It's hard to understand and describe the situation in the country; the Tutsis — the tribe slaughtered in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994 — are leading an army against the government. 5.4 million people have died from war-related causes in the Congo since 1998, which one organization calls "the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II." And the majority of deaths were from "secondary" causes: malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. Preventable, and treatable, under different circumstances. But Ashley Judd says that women and children "tend to be the most vulnerable and the most exploited and the most underserved and so there is probably a gender inequality factor that contributes to the lack of attention that's being given."

Judd's experiences in the Congo — especially when she met with the many, many women who had been brutally raped — had a real impact on her. "I was flat on my back for three weeks after," she says. (She went to a doctor and then a psychologist, who diagnosed her with "plain old straight-up grief.")

Judd is extremely articulate about the horrors she witnessed:

"[I sat with] a woman, who, through word of mouth, heard there was a clinic which could help a woman who had been raped. She had to figure out—in the midst of being stigmatized, in the midst of her physical agony, in the midst of incontinence and starvation—how to get herself walking, crawling to this clinic, only to find that it's overcrowded, because there are so many women, hundreds, if not thousands, just like her. And just imagine, this is a clinic that does nothing but genital reconstruction; […] The vagina will tear when being forced to accommodate either a rapist's anatomy or objects that are introduced: wood, rock, sticks, guns, bayonets. There will be perforation of the vaginal walls, perforation and ripping of the cervix, potentially, based on the extent of the penetration into the uterus. The wall between the rectum and vagina is ripped apart. The urethra, which goes to the bladder, is damaged. There is incontinence. The urine is constantly seeping out, because the muscles and mechanisms that hold the bladder intact are ruined; there is faecal incontinency, which of course can introduce faecal matter into the gut, which results in horrific infections."

Christopher Dickey says: "Inevitably, there are people who say that you are a voyeur." Responds Judd: "Let them come with me—Come 'voyeur' with me."

Ashley Judd’s Heart Of Darkness [Newsweek]
Ashley Judd's Congo Diary [TheCommunity]
Population Services International [Official Site]

(In case you're wondering, some of the countries with female presidents or prime ministers currently leading are Ireland, New Zealand, Finland, The Philippines, Mozambique, Germany, Liberia, Chile, India and Haiti.)

In any case, Rwanda is making big news since, as of its elections on September 15, the majority of the seats in its Parliament (44 of 80) will be held by women. According to a report in The Economist: "That level of representation—once seldom seen outside Scandinavia—has less to do with an upsurge in feminist thinking than with a law passed in 2003 that guaranteed women 30% of the seats. The aim was to break up 'old boy' networks and help the country make a new start in its first elections since the 1994 genocide."

The UN suggests that even though there are women in politics, they're still lacking in leadership positions. A Latin American study showed that while 47 percent of party members in Paraguay were women, they held just 19 percent of leadership positions. Some of this is sure to be covered in a documentary airing tonight on PBS, titled Women, Power and Politics.

As for the United States of America, where a woman stands in the harbor of New York, welcoming the tired and poor? How many years do you think it will take before we have a woman leading here?

U.N. Study Finds More Women in Politics [NY Times]
Women Rising [Economist]
Cracking the Glass Ceiling, in Rwanda and Elsewhere [NY Times]
Related: Current Female World Leader Count [Filibuster Cartoons]
Earlier: Foreign Minister Is In Position To Be Israel's First Female PM In 34 Years

• Despite attempts by residents in Austin, Texas to get billboards depicting aborted fetuses taken down, the city government says they can't do anything about them because they aren't breaking any laws. • The manager of Image Hotel on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey claims to have fired all of his male staff after he caught them having affairs with foreign female tourists. • According to collected tax data, women "out-gave" men in gifts by $5 billion in 2005. • A Pakistani newspaper claims that there are 100 rapes occurring in Karachi per day, but, of course, that number may be higher that due to rape victims' fear and silence. • A study of hospital discharge records in California revealed a decreased number of complications as a result of a hysterectomy over the past 15 years. • A study of Lipitor, a drug prescribed to men and women to reduce the risk of a heart attack and lower cholesterol, has revealed that the drug is mismarketed towards women and makes unfounded claims about the effectiveness of the drug for them. •

Microloan organization Vision Finance, which started a program in the Rwandan town of Masaka three years ago, says that while the majority of borrowers are female, "four out of five defaulters are men." Jeanine Mukandayisenga, one of the businesswomen in Masaka who benefited from microlending, tells the Post: "They say that women care more about the family, but I do not know if that is true...I think it has more to do with the self-control woman show in hard times. We know how to survive when men despair."

But women aren't just thriving as money managers in Rwanda; women hold 48% of seats in the Rwandan parliament, which, according to the WaPo, is the highest percentage in the world. And it's not like Rwanda is an anomaly. The World Bank says that "in India's great economic transformation of the past 15 years, states that have the highest percentage of women in the labor force have grown the fastest as well as had the largest reductions in poverty." One of the most encouraging aspects of female success in Rwanda is that women are being seen differently by the culture as a whole. "Today, woman are in business; before, if a woman had some money, she would have to give it to the man," Rwandan high schooler Eric Muhire says. "They could not compete against a man. But now, they are competing and doing better."

[Image via The MotherHood]

Earlier: Justine Henin Retires • Basket-Weaving Brings Women Together
Money Doesn't Make The World Go Around, But It Helps

A product known as LifeWrap can stabilize a woman who is hemorrhaging. It's like a partial wet suit, made of neoprene and Velcro, costs $160 and can be used 50 times. (The company gladly accepts donations.) A study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health also found a relatively inexpensive way to treat mothers and reduce blood loss. Researchers reduced the number and severity of episiotomies at public hospitals in Latin America and increased the use of the hormone oxytocin - which is given to mothers to make their uterus shrink and bleed less during the third stage of labor. Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl of Partners in Health, have been working in Haiti and Rwanda, where health care for women (and especially girls) is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Writes Dr. Famer: "Obscene though it is, death during childbirth isn't the end of the story. In the world's poorest areas, many orphaned children wind up destitute and on the streets within a few years of their mothers' deaths, sometimes resorting to desperate or criminal measures for food, shelter, clothes or school fees."

Brigid McConville is the director of White Ribbon Alliance in London, an international organization to promote safe motherhood. She notes that African women have a 1 in 16 chance of dying from a pregnancy, compared with 1 in 1,400 in Europe. ""These are needless and preventable deaths. This is not a strange illness that requires science to find a cure," McConville says. "If you get it right for mothers, you've got the health staff in place in the community, you've got the referral system to the next level, you've got the operating theater, the anesthetist, the electricity and communications. All of this will benefit a man with a broken leg or a child with a respiratory illness."

The only question here is this: If saving the lives of pregnant women increases the heath of humans on a global level, why doesn't the cause get more attention? And why can't we meet the goal the UN has set?

Battling To Take Death Out Of Birth In Africa [Reuters]
Simple Innovation Saves Women's Lives [Our Bodies Our Blog]
Keeping New Mothers Alive [Washington Post]
Related: LifeWraps [University Of California San Francisco]
Partners In Health
White Ribbon Alliance

Hilton does have a kind of schizophrenic voice. When she meets someone, she puts on that familiar slow whisper, almost as if she's checking you out before she lets her guard down. When she does, she's sweet and chatty, like a high-school girl hoping to win your vote for homecoming queen. "I think she only uses her real voice with people who are close to her," says her sister, Nicky. "It's a rather weird concept, if you think about it.

Uh, yeah, so weird. But you know what's weirder? That having no redeemable talent beyond fucking and muttering incomprehensibly racist crap on video, then driving under the influence of alcohol and assuming you are above the law, then serving jail time while writing missives that expose to the world how almost unbelievably incapable of brain activity you really are, is the new way to get taken seriously by a leading national newsmagazine!

Can Paris Get Serious? [Newsweek]

• A new study indicates that 90% of pregnant women feel stressed during pregnancy, usually over a number of "taboo" topics that they don't feel like they can discuss publicly. Among them? Nearly two-thirds worry that their partners don't appreciate how tired they are and write off any emotional outbursts as "hormonal" — ladies, having a douchebag for a baby daddy is not a taboo topic. Perhaps Britney will take your calls! [Guardian Unlimited]
  
• An Iowa Court has ruled in favor of same-sex marriages. Finally, a reason to visit! [CNN]
  
• Preliminary studies suggest that eating flaxseed can ease menopausal hot flashes. Mommy, what does a hot flash feel like? [CBS News]

• A suspected serial killer was arrested in Lansing, Michigan after he killed five women in a month. A sixth woman was attacked last week, but her dog chased the man away. Way to go Lassie! [ABC News]
• Johnny Cash's often-overlooked first wife Vivian, who died in 2005, compiled a book of letters from the singer during their relationship and had them published as a memoir, "I Walked The Line", out this week. Totally on our reading list, even though we know it's going to tarnish our image of the Man In Black just a lil' bit. [NY Times]
• Dennis Gallagher is that disgustingly pervy councilman who was arrested for raping a woman earlier this month. What's irking us in particular this morning is that the amNY article about Gallagher and other pols like him describes them as "men behaving badly" — as if raping women is similar to, say, toilet papering a neighbor's house. [amNY]
• Princess Di's ginger kid Prince Harry was the showstopper at the tribute ceremony for the late Princess of Wales. We mention this mainly because we've always wanted to make a case that Harry is the far hotter son, despite that whole Nazi uniform wearing business. In other news, ginger kids are a dying breed. [Daily Mail, KLTV]
• Something the French can't be all high and mighty about is a Rwandan commission's assertion that French troops raped women and girls during the 1994 genocide. [The Independent]
• Brian De Palma's new film Redacted stunned audiences at the Venice Film Festival because of it's brutal depiction of a real-life war crime committed during the Iraq War, in which US soldiers raped a 14-year old girl and murdered her family. Normally we're quite squeamish about violence in movies, but if there ever was a time when hitting audiences with some cold, hard reality is necessary, this it. [Reuters]
• Aside from being freaking evil, the rise in female feticide may have consequences for Indian society — the United Nations says that fewer Indian women could lead to a rise in sexual violence, child abuse, and wife-sharing. [Reuters]