Nepal has to get some credit for creativity with its public policy.

Following an official's recent suggestion of pocketless pants as a method to reduce airport corruption, the Nepalese government has a new plan. To keep widows integrated into society the government will provide a $650 grant to men who marry them.

The government says that "single women," as widows are known in Nepal, are often neglected by society, particularly in rural communities. The subsidy is supposed to help by reducing the stigma attached to widows, who traditionally lose their status when their husband dies.

Widows and women's groups however, were less than thrilled, and around 200 marched in protest yesterday in Kathmandu (pictured at left) telling the government to reverse its decision.

From AFP: 

Women chanting slogans and waving placards that read "We don't want government dowries" and "Don't put a price on your mother" marched to the government's headquarters to hand over a letter of protest.

The BBC coverage a few weeks ago helps explain the widows' point of view:

Widows like 29-year-old Nisha Swar, whose husband was killed by Maoist fighters six years ago, say the policy of offering payment for remarriage could lead to discrimination.

"Men could want to be with us for the sake of getting the 50,000 rupees. It is like putting a price tag on our head and we are very humiliated by this," she says.

Her friend, 30-year-old widow Poonam Pathak, agrees.

"I feel embarrassed because now anybody walking on the road could say, look, there's a widow! I could get 50,000 rupees if I married her," she says.

So far, the government has defended its decision, but even if it is overturned the publicity is a good sign: at least Nepal is concerned about improving the status of widows.

PRADEEP SHRESTHA/AFP/Getty Images

The new speaker of India's lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, breaks the glass ceiling:

India’s lower house of parliament elected Meira Kumar, a former diplomat and five-term Congress party lawmaker, as speaker, the first time a woman has been chosen to run a male-dominated chamber known for its rowdy debates and frequent walkouts.

Kumar, 64, was the only candidate and had the support of the ruling Congress-led coalition and the alliance led by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. Her appointment as speaker, or presiding officer, was announced by stand-in speaker Manik Rao Gavit in the Lok Sabha, or lower house, in New Delhi today[...]

The speaker conducts the proceedings of the house and occupies a pivotal position in India’s democracy, the world’s largest.

For the most part, female leadership is nothing new for India -- Indira Gandhi was prime minister from 1980 until her assasination in 1984, and her daughter-in-law Sonia has been president of the Congress Party for over a decade. But the Lok Sabha, despite having more female members than ever, is still almost 90 percent male.

While the headlines have focused mostly on gender, though, it is also noteworthy that Kumar is a Dalit--also known as an "untouchable"--a member of the lowest class in India's caste system. With the recent success of a Dalit-led political party, the Bahujin Samaj party, Kumar's election may be a victory for Congress with not one, but two key voter groups.

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Brazil's Lula may blame "white people with blue eyes" for the global financial crisis, but in financially-crippled Iceland, many women in finance and government feel they have to clean up the mess left by the country's boys-club power elite. One former government official who, according to Der Spiegel, runs Iceland's only still-successful investment firm, put it this way:

"The crisis is man-made," claims banker Halla, 40, who like all Icelanders, is only addressed by her first name. "It's always the same guys," she says. "Ninety-nine percent went to the same school, they drive the same cars, they wear the same suits and they have the same attitudes. They got us into this situation -- and they had a lot of fun doing it," she says. Halla criticizes a system that focuses "aggressively and indiscriminately" on the short-term maximization of profits, without any regard for losses, that is oriented on short-lived market prices and lucrative bonus payments. "It's typical male behavior," says Halla, who compares it to a "penis competition" -- who has the biggest?

Now Iceland's women are rising to the top ranks -- in politics, too -- and they want to make everything better. Writer Hallgrimur Helgason says the new star is Johanna Sigurdardottir, 66, a Social Democrat, who had previously been known to most Icelanders as an honest and unimposing politician. "My time will come," she once railed at her opponents angrily almost 20 years ago.

Halla credits her success to bringing "female values into the financial world."

Sigurdardottir, currently prime minister in an appointed caretaker government, is widely expected to win big in an early election this weekend. She is not only her country's first female prime minister, but the world's first openly-lesbian head of state. 

Perhaps Iceland too -- as The Onion brilliantly summed up the last U.S. election -- is now "finally shitty enough to make social progress."

 The Israeli ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yated Neeman reached new levels of Stalin-esque photoshop audacity by doctoring photos of Israel's new government to remove female ministers Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver and replacing them with male ministers. (Click the photo for a larger version.) If Tzipi Livni had been elected, I would imagine the paper would have been pretty text-heavy on most days.

Unfortunately, no one has yet invented software that can make Foreign Miniser Avigdor Lieberman disappear.

Encouraging news from the kingdom:

An expert on girls' education became Saudi Arabia's first woman minister on Saturday as part of a wide-ranging cabinet reshuffle by King Abdullah that swept aside several bastions of ultra-conservatism.

Nora bint Abdullah al-Fayez, a US-educated former teacher, was made deputy education minister in charge of a new department for female students, a significant breakthrough in a country where women are not allowed to drive.

Abdullah also sacked the head of Saudi Arabia's despicable Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the religious police who once prevented a group of girls from escaping a school fire because they were improperly dressed. It's about time. We can only hope the beatdowns will continue until the commission is dismantled entirely.

David Silverman/Getty Images

Yesterday, my esteemed colleague Josh said a lot of world leaders may not learn much about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin other than what she looks like. It turns out that ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel may not learn even that much.

The ultra-Orthodox do not publish photos of women in their newspapers due to concerns about feminine modesty. And newspapers are a prime source of information for them because they generally don't tune into television, the Internet, and most radio stations.

The prohibition on women's photos is posing a challenge for Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Reuters reports. In the wake of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's resignation, she has been asked to form a governing coalition. Securing support from the ultra-Orthodox could be tough if she remains faceless to them.

If Livni wants to reach out to the ultra-Orthodox, it looks like she'll have to meet with leaders face to face.

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The New Republic's Jason Zengerle highlights a particularly cringe-inducing exchange from the meeting between Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and veep nominee Sarah Palin yesterday at the UN:

“I am honored to meet you,” Ms. Palin said.

“You are even more gorgeous than you are on the (inaudible),” Mr. Zardari said.

“You are so nice,” Ms. Palin replied. “Thank you.”

“Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you,” Mr. Zardari continued. At which point an aide told the two to shake hands.

“I’m supposed to pose again,” Ms. Palin said.

“If he’s insisting,” Mr. Zardari said, “I might hug.”

Yes, Zardari's a sketchball, but unfortunately, I have a feeling that Palin would face a lot of this sort of thing if she became vice president. Palin had exactly zero international recognition until this month so as long as she is being so closely guarded by the McCain campaign, a lot of world leaders aren't going to know much about her besides how she looks and the less tactful ones are going to let her know it.

Well-qualified, confident female leaders like Angela Merkel or Condoleezza Rice would never get this kind of degrading, sexist treatment from their male peers. Oh wait. Never mind.

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Bela Karolyi, the NBC sports analyst who was coach of some of the world's greatest gymnasts, including Mary Lou Retton and Nadia Comaneci, is incensed. He is convinced that China has included underage girls -- the age requirement is 16 -- on its women's gymnastics team by forging the girls' birth dates on official documents.

Yesterday, in reference to the Chinese gymnasts' childish body sizes (the team average is 4 feet, 9 inches, and 77 pounds), he unleased some verbal venom to the Associated Press:

They are using half-people. One of the biggest frustrations is, what arrogance. These people think we are stupid.

Gymnastics is famous for its small women -- or rather, girls -- but the Chinese gymnasts look awfully tiny and juvenile. In comparison, Japan's team average is 4 feet, 10 inches, and 83 pounds, while the Americans are an average of 5 feet and 107 pounds. Granted, size isn't always an indicator of age, but the New York Times recently pointed to other evidence of age falsification -- inconsistent reporting of some gymnasts' ages in official documents, media reports, and government Web sites.

The Chinese gymnasts certainly aren't half-people, but it sounds like the Chinese government might be telling some half-truths.

A 22-year-old St. Petersburg ad executive who was hoping to become the third woman in Russian history to successfully sue for sexual harassment (yes, you read that right) just had her case thrown out. Here was the judge's reasoning:

If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children."

Well I guess that's settled then.

Reversing Russia's population decline is a major priority for Russia's government, but this isn't exactly the most enlightened way to address the problem. Conditions for working women in the country are already in a sad state:

According to a recent survey, 100 percent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 percent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven percent claimed to have been raped.

Telling male bosses that this is their patriotic duty is probably not going to help.

(Thanks to my friend Emily for the link.)

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Nineteen-year-old Mehboba Ahdyar, an Afghan runner featured in FP's photo essay "The Olympians of Afghanistan," has decided to seek political asylum in Europe due to the threats she has received in her home country. Ahdyar, who runs wearing a head scarf and full-length track suit, competes in events ranging from 800 to 3,000 meters and has been a poster child for the Olympics.

Earlier this month, though, Ahdyar went missing from a training facility in Italy. Several days later, she called her parents and told them she was seeking asylum in Europe because of fears for her life. She has received death threats on her mobile phone from Muslim extremists who object to a Muslim woman participating in sports. Earlier this year, her neighbors called the police, claiming she was a prostitute -- a charge that landed her father in jail until the matter was cleared up.

This whole incident is such a shame. This young woman simply wants to run in the Olympics, not run for her life.

Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Is Becky Hammon a traitor or a savvy capitalist?

The story in a nutshell: Hammon, 31 and from South Dakota, plays basketball for the San Antonio Silver Stars, where she earns the maximum WNBA salary, about $95,000, and was last season's runner-up for the league's MVP. Last year, she signed a four-year contract worth more than $2 million to play with a professional Russian team in the off-season. Russia then fast-tracked her to citizenship, and she became a dual U.S.-Russian citizen early this year. Two weeks later, she became a member of Russia's national team and will now be representing Russia at the Olympics.

Hammon, who has no Russian heritage, says it was simply a smart business decision. Dual citizenship makes her more valuable because her Russian league requires two Russians on the court at all times and each club permits only two American players. "There's nothing more American than taking advantage of an opportunity," she told ESPN.

Hammon insists she never had a serious chance of making the U.S. Olympic team. She wasn't on USA Basketball's original short list of 23 candidates last year and, given that she's 31, this Olympics is probably her last shot. (Why an MVP runner-up didn't even make the short list is another subject altogether.)

Some may criticize Hammon for being unpatriotic, but she is embracing two things Americans love dearly -- capitalism and the freedom to pursue happiness. In a world of athletes without borders, such as Lukas Podolski, expect more talented sports players to go to the highest bidder.

Still, I'm curious to see if her eyes tear up to Russia's national anthem if she gets to mount the medals podium this August.

A new phenomenon has been taking Bolivia by storm in recent years: female wrestling. The women don traditional costumes, including a pleated, layered skirt, a bowler hat, shawl and pigtails, and put the WWE to shame:

AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images

AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images

Although legend has it that some indigenous women of the Aymara people, called Cholitas, have been wrestling for up to 20 years, the trend has only recently reached a critical mass. In 2007 a 20 min. documentary called "The Fighting Cholitas," was entered into several International Film Festivals, including the United Nations Association Film Festival. And in January the women, led by Carmen Rosa a.k.a. "The Champion" and Yolanda Amorosa a.k.a. "The Loving One," formed an association of women wrestlers, which organizes practices twice a week and matches every Sunday.

The Federation's founder, Carmen Rosa, explains the connection between women's equality and women's wrestling  in a not-to-be-missed BBC news video:

Because we Cholitas have been humiliated and very discriminated [against] in the past. That is what mostly drove me to be a fighter. I also wanted to show people, not only in Bolivia, but around the world, that women can do what men do and still be an indigenous woman."

www.miss-landmine.org

Dignity, a restored sense of beauty, and the spotlight on a serious issue: The goals for Angola's Miss Landmine pageant brought together 18 contestants, all land mine survivors, representing the southwest African nation's provinces. On a television special Wednesday night, the ladies posed in gowns and swimsuits -- and their artificial limbs.  The winner, Augusta Urica, was presented $2,500 USD by Angola's First Lady Ana Paola dos Santos, and will receive a customized artificial limb. You can see some of the contestants' profiles at the event's Web site. (Pictured above is Cuanza Sul, one of the runners-up.)

Each year, between three and four-hundred people are maimed by mines in Angola -- remnants of a 27-year civil war that ended six years ago. Even though significant effort has been put forward to get rid of them, the country remains one of the most mine-laden in Africa.  

There are 80,000 amputees in Angola, most as a result of landmines, according to the International Herald Tribune. Candida Celeste, Angola's minister of family, said, "They showed that they can, that they are able... This will provide encouragement to all those left invalid by the war."

The pageant came ahead of International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action which falls on April 4 each year.  As the tens of thousands of Angolans can attest, mines are not weapons that can be easily and completely undeployed, and they continue taking lives and livelihoods for generations after hostilities cease. Though, as these women prove, there can be life after landmines as well.

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This morning, I attended the 2nd Annual International Woman of Courage Awards, presented by Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky in honor of Saturday's International Women's Day. Out of the 95 women worldwide who received the honor, eight were invited to personally accept the award at the ceremony.

The awardees are an inspiring group of women, including: Suraya Pakzad from Afghanistan, whose organization Voice of Women sheltered and counseled women even throughout a repressive Taliban regime; Virisilia Buadromo of Fiji, who heads up the Fiji Women's Rights Movement (FWRM), and pushes for family law reform, Eaman Al-Gobory from Iraq, a physician with the International Organization of Migration (IOM) who has worked tirelessly to find specialized medical care for Iraqis whose afflictions cannot be treated within Iraq; and Binal Thawabteh a Palestinian women's rights activist who has encouraged and trained women to seek public office, and recently founded a monthly newspaper that raises such hot-button issues as polygamy and honor killings. Other awardees hailed from newly independent Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, and Somalia.

The rise of NGOs such as The Initiative for Inclusive Security reflects growing awareness that women's full participation in society isn't just about justice and fairness, it's also about security. Choosing to honor these particular eight women -- all from areas ravaged by conflict and instability -- clearly shows that this is also the line Rice means to take as she seeks to polish her legacy.