These informal banks in Kenya help women acquire financial stability, to help them take control of their income.
Tag: feminism
Social media and dating apps have revolutionized the way young people live, and given women the right to seduce.
CAIRO — A friend of mine lived alone in downtown Cairo. She was single when she moved in but after getting into a relationship, her boyfriend joined her. One day in 2012, her neighbors saw her heading to the apartment with her boyfriend and two friends, a man and a woman. Once they were inside, […]
Catering specifically to women – particularly in rural areas – is not only good for gender equality, it is good for business.
WASHINGTON — How many times have we heard that this is the year of the woman? Let’s just say, several. Each decade for the past century or so seems to have presented a fresh feature to justify yet another proclamation of historic import. From suffrage (1920) to the pill (1960) and legalized abortion(1973) to Gloria Steinem and Ms magazine (1972) to “Reviving Ophelia” (1994) — fast-forwarding to the recent pink-capped Women’s March (2017) and the #MeToo movement (2017) — women have been pushing their way forward to reach parity with men. Many of the original goals have been reached. Women […]
The power of love, or the celebration of a future society that values spiritual oneness rather than patriarchal divisions, is the ultimate source of resistance.
-Essay- CAIRO — I dropped her off at the first of many stops that make up the long journey back to her home, and I went back to mine. We both like “homemaking;” we hoard the smallest of things, collect candles, eat what we grow – both of us are lovers of life, even fighters […]
-OpEd- MONTREAL — The news spread around the world: Canada had just changed the English version of its national anthem, replacing the line “in all thy sons command” with “in all of us command.” Why? To make it gender neutral of course. Officially, and in order to reduce the significance of this change, they pretend […]
France is the land of seduction, where relations between men and women can seem more harmonious, dating back to the Ancien Régime. Or is that a myth hiding a darker reality?
‘Love jihad’ is a brutally constructed political agenda combining patriarchal notions of ‘our women’ and communal notions of ‘their men.’
The male god of tennis cried (profusely) after his Australian Open win. Not just his tears, but the place he gives his family, show a different way to be a sports hero.
The historian and sociologist Georges Vigarello recounts the evolution of the dress, which tells the story of female representation and liberation in society.
Marketing firms are embracing a strategy called ‘femvertising’ to challenge the sexist gender molds of the past. Are they pushing equality for equality’s sake, or just trying to woo consumers?
Many are up in arms after UNESCO granted a small Japanese island World Heritage Site status in June. On face value, Okinoshima Island, home to a 17th-century Shinto shrine, is a worthy World Heritage Site. But it’s not what the island has that has caused controversy — rather, what it lacks: There are no women […]
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — Feminism is an acidic drink, strong, seething and so concentrated that it should be sipped at a pace suitable for each person’s palate. There is no key or magic recipe that makes you a feminist and nobody has the absolute truth on how to most effectively pursue the cause. What is certain, […]
-Analysis- Battles over sexism are being waged all over the world. In India, Muslim women have brought the “triple talaq” law, which allows men to cut off their wives by repeating “divorce” three times, to the country’s Supreme Court. In the Republic of Congo, widows are suing over a tradition that forces them to give […]
Categories
Feminist Humor And Basic Economics
-Essay- PARIS — In 1949, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir published the landmark feminist book Le Deuxième Sexe (“The Second Sex”). The work is a challenge to anyone who chooses — or is assigned? — to read it, with almost 1,000 pages between two volumes. Revered for the clarity and force of its arguments, de […]
Italy is, still, a deeply sexist country. A recent murder and suicide remind one mother why part of her shuddered at the thought of having a baby girl.
SCOTTSDALE — In this suburb of Phoenix, Carrie Lightfoot chooses her weapon of the day from a compartment stash under her bed. She’s spoiled for choice: six semi-automatic pistols and a revolver, not to mention the AK-47s and shotguns. The scene looks like something from old westerns, but Lightfoot embodies a contemporary America, where more […]
A female Islamist member of Parliament and an alternative-minded blogger have very different ideas about the role of religion in post-Revolution Tunisia.
From the poor to the pretty rich, women are still stuck with the lion’s share of housework and child-rearing. By one estimate, if each hour of domestic work were paid at minimum wage, it would total 33% of France’s GDP.
GUADALAJARA — Mexico”s state of Jalisco is experiencing a violent crime wave against women. Mexico City-based daily El Universal reports that the number of murders of women, also known as femicides, rose to 150 there in 2015, part of a troubling rise in killings since 2009, when only 58 were recorded. While the notoriously violent […]
-Essay- CAIRO — They did not expect the joy and the despair, the potential and the tribulations that have spanned six long years. They were allured by calls for freedom and social justice before they were hit hard by authoritarian regimes and objectified by the region’s Salafists in both the East and the West. They […]
Though a number of Asian countries have special menstrual leave policies for working women, the West hasn’t embraced the notion, in part because feminists have rejected the idea. But now a UK company has adopted time off for women facing monthly p
CAIRO — International Women’s Day is celebrated around the world on March 8. Egypt celebrates Egyptian Women’s Day on March 16, and March 9 marks the infamous day when members of the Armed Forces performed virginity tests on female protestors detained in Tahrir Square in 2011 — a crime no one has been held accountable […]
When a feminist argues that male courtship rituals toward women are a form of gender subjugation, a Portuguese journalist takes his own kind of offense on behalf of the male sex.
FLORENCE — “My first child died inside me while I was trying to give birth …” Hamdi Abdurahman Ahmed is 30 years old and has a marked Florentine accent as she begins to speak. In 2007, she left Somaliland and arrived in this Tuscan city where she currently works as a cultural mediator. In Italy […]
Mothers in traditional Muslim families instill in both their daughters and sons the values that lead to the subordination of women, which can lead to sexual attacks like those that have made headlines in Germany.
Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi has been arrested for her provocative work. With a new exhibition in Hong Kong, Asia’s battle for free speech and open sexuality comes together.
When fear gets hold of me When anger seizes my body When hate becomes my companion Then I get feminine advice, because it is only feminine pain And I am told feminine pain perishes like all feminine things. — Dahabo Ali Muse, “Feminine Pains” poem, 1998 HARGEISA — “On my wedding night, it felt like […]
A German journalist suggests that the conversation around feminism has taken a terribly wrong turn. First you must ask the right questions.
Modern feminism is too focused on the image of feminists themselves, rather than renewing debate of the movement’s core principles. What can be done about feminism fatigue.
The current and past Minister have both been women (not to mention Chancellor Angela Merkel). But that’s apparently not enough…
RIYADH – Amna Bawazeer, a student at an all-women’s university campus in Saudi Arabia, had lived and studied for years with a heart condition. But activists say that her death from a heart attack on campus Thursday was the fault of Saudi Arabia’s strict gender segregation laws. After Bawazeer collapsed suddenly while attending school, female […]
For this Chinese writer, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife is a symbol of all that’s wrong with the power women of the new century.
Did you know ‘The Hunger Games’ was written by a woman? Do you care? Examples of sexism continue to plague the male-dominated world of science fiction.
When Gezi Park protesters held up posters of Kemal Ataturk amid a fog of tear gas, they were searching for stability in a changing world. Reflections on 70 years of the Turkish Republic.
Li Tianyi, son of a famous Chinese general, is currently being tried in a case of alleged gang rape along with four of his friends. Referring to this ongoing case, Yi Yanyou, a law professor at Tsinghua University, declared on his microblog account last week: “Even if it was rape, the harm of raping a […]
Categories
Naked Courage In China
Both for the consequences they face from Chinese authorities and for their radical forms of protest, these women’s rights activists can make Femen seem tame by comparison.
In spite of the economic growth and rising living standards in many Asian countries, the status of women has strangely stagnated, and even regressed. If women’s status is only measured by remuneration, Asia surely wouldn’t be the only place where there is a marked disparity between the sexes. For instance, according to the United States […]