‘Are there grrrls in the majority world?’ I wondered. The answer is yes, and they rock. In fact I’ve made a Majority World Riot Grrrl playlist which can be found for your delectation. Big shout out to Riot Grrrl Berlin and their fantastic compilations, on which lots of these bands feature.

Nepal

The first band I found was an anarchafeminist outfit from Nepal called Tank Girl. Nepal has a deeply traditional patriarchal society; marital rape was outlawed only in 2006 and still carries just a six month sentence. Rape survivors are often ostracised, having ‘brought shame’ to their family and wider community. Dalit (or ‘low-caste’) women face additional discrimination and extremely high levels of violence.

One of Tank Girl’s members, Sareena Rai, is involved in two other feminist DIY punk bands, Rai Ko Ris and Naya Faya, and works to help Dalit women to protect themselves from gender-based violence, delivering self-defence training in her house. Which is pretty awesome.

Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia

I found a few more Asia-Pacific riot grrrl bands, including the adorable Fatal Posporos from the Philippines and Pretty Riot from Indonesia. As well as bands Hellsister and Dance On Your Grave, the scene in Malaysia was (and hopefully still is) large enough to support a zine distro called Grrrl:Rebel. “Through zines, people in the scene are much more exposed to stuffs that were somewhat limited to them and the public before” founder Carol told GrrrlZines.net in 2001. “In countries like Malaysia and Singapore, you would get arrested if you write any articles that can be considered as threats to the government.”

It’s comments like that which I find so remarkable, dropped into interviews about the role of girls in the punk scene and the best local bands which could kind of be about anywhere.

Africa and the Middle East

While I couldn’t find any trace of a riot grrrl scene in Africa, I did happen upon a 2011 documentary called Punk In Africa which sounds good. And in the Middle East, grrrls are thin on the ground, but judging from the cracking MidEastTunes website there are plenty of women active in dark metal and goth, including Bahrain’s first all-girl metal band Scarlet Tear.

Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil

South America does seem to have a sizeable riot grrrl base – my cursory search turned up bands in Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and Argentina. Le Butcherettes from Mexico are definitely worth a listen, and I’d like to find more by a Venezuelan skapunk outfit called 7 Potencias who have a song called ‘Feminista de Bolsillo’, which I’m led to believe translates as ‘Pocket Feminist’.

The biggest scene seems to be in Brazil, which boasts a huge list of bands and artists, including Dominatrix, Siete Armas and Bertha Lutz, with her irresistibly-titled track ‘Feminism? Yes Please!’.

Bit of context: while Brazil is the world’s sixth largest economy, there is still vast inequality. And although it currently has a female President for the first time in Dilma Rouseff, women make up just 8.6% of the seats in Parliament. Abortion is legal only to save a woman’s life or in cases of rape, and in 2010, it was reported that 200,000 women a year are hospitalized for complications of illegal abortion.

The reasons behind riot grrrl’s popularity in Brazil are even the subject of an academic paper by Calla Hummel, who recognises the political significance and adaptability of this particular bit of shouty youth culture:

Brazilian riot grrrl is one of the sites where Western cultural hegemony is being called into question… As it moves across borders, riot grrrl becomes a form of transnational feminism – and grrrls must address how ideas and material originating in a given locale may resonate, change, or delegitimize ideas and work in another.

Gender inequality is a global problem which varies in its expression across different cultural contexts. It’s not an ‘over there’ issue, but in some places it’s more severe than in others. Similarly, riot grrrl anywhere is awesome, but the courage and kickassness of the grrrls in these bands is pretty inspiring.

As a band member called Isabella quoted by Hummel says:

As long as we keep getting letters from the middle of the jungle, from a tiny, three person town in the Amazon, from some girl saying, ‘Feminism saved my life, thank you,’ we will keep doing it.

• This article originally appeared in a zine put together for Sara and James‘ club night Grrrls Just Wanna Have Fun.
• Tiny Note From The Ed: Happy International Women’s Day from everybody at BadRep Towers! Please consider donating to WomanKind Worldwide today.

Picture CC Terriem, 2011

So why am I writing this at all? Over the last nine months I’ve gotten interested in the interactions between violence against women, gender roles and HIV, which I confess is mostly down to my job at Womankind Worldwide.

It struck me that even though I’ve been working with different organisations tackling violence against women in the UK for years, I don’t remember HIV ever being mentioned. It’s just not something I’d ever really thought about. But then, I had also failed to really think about, you know, the rest of the world. This job has been an eye-opener, and I heartily encourage other feminists in the UK, the US, and Western Europe to look up and see what’s happening in the places you don’t see on TV.

“This epidemic unfortunately remains an epidemic of women,” Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS said in 2010. At the end of 2009, women accounted for just over half of all adults living with HIV worldwide. In some areas of the world the proportion is much higher, for example in sub-Saharan Africa it is 60%. High levels of HIV among women in these areas are both caused by and causes of violence against women.

Violence, HIV and Women’s Health

Violence against women (you remember, that really prevalent thing that occurs in all countries in the world) interacts with the HIV epidemic in several cheery ways. This paraphrased from a World Health Organisation briefing:

• Sexual abuse in childhood is associated with risk-taking behaviour later in life, increasing an individual’s lifetime risk of contracting HIV.
• Rape exposes women to HIV, and the chances of a woman contracting HIV via a forced sexual encounter are probably increased due to the physical trauma.
• Violence and fear of violence can stop a woman insisting on condom use or refusing unwanted sex, leaving her with no means of protecting themselves.
• Fear of violence, abandonment or stigma can dissuade women from learning their status or from sharing it with their partners, and can also effect HIV control, treatment, and programmes aiming to prevent mother to child transmission.

Women’s health has been the subject of more discussion in development circles in recent years, thanks in large part to the Millennium Development Goals, one of which (MDG5) is focused on maternal health. Women’s health doesn’t begin and end with children though, so I’ve been pleased to see greater recognition of the impact of gender-based violence appearing under MDG6, which is dedicated to ending the spread of diseases including HIV infection and the associated illnesses it can cause. Next step, an MDG which is focused on reducing levels of violence against women? Something which has a pretty damaging effect on women’s health in its own right.

Ghana

Through work recently I was lucky enough to meet some of the women and men fighting to reduce violence against women and women’s vulnerability to HIV infection in rural Ghana. Although Ghana isn’t the country worst affected by the HIV epidemic, of the 240,000 HIV+ adults living in Ghana, almost 60% are women. Women in Ghana also experience high levels of violence: 1 in 3 women has experienced some form of physical violence in their lifetime, and 20% of women report that they first experienced sex against their will. (Stats)

In addition there are a number of harmful traditional practices that contribute to the spread of HIV among women, as well as the cultural acceptability of men having several partners and the right to demand sex. Traditional practices, such as widow inheritance (where a widow is forced to marry her dead husband’s relative), or polygyny (22% of married women are in polygynous unions) increase the likelihood of contracting HIV.

Women living with HIV or AIDS in Ghana also face enormous stigma and go to extraordinary lengths to find support and keep their status secret. One reason is that belief in witchcraft is widespread, and HIV infection or death from AIDS-defining illnesses is sometimes blamed on the malign influence of a witch. Incidentally if you’re interested to know more about what happens to women accused of witchcraft in Ghana I recommend watching The Witches of Gambaga:

‘Witch’ persecution is also alarmingly common in Nepal.

Reading about all this every day at work would get a bit depressing if it wasn’t for our amazing partners – health workers, educators, lawyers and activists – who are working for change for individuals, and local and global communities. Part of that change is recognition of the complex interactions between HIV and AIDS and violence against women, and the need for targeted, local, gender-sensitive interventions and support. UK feminists can help by looking up, and recognising that HIV is a feminist issue on a global scale.