Ten years of arrests and silencing dissent may have been enough to instill fear in the hearts of Saudi citizens, who now comply with the sweeping changes reshaping their country — politically, economically and even socially.
Tag: womens rights
In Syria the provisional government led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has removed the term “gods” and images of statues from the school curriculum. Men destroy statues so that the statues do not destroy them. Removing these images and their rightful place in history is a dangerous call to war against truth and equality.
The trial has captivated and horrified the world as Gisèle Pelicot has chosen to openly testify that her husband had drugged and raped her repeatedly for years, and invited dozens of other men to sexually assault her while she was unconscious. Sadly, similar stories stretch half-way around the world, including the author’s Ecuadorian hometown.
In South Korea, the feminist 4B movement, which rejects any intimacy with men, has been causing a stir for years. What kind of feminism is it, anyway?
For centuries, doctors have taken women’s diseases less seriously, saying they were psychological or made up. But now, social media is helping these women report their misdiagnoses and confront an unjust system.
As Donald Trump makes his third bid for the White House, Catalina Uribe Rincón considers, in the Colombian daily El Espectador, why so many Hispanic-Americans back a racist and anti-immigrant candidate.
Updated Oct. 10, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. Some 3,500 women were the first since the Islamic Revolution to be allowed to attend a football match in Iran for a World Cup qualifier in Tehran on this day in 2019. What was the first sporting match attended by women in post-Revolution Iran? In October 2019, Iran […]
A new gruesome case of the rape and murder of a young female doctor trainee in India is bringing once again to the forefront the issue of women’s safety in the country. Why does this keep happening?
Hundreds of thousands of migrants are in limbo in Tunisia, which has in recent years become a major transit point for migrants fleeing conflicts and poverty in Africa and the Middle East for better lives in Europe. Women in particular lack basic rights, including sexual and reproductive health services.
No other African country was dominated by men to the same extent as Somalia. Yet women have been fighting against male control: whether in parliament, where there is now a quota for female representatives, in journalism or in beauty contests. But they are coming up against dangerous opposition.
Updated August 10, 2024 at 11:50 a.m. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice on this day in 1993. She was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court, following Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, appointed in 1981. Ginsburg was nominated by President Bill Clinton. How long did Ruth Bader […]
Alexey Sokolov is being tried for showing the logo of Facebook, which Russia has classified as an extremist organization. But his human rights activism and opposition to the regime show how the social media is used by the regime to persecute opponents.
Laws in the late 1990s ended bans on women from wearing pants in Brazil’s courts and legislature, a practice that de facto has continued in many place. Female judges and legislators discuss how dress codes hinder women’s access to power, and the battle to change habits.
In Lebanon, as in many countries in the Arab world, abortion is criminalized, leaving women with few safe options to end a pregnancy. In the Beirut-based independent digital media Daraj, Nour, 20, shares her story of learning she was pregnant out of wedlock and seeking a secret medical abortion.
Legalized in Argentina up to 14 weeks in 2020, abortion is now under attack by Javier Milei’s far-right government, which is compromising access to the procedure and spurring anti-abortion movements in the country — with implications for women in neighboring Brazil, Paraguay and Chile.
A winemaker in Italy reclaimed her grandparents’ vineyards and created her own queer winery dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community, including wines bearing the names of women accused of witchcraft. And yet this innovative and sustainable initiative has generated unforgivable homophobic and sexist comments on social networks.
With their country in an intractable civil war, thousands of Yemeni women have been unable to obtain passports and other official documents without the permission of a male guardian or relative — as warring authorities have been systematically violating Yemeni law and women’s right to freedom of movement.
Although the last Salvadorian woman imprisoned on charges linked to abortion was released in December, 11 similar cases are currently pending in the country. Human rights activists acknowledge the progress made, and the work that remains to be done to overturn strict anti-abortion laws.
Using the methods of the Islamic regime in Tehran, the Yemeni fundamentalist insurgents have imposed repressive laws to control women’s movement and behavior.
A wave of denouncements against prominent Cameroonian businessman Hervé Bopda has led to his arrest late Tuesday night. The public outcry is coming as many across Africa say its time confront sexual violence head on.
The synod had promised to bring forth revolutionary ides for both members of the LGBTQ and women within the Church. But looking at the first session’s conclusion reveals that hopes for change may have come too early.
Two synods by the Catholic Church, to be held in Rome in late 2023 and 2024, are to debate possible and even radical changes to the Church’s practices and rules in line with the Argentine pope’s vision of a social and inclusive Church.
Artist aleXsandro Palombo’s mural of Italian politicians Elly Schlein and Giorgia Meloni as pregnant, tattooed activists elicits conversation about policies surrounding female bodily autonomy.
Here’s the Brazilian media spectacle of brazen masculinity, white privilege — and, finally, an arrest.
Contributing biologically to a child’s creation no longer directly implies parenthood. Surrogacy has shaken up traditional ideas and beliefs about sexuality, reproduction and filiation. The author poses key questions that must be answered to ensure that surrogacy is driven by both science and ethics.
Iranian authorities have begun prosecuting multiple demonstrators arrested at recent mass protests, accusing them of the gravest crimes that are punishable by the death penalty. Authorities said a man arrested at a Tehran protest in October was hanged Thursday.
A female Islamist member of Parliament and an alternative-minded blogger have very different ideas about the role of religion in post-Revolution Tunisia.
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 […]
KABUL — Inside the Afghan capital’s soccer federation stadium, dozens of Afghan women, some of them recently returned from a training camp in Japan, are practicing their skills. “From 2006 up to now, the Afghan women’s national soccer team has conducted several different trips abroad, for training and matches,” says Zohra Mihree, chief of the Afghan women’s soccer committee. “The team participated in SAFF (South Asian Football Federation) tournaments in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Our team came in third place in 2014.” Currently, more than 100 women soccer players are training in different clubs around Afghanistan, up from just a handful […]
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 […]
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 […]
An ordinary room, or a dark hut in a rural village. A razor blade bought at a market will suffice, or a sharp knife, or simply a shard of broken glass. Sometimes needle and thread, or the thorns from a wild-growing bush. The women of the family restrain the little girl while a circumciser is […]
In recent months the Taliban has destroyed three radio stations in Kunduz province. But it hasn’t stopped 28-year-old Maryam Durani, who remains determined to continue broadcasts for women.
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.
LONDON — According to a new British law, any teacher, doctor, nurse or social care professional who comes across a case of a girl who has undergone genital mutilation has the duty to report it to the police. This law, which took effect on Oct. 31 and applies to any victim under the age of […]
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Congolese Women, Freedom Through Literacy
BRAZZAVILLE — It was only when she realized she’d handed her husband a letter written by his mistress that Alphonsine decided to act. Facing such heartbreak and humiliation, this 54-year-old housewife and mother of seven, decided to join a basic literacy class in the Congolese capital of Brazzaville. Like Alphonsine, many illiterate women have started […]
Representatives and victims in the Congo are pushing back on ancient traditions that render women without rights after the deaths of their husbands, even prohibiting them from eating or drinking when they want.
Only three ministers in Egypt’s 33-member Cabinet are women. But the media is apparently too dazzled by their looks to notice there’s a problem in the first place.
NEW DELHI — Archana, who is just 15, is desperately trying to put her 3-month-old brother to sleep. He’s crying out for his mother, who died last week after going to a government-run sterilization camp. At least 15 others suffered the same fate, and scores of others are seriously ill after undergoing tubectomies at two Indian sterilization “camps.” Ongoing investigations point to contaminated drugs given to the women as a possible cause of death. But a dirty operating room and surgeries performed in a matter of minutes with unsanitized instruments have raised serious questions about India’s approach to population control […]