As mother, she knows precisely the details of her children’s lives, including all of the stupid things they do. The task of the Romani woman is to take care of the children, to maintain the household, and to hold together the extended family.

Their lifestyle is comparable to what it was five hundred years ago. Unfortunately, women have drawn the losing card. The positions of Romani men and Romani women are clearly divided. The result is the discussion that follows: We therefore solicited from Romani activist Sabina Xhemajli an article on the status of Romani women, and then circulated it among prominent male and female Romani activists, inviting responses. Aware of the troubled seas on which we were embarking, we decided that among our most important tasks would be facilitating debate among Romani activists on the often sensitive, often misconstrued, and in fact multi-faceted issue of women’s rights. Indeed, not all members of the ERRC were without misgivings on the issue. When the editors of Roma Rights agreed that an issue devoted to women’s rights was timely and important, it dawned upon us that the undertaking would be controversial. Roundtable: Romani activists on women’s rights

“Advocacy' presents the declaration of the “International Conference ‘Public Policies and Romani Women in Central and Eastern Europe’, which took place December 3 and 4, 1999, in Bucharest, Romania. Joanna Wells then summarises the state of justice issues in the policy of coercive sterilisation of Romani women in Communist and post-Communist Czechoslovakia.

Next, Claude Cahn links issues of domestic abuse with the importance of raising the prominence of Romani courts. The roundtable is followed by a discussion of the power of the woman’s traditional role in Romani communities by anthropologist Carol Silverman. The “Notebook' section begins with a roundtable discussion by Romani activists on the subject of women’s rights. A variety of excellent authors have weighed in on this often misunderstood, often contested issue. Romani women in Romani and majority societies

Big gpsy women