Worldcrunch
Polish scientist Maria Skłodowska-Curie, also known as Marie Curie, has often caused controversies entirely unrelated to the scientific breakthroughs she achieved. Rather, almost 70 years after her passing, a heated debate on the inclusion of her Polish maiden name, and the Polish spelling of her name, continues.
It is 2025, and yet many doctors remain largely uninformed about how women’s bodies function, since the standard has always been the male body. To grasp the full extent of the problem, we must imagine a much different future.
This week, the Taliban closed a radio station broadcasting from Kabul and aimed at women — yet another act in its unprecedented isolation of half of Afghanistan’s population. While the world is not turning a blind eye, it lacks the means to put pressure on the Taliban.
One-third of young Polish women don’t go to the gynecologist from fear of being judged. Catholic Polish doctors often refuse to prescribe birth control, openly make references to their religion, make judgmental remarks about their patients, and, in the worst cases, deny women life-saving care because of Poland’s draconian abortion laws.
Spain has become an international mecca for fertility treatments. Yet in an industry where medicine, business, social pressure and life projects overlap, some are raising concerns over what they say is aggressive advertising, misinformation, obstacles to stopping egg freezing and procedures ending in unbearable debt.
Menstruation stigma continues to affect women’s daily lives in Egypt, from societal shame to discrimination at work and in public spaces. For Cairo-based Al-Manassa, Rahma Samy explores how deeply ingrained cultural taboos shape women’s experiences with their periods and efforts to break free from them.
In Egypt, there is a disturbingly high rate of sexual abuse cases by members of the clergy who evade accountability. It’s time for Egyptian authorities to create better mechanisms to investigate these cases, punish perpetrators, and support survivors.
Reducing sentences in family violence cases isn’t uncommon in Egypt. So women struggle from both: their families and the courts.
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?
Is feminism wrong in its strategy? Are all male machistas? Some ideas on what we men could do better — as politicians like Trump seem to count on young, disgruntled men to push back against the victories of the feminist movement.
Wild nature, good childcare, equal rights: Sweden is often romanticized as a paradise for parents to raise kids. But the reality is far more complicated.
Filippo Turetta was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, 22-year-old Giulia Cecchettin last November. Everything about this story, which prompted protests across Italy and beyond, is painfully emblematic in how “normal” violence against women is.
Children orphaned by domestic violence are a uniquely vulnerable kind of victim. An investigation from Romania, as the world marks International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Feminists want male allies in the fight to advance women’s rights. Yet many men who claim to be allies have shown that they do it for the wrong reasons.
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.
In conservative societies like Egypt’s, myths about the female body, including about self-care and sexuality, are very common. For Cairo-based Al-Manassa, Wafaa Khairi talks with Egyptian women about these myths and how they have impacted their physical and emotional health.
What’s in a name? For married women in India, it is ultimately a marker of patriarchy — and an instrument of marginalization.
In more than a year since the Israel-Hezbollah conflict escalated, news of bombing has become a habit in Lebanon. In an essay for the Beirut-based independent media Daraj, Lebanese journalist Pascale Sawma discusses how war has become “normal” — and what that means for her and her work.
Donald Trump set out to win over young, disengaged heterosexual men as a core constituency. And he succeeded. As he embarks on a second mandate, German journalist Alice Hasters asks what it means for the #MeToo movement.
To truly combat how internalized traditional gender roles have become, we need to rethink power dynamics — and why some tasks shouldn’t “by default” be incumbent on women.
Footage showing an Iranian woman stripping to her underwear at a Tehran university in protest of the country’s strict clothing laws, and her subsequent arrest, shows that fundamentalists over the world share a common terror of the female body existing in its own right.
Sudan’s ongoing war has been marked by widespread reports of rape and gang rape, atrocities long documented in the African country dating back to the Darfur conflict in early 2000s.
North Dakota’s last abortion clinic was forced to move to neighboring Minnesota two years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal protection of this right, guaranteed since 1973. Ahead of the presidential election, the fight for women’s rights is rallying Democrats.
A landmark decision last year by the Mexican Supreme Court is part of a push in Latin America to expand abortion access. But as seen by the U.S. overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022 and the presidential election in November of this year the issue is moving in different directions around the world.
Yes, surrogacy can exploit women and their bodies. But like JD Vance, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is really just trying to impose her own conception of the family on everyone else.
The decision is yet another example of how Iran’s laws since the 1979 revolution have restricted women’s rights both inside and outside the home.
Founded in the United States in 1971, Heartbeat International has grown into one of the largest anti-abortion networks in the world, with more than 3,250 affiliated centers in 89 countries, including 288 in Latin America. But it uses misleading advertisements, inaccurate information and sketchy data collection to achieve its goals.
Since Nessa Sosa posed for a magazine to talk about what it’s like to be a trans woman in El Salvador, she has become a leading figure for the LGBTQ+ community in the country and a figure shaking up TikTok in a country that discriminates against sexual diversity.
Women who are garment workers for well-known European labels face frequent gender-based violent harassment, caste-based discrimination, wage theft, forced termination, and other forms of labor and human rights violations. The laws simply don’t help.
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?
Few artistic disciplines have as many women as leading figures as flamenco does. Madrid-based media Ethic takes a look at some of the most representative names — from Carmen Amaya to Rosalía — of this cultural expression and their contribution to the history of music.
Associations and activists in Tunisia are taking to the streets to express their anger and condemn a surge in gender-motivated violence in the country, where one femicide occurs every two weeks.
With no fitness apps, emails or social media, the Barbie Phone speaks the same language of mindfulness seminars, digital fasting cures and wellness retreats that seek a simple, undisturbed and healthy life. But can a phone — no matter how simple — really be a self-care tool?
Stepping over dead bodies. Visiting shrines. Laying on the ground and rolling in a desert cemetery. These are ancient practices that some Egyptian women still turn to in hopes of becoming pregnant.
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.
Activists in Poland, a country known for having some of the most restrictive laws on abortion in all of Europe, plan to open the country’s first abortion clinic in Warsaw. As they gather funds to make their dream a reality, they explain the legal loopholes that will help them to provide safe abortions for Poland in a physical, non-judgemental space.
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.
As demonstrations spread across India after the rape and death of a doctor in Kolkata, women from a Mumbai slum were asked to leave a protest site by residents of a high-rise complex. A sign that caste and class issues may be getting in the way of solidarity?
Married shortly before ISIS militants began their genocide of Yazidi people in northern Iraq, Samia Samu was later abducted and held captive for nine years. Upon her recent release, she and her husband, Dakhil Hassan, celebrated by renewing their wedding vows.