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International Women's Day 2010: Indigenous women of the Americas face double discrimination

MONTREAL - March 8, 2010 – International Women's Day is an important opportunity to remember the double discrimination faced by Indigenous women throughout the Americas, says Rights & Democracy. If being born a woman is a disadvantage, it is doubly so in the case of Indigenous women of the Americas.

In Canada, nearly 40 per cent of Indigenous women live in poverty – more than twice the number of non-native women and many more than the number of native men living in similar circumstances. This situation only gets worse in other regions of the Americas, where Indigenous communities live in extreme poverty.  Mortality rates for infant girls and illiteracy among Indigenous women are substantially higher in these communities, and their precarious living conditions put them at greater risk of human rights violations.
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