The Importance of the Violence Against Women Act (2012)

April 18, 2012

The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law (Title IV, sec. 40001-40703 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, H.R. 3355) signed as Pub.L. 103-322 by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994. The Act provided $1.6 billion toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave unprosecuted. The Act also established the Office on Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice.

VAWA was drafted by the office of Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE), with support from a broad coalition of advocacy groups. The Act passed through Congress with bipartisan support in 1994, clearing the House by a vote of 235--195 and the Senate by a vote of 61--38, although the following year House Republicans attempted to cut the Act's funding. In the 2000 Supreme Court case United States v. Morrison, a sharply divided Court struck down the VAWA provision allowing women the right to sue their attackers in federal court. By a 5--4 majority, the Court's conservative wing overturned the provision as an intrusion on states' rights.

VAWA was reauthorized by Congress in 2000, and again in December 2005.[4] The Act's 2012 renewal was fiercely opposed by conservative Republicans, who objected to extending the Act's protections to same-sex couples and to provisions allowing battered illegal immigrants to claim temporary visas.

Condom With Teeth To Fight Rape

CNN) -- South African Dr. Sonnet Ehlers was on call one night four decades ago when a devastated rape victim walked in. Her eyes were lifeless; she was like a breathing corpse.

"She looked at me and said, 'If only I had teeth down there,'" recalled Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time. "I promised her I'd do something to help people like her one day."

Forty years later, Rape-aXe was born.

Ehlers is distributing the female condoms in the various South African cities where the World Cup soccer games are taking place.

The woman inserts the latex condom like a tampon. Jagged rows of teeth-like hooks line its inside and attach on a man's penis during penetration, Ehlers said.

Once it lodges, only a doctor can remove it -- a procedure Ehlers hopes will be done with authorities on standby to make an arrest.

"It hurts, he cannot pee and walk when it's on," she said. "If he tries to remove it, it will clasp even tighter... however, it doesn't break the skin, and there's no danger of fluid exposure."

Ehlers said she sold her house and car to launch the project, and she planned to distribute 30,000 free devices under supervision during the World Cup period.

US Navy approves Women on Submarines

The US defence department has decided to allow women to serve aboard submarines, according to officials.


It has been 20 years since the Navy first allowed women to serve on its surface warfare ships. But submarines remained off-limits for several reasons.


The main reason had to do with cramped quarters on the subs, where there is little privacy. Now the chief of the Navy's task force on women in submarines, Rear Admiral Barry Bruner, says larger, more modern subs have changed that.

Women Discussing Their Periods

This video shows women which have been met in the mall, they answer embarrassing questions about the first time they got their period.


Some women seem to be shocked, and others very reluctant!


Discussing periods is it a taboo still?

Empowering Women with Microfinance

Three short stories about how microfinance helps poor women to build businesses and improve their lives.


Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients, including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services.


More broadly, it is a movement whose object is "a world in which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers." Those who promote microfinance generally believe that such access will help poor people out of poverty.

Russian beauties turned into sex slaves

A network of 13 people, reportedly headed by a senior intelligence official, are facing charges of human trafficking. It follows a case where more than 130 women were sold as slaves across Europe.


Thousands of Russian girls living abroad are being forced to work as sex slaves. Tough new laws are in place to tackle the problem, but for many the living hell of sex slavery goes on.


Despite living in the 21st century, many young women from Russia discover, usually too late, that slave trade has yet to be abolished.

Color Blind: Don't bring home a white boy!

IN AN AGE WHEN AMERICA HAS EMBRACED a mixed-race president and a strong, independent black woman as first lady...when black women are on the move and more empowered than ever before...there remains one hot-button topic that stirs up cultural resistance and intensity of emotion like no other: interracial relationships -- or, specifically, when black women date or marry white men.

What is it about the black female/white male dynamic that sparks such controversy and depth of feeling? What keeps many single black women from exploring relationships outside of their race at a time when the pool of eligible black men is at an all-time low?

According to Amazone.Com, "Don't bring home a white boy" is the cultural message stamped deep into every black daughter, an enduring twenty-first-century taboo with origins dating back to the Civil War era, the turbulent Civil Rights decades, and beyond. Now at last there is an honest, eye-opening examination of this societal phenomenon that will resonate with women everywhere and give voice to all sides of the debate. Karyn Langhorne Folan, herself a black woman happily married to a white man, brings together historical, statistical, psychological, and personal perspectives in a groundbreaking book that boldly debunks the "notions" that can keep interracial dating off the table for many women, including:

After slavery, I could never date a white man...

My family would never accept him -- and his would never accept me...

White men don't find black women attractive unless they look like Halle...

Our biracial children would have no sense of identity...

It means I'm a sellout, or fi lled with self-hate...

We'd just be too different...

Filled with real-life anecdotes from, and interviews with, men and women of both races and informed by Folan's thorough and expansive research, Don't Bring Home a White Boy is both an invaluable contribution to the topic of interracial dating and a timely handbook to help women look beyond skin color in the quest to have all they deserve and desire in a life partner.

Two Afghan Women Publicly Flogged

Feb.18, 2010: According to reports by Afghan media, ordered by a local warlord called Fazl Ahad, two Afghan women were publicly flogged in Ghor province in Western Afghanistan.

Spokesman of Ghors Governor, Abdul Hai Khatibi said thes women were forcibly married in Dolina district, but later they both ran away from their husbands' houses. Police in Heart arrested the two in Chasht district while wearing men's dresses. The women were then returned to their village and handed over to their husbands.

In light of a decree issued by local clerics, Khatibi said, the two women were subjected to 45 lashes each in public and they were flogged in presence of a large number of people. The footage of the scene was aired by some local Afghan TV channels.

The Dolina district is a haven of illegal armed groups, who impose such brutal and unethical verdicts on people, he added.

Deputy Dolina police chief Jahan Shah said to Pajhowk Afghan News that the two women were punished by a former jihadi commander named Fazl Ahad. He alleged the commander asked the husbands to give divorce to their wives.

Jahan Shah said the women fled their houses due to violence and beating.

Another police officer, who did not want to be named, said Fazl Ahad was involved in many such incidents. Tolo TV reported on Feb.18 that this warlord also flogged a man for having argument with a Mullah and imprisoned him in his private jail.

First Same-Sex Marriage in DC

Washington (CNN.Com) -- A lesbian couple together for more than a decade smiled through tears Tuesday as they became the first same-sex couple to marry in the District of Columbia, on the first day such unions are legal in the nation's capital.

Sinjoyla Townsend and Angelisa Young said they had waited years to marry. They were first in line last week to apply for a marriage license at Washington's marriage bureau.

"You are my friend, my partner, my love," Young, 47, told Townsend, 41. "I will love you today, tomorrow and forever."

After the wedding, those present cheered as the two women embraced and cried. They have been together for 12 years and have children, according to biographical information released by the Human Rights Campaign and D.C. Clergy United for Marriage Equality.

The new law survived a Supreme Court challenge. The measure went into effect last week, but couples had to hold off until Tuesday because of the district's three-day waiting period.