Feminist News Round-Up 26.02.17

Image: Daniel Lobo

Brazilian Carnivale Addresses Political Issues
The Brazilian festival ‘Carnivale’ has taken a turn for the political this year, with the raucous celebration usually turning a blind eye to current and international events. Organisers of the festival and revelers alike tackled big topics of sexism, homophobia, Donald Trump and the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. Some festival-goers were seen carrying mock-ups of Trump’s proposed Mexican border wall scrawled with his racist and sexist comments. Others wore costumes highlighting the alarming wealth gap in Brazil.

Trump’s feminist critics gagged by Chinese internet giant Weibo
Chinese social media platform Weibo (an internet site that operates in parallel with Facebook) handed the anti-Trump account “Feminist Voice in China” a 30-day ban on Monday for allegedly violating Chinese law. The creators of the account called for “militant feminist struggle” in response to Trump’s “aggressively misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and racist policies”.

Women plan ‘Lass War’ protest at northern powerhouse conference
Women from the north of England will be staging a protest to highlight the under-representation of female workers at a powerhouse conference. To do this, they will be putting on hard hats, hi-vis vests and men’s suits to draw a comparison to the stark gender divide in the powerhouse industry.

Miuccia Prada returns to feminist form in Milan’s Fashion Week
Fashion’s premier feminist, Miuccia Prada, has launched a collection that looks at the progress – or lack of it – in gender politics. Prada said of her collection, “I heard that in America, at the women’s march, an old feminist said ‘I can’t believe that 50 years later we are still in the same place. This was a collection looking at why it is that gender politics finds itself, in 2017, wondering if it has made any progress in the last half-century.”