Segolene Royal

Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal told French voters that “women’s time has come“, urging them to back her bid to become France’s first woman head of state, AFP reported.
“Women’s time has come, and I hope that the French will have the audacity to prove it in the presidential election,“ she told a forum in Paris organized by the women’s magazine Elle and addressed by all the main candidates.“ When there is progress for women, it also means progress for men, it means progress for the whole of society,“ Royal told the gathering at the Sciences Po political science institute. A 53-year-old mother of four, Royal is trailing slightly behind the right-wing frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy with just over two weeks to go until the April 22 first round.
Royal has proclaimed that she is bringing a woman’s touch to politics and complained of sexist hurdles barring her road, although polls show her and the other main candidates drawing almost equal support from men and women. But women, who make up more than half of France’s 44.5 million voters, appear undecided about their choice of candidate.
Forty-eight percent have yet to make a firm choice, according to the IFOP polling institute.
Along with the young--55 percent of under-35s are still wavering in their choice--women have become a prime target for the candidates in the last mile of the race.
Asked to spell out three key measures she would take in women’s favor if elected, Royal promised a framework law against domestic violence, universal public childcare for toddlers, and compulsory schooling from age three.

Nina Wang

Hong Kong tycoon Nina Wang, believed to be the richest woman in Asia, always cut an impish and unlikely figure in Asia’s club of multibillionaires, AFP said.
But Wang, who won a long and bitter legal battle for her late husband Teddy’s multibillion-dollar estate, was never one for the conventions of the wealthy.
She preferred cheap brands and fried chicken to designer clothes and five-star restaurants and--despite a personal fortune estimated at more than four billion US dollars--always avoided the usual trappings of the high life.
Wang and Teddy--who was declared legally dead in 1999, nine years after he was kidnapped and never heard from again--were so thrifty they bought cut-price tickets to shows.
Her frugality was widely documented by the Hong Kong media, who nicknamed her “Little Sweetie“ because her trademark pigtails resembled a Japanese comic character.
Her death Tuesday at age 69, announced by personal assistant Ringo Wong on Wednesday (April 4), robs Asia of one of its zaniest and best-known characters whose exploits were tabloid fodder for years.
Her low-cost lifestyle kept her monthly expenditure below 3,000 Hong Kong dollars (385 US), China Woman said, although while running her late husband’s conglomerate Chinachem in the 1990s, the firm was earning many times that every minute.
But Wang proved a shrewd businesswoman and power player on the political scene.
After taking control of Chinachem she transformed it into a multi-billion US dollar empire with more than 200 office towers and 400 companies around the world.
Forbes magazine last year estimated her personal fortune at $4.2 billion, 154th in its ranking of the world’s richest people.
Despite her flamboyant dress sense, Nina was a workaholic, rising early and often working past midnight. She kept a low profile and rarely discussed her business investments.
“I don’t have any time to spend my money,“ she was quoted as saying by China Woman.
Rarely seen in public, she had a phalanx of 50 bodyguards because she reportedly received regular death threats.
Wang had served on the elite selection committee that chooses Hong Kong’s leader and was a delegate to a top advisory body to the Chinese government.
She always said she would not have children, in order to avoid the troubles she said her massive wealth could bring to the next generation, and pledged to donate all her money to charity.

Something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives, the late Betty Friedan wrote in “The Feminine Mystique,“ her groundbreaking 1963 book attacking the idea that a husband and children were all a woman needed for fulfillment, told AP.
That book effectively launched the modern women’s movement. But more than four decades later, writer Leslie Bennetts is trying to sound a very similar message. In “The Feminine Mistake“--the title’s no accident--she argues that many young mothers have forgotten Friedan’s message, embracing a 21st-century version of the 1950s stay-at-home ideal that could imperil their economic future as well as their happiness.
Needless to say, the book isn’t going down smoothly with everyone--especially mothers who’ve chosen to stay home with their children. “She’s stereotyping stay-at-home moms,“ says an annoyed Debbie Newcomer, mother of a 14-month-old baby in Richmond, Texas. “This is my personal decision. I’m a better mom by staying at home.“ Bennetts says she never intended to issue the latest salvo in the “Mommy Wars“--that long-running, angst- and guilt-ridden debate over whether mothers should stay home with their children. And she says she’s surprised by the reaction.
“The stay-at-home moms are burning up the blogosphere denouncing me,“ she mused over coffee last week. “They’re saying I must be divorced, childless, bitter, lonely and angry to be writing this.“ (Bennetts, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine, has two children with her husband, a fellow journalist.) “Clearly, I’ve struck a nerve.“ Bennetts says she merely wanted to present factual evidence that there are great risks involved when a woman gives up economic self-sufficiency--risks she may not be thinking of during those early years of blissful, exhausting parenting.
Divorce. A husband losing his job. A husband dying . All of those, Bennetts warns, could be catastrophic for a woman and her children. And if the woman decides she’ll get back to her career later, once the kids are ready? Stop dreaming, Bennetts says.

Living in Thailand’s restive Muslim-majority south, Sudthaya Sukthong used to spend her days in constant fear that she could be killed at any time, wrote AFP.
Islamic separatists who have battled the government for three years stage deadly attacks almost every day in this region along Thailand’s southern border with Malaysia.
So when the army began recruiting for new all-female units of army rangers, she decided to take her life in her own hands.
“As civilians, we don’t know what our fate will be, because many innocent people have been killed and we don’t know when it will be our turn,“ she said.
“So I came here to serve the nation and be part of the government and to die on duty. That has more dignity and more honor than dying for nothing“ as the victim of an attack, Sudthaya said during a break from her advanced combat training at an army camp in Narathiwat province.
Sudthaya used to be a school teacher, but now she’s dropped her chalk for an M-16 and green army fatigues, trading walks in the schoolyard for patrols in the most dangerous districts of southern Thailand.
Thailand began recruiting the female rangers in response to new tactics by the separatists, who use veiled women to carry hidden weapons or bombs. Muslim women also increasingly stage protests to block roads while militants make their escape.
Some 130 women have undergone six weeks of training no different from that of their male counterparts, learning how to shoot, how to conduct patrols and searches, as well as first aid techniques.
The women train at a base at the foot of a long mountain range where the militants hide and train their forces. Once they join the force, the women rangers are prevented only from engaging in offensive military action.
Female rangers are supposed to be the friendlier face of the Thai military, assisting with rural health care and trying to improve relations with residents.
But they also work alongside male rangers in setting up military checkpoints, in addition to dealing with the often tense protests by local women, said Colonel Narongvit Chusangkit, commander of Narathiwat province’s 45th Ranger Battalion.
“Female rangers play key roles in these three southern provinces, because they deal with Muslim women better than male rangers can,“ he said.

A little boy giving mommy a big hug in a Tehran park

A little exercise, even just a long walk, may go a long way toward helping women feel better while going through menopause, said AP. Women involved in a regular exercise program reported better quality of life during menopause compared with those who did not exercise, according a Penn State University study.
The 164 volunteers were primarily sedentary before the four-month study led by Steriani Elavsky, a Penn State kinesiology professor. They were divided into three groups. One group met three times a week to walk for an hour, another group gathered for 90-minute yoga sessions twice a week, and a third group didn’t exercise. Results were published in a recent issue of Annals of Behavioral Medicine.“ It’s a nice reaffirmation that exercise is beneficial for lots of different things,“ said Dr. Charles Castle, a Lancaster-based gynecologist and a member of the board of trustees for the Pennsylvania Medical Society.“ From the standpoint of patients, part of the difficulty is finding something you like to do,“ said Castle, who is also vice chairman of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Menopause, which typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55, is when a woman stops menstruating. Roughly 1.5 million women reach menopause each year in the United States, and 80 to 85 percent typically experience symptoms such as irritability, mood swings, hot flashes and night sweats.
While mood and outlook improved for the exercisers, the study found mixed results when it came to the latter two symptoms. Half of all the women in the study reported improvement in hot flashes and night sweats, Elavsky said, and most of those were in the exercise groups.
Women who finished the four-month walking program in Elavsky’s study reported the most improvement in mood and quality of life, while those performing yoga reported similar but smaller improvements, the study said. Walking and yoga were chosen because one is aerobic and the other is non-aerobic.

In developing countries, low birth weight is a constant problem for pregnant women. Fortunately, a new study conducted in Tanzania shows that a multivitamin may help to increase birth weight, said foodconsumer.org
This study demonstrates that a simple, cheap vitamin pill may help to cut down the number of underweight newborns- invaluable in a world where yearly, 20 million children are born underweight and 95 per cent of those are born in developing countries.
Conducted in Tanzania, this study involved 8,468 HIV negative pregnant women. While one half was provided with a vitamin supplement (containing all the B vitamins, and vitamins C and E) in addition to the iron and folic acid supplements already administered, the other group was simply given the iron and folic acid.
In the group given the vitamins, the risk of giving birth of an underweight child dropped about 20 per cent. However, there was no significant difference between the groups in the rate of fetal death or premature birth.
When tested on a group of HIV positive women, the risk of having an underweight baby was decreased by more than 40 per cent.
Lowering the number of underweight births can prove beneficial in many ways, according to Wafaie Fawzi of the Harvard University School of Public Health, who mentions that, “low birth weight is associated with adverse outcomes during pregnancy, including infant mortality and poor growth and cognitive development.“
He goes on to add that considering their low cost and positive health benefits, the multivitamins should be considered for all pregnant women in developing countries, regardless of their HIV status.

Pregnant women in England will be offered the choice of a home birth overseen by a midwife, the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, pledged.
Under a new plan for maternity services expectant mothers will be offered a “full range of birthing choices,“ including home births, by 2009. Setting out the plans, Hewitt said pregnant women would be given minimum guarantees about the level of service they can expect from the NHS, according to the Guardian.
She said: “I am making it absolutely clear: if you have a baby at home or indeed in a midwifery-led unit, it is only a professionally qualified midwife who can supervise that birth.“
She acknowledged a current shortfall in midwives but said 1,000 were in training and would qualify in the next couple of years. And she insisted that the ambitious “gold standard“ plans would not be financed by cuts elsewhere in the NHS.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today program ahead of the launch, Hewitt said the proportion of women opting for home births was running at up to 12% in areas with well-organized and well-staffed midwifery units.
“There are clearly far more women out there who would like to have a home birth and could do so safely, but aren’t at the moment getting that option,“ she added.
Hewitt continued: “What we are doing is saying to the local NHS: you tell us what you think your shortfall is and then we will work with you to ensure over the next two to three years you can increase those numbers.“
Hewitt unveiled Labour’s vision for the future of maternity services in England after a brief tour of a London hospital. Under the plans women will be able to choose how to access maternity care when they first discover they are pregnant: they might opt to go directly to a midwife or a GP, for instance.
They will also be able to choose whether to be cared for by midwives or by a maternity team comprising both doctors and midwives.