1. Because women's work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or
repetitious and we're the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than
what we do and if we get raped it's our fault and if we get beaten we must have
provoked it and if we raise our voices we're nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we're
nymphos and if we don't we're frigid and if we love womenit's because we can't get a
"real" man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we're neurotic and/or pushy
and if we expect childcare we're selfish and if we stand up for our rights we're
aggressive and "unfeminine" and if we don't we're typical weakfemales and if we want
to get married we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're unnatural and because we
still can't get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moonand if we
can't cope or don't want a pregnancy we're made to feel guilty about abortion and...for
lots of other reasons we are part of the women's liberation movement. ~Author
unknown, quoted in The Torch, 14 September 1987
Equality for women can reduce world
hunger, says UN report
Ending discrimination against women in agriculture could feed 150m people, according
to Food and Agriculture Organisation
 guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 March 2011 14.29 GMT
 Article history
 Giving women better access to land, technology and other agricultural resources
could reduce the number of hungry people by up to 150 million, according to the
UN food agency.
 The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said that about 925 million
people across the globe were undernourished in 2010. Of these, 906 million live
in developing countries.
 Giving women the same tools and resources as men, including financial
services, education and access to markets, could increase agricultural production
in developing countries by 2.5% to 4%, it said in a report released on Monday .
This could in turn reduce the number of hungry people by 12% to 17%, or by
100 to 150 million people.
 The FAO director general, Jacques Diouf, said ending discrimination against
women in agriculture was necessary to win the fight against world hunger.
"Gender equality is not just a lofty ideal, it is also crucial for agricultural
development and food security," he said.
 Women make up 43% on average of the agricultural labour force in developing
countries, said the report, released in Rome on the eve of International Women's
Day. Typically, rural women who are employed tend to be kept in low-wage
jobs and have seasonal or part-time work, according to the FAO.
 Yields on plots managed by women are lower on average than those managed by
men, a result of their lack of access to tools and technology compared to male
farmers.

2.  Sport media and stereotypes
Austria, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania and Norway have taken part in a cross-
European research project initiative, “Sport media and stereotypes—women
and men in sport and media”, to explore similarities and variations in
representations of women and men in sport. The initiative aims to promote
change in gender stereotypes in sport by raising awareness among
influential target groups about the impact of representation of male and
female athletes, particularly in the media, and how it creates and maintain
traditional images of women and men.
 Source: The 2005 United Nations International Year of Sport and
Physical Education: Austrian Projects. Available from http://sport.austria
The coverage, marketing and promotion of women’s sport are also often
highly sexualized. The value of the female athlete is often determined in
terms of her body type, attractiveness and sex appeal, rather than in terms of
the qualities that define her as an athlete . Donna Lopiano, the former Chief
Executive of the Women’s Sport Foundation in the United States, says that
the sports media culture is “deciding what sells, and they’re not willing to
sell legitimate female athletic achievement”.
This approach is sometimes imposed on female athletes but may also be
used voluntarily as a strategy to gain media coverage. For example, in 2000,
the Australian national women’s soccer team, the Matildas, launched a
nude calendar to generate publicity and increase their public profile. Capitalizing
on attractiveness is one way that women athletes are earning more money and
corporate sponsorships, but it is argued that the enhanced sexualization
of female athletes diminishes their accomplishments and reinforces the image
of women as sex objects, which is harmful to all women.
Male athletes are also taking advantage of the commercialization of the
sporting industry—as seen by clothing collections of male sport starts such as
Björn Borg (Sweden) and Ian Thorpe (Australia). However, Dr. Mary Jo Kane,
Director of the University of Minnesota , noted that while the number of
sexualized images of male athletes is far outweighed by pictures depicting men
simply as great athletes, this is not the case for women. Female athletes can
also be sexualized through official game rules, which sometimes require
revealing uniforms, even when there is no functional purpose. This has been
referred to as sexploitation.