much on one's actual sporting or singing ability, but rather, how much sex appeal, how marketable you are. After all, sex sells. However, just as it was conventional wisdom in the past that the world was flat, the notion that propelling sexuality reaps success for the modern day warrior-princesses eager to conquer the world is fatally flawed. For one, the very same free-market force of capitalism that sweeps sensual, nubile young ladies to the top of the corporate ladder will also be responsible for their eventual downfall. Indeed as Mr. Francois Hollande (leader of the Socialist Party, France) said: "Queens may have their moment but the king will always return to take power." Building a career and success upon the foundations of your sexuality is no better than building a gleaming multi-million skyscraper on sand - its rise will be as spectacular as its collapse. Take for example an extract of an article from The Straits Times:

Ladies Night - but only if you're under 36

IN A black-lace top, a grey Gucci beret and tight jeans, Ms Violet Lim was dressed to party.
But at the entrance of Powerhouse in mega-club St James Power Station, a bouncer asked for her identity card, then denied her the five free-drinks vouchers typically offered to women on Ladies' Night.

The reason? She was 'above 35'.

Last Wednesday night, the 55-year-old dating consultant, a mother of two grown children, was told she had to pay for her drinks.

By then, she was so insulted, she left.

'They are too much,' she said. 'My girlfriends and I have been going to Ladies Night at various clubs for many years and we never had problems getting free drinks.'

The idea of Ladies Night at clubs works on the belief that the promise of free or discounted drinks for women will draw them in, and they in turn will attract men.

Being an adult woman is generally enough to qualify for the privilege - age notwithstanding.

But Mr Andrew Ing, chief operating officer of St James Power Station, said the club's coupons only extend to women 'who fit our target profile' - that is, 'young and trendy'.

'It's to protect the interests of our existing clientele,' he explained.

Two weeks ago, Ms Lim also failed to get the coupons, despite being dressed youthfully in a fitted jacket and trendy black slacks.

She was handed spa vouchers instead.

Similarly snubbed - and annoyed - was 36-year-old nurse Geraldine Lee, who is just one year over the Powerhouse age limit.

'It's like telling you you're old and won't attract guys, so go somewhere else,' said Ms Lee, who was at the club for the first time last Wednesday.

Even so, Mr Ing cited the club's right to turn away customers, and its right to give or refuse Ladies' Night privileges.

'Door policies have always been controversial because they can never be in black and white,' he said.

..............................American investment banker Jason Timothy, 25, said: 'I just don't think a 55-year-old woman would create a great atmosphere to attract men.'


END

But that’s not all. An over-emphasis on female sexuality by society will contort people's perception of women and their achievements will be undermined and swept away and written off as just the result of their beauty and nothing more. Female talk-hosts on the ESPN shows are perceived to be there as just eye-candy. People do not even bother about the possible hours these women spend reading and researching into tactics of various football teams etc. Sportswomen tend to be described by sport commenders differently as compared to sportsmen, with emphasis on looks rather than performance, undermining the years of back-breaking physical conditioning these female athletics put in to compete at the highest level. Thus female sexuality not only provides fleeting glory but eternal obscurity, it also erodes and diminish any legitimate virtues such as perseverance, emotional-intelligence etc, that many women posses through their own efforts, independent of their physical endowment.

The next time you put on your M.A.C makeup, place that false eyelashes and don Triumph's Maxi misers push up bras, remember that the only one you are deceiving is yourself, because if love, fame and power are endorsements and testimonials of value, then "value" that hinges on sexuality expires once you are 36.....

JY

Female sexuality can go both ways -- it can be seen as subjection and empowerment simultaneously, depending on the agenda and context.

A female portrayed as a sex symbol would previously be considered as victims subjugated to men's desires and expectations of them. The woman appears passive, vulnerable to any way the man wants to utilise her, and essentially place herself under the mercy of the male. To some, adorning something that is considered 'feminine', such as heels and dresses, would be to conform to societal's, or more specifically, men's stereotype of feminity. To quote the protagonist in the movie 'She's the Man', high heels are "a male invention designed to keep women from running away". What a promising future the fashion runway has for us.

On the other hand, a female's forte can lie in her sexuality itself. To be able to wear heels and dresses as she desires would be a physical expression of her freedom to follow her choice. In more recent times, if a female is portrayed suggestively, more often than not it isn't in the "I'm your slave" kind of way, but rather in the "You know you want me" kind of way. This juxtaposition automatically places the woman in the position of power, as she uses her sexuality to manipulate men to get what she wants, not the other way round. Not that this kind of power is exactly in the positive sense, but the tables have turned. It does not help that many men's weaknesses lie in their inability to resist this, thus falling prey to women manipulating their sexuality to their advantage. The first example that comes to mind is from the movie 'Munich', where 1 of the spies sent out, Carl, gave in to the advances of an attractive woman, actually a spy in disguise, resulting in a swift death in his hotel room. If men flaunted their power through muscles and speed, women could tap on theirs using their sexuality.

Of course, a female's sexuality is not the only area she can showcase her power and authority in, but why the struggle for power? Does having more power over the other necessarily equate to having a better quality of life and welfare? "With great power comes great responsibility", and if mishandled, with great responsibility comes burden, stress, anxiety etc. It isn't about having greater power, but to be able to assert an individual's human rights and dignity that is the more important issue here. In the domestic arena, a working husband may appear to have more power in the household than the stay-home wife, but each role has its own purpose and importance, and as long as there is mutual respect and love in the family, it does not matter who wields more visible power as long as both parties complement each other in establishing a complete and wholesome family -- which should be the ultimate goal of both spouses. If, however, having more visible power leads to the husband abusing the wife or subjecting her to his expectations of her, the root of the problem would not be power, but about the love and respect he has for his wife.

Submission isn't necessarily derogatory either. Submission is a divine order ordained by God - just as Christ washed the feet of His disciples, so we serve others out of love. In marriage, submission is an attitude of yieldedness and love, not of inferiority. God ordained men to be the head of the house, just as Christ is the head of the church, and the woman represents the bride of Christ - the church. However, this definitely does not call for abusing of the man's power over his wife. Eve was created as Adam's helpmate (Genesis 2:18), his 'manager', so both their physical, emotional and spiritual differences can complement each other through marriage. Woman was created with the desire to be protected and loved, thus He asked husbands to love their wives - but this inherent desire has been perverted over time, seeing how young women now look for love and assurance in the wrong places using the wrong ways.

Female sexuality, no matter whether propelled in the direction of subjection or empowerment, should always preserve dignity and integrity at all times. The Bible says that our bodies are a "temple of God" - God dwells inside of us, and thus we ought to love our bodies and treat them with respect and reverence, irregardless of gender. The one with the true power is the one who knows how to treat his/her body with true understanding, exercising Godly leadership as representations of Christ in this world.

JL*

Sex and money

By 2020 over half of Britain's millionaires may be female. Why?
IN APRIL this year, 92 females graced the Sunday Times Rich List, an annual round-up of Britain's 1,000 wealthiest people. Ten years ago there were 64. And rich women are getting richer, too: over the decade the average worth of female millionaires has grown by more than half. Today Britain's wealthiest woman has £4.9 billion ($9.6 billion) to her name, compared with the paltry £1.5 billion her counterpart had in 1997. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) reckons female millionaires will outnumber male ones by 2020, and by 2025 women will control 60% of the nation's private wealth. They do better at school and in higher education, and they live longer. Girl power, it seems, never had it so good.
Is this wave of affluence a chimera or does it have solid underpinnings? A report this week by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company, for Barclays Wealth, a financial-management firm, claims that the historical sources of women's wealth—marriage, inheritance and divorce—have been replaced by independent income, business ownership and investments. More than 80% of women now derive their riches from personal earnings, it says, particularly from their own businesses. Divorce, long the engine that propelled women into prosperity, is cited by only 2.9% of those questioned as the main source of their wealth.
But Philip Beresford, who compiles the Rich List, dismisses the idea that women are breaking into its ranks independently of men. “There is no evidence, yet, of seriously rich female entrepreneurs coming in huge numbers,” he says. The woman who tops the list is in fact Lady Green, whose husband made them both a fortune in retailing. If the CEBR is correct, Mr Beresford thinks most British millionairesses will still be wives, daughters and divorcees.
A glance at the number of women in the top ranks of business suggests he is right. Women make up only a tenth of the directors of FTSE-100 firms. They are also under-represented in the upper echelons of management. In a report in March, PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accountancy firm, said that the number of female senior managers in FTSE-350 firms had fallen by 40% since 2002. This may be due to a prevailing macho culture at the top; or it may reflect the costs of child care, which have risen by 27% in the same period.

If things look sticky at the top, women at the bottom find the relative going far tougher. Although the gap between men's and women's earnings has shrunk for those at all income levels, it remains far bigger among the poorest tenth than in any other group (see chart). The latest annual report from the Equal Opportunities Commission shows why: men still dominate highly paid work, and the proportion of female graduates in low-level jobs has rocketed in the past decade, along with the number of people going to university.
It will take another 60 years before there is equality between the sexes in British business (and 200 to achieve the same in Parliament), the commission calculates. Progress, it moans, is “painfully slow and at risk of going into reverse”. It's still hard to be a woman.

Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Quote of the Day

HIS Quote : "I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war." ~Robert Mueller

HER Quote : "In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on a woman." —Nancy Astor (British Politician)



jy

A game of ducks and drakes

Taken from The Economist :

The evolutionary battle of the sexes has some curious consequences
SEX, in most species of bird, is a consensual activity. It has to be. Males have no penises and are armed with a genital opening which looks little different from that of a female. Intercourse happens when these two openings are brought together in what ornithologists refer to as a cloacal kiss. In these circumstances, rape is a difficult option.
Drakes, however, are notorious rapists—forcing their attentions on ducks indiscriminately—and it is surely no coincidence that they are among the 3% of male birds that do have a penis. In fact, drake penises come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes that are thought by students of the subject to be part of an arms race to ensure that it is the owner's sperm that fertilise the next generation of ducklings, rather than anybody else's.
The question is, an arms race against whom? The males of many species of insect have similarly elaborate genitalia. These seem designed to compete directly against other males—for example by scraping out the sperm of previous suitors or breaking off and blocking the female's genital opening. But Patricia Brennan, of Yale University, and her colleagues suspected that in ducks and drakes the arms race might be between the sexes rather than between members of the same sex. Females, in other words, would rather choose which males inseminate them. And if rape is inevitable, evolution might provide them with other ways of making this choice.
Surprisingly (or perhaps not, given the male-dominated nature of science) the elaborate cataloguing of drake genitalia had not been extended to ducks. So Dr Brennan got out her scalpel and started looking. As she reports in the Public Library of Science, she discovered that the sexual passages of ducks are every bit as elaborate as the penises of drakes are. Indeed, for every species, the more elaborate the latter were, the more elaborate were the former. In particular, duck vaginas are often equipped with additional passages that have blind endings, and frequently corkscrew in a clockwise direction, in contradistinction to the anticlockwise thread of a drake's penis.
Dr Brennan interprets these anatomical flourishes as anti-insemination mechanisms. The contrary threads of the genitalia make successful penetration much harder if the female is not co-operating. The blind passages make it likely that sperm will be ejaculated into the wrong place and thus fail to fertilise the duck's eggs. Conversely, a willing female should be more easily inseminated.
That interpretation is backed up by the fact that ducks with the most elaborate genitalia are those from species where the drakes have the largest penises. These species are also the ones where rape is most often observed. In ducks and drakes, it seems, size matters. But not in a way that is good for females.

Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.