FROM the moment it was announced on Feb. 2, Meryl Streep’s 16th Oscar nomination — best performance by an actress in a leading role for “Julie & Julia,” in case your attention has been otherwise occupied — seemed both richly merited and a bit redundant. Of course she would! How could she not?

It is barely an exaggeration to say that you can’t have an awards season without Ms. Streep, who has been enmeshed in roughly half of them since 1979, when she was nominated for best supporting actress in “The Deer Hunter.” She won that category the next year, for “Kramer vs. Kramer,” and was nominated in it once again, in 2003, for “Adaptation.” Those three supporting nods are filigree on top of the 13 nominations for best actress, which she won on her second try, in 1983, for “Sophie’s Choice.”

More than a quarter-century has passed since then, which may mean that Ms. Streep is overdue for a third statuette. Since her last one Oscars have gone to Gwyneth Paltrow, Hilary Swank (twice) and many other more- and less-deserving younger performers, while Ms. Streep, 60, has been a constant, patient and routinely passed-over Oscar-night presence.

Has she received too much recognition or too little? Trying to quantify an answer is really just trivial showbiz math, pseudoscientific data marshaled in support of a conclusion that is already axiomatic: Meryl Streep is the best screen actress in the world.

I’m not inclined to disagree. A case could conceivably be made for Isabelle Huppert or Juliette Binoche or some other French actress, but everybody knows France is different. Actresses are regarded there as something between natural resources and national treasures, whereas here they tend to be idols, commodities or fetish objects.

And in some respects Ms. Streep’s career resembles that of some of her French counterparts, like Ms. Huppert and even Catherine Deneuve, who move nimbly between large and small films, between comic and dramatic roles, and who have been permitted to age not only gracefully, but also grandly and sensually.

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By A. O. Scott
New York Times
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The first Iranian woman to take part in the Winter Olympics says she hopes she will be able to inspire Muslim women all over the world to get involved in sport.

Marjan Kalhor has overcome conservative opposition to her participation in the games by wearing a headscarf under her skiing helmet.

High in the Alborz mountains north of the sprawling city of Tehran lies Dizin, the centre of the country's skiing industry.

Although skiing is popular in Iran, a lack of investment in the resort has left it with outdated ski lifts and little modern skiing infrastructure.

But that hasn't stopped the rise to fame of Ms Kalhor - who has already made history.

This week the 21-year-old is thousands of miles away in Vancouver preparing for her debut in the Winter Olympics.

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BBC News
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Susan notes: an amazing woman in the making...

It was every little girl’s dream - she was to get a new dress, jewellery, sweets and a party for all her friends.

What 10-year-old Aisha* did not know was that after the wedding party she would have to leave school, move to a village far from her parents’ home, cook and clean all day, and have sex with her older husband.

“He took out a special sheet and laid me down on it,” Aisha told IRIN, wringing her small plump hands. “After it, I started bleeding. It was so painful that I was crying and shouting, and since then I have seen him as death.”

After a week of fighting off her husband every night, Aisha’s father was called. He had received 200,000 Yemeni Rial (US$1,000) for his daughter in `shart’, a Yemeni dowry, which he could not pay back.

“My Dad made a cup of tea and put some pills in it, which he gave me. The pills made me feel dizzy,” said Aisha. “My Dad told me to sleep with my husband, or he would kill me, but I refused.”

Instead Aisha broke a glass bottle over her head in a desperate attempt to stay awake. “My Dad hit me badly. I was bleeding from my mouth and nose,” she said.

After spending a few months in her husband’s home, where she said he would regularly drug her and beat her, Aisha managed to escape. Now, two years later, aged 12, she is unable to divorce him.

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IRIN News
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For women in Iraq, the coming national elections offer both a promise and a reminder of the difficulty of change in this male-dominated culture.

The Constitution calls for at least 25 percent of Parliament’s seats to go to women. But the first women elected in 2005 have had little effect, analysts and women who are members of Parliament say.

Now, as the campaign begins for the country’s second post-invasion parliamentary vote, on March 7, some women say a new female political class is starting to emerge. In one sign of this development, 12 women from outside the political system have formed their own party, with a platform built on women’s rights and a jobs program for Iraq’s more than 700,000 widows.

“People can see we are independent and we are not working for any party in Iraq,” said Jenan Mubark, who organized the slate because, she said, women were often marginalized within parties. “They can see we just want to empower Iraqi women in the educational and economic sectors. It’s a very wide range of objectives, but I believe that Iraqi women need it.”

Iraqi women have higher rates of poverty and unemployment than men, and lower levels of education.

Ms. Mubark manages a construction company and runs the Iraqi Center for Women’s Rehabilitation and Employment, a nongovernmental organization that she said gave her a base of support, both male and female. In her walkup office in central Baghdad, she described her agenda in language that has become familiar to political campaigns around the world. “This,” she said, “is the first step for change in our country.”

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By John Leland and Riyadh Mohammed
New York Times
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