Answers: Marking International Women's Day
1) Besides the controversies over sexism, Japan is also debating whether to change a requirement for married couples that was introduced in 1896. Efforts by women’s rights activists to invalidate the rule were rejected in a 2015 Supreme Court ruling. Japan is a rarity in the industrialised world in maintaining this rule.
Married couples have to take up the same surname. While theoretically it could be either spouse’s surname, figures show that 96 percent of married Japanese women use their husband’s surname. More here and here.
In sharp contrast comes Canada’s Quebec province, where women are legally prohibited from taking on their husband’s surname. Similar restrictions are in place in Greece. More here and here.
2) On September 23, 1970 what step was taken by Jane Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss, Judy Tegart Dalton, Julie Heldman, Kerry Melville-Reid, Nancy Richey, Rosie Casals and —————(I have intentionally left out the most famous name). They were known as the Original 9. This is a sports-related question. (Hint: Aiding the nine in their plans was tobacco giant Philip Morris and its marketing savvy)
The ‘Original 9’ was a group of women tennis players who set up their own professional tour in protest against the disparity in prize money. What began as the Virginia Slims Circuit sponsored by Philip Morris morphed into the Women's Tennis Association. The player I left out in the list of 9 is Billie Jean King.
3) 1975 was labelled by the UN as International Women's Year. What did women in Iceland do on October 24 that year, putting them on the forefront of the battle for equality?
Women in Iceland stayed off work, both in offices and homes and refused to handle childcare. The day was known as ‘Women's Day Off’.
4) In February a court ruled in favour of a journalist in a defamation case filed by a high-profile newspaper editor turned government minister, who she had accused of sexual assault. This is considered a landmark ruling for the country’s #MeToo movement. Name the country. (The minister had to resign in 2018, after multiple women levelled allegations of sexual harassment)
India. The journalist is Priya Ramani and the ex-minister M.J. Akbar. More here, here, here and here.
5) On August 8, 1984 Morocco’s King Hassan II declared that all girls born that day should be named Nawal. Why? (Hint: Sports)
Nawal El Moutawakel won the gold medal in the women’s 400m hurdles at the Los Angeles Olympics. She was the first female Olympic gold medallist from the Arab world and Muslim community, as well as the first non-white woman from Africa to take the top spot. She was also the first Moroccan gold medallist of any sex. (For those from India, P.T. Usha finished fourth in this 400m hurdles race)
6) Last month which international organisation made history by appointing former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as its director-general, making her the first woman and first African in the post? (Last year the Trump administration had blocked her appointment)
World Trade Organization. More here, here and here.
7) While New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote in 1893, it was only in 1971 that Switzerland did so, after a majority of male voters backed the move in a referendum. Extending adult franchise to women took even longer in a smaller European country. It took a narrow 119-vote win in a referendum of male voters in 1984 for the change. Name the country.
Liechtenstein. More here and here. After elections in February 2021, for the first time a woman could be chosen to head the governing coalition. Sabine Monauni has been serving as the country’s envoy to the European Union.
Update: Sabine Monauni became the Deputy Prime Minister. More here. Another major development for women in Liechtenstein in 2021 was the national football team playing its first international match. More here.
8) Last month a decision by a Beijing divorce court generated a major online debate and is being talked about as a precedent for the rest of the world. What is the landmark ruling all about?
The divorce court ruled that a man should compensate his ex-wife for the housework she did during their marriage. More here and here.
9) After years of civil war in this country, mass demonstrations were held by women in 2003 demanding peace. Its leader (and future Nobel laureate) mobilised a coalition of Christian and Muslim women. Her strategies for the movement included a ‘sex strike’ by withholding sex (she later said it was very successful in rural areas). As warlords kept bickering during peace talks, she threatened to strip naked in public. A peace deal was finally signed in August 2003. Name the country.
Liberia. Leymah Gbowee was the activist who coordinated the protests. She helped mobilise support for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in elections in 2005, which saw Sirleaf become Africa’s first elected female president. Gbowee and Sirleaf were among the three Nobel Peace Prize awardees in 2011. More about Sirleaf’s legacy here.
10) Iranian media are known for digitally altering the images of women to comply with restrictions on how the female body is displayed (Example of Michelle Obama here). Iranian women are shown with a hijab, including those in the diaspora who don’t cover their hair. But an exception was made during tributes to a U.S.-based Iranian academic who died of cancer at the age of 40 in 2017. Most newspapers showed her with her head uncovered and so did President Hassan Rouhani in his tribute on Instagram. Earlier in 2014 she had become the first woman recipient of a prestigious award that’s described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in her field (Iranian media at the time digitally retouched her photos). Who?
Maryam Mirzakhani, mathematician and the first woman to win the Fields medal, the discipline’s biggest award. More on how Iranian media covered her death here and here.
11) Her father was an air force general who was imprisoned after a military coup and died after months of torture. A medical student at the time of the coup, she was also jailed and tortured. She moved to Australia and then East Germany where she resumed her medical studies. Trained as a paediatrician, she returned to her country and its politics. Following the transition to democracy, she became the first woman to become Defence Minister in her continent. As a single mother in a conservative country, she upended social taboos by running for President and serving two terms. Name the leader and the country.
Michelle Bachelet, two-time President of Chile. The torture survivor is now the United Nations human rights chief.
12) Which term was coined by the academic Kimberlé Crenshaw, who used it for the first time in a paper published in the University of Chicago Legal Forum in 1989? (The paper focuses on three legal cases). The term has acquired salience in recent years and made it into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015.
Intersectionality. More here and here.
13) When it comes to women’s representation, what is the dubious distinction currently shared by the Pacific island democracies of Vanuatu, Federated States of Micronesia, and Papua New Guinea?
No elected woman in Parliament. More here, here and here.
Update: In 2022 two women were elected to Papua New Guinea’s Parliament and Vanuatu had its first woman MP in 14 years. A woman was elected to Congress for the first time ever in the Federated States of Micronesia in 2021.
14) What was officially allowed on October 10, 2019 by a country’s conservative government for the first time in decades? This followed international pressure following the death of a 29-year-old who set herself on fire after learning she may face jail time. She became known as ‘Blue Girl’. (Hint: the award-winning 2006 film ‘Offside’ dealt with this theme)
Iran allowing women into the stadium to attend a men’s football match for the first time in decades. More about ‘Blue Girl’ Sahar Khodayari, who was arrested for trying to enter a football stadium and set herself on fire here and here.
15) This word was first proposed in a local newspaper in the U.S. state of Massachusetts in 1901. After a brief debate that year about the word being a ‘tactfully ambiguous compromise’, it faded away. The word started making it to business writing in the 1950s. In 1961 an activist spotted the word in a Marxist magazine her roommate received. She initially thought it was a typo but went on to become an ardent advocate for the popular use of the word. For years she ploughed a lonely furrow, until the end of the decade when her arguments for the word in a radio interview were widely noticed. (Hint: the word soon became the title of a magazine)
Ms. The word was popularised by the activist Sheila Michaels. More here and here. Michaels’ radio interview was noticed by Gloria Steinem, who took up the name ‘Ms’ for the feminist magazine she co-founded.