The most well-said stories of the week at EcoSalon.

Sometimes body language can say so much more than words. Here’s one artist who sculpts figures that speak volumes.

Sunday is Women’s Equality Day. It’s also International GoTopless Day – misguided and irrelevant?

SAMSARA- 5 years in the making, across 5 continents and 25 countries – is shaping up to be an incredible piece of film-making, and a statement about the unchanging cycle of life that underpins our conflicted, turbulent world. Watch the trailer and see an interview with its writer-producer here.

Contrary to promises by its President a year ago, Iran is now selectively barring women from University degree courses – and one Nobel laureate human rights campaigner is demanding the U.N. investigates.

Finally, we talk to Elizabeth L. Cline about her book Overdressed, an investigation into the appallingly high cost of cheap fashion. What’s the answer for the industry and the consumers supporting it?

The post The Friday 5: Statement-Making Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

Iran shows fear of women getting ahead by simply barring them from being educated.

Last week we asked, is Saudi Arabia’s policy of segregating women designed to help or hinder their economic independence? Tricky to answer – but in Iran, things are a little more clear-cut. Its government has just announced that 36 of the country’s universities will be barring women from enrolling on a total of 77 BA and BSc degrees for at least the next year.

Why? Two reasons are offered: firstly, a lack of demand for women employees in the jobs these courses work towards…and secondly, quoting a senior Iranian education official:

Some fields are not very suitable for women’s nature.

– Abolfazl Hasani, as quoted at Rooz.

In other words – women aren’t wanted in these professions, even if they were capable of excelling in them, which allegedly they aren’t.

Time to quote some damning statistics.

• Women account for nearly 60% of University students in Iran. (New York Times).
• In 2011, women outnumbered men 3 to 2 in successfully passing university entrance exams. (Telegraph)
• In 2009, just 15% of the Iranian workforce (3.5 million) were women, as compared to the global average of 45%. (Payvand News Of Iran)
• In the same year, less than 4% of employed women were in senior, executive or managerial positions. (Payvand News Of Iran)
• Iran’s University of Isfahan justified barring women from taking its mining engineering degree by stating that 98% of the course’s female graduates ended up unemployed. (Telegraph)

In a way, it’s a neat argument: the education system is barring women to avoid wasting money teaching them professions they will find it difficult to find employment in. Why would they find it so difficult? Because of endemic sexual discrimination.

It’s also easy to construct an argument for this being a panicked reaction to the development of the women’s rights movement in Iran, as follows: under Iranian law, women need the permission of their husbands to work. This means that a career-minded woman would either be choosier with their choice of husband, or refuse to seek one altogether – just the kind of erosion of a traditionalist way of life that a high-ranking theocrat would be afraid of.

To Iranian Nobel laureate and human rights campaigner Shirin Ebadi, it stinks of repression – and she’s demanding the United Nations launches an investigation:

The aim [of single-sex degree courses] is that women will give up their opposition and demands for their own rights.

  – Shirin Ebadi, as quoted in the Telegraph.

 A year ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described proposals to segregate students as “shallow and unwise,” and called for their cancellation.

It seems a year is a long time in Iranian politics.

Image: Paul Keller.

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Strong women unite under one great title.

When Iranian American author Angella Nazarian was growing up in pre-revolutionary Iran, she didn’t have many female role models outside of her immediate family. “I came from a very traditional culture which was very patriarchal. [At age 11] when I first moved from Iran to the U.S., it was the time of revolution, and I didn’t see my parents for 5 years,” she says.

After building a successful family life and career in the U.S., Nazarian, who is also a professor in psychology and speaker on women’s issues, decided to go on a writerly mission of self discovery. “I thought, how exciting would it be if I immersed myself in researching the lives of the most extraordinary women not only to find out for myself, but to share with everyone else,” says Nazarian. “This is part of what writers do. Whatever they are seeking to find out for themselves, they write books about.”

The result is her new book Pioneers of the Possible, which profiles 20 women, both living and not, who have fundamentally changed the field in which they work and, in the process, the world in which we all live. The list includes known names like writer and philosopher Simone DeBeauvoir, Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Mathaai, South African politician and activist Helen Suzman as well as lesser known women such as female bullfighter Torera Conchita Cintron and Cambodian human rights campaigner Somaly Mam.

Nazarian explained that the most fascinating part of researching her book was realizing that her twenty subjects—who she said became her “invisible friends” after getting to know each of them so well—had striking commonalities despite markedly diverse backgrounds, life stories, and challenges.

“Women today tend to look at self improvement books thinking about how we can be better people, how we can improve ourselves, but when you read the lives of these women, you can absolutely see they were not perfect in any way shape or form,” Nazarian said. “What they were all similar in is that they knew themselves so well. They actually tailored a life around their strengths and filled their lives with vibrancy and things that mattered to them.”

One example of this is Brazilian rainforest campaigner Marina Silva, who has been called the “Al Gore of Brazil.” Nazarian said she was particularly inspired by Silva who, at the age of 16 was still illiterate yet managed to go on to run for the presidency of Brazil and be instrumental in passing legislation to preserve the Amazon rainforest.

When it comes to the perennial question of “can woman have it all?“—a debate that was reignited recently in an Atlantic magazine piece authored by former U.S. State Department Director of Policy Planning Anne Marie Slaughter—Nazarian thinks it’s a matter of defining what you mean. For Nazarian, who is also a mother, having it all means having a little bit of everything.

“If you had asked the women in my book, they’d probably all say they did have it all!” she said. “One was never married, one was bisexual, Estee Lauder had a vibrant family life but her husband was the one at home looking after kids while she was doing all the marketing. Her vision of a family was different from a stay at home mom.”

Nazarian agrees with the main argument of Slaughter’s Atlantic piece—that having a high-powered career and enriching family life simultaneously is largely unattainable, and not even ideal for most women.

“We need more conversation about how we can have a career track as women where you can have plateaus and then go back into the workplace. I don’t think it has to be an upward journey all the way through,” she said. “Statistics show that a greater number of women are going into entrepreneurship fields. This makes perfect sense—as an entrepreneur you have a much better chance of what we call ‘having it all’ rather than being in a corporation.”

After completing the research for her book, Nazarian says it is her firm belief that there is nothing a woman—particularly one who surrounds herself with a “fearless tribe” of supporters—can’t accomplish.

“Some of the biggest movements to revitalize economies in third world countries address female micro-finance and that’s because women have an amazing resourcefulness that rejuvenates their communities,” Nazarian said. “We’re the untapped resource. We’re not eye candy.”

The post ‘Pioneers of the Possible’: Profiles of 20 Extraordinary Women appeared first on EcoSalon.

A decade ago, I spent a year living in Sweden. Despite what mass media might have you believe, the country is in fact more than just bombshell blonds and smorgasbords. While there, I befriended several Iranians, their families having fled during the reign of the Shah and taken refuge in Scandinavia. I was quickly taken in as an extra daughter by these hospitable and warm families, the mothers ready to please and ensure that I was taken care of. I grew to love Persian rice pilaf and the masses of yogurt and dill ever present at meals.

This was several years before words like “axis of evil” and “uranium” became associated with the country, so for me, when someone mentions Iran I immediately envision large family parties with rhythmic Persian dance music, tables overflowing with delicious food, and older Iranian women explaining to me just who had made what and which family recipe was used. To me, Iran means warmth, generosity and, above all, a culinary tradition that deserves respect; a good reminder that food really can bridge cultural gaps.

In the foodie world we’ve seen this happen with places like Thailand and India, countries known for their culinary traditions that have become almost as deeply ingrained in American food culture as hamburgers and hot dogs. Although I don’t have any hard statistics on the link between enjoying food from a certain country and our relations toward it, it’s logical to assume the more we love the food from a certain place, the more we’re inclined to learn about it and discover the country’s culture – and we all know that cultural understanding is a key component in promoting a more peaceful world.

There are some new tastes on the block trying to do just that, and they’re from places you might only have seen referenced in news headlines. Conflict Kitchen, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is making a name for itself by serving up takeout food only from countries that the United States is in conflict with. North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan; these might be household names when it comes to the nightly news, but with a focus on their culinary prowess, more emphasis is being put on the cultural forces of the country and less on their current standing in global affairs.

The food served at Conflict Kitchen will rotate every four months to feature another country. The takeout storefront is currently decked out in a colorful Iranian exterior and serves up the country’s traditional kubideh in freshly baked barbari bread with onion, mint, and basil. Beyond providing delicious and unique food, the ultimate goal is to encourage discussion. According to the website, “Each Conflict Kitchen iteration will be augmented by events, performances, and discussion about the the culture, politics, and issues at stake with each county we focus on.”

How the food is served is also a key component in educating the general public on cultural issues. “Developed in collaboration with members of the Pittsburgh Iranian community, the sandwich is packaged in a custom-designed wrapper that includes interviews with Iranians both in Pittsburgh and Iran on subjects ranging from Iranian food and poetry to the current political turmoil.”

Recently, the grant-funded Conflict Kitchen held a simultaneously meal between Pittsburgh and Teheran, where dinners in both cities were joined together by Skype. Free and open to the public, this is an excellent example of how food can bring people, who normally are worlds apart, together and inspire long lasting conversations that tackle difficult questions like tradition and culture and in turn change our perceptions.

You can keep up with the Conflict Kitchen and what food they’ll be featuring next on their website.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Images: Conflict Kitchen

The post Foodie Underground: Conflicted Cuisine appeared first on EcoSalon.

It’s the end of June already, and the earth’s half-spin around the sun has brought us ladies plenty to wring our delicate little hands about. From Iranian clerics blaming earthquakes on our breasts to oil spills wreaking havoc on our pregnancies, 2010 has made us reach for the smelling salts on numerous occasions. Here at EcoSalon, we’ve covered women and the environment with vim, bringing you celebratory communiques alongside melancholic missives. Below, you’ll find a roundup of the news in 2010 thus far. If the past six months are any indication, the rest of the year will be a doozy. Feeling faint yet?

• Is GINK the new DINK? It used to be that childfree couples were called DINKs – Double Income, No Kids. But the great American greenwash has influenced reproductive choices as well, with an increasing number of couples citing the environment as a reason to go kidless. A recent study by Oregon State University added fuel to the fire, revealing that not having kids is 20 times more environmentally friendly than any other day to day green task, like recycling. Lisa Hymas of Grist coined the term GINK – Green Inclinations, No Kids – to describe childfree tree huggers like herself.

• Condoms came under attack earlier this year, with women’s health writers and scientists bemoaning the prophylactic’s sorry environmental record of sullying our beaches and clogging up our landfills. While greensters wondered whether condoms are biodegradable (likely not – their decomposable latex is mixed with human-made chemicals), we asked another question: why have this conversation in the first place? Condoms, as a blogger at EcoGeek noted, are “the single most important environmental innovation” ever, curbing environmentally-catastrophic population growth.

• Congress attacked killer chemicals this spring when members of the House and Senate introduced versions of the Safe Chemicals Act, a bill meant to fortify a toothless, decades-old law against allowing dangerous chemicals in household products (we all know how well that one worked…hello bisphenol-a). Uteruses in America rejoiced at the news: the Safe Chemicals Act is a boon to women, whose reproductive systems have been under siege by infertility-causing chemicals in water bottles and other plastics.

• In April, an Iranian cleric asserted that women who don’t cover up cause earthquakes. His declaration–meant to dissuade Iranian women from unveiling–ignited a response in the U.S., when blogger Jennifer McCreight organized a Boobquake, a day in which women wore low-cut tops without tectonic incident to prove the cleric wrong. But what could have been a bold political stunt turned into a ho-hum protest, with men egging on their breast-baring peers while feminists complained that the plight of Iranian women became fodder for a Girls Gone Wild spectacle.

• As if the earthquake itself didn’t cause enough damage, sexual violence rates spiked in Haiti in the months after the disaster. According to an article in Women’s eNews, aid workers in a major Port-au-Prince refugee camp fielded daily reports of rape, prompting the United Nations to send a special unit of 130 female Bangladeshi soldiers to address the violence. Lamentably, the post-disaster rape crisis was not unique to Haiti alone; many Hurricane Katrina survivors were similarly re-victimized.

• On the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, we noted that the pill’s invention by women’s rights crusader Margaret Sanger initiated the era of modern family planning, allowing women to choose the number and spacing of their children – a boon for their health and the health of their babies alike. But while the pill has done its part to keep our skyrocketing population in check (if you think things are bad, just imagine the world without it) its environmental record isn’t spotless – the hormones in the pill, excreted into waste water through urine, cause fatal mutations in fish populations.

• When a Houston tanning salon called upon the spirit of Coco Chanel to promote its new earth-friendly false tanning beet spray, we called foul. As legend has it, Chanel sparked the tanning craze in America when she stepped off a boat in Cannes with perfectly bronzed skin. Though Coco was a pioneering designer, breaching the boundary between menswear and womenswear, the tanning trendsetter didn’t galvanize women to leave the drudgery of housework in order to bask in the sunshine. Rather, Coco inadvertently created another unrealistic beauty standard.

• While much of the initial news surrounding the BP oil spill focused on the disaster’s effect on wildlife, we asked about its impact on human livelihoods. Coastal Women for Change, a community organization that sprung out of the post-Katrina haze to bring attention to the need for improved childcare in Biloxi, Mississippi, has stepped up after the spill by serving as a conduit for information from the Environmental Protection Agency to the local fishers. The biggest challenge? Getting fishers of different ethnic and economic backgrounds to rally together for their interests.

• Last year, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published their book Half the Sky, a groundbreaking tome arguing that international aid is more effective when directed toward women. While Kristof and WuDunn described women as the gatekeepers of health and well-being in their communities, they left out one green detail: the fact that women also hold the keys to conservation. In Indonesia, the Environmental Ministry has begun offering classes on water conservation to women in rural areas who are responsible for fetching and distributing water to their families.

• Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but we all care equally about the earth, right? Wrong. According to several articles this year, men and women display their green pride differently, with men working for big picture sustainability while women, ever the quibblers, take on recycling and composting projects. We pointed out the ludicrousy in this theory, noting that a handful of anecdotes don’t constitute a trend. With all this talk about men, women, and their green differences, we lose sight of the why we should go green at all.

• As if the oil spill wasn’t dangerous enough, the chemical dispersants used to clean it up could spell health risks for pregnant mothers and their unborn children. According to information recently released by the Environmental Protection Agency, chemicals that caused health problems in the cleanup workers on the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill are being used again today. Pregnant women have been advised to stay as far away from the contaminants as possible – a tall order for those women who actually live in the Gulf.

Image: xjyxjy

The post A Look Back at Women and the Environment in 2010 appeared first on EcoSalon.

In the Book of Genesis, God punishes wicked humans by creating a flood to destroy the earth, leaving Noah to salvage biodiversity on his fabled ark. This narrative paradigm – men and women misbehave, God causes a natural disaster – may sound like the stuff of biblical legend. But ask some religious extremists and they’ll tell you that people – women in particular – are causing catastrophic events.

In 2005, a group called Columbia Christians for Life said that women caused Hurricane Katrina by having abortions, evidenced by the fact that satellite images of the storm resembled (if you squint a bit) a six-week-old fetus in utero. Earlier this year, Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson claimed that Haitians brought the devastating January earthquake upon themselves when their ancestors signed a (historically dubious) pact with the devil to liberate themselves from the French.

And now, a senior Iranian cleric named Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi says that Iranian women cause earthquakes when they wear immodest clothing. “Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,” he said during a prayer sermon. “What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble? There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam’s moral codes.”

Inane and bigoted assertions like those above deserve to be reckoned with. But they shouldn’t be reckoned with with even more inanity, which is exactly what happened earlier this week when Jennifer McCreight of Blag Hag staged her much-hyped Boobquake by urging women the world over to harness the tectonic power of their ta-tas by wearing low-cut tops. With nearly 70,000 members participating, according to Boobquake’s Facebook page, the Monday event went off as planned – women bared their breasts, the earth remained still (save for a coincidental quake off the coast of Taiwan), and – as if there were any doubt – the cleric’s theory proved false.

So what’s the problem here? It’s not that McCreight and friends were wrong to confront the sexist statement. And for the record, there’s nothing suspect about women baring their souls or their bodies for a cause. The issue is that Boobquake devolved into a Girls Gone Wild-esque spectacle for the male gaze. According to Salon writer Beth Mann, who reviewed hundreds of comments on the Facebook page, “it seemed to be turning into something else, with many men chiming in, with their ‘show us your tits’ camera-ready attitude. Women on parade again… sigh.”

What’s more, Boobquake, while well-intentioned, didn’t do much to help out the cleric’s target audience – Iranian women. “By Iranian cleric standards, every day in America is boobquake.  And according to the original story, the cleric was chastising not women around the world for flashing a little boob or wearing tight jeans, but going after Iranian women who show a little hair or wear clothes that indicate that a shape might be visible underneath,” notes Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. Instead of using this as an opportunity to learn about the lives of Iranian women, or to comment on the fact that blaming earthquakes on female immodesty is akin to blaming rape on female immodesty, Boobquake became a diversion.

Next time someone blames a natural disaster on human moral behavior, let’s think our response through a little more. And while we’re at it, how about a little information on the way that humans do contribute to natural disasters – not through moral or immoral activity but through pollution.

Image: Lawrence OP

The post Can Human Moral Failings Cause Natural Disasters? appeared first on EcoSalon.