The Week USA 03.20.2020

Best columns: International^ NEWS^15

ETHIOPIA

RUSSIA

American mediation has failed to solve a bur-

geoning crisis between Egypt and Ethiopia, said

Sébastien Németh. Desperate for hydroelectrical

power to serve a growing population, Ethiopia has

been building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance

Dam on the Nile River since 2011, and it is now

nearing completion. Egypt, which sits downstream

and has depended on the Nile for millennia, wants

to ensure that the dam will not deprive it of vital

resources. The two sides have been in talks for

years over how quickly the dam’s reservoir should

be filled. Egypt says the filling period should last

12 to 20 years to ensure that its agricultural sector

isn’t starved of water. But Ethiopia says it can’t

wait that long to see a return on the $4.6 billion

project. Rather than continue regional talks, Egypt

turned to its powerful patron, the U.S., to inter-

vene on its behalf, and analysts say that Washing-

ton “exerted strong pressure on the Ethiopians” to

force a compromise that was “to their disadvan-

tage.” Last month, Ethiopia abruptly pulled out

of the talks. If negotiations don’t resume soon, the

dispute could turn deadly. “If there is a need to

go to war, we could mobilize millions,” Ethiopian

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said last October.

“But that’s not in the best interest of any of us.”

Russian women will soon have the right to work

as train engineers, said Samantha Berkhead. Since

1974, women had been banned from employment

in 456 jobs deemed too strenuous for them, rang-

ing from truck driver to aviation mechanic. Those

restrictions were “a remnant of the Soviet-era be-

lief” that women must be sheltered because their

“safety and ability to bear children were para-

mount to the survival of the communist state.”

But thanks to a lawsuit by would-be riverboat

captain Svetlana Medvedeva, the Labor Ministry

has removed most of those jobs from the banned

list, and they will be open to women starting next

Jan. 1. Still, about 100 jobs, including mining,
welding, and firefighting, will remain the preserve
of men. Activists say that could be because the
Russian political class is still overwhelmingly
male. Women make up only 15 percent of the
State Duma, and only three of the 31 cabinet
ministers are women. Medvedeva won her suit in
2017 and now works for a shipping company, but
it took three more years for the government to
pass broader changes to apply to everyone. “The
government does not want to see women on a par
with men,” she said. “Our rulers consider women
Ge to be incubators.”
tty

The potential

for a war

over water

Sébastien Németh

RadioFranceInternationale.fr

Many jobs

still barred

to women

Samantha Berkhead

The Moscow Times

What a “win for women,” said The

Nation in an editorial. On International

Women’s Day this week, thousands of

Pakistani women across the country

turned out to rally for equality, both

under the law and in the home. The

third annual Aurat March—Urdu for

women’s march—brought together

women “from different walks of life” to

agitate for basic rights that both Islam

and Pakistan’s secular constitution af-

ford them but which are often denied

them in practice. Protesters demanded

access to education and freedom from

violence—more than 1,000 women are murdered here in the

name of honor every year—as well as an end to sexist demands.

At last year’s march, a placard reading “How do I know where

your socks are?” caused men to erupt in outrage that their wives

might dare refuse to serve their every need. Fear that slogans

would be similarly provocative this year sparked a “media ti-

rade against the movement,” mostly on radio and television. Yet

despite threats from Islamists, the demonstrations went ahead

peacefully in almost every major city, with the only major dis-

turbance occurring in Islamabad, where a few rioting men threw

stones and injured several marchers.

The day’s success doesn’t mean Pakistan has suddenly become

a friendlier place for women, said Inamullah Marwat in the

Daily Times. On a talk show ahead of the march, a discussion

of the slogan “My body, my consent” degenerated into a verbal

brawl between women’s rights activist Marvi Sirmed and writer

and director Khalil-ur-Rehman. Rehman lit into Sirmed using

“such language as we only hear in

the streets”—he told the campaigner

that “no one would even spit on

your body” and called her a “cheap

woman” who should “shut up.”

The mainstream media denounced

Rehman’s behavior, but the comments

posted under every Pakistani news

article about the flap were overwhelm-

ingly misogynist. Many Pakistanis find

the idea that a woman might refuse

her husband intimacy to be un-Islamic.

Others believe that it is obscene for

women to even mention their bodies in

public. Women’s empowerment still sparks waves of male anger.

Yet feminist activists have not been blameless, said Rehman

Malik in The Nation. I’m wholeheartedly for their cause and I

support the march, but it is upsetting to see women on TV en-

gaging in “cross-firing and heated arguments” that are “insulting

for both sides equally.” Women and men alike would benefit

from a more civilized discourse.

But you can’t change society by being polite, said Sherry Rehman

in The News International. Rights don’t just “fall into anyone’s

lap, not in Pakistan, not anywhere.” We are literally fighting for

our lives—a woman dies in childbirth every 20 minutes in this

country, “mostly because they are married off too young.” Some

50 percent of Pakistani women have no say in their health-care

decisions. And dozens of women every year have acid hurled in

their faces for daring to reject a suitor. In a country defined by

such abuse and inequality, “it’s a little amoral to not be radical.”

Pakistan: An uphill struggle for gender equality

On the march for women’s rights in Lahore