Equality Newsletter #5 (March 29, 2021)
UN reports on status of women, wealth gap is growing even wider, Black doctor's death from COVID decried, and more
GENDER
Women’s global progress much slower than hoped, UN reports
Women are far from having an equal voice to men, and in every region of the world, and they are still exposed to various forms of violence, harassment and discrimination, according to the latest United Nations report The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics, a comprehensive survey of the status of women across the globe.
The 80-page report found that women have made real advances over the past quarter century -- most notably in education, employment and health care -- but that progress has been too slow, and in some areas, such as protection against sexual violence domestically and during wartime, women have suffered real setbacks.
“Twenty-five years since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, progress towards equal power and equal rights for women remains elusive”, said UN Secretary-General António Gutierrez. “No country has achieved gender equality.”
The report took square aim at the lack of progress women have made in securing parity with men in economic and political leadership positions. In 2020, women held only 28% of managerial positions globally, almost the same proportion as in 1995, the report notes. And just 18% of companies surveyed had a female CEO in 2020. Among Fortune 500 corporate rankings, only 7.4%, or 37 CEOs, were women.
In politics, women’s progress has been slightly better. For example, since 1995 women’s representation in parliamentary bodies has more than doubled while their representation in cabinets has quadrupled. However, women still occupy less than 25% of the total positions in each case, well below parity, the report noted.
Meanwhile, the onset of the global pandemic has pushed women to the front-lines in healthcare settings, in home care, in the family and in the public sphere, where their heroic service as nurses and their prominent role as policy advocates has gained them global recognition, the report noted.
On the downside, mandatory lockdowns and sheltering no place policies have exposed millions of women to higher rates of domestic violence, without offering them badly needed escape routes, the report notes.
Overall the report paints a picture of a world more formally committed than ever to women's equality but struggling with deep-seated institutional and cultural barriers that have left too many women stranded at lower social and professional plateaus than those occupied by men.
The report also noted a need for better systems for collecting data on gender issues, and a greater focus on assisting and empowering young girls who represent the future of women in the coming decades.
LGBTQ
New trial scheduled in the murder of Greek LGBTQ activist
Greek prosecutors have announced that a new trial will be held in the death of Zak Kostopoulous, an LGBTQ activist who died in September 2018 after he was brutally beaten by far right activists operating in complicity with the Greek police
Kostopoulos, an LGBTQ activist, drag artist and columnist known as "Zackie Oh" to his friends and admirers was killed in broad daylight on an Athens street outside a jewelry store in downtown Athens more than two years ago.
Police charged that Kostopoulous had tried to rob a grocery store and was discovered and confronted by the shopkeeper. But eyewitnesses said that Kostopolous was set upon by attackers and was repeatedly kicked in the head despite the fact that he was unarmed and posed no threat to anyone.
Amnesty International and Greek human rights groups have labelled Kostoupoulos' death a "murder" and have called upon the Greek government to conduct an impartial investigation. The appearance of a homemade video that appears to document the unprovoked attack has forced the government to accede to these demands, raising the hopes of Greece's beleaguered LGBTQ community that justice may finally be done.
“It was a lynching. There’s no other way to describe it,” said Philippos Karagiorgis, who is seen in the newly released video footage, arms outstretched, attempting to stop the attack. “[Zak] was … on all fours like a baby, desperately trying to crawl through the shattered glass of the shop’s window. Every time he tried to get up, these two men would kick him in the head, again and again.”
LGBTQ activists say the inability to secure justice for Zak for so long reflects Greece’s deeply ingrained homophobic culture. They also point to a long-standing pattern of abuse and impunity in Greece's police force that extends to other marginalized groups and to any Greek citizen that somehow runs afoul of official authority.
A 2019 report by Human Rights Watch catalogued a wide range of human rights violations in Greece, including violence and threats of violence against women, sexual minorities and refugees The report also noted a spike in abuses and reports of abuses by the Greek police specifically.
Last year, a group of street artists rented a crane and painted through the night so that by daybreak, the entire wall of a building in downtown Athens bore the image of Kostopoulos and his alter ego Zackie Oh.
“This is about difference and the lack of tolerance for it in this society,” an Anthens arts teacher told the British Guardian last month. “Zak was murdered for being who he was. And that’s why his image is going to be on walls and columns, every surface we can put it on, for a very long time.”
RACE
Death of Black doctor renews debate over COVID disparities
A hospital in Indiana has come under fire after a Black doctor being treated for COVID charged that she was the victim of racism. and then promptly died in the hospital's care. The doctor, Susan Moore, had posted a series of videos on Facebook to decry the quality of care she was receiving. Hospital administrators have promised to review the circumstances surrounding Moore's death.
In a Facebook video posted on December 4, the 52-year old doctor said she had to repeatedly ask for medication, scans and routine checks but was often rebuffed or ignored by attending physicians. She said a white doctor in particular was the most dismissive, which caused her to suspect that her race was a factor.
According to Moore, when she complained that she was experiencing chest pains and trouble breathing, hospital doctors dismissed her complaints and sent her home prematurely. Within hours her blood pressure spiked and she was forced to return to the hospital, where she said doctors continued to mistreat her. She died just two weeks later.
The circumstances surrounding Moore's shocking death has renewed debate over the disproportionate burden that African-Americans have shouldered during the course of the COVID pandemic. Data shows that Blacks and other minorities are becoming infected and dying at disproportionately high rates, due to a combination of pre-existing health conditions like diabetes and obesity but also because, as in Moore’s case, they may be receiving substandard care.
The fact that Moore was also a doctor, fully aware of the nature of COVID and a peer of the physicians treating her has only heightened awareness of how powerful a factor a patient's race may be in the way African-Americans are being treated during the pandemic.
“I put forth and maintain, if I was white, I wouldn’t have to go through that,” she said in her video, her voice often cracking. “This is how Black people get killed, when you send them home, and they don’t know how to fight for themselves.”
Dennis Murphy, the chief of IU Health North Hospital in Carmel, Indiana said he saw no "technical" shortcomings in the care Moore received during her hospital stay but acknowledged that aspects of her treatment by doctors at the hospital might still be an issue. In an extraordinary move, he promised to appoint an independent review committee comprising doctors of different ethnic backgrounds to investigate whether race was a factor in her treatment and subsequent death.
“I am asking for an external review of this case. We will have a diverse panel of health care and diversity experts conduct a thorough medical review of Dr. Moore’s concerns to address any potential treatment bias,” he said in a statement.
Moore grew up in Michigan, where she earned a medical degree at the University of Michigan in 2002. She had an active medical license in Indiana at the time of her death, according to MLive.com.
WEALTH
New RAND study confirms long-term income inequality trend
A new study by the RAND Corporation finds that trends in income inequality in the United States since 1975 are worsening, even as the nation’s per capita GDP and overall economic productivity continue to rise. “The gains of economic growth have been primarily going to the top,” Carter Price, a senior mathematician at RAND and author of the new study, said last month. “And for some segments of the population, there have been no gains whatsoever.”
The most recent period contrasts sharply with the first three decades after World War II, when the fruits of economic growth were shared widely across the income spectrum, Price suggests. The main difference is that inequality in taxable income has increased substantially over the last four decades. Simply put, the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes, which is swelling the fiscal deficit while leaving poorer sectors with reduced access to government services. At the same time, the middle-class tax burden has also increased, reducing net incomes.
Rich Hanauer, a venture capitalist who first suggested the idea for the RAND study, and helped fund it, estimated what average salaries would be had the system developed in a more equitable fashion consistent with earlier trends.
“The median full-time worker in America today earns about $50,000 a year. If they had been held harmless by the last 45 years of neoliberal economic policy … instead of earning $50,000 a year, they would earn between $92,000 and $100,000 a year,” Hanauer told the news magazine Marketplace Morning Report.
“The only people who won over the past 40 years are the 1%. Everyone fell behind besides the richest which explains why so many people are angry,” Hanauer said.
What’s the solution? Hanauer suggests that raising the minimum wage to $15 would certainly help. However, higher end companies should also be compelled to pay a minimum of $20 per hour, he argues. In addition, companies should be compelled to hire new workers rather than pressure their existing workforce to work excessive overtime hours, limiting new hires, and squeezing their employees beyond the breaking point.
Another critical reform, Hanuer insists, is the promotion of more small and medium-sized businesses operating regionally rather than relying on larger national monopoly firms that exert undue leverage over the consumer market, often boosting prices and reducing wages, while reaping high tax breaks.
Time is running out, Hanauer says. “It is mathematically certain that the country will collapse eventually. It will collapse, economically, it will collapse politically and it will collapse civically If we are not prepared to address this problem at the source of the problem, our country is doomed.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Inoculation was first introduced in America by a slave based on centuries-old folk practice in Africa.
Onesimus, one of a thousand slaves of African descent living in the Massachusetts colony in the early years of the 18th century, was a gift to the Puritan church minister Cotton Mather from his congregation. When a smallpox epidemic swept Boston in 1721, Onesimus told Mather of an ancient African practice of scratching the skin of an uninfected person with smallpox cells, rendering them immune. In the face of widespread public opposition, Mather convinced a prominent Boston to experiment with the procedure. Nearly 250 volunteers were inoculated. In the end, just 2% of those inoculated died compared to 15% of people not inoculated who contracted smallpox.
Based on this early success, the United States army decided to inoculate American soldiers fighting in the Revolutionary War. Over time, inoculation became the standard medical practice for reducing the impact of other deadly infectious diseases, including polio, rubella and whooping cough.
For more on Onesimus’s role in disseminating knowledge of inoculation, see Alexander Yung, “How an African Slave Saved Boston,” published in the online magazine Medium on June 21, 2020, and Gillian Brockell, “The African roots of inoculation in America: Saving lives for three centuries.” published in The Washington Post on December 15, 2020.
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