Wed., September 18, 9-10 pm, Joy of Resistance presents: The New Delhi rape convictions — what they mean and don’t mean for India — and why men say they rape. Guests: Rita Banerji, Soraya Chemaly

WBAI can be heard at 99.5 FM in the Tri-State area and streams at wbai.org. Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/joyofresistance

On Wednesday, September 18, 9-10 pm, Joy of Resistance will look at the recent rape convictions in India for  which four men, found guilty of fatally gang raping a woman on a New Delhi bus last December, have been sentenced to hanging. The attack sparked outrage and huge street protests at the time, and prompted India to introduce supposedly stringent anti-rape laws which can include the death penalty for rape-murders. While many in India and elsewhere have proclaimed that the problem of epidemic levels of rape in India is either solved or on its way to being solved,

Rita Banerji, an Indian feminist activist and originator of the “50 Million Women Missing” campaign, who will be our first guest, vehemently disagrees. She paints a picture of an India in which women’s lives and safety have little or no value, women are routinely used as pawns in dowry-wealth building schemes and politicians protect the status quo.

Meanwhile, an unprecedented UN study of 10,000 men in Asia and the Pacific, has found that, on average, half of those interviewed reported using physical and/or sexual violence against a female partner and that the major reason given by men for their actions was “male entitlement.” We will be discussing this study and other background conditions of the normalization of rape globally with Huffington Post commentator Soraya Chemaly, an activist and frequent blogger on these issues.

Our Feminist News Segment will include domestic stories & links to: a new study by the Guttmacher Institute on abortion and women’s mental health; a court-case on “medication-abortion” that will likely go to the Supreme Court: the benefits to women of “Obama-Care“: American Association of University Women proposes improving the gender wage-gap through a new “data-collection tool” and 100 women, including Terry O’Neill, President of National Organization for Women, were arrested in a sit-in in Washington, D.C. to protest the lack of progress on immigration reform. International stories/links will include: four men sentenced to hanging for last December’s New Delhi rape/murder; study of 10,000 Asian and Pacific Men reveals “male entitlement” to be the reason most often cited for rape; head of U.N. Women says that worldwide, women are losing ground; Australian state debates fetal “personhood” law; U.N. Women condemns targeted killing of women police officers in Afghanistan.

Joy of Resistance: Multicultural Feminist Radio @ WBAI airs on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month, at 9-10 PM. We cover the ongoing worldwide struggle of women for full equality and human rights. You can follow us at twitter.com/joyofresistance and follow/read our blog at joyofresistance.wordpress.com . Programs stream live @ wbai.org where they are also archived for 90 days.

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