NewsFlash

The Feminist Majority, Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) and Center for Health and Gender Equity released their latest Global Women's Scorecard, giving the Bush Administration failing grades for rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a "D' for international AIDS relief.

The rights of women are in the new Afghan constitution, but they are very fragile, and the Bush Administration "should work harder to separate religion and government there and to extend the multinational peacekeeping throughout the country," Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal told the Associated Press. The Global Women's Scorecard gives Bush an "A" for rhetoric, but a "D" for reality on women's rights in Afghanistan.

Released on March 4, the Scorecard gives the Administration a grade of "Incomplete" for efforts to include women in the rebuilding of Iraq. Although Iraqi women have achieved some victories, according to WEDO Executive Director June Zeitlin, without the quotas that the U.S. opposes, "women cannot achieve critical mass" in politics.

And with its abstinence-only approach to AIDS prevention in Africa, "the Administration takes a value-laden and religious perspective rather than a public health approach," Jodi Jacobson, head of the Center for Health and Gender Equality, told AP. Women and families suffer as a result, she said.

More information is available online at www.wglobalscorecard.org

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