The International Chess Federation (FIDE) says it is temporarily banning transgender women from competing in its women's events.

The FIDE said individual cases would require "further analysis" and that a decision could take up to two years.

The move has been criticised by some players and enthusiasts.

Many sports governing bodies have been working on policies towards transgender athletes, but chess does not involve comparable levels of physical activity.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/3413638

New signs emphasize strength and hope of Indigenous women and communities.

Families of missing and murdered Indigenous women in northern B.C. and an Indigenous social service agency have unveiled four new billboards to honour and remember the women and girls who've died or disappeared along a notorious highway that's been dubbed the Highway of Tears.

The route has been called the Highway of Tears because more than 40 women and girls, mostly Indigenous, have gone missing or been murdered along the 700-kilometre stretch of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert in northern B.C. since 1969.

AUW organised for 148 Afghan women to go on the last US hanger out of Kabul. (...)

(...)AUW hopes to help more women - the goal is 1,000 - to continue their education by offering scholarships and a safe exit from Afghanistan.

A migraine is far more than just a headache – it’s a debilitating disorder of the nervous system.

People who have migraines experience severe throbbing or pulsating pain, typically on one side of the head. The pain is often accompanied by nausea, vomiting and extreme sensitivity to light or sound. An attack may last for hours or days, and to ease the suffering, some people spend time isolated in dark, quiet rooms.

About 800 million people worldwide get migraine headaches; in the U.S. alone, about 39 million, or approximately 12% of the population, have them regularly.

And most of these people are women. More than three times as many women as compared to men get migraines. For women ages 18 to 49, migraine is the leading cause of disability throughout the world. (...)

Women tend to experience accelerated ageing around the ages of 30 and 50, according to a study that analysed a wide range of molecular and physical markers. This may be due to hormonal changes that occur when some women give birth or go through the menopause.

In recent years, there has been growing recognition that ageing doesn’t always progress at the same pace and certain factors, such as stress and smoking, can speed it up. (...)

Thought we could use a bit of humor, but please remove if this breaks any rules.

In 2008, archaeologists in Valencina, Spain, discovered a stunningly ornate tomb. The single-occupancy grave, a rarity in itself for the time, contained a treasure trove of valuables: a rock crystal dagger, high-quality flint, ostrich eggshells and ivory, including the tusk of an African elephant.

Dating to the Iberian Copper Age—some 5,000 years ago—it held an individual who likely died between the ages of 17 and 25. Assuming the tomb belonged to a wealthy, powerful leader, scientists called this individual the “Ivory Man.” But now, 15 years later, researchers have determined that the Ivory Man was actually an “Ivory Lady,” according to a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

To reach this conclusion, researchers used a new technique that can identify an individual’s sex based on tooth enamel. This process can be more effective than DNA analysis when studying remains in especially poor condition.

This new research shows that women could hold high-status roles in Iberian society at the time—and that this particular woman may have even been the “highest-ranked person” during her lifetime, says study co-author Leonardo García Sanjuán, an archaeologist at the University of Seville in Spain, to Live Science’s Jennifer Nalewicki. He adds that the Ivory Lady’s wealth and social status were impressive even when compared against a database of approximately 2,000 Copper Age burials in the region.

“The Ivory Lady totally stands out, head and shoulders above the rest, either male or female,” he tells Science’s Celina Zhao.

Researchers think that the Ivory Lady may have been revered for several generations, reports CNN’s Katie Hunt. Other graves and artifacts around her tomb date to as late as 200 years after her death.

Additionally, one nearby tomb—the only “comparably lavish” grave in the area, according to a statement announcing the new study—contains the remains of at least 15 women, suggesting that other women held leadership positions and high status during this period. (...)

This is exactly the kind of abortion-ban-supportive police action we’d been hoping we wouldn’t see.

It is imperative that women seeking healthcare in states other than their own remain vigilant in their travel planning and discreet around communicating about their condition.

Truly scary times. It was difficult to imagine this reality even a year ago.

The number of people dying in the U.S. from pregnancy-related causes has more than doubled in the last 20 years, according to a new study, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

And while the study found mortality rates remain "unacceptably high among all racial and ethnic groups across the U.S.," the worst outcomes were among Black women, Native American and Alaska Native people.

The study looks at state-by-state data from 2009 to 2019. Co-author Dr. Allison Bryant, an obstetrician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says maternal death rates in the U.S. just keep getting worse. (...)

Fascinating article about a topic we need to know and talk more about!

Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers

The team found that regardless of their maternal status, women hunt in 79 percent of the societies they studied. Over 70 percent of female hunting also appears to be intentional, instead of opportunistic killing of animals encountered while doing other activities. Women’s intentional hunting appears to target game of all sizes, but was most often large game

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/509396

A painting has been saved for the UK in recognition of its “outstanding significance” for the study of race and gender in 17th-century Britain, it will be announced on Friday.

The anonymous artist’s portrait of two women – one black and one white, depicted as companions and equals with similar dress, hair and jewellery – has been bought by Compton Verney, an award-winning gallery in Warwickshire.

Titled Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies, the work, part of the English school dating to about 1650, appears to be a moralising picture, criticising the use of cosmetics in altering a person’s natural appearance.

Their faces are covered in curious beauty patches that were fashionable at the time and which the painting’s inscription condemns as a sin of pride, a widespread opinion in the 17th century.

Wearers of such patches or spots – made of silk or velvet – risked provoking the wrath of God. Part of the purpose of the patches was to hide imperfections or signs of disease. The white sitter wears black patches of various shapes and the black sitter has white ones.

The painting was at risk of permanently leaving the UK after being auctioned in Shropshire in 2021. A temporary stop to allow a UK institution to acquire it was placed by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest.

The independent body, serviced by the Arts Council, advises the secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on whether a cultural object intended for export is of national importance under specified criteria.

Noting that its departure from the UK would be a “misfortune”, the committee’s report stated: “The depiction of a black female sitter in a 1650s painting was highly unusual … inviting important debate about race and gender during the period.”

It added: “It visualises in a way that no other painting of the period does the early modern debates concerning the morality of cosmetics use; discourses on ideal beauty and blackness; issues concerning gender hierarchy and female agency; as well as attitudes to race and ethnicity, especially so in an age that witnessed increasing global contact through trade and colonial expansion.”

(...) A new family of nonhormonal drugs that work directly on the body’s internal thermostat is offering hope for women who can't or don't want to use hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Last month, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved a medication called fezolinetant for the alleviation of vasomotor symptoms, the medical term for hot flushes or flashes. The pill, sold under the brand name Veozah, is the first neurokinin-3 (NK3) receptor agonist approved by the U.S. regulator to reduce vasomotor symptoms caused by menopause.

Unlike HRT, which replaces the estrogen and progesterone women lose as their fertility wanes, NK3 receptor agonists block neural activity in an area of the brain that helps regulate body temperature. That internal control centre tends to malfunction when the brain is deprived of estrogen.

For menopausal women who can’t or won’t take HRT – many still fear the treatment because of an influential 2002 study that exaggerated the risks to women under 60 – the options for relief have been limited. The same is true for the minority of women for whom HRT doesn’t work.

Fezolinetant “could be a real game-changer,” said Wendy Wolfman, director of the menopause and premature ovarian insufficiency clinics at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. She is eager to have something new to offer cancer survivors who’ve been suffering through hot flashes and night sweats for as long as a decade. “Their life is hell,” Dr. Wolfman said.

It’s not clear when fezolinetant will be available in Canada. The drug’s Japanese maker, Astellas Pharma, has applied for approval in the European Union, Switzerland, Australia, Brazil and Israel, but has yet to submit an application to Health Canada. (The company said in an e-mail that it doesn’t have any details about a Canadian application to share at this time.)

It is also not clear how the new drug stacks up against HRT when it comes to alleviating hot flashes. Fezolinetant hasn’t been tested in a head-to-head trial against hormone therapy, said Stephanie Faubion, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health and medical director of the North American Menopause Society.

“It appears that it’s probably not going to be as effective as hormone therapy based on the phase three trials,” Dr. Faubion said. “But it is effective.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/742622

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/80133

The Berber Queen who defied the Caliphate: Al-Kahina and the Islamic Conquest of North Africa

Seventh-century North Africa would see the rise of a warrior queen named al-Kahina. Who was she and how was she able to wage a war against the Umayyad Caliphate?

After their unification under the banner of Islam and the rule of the caliphs in Medina, the Arabs embarked on a series of spectacular conquests during the 7th and 8th centuries. By the mid-8th century, they created an empire that encompassed the territories between the Iberian Peninsula in the west to Norther India and Central Asia in the East Morocco's 🇲🇦 Indigenous Berber women play a prominent role in their culture.

For example, the story of Kahina, the pre-Islamic female warrior, is still very much alive in Berber culture and nowadays is used by the youth as a symbol of Berber language and culture. Kahina is remembered for her acts of bravery and her clairvoyant ability to lead her people against the Arab invasions in the 7th century CE. She surmounted the masculine monopoly of military enterprise to become a legend and the only uncrowned ‘she king’ in Moroccan history. Kahina, whose name means ‘priestess’ or ‘prophetess’, was born in the Aures Mountains in Algeria in the 7th century; the exact date is unknown.

During her lifetime, Arab generals began to lead armies into North Africa, preparing to conquer the area and introduce Islam to the local peoples. Kahina directed a determined resistance to the invasions. Around 690, she assumed personal command of the African forces, and under her aggressive leadership, the Arabs were forced to retreat.

Never is the objectification of a people more straightforward and complete than when they are pictured covered by cloth that completely obscures their face and body.

These women are all dead now, and even in their death, looking back at this moment in time one hundred years later, we can’t see them. We see figures, placeholders for people who were only allowed parts of themselves in life, and who now in death are disqualified even from being a face from the past in an old photo.

These women have been reduced to their plight. Photos like these are the reason I object to ideologies which promote the notion of modesty for women. They cover your ankles, flashes of stomach, your wrists, your chest, your neck….reducing you bit by bit, until you are gone.