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Those Rwandan women who are employed making "peace baskets" for Macy's — a job that helps them to repair the fissures of the ethnic civil war that saw the deaths of some 800,000 people fourteen years ago? They are part of a wave of women helping to lift Rwanda out of the poverty caused by the Hutu/Tutsi conflict. Not surprisingly, the economic and political contributions of women are the main fuel for Rwanda's current economic revival. According to Washington Post's Anthony Faiola, the genocide of Tutsis by Hutu militias and subsequent retributions left Rwanda with a population that's 60% female. This, along with new laws passed in 1999 that allowed women to inherit property, left the door open for more women to start businesses, even though in Rwanda's more patriarchal society, many women must still ask their husbands for permission before making economic choices. Now, women are running coffee plantations and graining mills, and often, they're out-earning their male counterparts. More »
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Justine Henin, the # 1-ranked tennis player in the world, is retiring at 25. The battling Belgian is going out on top! • In other sports news, Kashmiri girls are beginning to play soccer more and more. An under-19 tournament will be held in Kargil next month. • A new study has shown that obese adults are twice as likely to suffer from depression (among other mental illnesses) as adults of normal weight. • Nutritionists have found that dairy intake does not necessarily promote weight loss, despite what certain marketing messages would like to have us believe. .• Chemicals called pyrethrins, found in pet shampoos and insecticides, may cause autism in unborn and very young children. • Rwandan women are weaving "peace" baskets to be sold at Macy's; one of the weavers, Iphigenia Mukantabana, a Tutsi, works alongside Epiphania Mukanyndwi, a Hutu — whose husband helped kill Iphigenia's entire family. • A new dating site called RocknRollDating.com pairs people off by musical preference. • The makers of "the original fitness skirt," SkirtSports, are sponsoring the SkirtChaser Race Series in which women wearing skirts are chased by men. • Women working in hard sciences find that it still has an "old boys club" atmosphere, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation. Fifty-two percent drop out of these fields between ages 35 and 40. More »
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