Imagine if...

Your evidence in court counted for half that of the opposite sex.

You couldn’t take a job without your partner’s approval.

Your partner ‘disciplined’ you, and the law allowed it.

As a woman living in Iran, this would be your life.

In the 2005 presidential elections, 89 women presented themselves as candidates, only to be turned away as ineligible. For a year they protested, often resulting in beatings and arbitrary detentions. On 27 August 2006, a group of Iranian women launched the ‘Campaign for Equality’, to collect the signatures of one million Iranians on a petition that demanded equal rights.

Thanks to the courageous actions of these women and others like them, the profile of women’s rights in Iran has been steadily increasing.

They have made progress since they began the campaign:

• Inheritance laws are now being reviewed
• A new polygamy law, which would make it even easier for men to take several wives, was rejected in Parliament
  
• The law which means a woman’s death or injury receives half the compensation of a man’s is being reviewed
• In the last election women’s issues were on the agenda for the first time
• President Ahmadinejad has appointed three women to his cabinet

But their struggle continues.

Recent events have led to members facing increased persecution, imprisonment and exile. Their website has been attacked over 17 times. But they continue to speak up publicly and to go from door to door, gathering signatures and encouraging women to stand up for their rights.

The Campaign for Equality has set up a petition for those outside of Iran, to show solidarity with these brave women. We are working with them to achieve one million signatures. If you’ve yet to add your voice, please do so here.

You can also find out more about women’s rights in Iran and campaign on their behalf.

Lights are on, but nobody's in at the Home Office

This is a desperate plea for someone to switch off the electricity at the Home Office. Why? Because it will stop the light bulb on top of Jacqui Smith's head from going off every time one of her nincompoop, Baldrick-esque, what I can only imagine to be graduate scheme policy makers comes up with a cunning plan.

The latest plan; make a database of men who have been violent towards women.

The idea has been ridiculed by Refuge, the leading charity which pretty much offers what it says on the tin to women and children victims of domestic violence. Their chief exec, Sandra Horley branded it as a "gimmick" and a "useless initiative". She also accused the government of hypocrisy by trying to talk tough when it was actually doing very little.

Now call me bi-polar on this one but I think that Horley's response was both funny and deadly serious. Funny because I can only imagine the pent up rage Smith must be feeling by having her big International Woman's Day initiative dismissed so strongly. Her parade was washed away to sea in fact it was rained on so heavily and that makes me laugh. It makes me laugh because I am past rage myself on how this government comes up with hollow and poorly thought through ideas which never materialise or never solve the problems they set out to. In fact they seem to create not only fresh but worse problems that those that already existed; FSA, Human Rights Act, Access to Information are good examples.

This database would always be incomplete because the vast majority of violent men are never reported. The list would extinguish the rights of men who have spent convictions and would presumably exclude violent women (so much for sexual equality). There would be issues about who would have access to the information contained on the list and in what capacity it could be accessed; girlfriend, neighbour, employer, bank etc.

What really makes me wonder about the intelligence and perhaps sanity of those coming up with ideas in the home office is that they have a handful of charities who are working in this area already yet they haven't forged proper working partnerships to try ideas from people who are actually on the ground working in that specific area. Why? I can only assume that the ego involved here is so big as to think that someone who hasn't been elected to a position of power couldn't possibly have anything valid to contribute the the running of the country. That bloody well makes me mad!!!