Group News

When you think of the Niagara region immediately the mind turns to the majestic falls.  Some who have spent more than an afternoon here will think of places like the Welland Canal, The Skylon Tower, Fallsview Casino, Clifton Hill, and maybe even the dearth of reasonably priced hotels, and restaurants.  The aforementioned sites are the Niagara region you are supposed to think about.  It is what you will find printed in all of those handy little pamphlets, that the tour guides like to give out.  Yes the safe family destination, where everything is bright and sunny.What you will not hear about are the women that have been killed here since 1996. What if I were to whisper these names in your ear?

31-year-old Dawn Stewart- her skeletal remains and those of her six-month old fetus were discovered in March 1996 in a wooded are of Pelham six months after her disappearance.

26-year-old Nadene Gurczenski – her body was discovered in a Vineland ditch in May 1999. She had a two year old child. Cause of death undeclared.

32-year-old Diane Dimitri- her body was discovered in a ditch outside of Welland in August 2003. She had four children. Beaten to death.

26-year-old Margaret Jeanette Jigaru- her body was discovered in the parking lot of Princess Margaret Elementary school in Niagara Falls in July 2004. She had a four year old son. Shot in the back of the throat, execution-style.

22-year-old Cassey Chicocki- her body was found in a wooded area off of Whirlpool Rd. in Niagara Falls in December 2005. She had suffered the loss of her 3 month old child and the suicide of her brother in the few years just prior to her murder. Beaten to death, her teeth were in her stomach.

29-year-old Stephine Beck- her body was discovered in a Vineland ditch , one concession south of where Nadene’s body was discovered 8 years earlier, in march of 2007. Stephine was 14 weeks pregnant. She died of strangulation.

36-year-old Shari Bacon- found beaten to death in Sean Paul Christie’s apartment in April, 2008. She had to be identified by her tattoos.

Do they resonate with a kind of familiarity in your memory? How about if I said the name Kristen French? The difference between Kristen French, and the aforementioned women, is that French was a young school girl brutally murdered and raped by the serial killer Paul Bernardo, and the other women were all sex trade workers who were brutally raped, and murdered.  French is memorable for her innocence and potential, while these women are forgotten for their occupation, and addictions; yet were they not all women, all worthy of justice?

These are just the women whose bodies have been found. What about the missing women who have not been reported?  What about the many incidents of rape and physical assault that don’t make the local papers, never mind the national news?  There are few resources for these women that make up the front lines of Niagara’s informal economy. Occasionally the police do the raids, and shut down some of the massage parlors, but where are these women to go? Everyone says not in my neighborhood, but no one wants to help them leave this life.  It is far easier for the average citizen of this region to sit on their front porch, and pontificate about the morality and legality of their choices, all the while forgetting the true vulnerability of these women.  Imagine if every day that you went to work, you were risking rape or death?  That is what these women faced every single day to either feed an addiction, raise children, or support themselves.  Should anyone have to pay for that with their life?

When labor day rolls around and the crowds get sparse on the tourist gouging hill, it is these women that keep the money flowing.  The only industry in this area is the tourist industry, and good paying full-time jobs are extremely hard to come by. Many women fall in and out of prostitution to make up for the short fall in unemployment benefits throughout the long winter.

One of the things that angers me the most about the sparse reporting that has taken place on these brutal homicides, is the fact that these women are constantly only referred to as sex trade workers.  Yes, that was their occupation but does anyone’s job make up the totality of their identity. It is a way of devaluing their humanity.  To the world at large they don’t constitute a loss because they are represented as dirty, foul, carnivorous vaginas seeking to profit through dirty acts. “Good girls” don’t sell sex, and “good girls” don’t become addicted.  Yet there was a time when they must have danced in the rain, built snowmen, or even just enjoyed the warmth of the suns rays as it kissed their bodies.  As long as we continue to see them as what they did rather than who they were, there will never be a push to achieve justice for them.

Stephine Beck

(Michael Durant was charged with the murders of Casey and Diane)

Please take the time to look at the pictures of these women.  When we remove the stigma of the term sex trade worker they could easily be your neighbor, or your friend.  This is what has been taken from the Niagara Region.  It is a tragic, tragic loss, and should be treated as such. I will continue to post about these women as I become aware of new information.  Though the community may be ready to turn its back in forgetfulness, I will continue to light a candle in remembrance.  Though society would have you believe otherwise, these women matter. They certainly deserved better than to be treated as refuse for simply being women who through chance, and circumstance ended up paying the price for our misogynistic, rape apologist culture.

I originally came across this story at Breaking Buzz. Apparently, Madison High school decided that Marche Taylors dress was unacceptable attire for prom. What should have been a night full of dreams, and wonderful memories ended with Ms. Taylor being escorted out in handcuffs. Instead Ms. Taylor will remember this night as the night that patriarchy asserted its control over her body.

Society is continually discipling the female body according to the male gaze. If a man finds attire sexually suggestive it is deemed so regardless of the intent of the wearer. Women have never had autonomous control over our bodies. Instead our dress has been dictated according to a moral code that seeks to control for the purposes of ownership. Had a male arrived at the prom naked from the chest up, would his attire be deemed too sexy for prom?

We have not progressed from the idea that women deserve negative treatment because of the clothing that we wear. Despite the gains of feminism, society still seeks to castigate based on appearance, rather than intent. How many people will view Ms. Taylor attire and say that she got what she was looking for, despite the fact that they have no idea what her true intent was. How many will compare her dress to that of a prostitute?

Ms. Taylor will not remember her prom night as the culmination of years of work, instead it will be remembered as a night in which she was unfairly punished for daring to dress her body as she chose. It will be the night that she remembers that women don't have true agency in this society. The handcuffs will forever symbolize in her memory the colonization of womens bodies, should she ever again be tempted to think that she owns her body.

By Dominique Soguel
WeNews correspondent

(WOMENSENEWS)--The rising global demand for biofuel--one culprit in the global food crisis--would seem at first glance to be a boon to the developing world's female farmers.

After all, women represent between 40 percent and 80 percent of farmers in the developing world, where a rush is on to supply industrialized countries with an alternative to oil, which has spiked to $117 a barrel, up from $100 at the start of the year and under $10 a decade ago.

But a bundle of factors--from restrictive inheritance customs to the intense land pressures exerted by biofuel production--mean female farmers are likely to miss the biofuel bandwagon, according to a study released this week by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, based in Rome.

"Women might be limited in their ability to engage in and benefit from biofuel production due to their lack of access to land, capital and technology," says Andrea Rossi, co-author of the report.

In fact, female farmers may be hurt by biofuel trends. That's because governments often divert resources away from food production to expand bio-energy production and target marginal lands, which women more often than men depend on for food, fuel and livestock feed.

As oil prices have skyrocketed, developing countries have tripped over each other to emerge as credible suppliers of alternative energy sources, distilling ethanol for energy from corn, sugar cane and other crops.

At the forefront of this effort is Brazil, which is expecting more than $8 billion in foreign and domestic investment in the country's biofuel over the next four years.

Other countries, including Thailand, China and Nigeria, have explored small-scale biofuel production using cassava leaves, a root cultivated in sub-tropical regions and a major source of carbohydrates in the world's food supply.

Mali--where firewood and charcoal represent 80 percent of the country's national energy consumption--is pioneering energy from jahtrophta, a poisonous plant that grows successfully in barren soils, prevents erosion and steers animals away from food crops. Its biofuel potential has also captured investments from energy giant British Petroleum.

The Philippines and Fiji are examining the potential of coconut oil to produce petrol, according to Energia, the International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy in Leusden, Netherlands. In February 2008, Virgin Atlantic became the first commercial airliner to fly with a partial load of coconut-oil biofuel.

Female farmers are also limited in their ability to produce liquid biofuel because the intensive resource requirements are beyond the reach of farmers who work on less than 10 acres of land, according to the April 21 Food and Agriculture Organization report.

Chief among the resources that women lack is land.

In Brazil just 11 percent of land is owned by women.

Women make up 80 percent of rural labor in sub-Saharan Africa, but land is traditionally inherited through the male line. In Cameroon women undertake more than 75 percent of agricultural work but own less than 10 percent of the land. In Burkina Faso women cannot own property without the support of a husband or male relative.

In Middle Eastern and North African countries that follow Sharia law, women inherit half of what is allocated to men. South America and Caribbean countries, where the rural labor force is becoming increasingly feminized by up to 40 percent, also have a cultural history of favoring male inheritance.

Without land as collateral, women often face higher interest rates on their loans than men.

Female farmers face these types of restraints amid an intense need for their crops.

Thirty-seven countries--21 in Africa--require external assistance to cover their food shortages, the Food and Agriculture Organization found.

"People in Haiti are eating mud," says Yassine Fall, senior economic advisor for the U.N. Development Fund for Women. "More and more people are eating rocks in West Africa. People are so poor now that they are obliged to buy bones and boil them. Women in Mauritania are on the sides of the roads collecting the grains that fall from the back of trucks. People are rioting on the streets. It needs an urgent solution."

The rising cost of food is also hurting low-income people in the industrialized world.

In the United States, 1 in 10 households experienced hunger or were at risk of hunger last year, according to the Bread for the World Institute in Washington, D.C.

Up to 28 million Americans could need food stamps this year, the highest level since the program was introduced in the 1960s, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of the 11 million food stamp households in the United States, over 30 percent were headed by single women with children, the Washington-based Food Research and Action Center reported in 2006.

Emergency food aid--typically targeted at women for distribution--can buffer the crisis of rising food prices which is often compounded by natural disasters in low-income countries. But the World Food Program, which helped 16.4 million people and delivered 4.6 million metric tons of food in 2006, is also struggling to make ends meet.

The U.N. agency is spending 55 percent more since last June and says it needs more than $750 million to offset the costs without cutting back food rations or the number of people it feeds. Last year, the agency made an urgent appeal for $500 billion to big donor countries to make up for the rise in food and fuel prices.

Without new funds to support emergency measures, 100 million people could be plunged into hunger, according to the World Food Program's executive director, Josette Sheeran.

"We have switched items in the food basket," says Bettina Luescher, senior public affairs officer for the World Food Program's New York office. "From yellow to white maize, from wheat to rice in some cases, in order to save money. In Cambodia, rice prices have gone up so much that we might have to shut down its school-feeding program."

The main pressures on food prices won't abate soon, according to the World Bank. The global development agency expects crop prices to remain high through 2009 as markets adjust to the volatility introduced by higher energy prices, growing demand for alternative energy sources, rising incomes in developing countries and crop vulnerability to rapid climate change.

To stave off the worst effects of the global food crisis, Rossi, the co-author of the Food and Agriculture Organization report, says it's important for all women--not just female farmers--to get better access to land, capital and technology.

That's because an increasing number of households in developing countries are headed by women due to male emigration and HIV-AIDS.

Dominique Soguel is Women's eNews Arabic editor.