Iran voted in as member of UN's Commission on the Status of Women

By Ethel C. Fenig

While the slaughter of Muslims by other Muslims in Muslim lands continues, the UN finally sprang into action on Friday, rewarding Iran with membership on the UN's Commission on the Status of Women. The US joined others approving the new member.

The Commission...

is dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. It is the principal global policy-making body. Every year, representatives of Member States gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide.

Iran is fresh from hanging a Dutch-Iranian woman as part of its "execution binge ," and fresh from nearly stoning a women to death, averted only by intense international pressure. Iran joins such non exemplars of women's rights on the Commission as Afghanistan, where in Taliban-controlled areas, most women are barred from school; China, which only allows one child per family, often forcing abortions on women pregnant with another and infant females are often aborted, abandoned or killed; Turkey, where the country's murder rate of women has increased 1400% in the last few years as the Islamists have gained power.

And Iran fits right into the above in their treatment of women. Anne Bayefsky describes the present situation of women in Iran.

Iranian judges can, and do, sentence women to death by stoning for alleged adultery. And according to the State Department's latest report: "Spousal rape is not illegal... Rape:...according to the penal code...four male witnesses or three men and two women are required for conviction...A man may escape punishment for killing a wife caught in the act of adultery if he is certain she was a consenting partner...[I]n 2008 50 honor killings were reported during a seven-month period...The punishment for perpetrators was often a short prison sentence...A woman has the right to divorce only if her husband signs a contract granting that right, cannot provide for his family, or is a drug addict, insane, or impotent. A husband was not required to cite a reason for divorcing his wife...The testimony of two women is equal to that of one man..."

Apparently this is the Commission's definition of gender equality and advancement of women.

Busy working on the Commission's big women's powow, Durban lll, scheduled for September, where the US and Israeli treatment of women will be highly criticized, feminist groups are silent about this latest hypocritical UN act.

Apparently these feminists think their actions support gender equality and the advancement of women.