UK men expect to retire on an average annual income of £20,790, while women expect around half that

British women retiring in 2008 will barely draw half the pension income of men, a Prudential report has revealed.
The worrying gender split, identified in the research, indicated UK men expect to retire on an average annual income of £20,790, while women expect around half that, with an average retirement income of just £11,291, around £12,000 a year less than the average income for UK adults, reported Belfasttelegraph.co.uk.
Prudential also stated the typical person retiring, with an income of £18,663, in 2008 will live on £5,000 less than the average annual salary of working adults.
The ’Prudential Class of 2008’ research surveyed UK adults retiring this year and found the average age of retirement for a man is 60 years old, while women say they plan to retire at an average age of 58. This contrasts with the statutory retirement ages of 65 and 60.
Managing director of Prudential Retail Life & Pensions Gary Shaughnessy suggested the report highlights the continuing pension crisis.
“These figures confirm the UK’s pension crisis is far from over, and those retiring this year will have to survive on considerably less money than the average UK adult,“ he said.

Laizer (r) is preparing to start college in the autumn--hoping to be the country's first Maasai woman doctor.

At 12, brown-eyed Neema Laizer persuaded her elementary school teacher to accept one liter of milk each morning instead of money because her father refused to pay for a girl to be educated.
At 13, her father selected a 30-year-old stranger to be her husband. The next day, she was supposed to drop out of school and begin a new life as a housewife and a mother within a year, a common fate for young Maasai girls in Tanzania, Reuters reported.
Laizer had a different plan. While her father slept, she and her mother quietly packed a small backpack of clothes, then she slipped on a pair of black rubber sandals and escaped by moonlight through heavy tears and forest brush, running more than a mile to her uncle’s home.
The next morning, the two of them drove for six hours to a refuge 200 miles away that he had whispered to her about.
Now 19, Laizer is preparing to start college in the autumn--hoping to be the country’s first Maasai woman doctor--and speaking out against forced marriage, and violence against Maasai women in the East African country.
“In the village, we only exist to earn cows for our parents and to serve a man we normally do not love,“ said Laizer, referring to the dowry of cattle paid for brides.
The Pastoral Women’s Council, a non-government organization, estimates at least three Maasai girls run away from home daily to escape arranged marriages.
Hundreds of thousands of others are enslaved by oppressive traditions handed down by their elders, while the laws to protect them are rarely enforced, even as unsuspecting tourists marvel at their beadwork.
The Maasai, easily recognized by their colorful dress and traditional jewelry, number about 1 million throughout the hills of northern Tanzania. Fewer than 10 percent of girls reach secondary or high school and fewer than 12 have received a college diploma, according to Maasai schools and support groups.
Most young women are denied education, forced to marry men decades older, and face a life of servitude, abuse and rape.
The refuge that freed Laizer from her tribal traditions lies in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro at the end of a ruddy dirt road lined with banana trees and footprints, behind 10-foot (three-meter) high bushes and white steel gates.
A remedial school for 13-to-18-year-old girls, the Emusoi Center was founded by Catholic missionaries with the help of one of Tanzania’s few female Maasai college graduates, and is now home to 75 Maasai girls.

Saudi Arabian women are the victims of systematic and pervasive discrimination across all aspects of social life, a United Nations report said.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women urged the Saudi government to take concrete steps to enforce gender equality and end violence against women.
The committee overseas the application of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, a UN treaty regarded as a global bill of rights for women, AFP reported.
“Neither the Constitution nor other legislation embodies the principle of equality between women and men,“ the committee said in a report.
Saudi Arabia is governed by Wahabism, a strict interpretation of Islam that--in the name of Sharia law--imposes almost complete separation of the sexes. Women suffer from domestic violence, poor healthcare provision and high levels of illiteracy, the committee said in its report.
They are also shackled by the obligation to have a male “tutor“ or guardian to accompany them for many daily tasks, it found.
“The concept of male guardianship contributes to the prevalence of a patriarchal ideology with stereotypes and the persistence of deep-rooted cultural norms that discriminate against women,“ the report said.
“The level of representation of women in public and political life, at the local, national, and international levels and in particular in decision-making positions, is very low,“ it added.
The committee also expressed concern about female domestic migrant workers in the kingdom, who are vulnerable to economic and sexual exploitation and do not have ready access to the law.
Earlier this month, a Saudi delegation told a meeting of the committee in Geneva that “Saudi society is still largely a tribal society and changes in mentality allowing new ideas to be accepted take time.“
Riyadh also claimed that “Islam, as a realistic religion, admits that total equality between man and woman is contrary to reality, as various scientific studies on their psychological differences have shown“.

A woman weaving Kelim--a local Iranian carpet--in Qeshm Island. (Photo by Ali Hassanpour).

Mexico has created a new federal position to prosecute violence and exploitation against women and children, the government announced.
The position comes as human rights groups urge the federal government to do more to investigate the killings of women, especially along the northern border, AP reported.
The new position will replace a similar post created in 2006 and will add child sex and labor exploitation to its caseload.
Since 1993, an estimated 423 women have been killed in Ciudad Juarez, across the US border from El Paso, Texas and at least 89 between 2004 and 2008, the National Human Rights Commission reported.
In about 100 of the killings, women were abducted, often sexually abused and strangled before their bodies were dumped in the desert. Many were last seen in the city’s downtown area or taking buses, and their bodies often did not resurface for months.

Women who took folic acid supplements for at least a year before pregnancy cut their chances for very early pre-term births.

Researchers said women who take folic acid supplements for at least a year before becoming pregnant can greatly reduce their risk of delivering a baby prematurely.
Folic acid, a B vitamin, already is known to prevent major birth defects that involve a baby’s brain or spine, Reuters reported.
This study shows it may provide another benefit--cutting down on premature births in which babies have less time to develop in the womb and are more likely to experience serious medical problems.
The study tracked about 35,000 pregnant women between 1999 and 2002 who disclosed their folic acid intake.
It found that women who took folic acid supplements for at least a year before pregnancy cut their chances for very early pre-term births--20 to 28 weeks into the pregnancy--by 70 percent compared to other women.
These very early pre-term babies in particular face a high risk of complications such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease and blindness.
Women taking folic acid for at least a year before getting pregnant saw their risk fall by about 50 percent for premature births occurring 28 to 32 weeks into the pregnancy.
Most pregnancies take about 40 weeks. A premature birth is one that occurs more than three weeks before the due date.

Women from three slum communities in Manila asked the appeals court to allow them access to contraceptives in public clinics, revoking a local law that bans pills.
In 2000, the capital’s mayor issued an order stopping doctors, nurses and other health workers from promoting and distributing contraceptives.
“We want to decide for ourselves how many children we would have, and not the government to tell us how to do it,“ Lourdes Osil, a mother of six, told reporters after her lawyers asked the court to declare the seven-year-old local law unconstitutional, Reuters reported.
“We were denied not only access to contraceptives, but even our rights guaranteed in the constitution to make a free choice were also ignored and violated.“
Home to an estimated 89 million people, the largely Catholic Philippines has one of the fastest-growing populations in Asia with around 2 million babies born every year.
Under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a devout Catholic who relies on the support of politically powerful bishops, the central government promotes natural family planning methods.

Every week, letters from Iraqi widows spill across Samira Al-Moussawi’s desk. One wrote to ask whether she should spend what scant money she gets on her infant or on school books for her older son.
The member of parliament and head of a parliamentary women’s committee is at her wits’ end as to how to answer the desperate pleas from what could be as many as one to two million women, Reuters said.
Violence has fallen sharply across Iraq, but the number of women left without breadwinners is mounting, and with only a fraction of them receiving financial support from the government, officials fear the consequences could be explosive.
“What shall the widow do, deviate from what is right?“ Moussawi said. “Terrorist groups exploit the destitute.“
No-one can give an exact figure for the number of widows left by the brutal reign of Saddam Hussein, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in sectarian bloodshed since the 2003 invasion.
Moussawi, basing her estimate on a Ministry of Planning report from mid-2007, put the number of divorcees and widows close to 1 million of a total of 8.5 million women aged between 15 and 80.
Narmeen Othman, Iraq’s acting minister for women’s affairs, put the number as high as 2 million in a country of 27 million people.
Whatever their number, both parliamentarians say the women who have lost male family members since the US-led invasion of Iraq are increasingly lacking the means to provide for themselves.
“The number (of widows) is increasing day after day, it is becoming a time bomb, especially because many of them are still young,“ Othman said.
A report by aid groups found that 43 percent of Iraqis lived in “absolute poverty“. Four million people needed food assistance and only one in three children under five had access to safe drinking water.
Many widows who seek help find the government bureaucracy impenetrable.