Category Archives: Women

Women behind the lens: ‘She was too beautiful not to be photographed’

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Etinosa Yvonne recalls a chance encounter with a Fulani woman in northern Nigeria

I met this woman in Machina, in Yobe state, when I was on assignment in northern Nigeria 2020. It had taken us seven hours to get there – it’s right on the border with Niger – and it was already late afternoon, early evening.

We were waiting for people to come and collect water from a solar-powered water pump when I saw her: this extremely beautiful Fulani woman. I was particularly drawn to the marks on her face. I knew Fulani women always like to look good, but it was really beautiful to see up close. There was a bit of a language barrier as I don’t speak Fula and she didn’t speak English or Hausa, but she agreed to have her photo taken.

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‘She chopped her hair off’: Pakistani women’s struggle to play cricket

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In such a conservative country, young women often have to fight their own families first just to play the sport they love

Bisma Amjad plays cricket. She aspires to play internationally and was picked for Pakistan’s under-19 World Cup squad.

But when the pandemic came, because she was a woman, there was nowhere for her to practise, so she dressed as a man to play alongside male cricketers at “gully cricket” – the street game.

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‘We are struggling’: two former officials at Afghan women’s affairs ministry

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Gul Bano and Karima’s former offices are in the hands of the Taliban – and they fear for their lives

Gul Bano* and Karima* are activists who ran provincial branches of the ministry of women’s affairs in two different parts of Afghanistan. Their former offices have been taken over by the Taliban’s feared enforcers, the ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice. They are now in hiding, afraid of the men they helped put in prison for domestic violence and other abuses, many of them in the Taliban or with family links to the militants.

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org

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Global heating linked to early birth and damage to babies’ health, scientists find

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Exclusive: Studies show high temperatures and air pollution during pregnancy can cause lifelong health effects

The climate crisis is damaging the health of foetuses, babies and infants across the world, six new studies have found.

Scientists discovered increased heat was linked to fast weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity in later life. Higher temperatures were also linked to premature birth, which can have lifelong health effects, and to increased hospital admissions of young children.

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Cat Power: ‘To this day I sleep with my bedroom door locked’

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After breakups, breakdowns, stalkers and worse, Chan Marshall has rewritten her bleakest lyrics and recorded an album of highly personal covers. ‘We all need sweetness,’ she says

Chan Marshall is sitting cross-legged on a bed, crying. It’s a sniffly, unselfconscious kind of crying, tears smudging sooty eyeshadow. Thirty years into her often wayward career as the US singer-songwriter Cat Power, she is crying because in a few weeks’ time she is 50 and she can’t believe she made it, that life turned out OK, that she’s happy. At least, happier than she was when she turned 30, the day her then boyfriend “stood me up”. Or her 40th, when she felt controlled in the relationship she was in.

“He was involved with this church,” she explains. “I wasn’t allowed to have friends. Or a party. So … hmm. I’m so sorry.” She shakes her head, reaches across the bed and clutches my hand. “It’s heavy, dude.” She takes a bolstering tug on a cigarette. “The 20s were so fucking difficult, like: ‘Oh, now I gotta do this some more?’” she carries on. “Turning 40 was: ‘Uuuurgh, well I made it this far, but it’s got to get better.’”

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Egyptian media owner detained after trafficking and sexual assault claims

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Mohamed al-Amin’s alleged victims, all teenage girls, said he abused them in an orphanage he owned and in his holiday home

An Egyptian media tycoon with close ties to the government has been detained pending an investigation into allegations of sexual assault. The Egyptian public prosecution service says it is investigating reports that businessman Mohamed al-Amin sexually abused girls living in an orphanage that he owned and took them on trips to his holiday villa.

Amin, best known for establishing the pro-government CBC network in 2011, was arrested on Friday to be held for four days. The court decided to extend Amin’s pre-trial detention for a further 15 days in a hearing on Sunday where he told the court: “I never did anything wrong. I treated those girls like my own children.”

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Joy and nakedness at San Francisco’s Dyke March: Phyllis Christopher’s best photograph

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‘The march is like our Christmas – the biggest night of the year, where women celebrate half naked and anything goes’

In San Francisco, the night before the annual Pride parade is reserved for the Dyke March, a celebration of lesbian life throughout the city. It was like our Christmas – the biggest night of the year – and half of us would be so hungover we wouldn’t make it to Pride the next day.

I remember getting a call from an editor at On Our Backs, a lesbian magazine run by women that billed itself as offering “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian”. It was a bedrock of the lesbian community – one of the few ways to communicate with one another, and to celebrate sex and educate each other about it at a time when Aids had brought so much devastation to queer communities. The editor wanted me to shoot a kiss-in, but the tone of her voice sounded almost guilty – like she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask me to work on the biggest party night of the year. But to me, it was the most fun I could imagine.

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Driving change: the all-female garage shifting attitudes in northern Nigeria

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The NGO Nana is upending gender norms in conservative Sokoto state, where one in 20 girls finish secondary school

The green-and-red Nana Female Mechanic Garage sign is visible from the main road into Sokoto city. Behind its sliding iron gate, Zainab Dayyabu stomps around in heavy work boots and a blue jumpsuit, her hands callused and oily.

“I love the job I’m doing,” says the 23-year-old, as she opens the bonnet of a Peugeot van to test its battery.

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UK government urges all pregnant women to get immediate Covid jab

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Campaign comes as figures show almost all expectant mothers hospitalised with coronavirus symptoms were unvaccinated

The UK government is warning that almost all pregnant women admitted to hospital with Covid symptoms were unvaccinated in one analysis over several months last year, as it kicks off an advertising campaign encouraging expectant mothers to get boosted.

The campaign is calling on pregnant women not to wait to get either their first, second or booster jab. It will highlight the risks of Covid-19 to mothers and babies, with testimonies of pregnant women who have had the vaccine to be broadcast on radio and social media.

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First female judge nominated for Pakistan’s supreme court

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Move to appoint Justice Ayesha Malik, who banned virginity tests for rape survivors, described as ‘defining moment’ for the country

Pakistan’s top judicial commission has nominated a female judge to the supreme court for the first time in the country’s history.

The move to pave the way for Justice Ayesha Malik to join the court has been widely praised by lawyers and civil society activists as a defining moment in the struggle for gender equality in Pakistan.

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Taliban stop Afghan women using bathhouses in northern provinces

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Decision to close public hammams – most people’s only chance for a warm wash – sparks anger in light of country’s mounting crises

The Taliban sparked outrage this week by announcing that women in northern Afghanistan would no longer be allowed to use communal bathhouses.

The use of bathhouses, or hammams, is an ancient tradition that remains for many people the only chance for a warm wash during the country’s bitterly cold winters.

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‘We had the Spice Girls’: the two comics unpicking ladette culture

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Shaparak Khorsandi and Esther Manito both came of age during a time when women were expected to conform to male stereotypes. To reflect, they did what they do best: wrote comedy shows about it

When Shaparak Khorsandi’s teenage son recently discovered 90s music – the Shamen’s Ebeneezer Good, Pulp and more – he had questions for her. What did Jarvis Cocker mean when he sang “I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere, somewhere in a field in Hampshire?” Were they singing about ecstasy? Did she go raving, too?

Khorsandi was in her teens and 20s in the 1990s, and being swept along in ladette culture. Used by the lads’ mag FHM as early as 1994, “ladette” came to describe bolshie women who could out-party and out-gross any hardened lad. Sara Cox, Denise van Outen and Zoe Ball were the media favourites: often pictured binge-drinking and out on the town. Ladettes went hand-in-hand with 90s lad culture, where Britpop, banter and sport collided in a blizzard of hedonism. These “new lads”, posited one researcher, were retreating into a more simplistic masculinity in response to the Spice Girls’ concept of Girl Power; and middle-class boys were co-opting the dress and behaviours of working-class men.

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‘I have moments of shame I can’t control’: the lives ruined by explicit ‘collector culture’

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The swapping, collating and posting of nude images of women without their consent is on the rise. But unlike revenge porn, it is not a crime. Now survivors are demanding a change in the law

Ruby will never forget the first time she clicked on the database AnonIB. It is a so-called “revenge porn” site and in January 2020, a friend had texted her for help. Ruby is a secondary school teacher, used to supporting teenagers, and her friend turned to her for advice when she discovered her images were on the site.

“She didn’t send the thread that she was on,” says Ruby, 29. “She was embarrassed, so she sent a general link to the site itself.” When Ruby opened it, “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe that such an infrastructure existed: something so well organised, so systematic, fed by the people who lived around us.”

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Italy: proposal for statue of first woman to get PhD sparks debate

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Statue of Elena Cornaro Piscopia could go up in square in Padua that contains 78 statues all dedicated to men

A proposal to insert a statue of the first woman in the world to earn a PhD among the 78 dedicated to notable male figures on a prominent square in northern Italy has stirred controversy.

Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia received her doctorate degree in philosophy from the University of Padua in 1678. But she was not included when Padua officials devised a project in the late 18th century to erect statues in Prato della Valle – the largest square in Italy – dedicated to illustrious historical figures who were either from the city or had links to it.

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New Year’s Day killings spark call for action to tackle violence against women in France

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Government accused of remaining ‘scandalously’ silent on grim start to the year for women and girls

Feminist campaigners in France are calling for tougher government action to combat violence against women and girls after three women were allegedly killed by their current or former partner on the first day of 2022.

The body of a 28-year-old military recruit who had been stabbed to death was found near Saumur in western France on Saturday. The local prosecutor, Alexandra Verron, said a 21-year-old man, also a soldier, had been arrested and investigators were looking into a possible femicide – the killing of a woman by her partner or ex-partner.

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How we met: ‘He had to marry me or I’d sue him!’

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Mary, 62, and Roy, 70, met in Michigan after she accidentally crashed her bike into his – and broke her jaw. They’re now married and live in St Louis

When Mary moved from Bedfordshire in the UK to Michigan in the US on a Fulbright scholarship in 1985, she wasn’t expecting to find love. Her mind was focused on the nutrition course she had enrolled on and her plans for a future career. In the spring of 1986, she was cycling home from a meeting with her tutor when she approached a fence covered in ivy. Roy, who had been pushing his bike, emerged from behind the fence before she had the chance to stop. “I hit his wheel and, because my hands were cold and I was wearing a backpack, I went sailing over the handlebars,” she remembers. “I landed on my chin and broke my jaw on the concrete.”

In typical British fashion, she told him she was “absolutely fine”, but Roy says it was clear she was badly hurt. “My apartment was pretty close by so I got my roommate to drive her to the university health centre,” he says. The next day, Mary had to have her jaw wired shut, meaning she couldn’t eat solid food for three months. “Roy came to my apartment with some juice to suck through a straw. He said that when my jaw was unwired he would make me dinner,” she recalls. Although it was an accident, Roy felt “terrible” about what happened. “I was really concerned about her,” he says.

Want to share your story? Tell us a little about yourself, your partner and how you got together by filling in the form here.

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House of healing: the Honduran sanctuary for female rights defenders

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In one of the world’s most dangerous regions for environmental and human rights activists, La Siguata offers a safe space for women suffering trauma as a result of their work

A milky-white and sky-blue stone hangs from a red string around Ethels Correa’s neck, and every so often she rubs it between her fingers.

“When I feel anger, I grab this stone and I begin to relax, because they taught me how to breathe, to relax the body and to relax the mind,” she says. “I carry it with me all the time.”

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Kirat Assi: ‘Bobby tried to destroy my hopes, my dreams, every part of my life’

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She had been ‘catfished’ for years, and now her hit podcast tells the story of tracing the scammer and her quest for justice

The voice of Kirat Assi, subject of the podcast Sweet Bobby, is so familiar I momentarily forget we had never spoken, let alone met. I am one of the million-plus listeners gripped by her story of being “catfished” – duped into a relationship by someone with a false identity.

Assi, who lives in London, fell victim to a complex fraud that lasted eight years and involved up to 60 characters who only existed in the scammer’s warped imagination. At the centre was Bobby, a handsome cardiologist with whom Assi formed a close friendship that turned into romance despite never meeting in real life. Bobby was a real person whose identity had been stolen by the scammer, eventually exposed as Assi’s cousin Simran Bhogal.

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Female conductor takes the helm in first for Italian opera

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Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv makes history with three-year posting at Bologna’s Teatro Comunale

A female conductor will take the helm at an Italian opera house for the first time in January.

The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv said she was surprised to learn she was making history after receiving the offer from the Teatro Comunale opera house in Bologna. The 43-year-old begins the three-year posting as musical director on 22 January.

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Spain’s public sector trailblazers seek to lead way on menstrual leave

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Handful of local administrations are among the first in west to offer arrangement to their employees

A handful of local administrations in Spain have become among the first in western Europe to offer menstrual leave to their employees, in an attempt to strike a better balance between workplace demands and period pains.

This year the Catalan city of Girona became the first in the country to consider flexible working arrangements for any employee experiencing discomfort due to periods. In June it announced a deal with its more than 1,300 municipal employees to allow women, trans men and non-binary individuals to take up to eight hours menstrual leave a month, with the caveat that any time used must be recovered within a span of three months.

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