Category Archives: Women

How $10 radios and taxi bikes are helping to end the mutilation of girls

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Across the continent, young Africans are using their unique local knowledge and bargaining power to challenge beliefs about female genital mutilation

It took courage for Ayodeji Bella to raise the subject of female genital mutilation in her rural community in southern Nigeria. She knew local chiefs were key to challenging beliefs around the practice but when Bella, who was cut at five, broached the issue with an elder from her village, she was rebuked.

“I was young and unmarried and they wouldn’t take me seriously.”

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‘Men must be involved in the fight against girls being cut, it’s a violation’

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Female genital mutilation cannot be considered solely a ‘women’s issue’ if it is to be stamped out by 2030, say male campaigners in Guinea, Somalia, Kenya and Nigeria

There is a case from Dr Morissanda Kouyaté’s career that stays with him.

In 1983, Kouyaté, then 32, was working at a village hospital in Guinea when 12-year-old twins, Hassantou and Housseynatou, were brought in. Through wails, their relatives told Kouyaté that earlier that day, the girls had been taken into the bush to be submitted to genital mutilation. Now, they were barely conscious and bleeding heavily.

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Living in a woman’s body: as the world moves on from Covid, I feel the pain of being left behind

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I have blood cancer and continue to isolate, living without touch, hugs, intimacy or love. It is heartbreaking

Before the pandemic, I was an artist, activist, teacher, director and producer – living fully, despite having had blood cancer for 10 years. Today, I am classified as “A3” (a person with comorbidities) in the Philippines. In the UK, I am classified as extremely clinically vulnerable.

I don’t believe in labels, yet all of a sudden, I am one. Although I am fully vaccinated and boosted, there are no guarantees that the vaccines work in a body that has a suppressed immune system, like mine.

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Living in a woman’s body: I want my daughter to be inspired by my miraculous scars

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When I was pregnant, I discovered that I had developed breast cancer – just like my mother before me. One day, the child I was carrying may face the same hard choices

When I was five, I would talk to my mother while she was in the bath. When she stood to get out, the water fell from her, her skin pink from the heat. Her body was miraculous to me. Women’s bodies are miraculous, with the things they can do, but I didn’t know any of that then. I just knew that she was soft and perfect, and mine.

By the time my mother developed breast cancer, I was 30. She was double that age and there was an ocean between us: I was married and living in New York, so when the news came, I couldn’t hold her to me, or be a practical support. I sat on my bed and cried. The next time I saw her, it was all over. One breast removed and carefully reconstructed. The cancer gone. My husband asked me, as we approached my parents in the airport, whether it was OK to give my mum a hug. The surgery was recent; I wasn’t sure. But it was OK. She seemed the same.

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Girls should be educated, not mutilated. The cutting of women must end, now | Waris Dirie

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Female genital mutilation is about the subjugation of women. But I am optimistic about ending it in my lifetime

It is down to sheer ignorance that the misogynistic practice of female genital mutilation still exists in the world. In the UK, for example, FGM has been banned since 1985, but the country’s first court conviction occurred only in February 2019. The truth is, FGM will continue as long as there is inequality between men and women. It is about power and oppression, and its only purpose is to subjugate the woman and her sexuality to the man. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

The UN has a stated goal of eliminating FGM by 2030. Unfortunately, this is pure announcement policy. I worked as a UN special envoy from 1997 to 2003 and came to realise that the organisation is not doing what it should. That disappointed me and is why I started my own organisation, the Desert Flower Foundation. And, in my opinion, we are doing a better job than the UN.

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Living in a woman’s body: hospitality workers have always suffered abuse. In the pandemic, it got worse

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Many women working in restaurants and bars say men routinely asked them to remove their masks in return for tips, putting their lives at risk

After working as a bartender in Washington DC for many years, Ifeoma Ezumaki’s body reached its limit during the pandemic. For Ezumaki and millions of other restaurant employees, working during the pandemic – often, in the US, for a “sub-minimum” wage – became a source of immeasurable suffering. Tips went down because sales went down, while customer harassment and hostility went up. Ezumaki and her colleagues had to become public health marshals, in addition to cocktail servers; she was asked to enforce social distancing, mask wearing and even vaccination requirements.

One evening, a customer at the bar asked her to pull down her mask so that he could see her face – a request that became so common from male customers during the pandemic that hospitality workers started referring to it as “maskual harassment”. When Ezumaki refused, he said: “Well, I guess you’re not going to eat tonight.”

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Caesareans or vaginal births: should mothers or medics have the final say?

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More babies are born by C-section than ever, causing alarm at the WHO. But some believe the option should always be offered. So what are the risks and benefits?

When Elizabeth Chloe Romanis first considered the ethics of chosen caesarean sections, she was listening to a radio programme her husband had sent her. The programme was about how some NHS trusts refused to give medically unnecessary C-sections to people who wanted them. “He sent it to me like: ‘Have you heard this?’ and obviously I got very annoyed,” says the biolaw researcher at Durham University.

Someone phoned in and asked, why should the NHS offer the choice when childbirth is natural and surgery costs money? Irritated, Romanis thought someone from her field ought to argue for the right to choose. “So that’s what I did,” she says.

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Too close for comfort: the pitfalls of parasocial relationships

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Social media means adoring fans can keep up with the ins and outs of their favourite celebrities. But for those in the public eye, a dedicated fanbase isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be – especially for women

A few years ago, I had a fan. She had read my writing and listened to my podcast, and often replied warmly to my tweets. Occasionally, she would send me private messages, and eventually I started following her back. It was nice. At some point, the volume of communication increased – I began receiving emails, and the notifications and messages spread to Instagram. Then they grew more frequent, uncomfortably so. She wanted things from me: to work for me, to meet up with me, to know how my weekend had gone, to tell me how hers had gone, to tell me about the job she disliked, for me to help her with a project she was launching.

My heart began to sink whenever I saw her name appear on my phone and I started responding less and less in the hope of discouraging her overtures. Then she came to an event I’d organised – the first time we’d actually met – and to my mortification, presented me with a bundle of gifts (which I obviously sent a thank you message for – I’m not a monster).

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El Salvador woman punished under strict abortion law freed after 10 years

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‘Elsy’ was sentenced to 30 years for aggravated homicide over miscarriage and is fifth such woman to be released since December

El Salvador has released another woman imprisoned for aggravated homicide who after suffering an obstetric emergency was accused of aborting her pregnancy in a country where abortion under any circumstances is banned.

The woman, who activists helping her identified only as Elsy, had served more than a decade of a 30-year sentence. She was the fifth woman released before completion of her sentence since late December of last year.

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Afghan universities reopen with strict rules for female students

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Women required to attend separate classes and follow dress code at facilities in Kandahar and Helmand as they restart classes for first time since Taliban takeover

Public universities in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan have reopened after being closed for nearly nine months, with some female students joining classes.

Despite calls from education activists and students, universities and high schools across Afghanistan stayed shut after their usual summer break as the Taliban came to power. High schools have since reopened, but only for boys.

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Japan to reform 19th century law that puts ex-husband on child’s birth certificate

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Automatic addition of ex-husband as father on document within 300 days of divorce to be scrapped

Japan is set to reform a 19th century law that automatically registers a woman’s ex-husband as the father of a child born within 300 days of their divorce.

A government panel this week recommended amending the rule, along with another clause in the law that prevents women from remarrying for 100 days after a divorce on the grounds that the paternity of a child born soon after would be unclear.

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‘It stopped me having sex for a year’: why Generation Z is turning its back on sex-positive feminism

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The movement championed the right to enjoy sex and was supposed to free women from guilt or being shamed. But now many are questioning whether it has left them more vulnerable

Lala likes to think of herself as pretty unshockable. On her popular Instagram account @lalalaletmeexplain, she dishes out anonymous sex and dating advice on everything from orgasms to the etiquette of sending nude pictures. Nor is the 40-year-old sex educator and former social worker (Lala is a pseudonym) shy of sharing her own dating experiences as a single woman.

But even she was perturbed by a recent question, from a woman with a seven-year-old daughter who had caught her new partner watching “stepdaughter” porn involving teenage girls. Was that a red flag?

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Scientists developing single test to detect risk of four cancers in women

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Experts may be able to predict risk of developing ovarian, breast, womb and cervical cancers using cells from routine smear test

Scientists are developing a “revolutionary” test to predict a woman’s risk of four cancers using a single sample collected during cervical screening.

Using cervical cells from a routine smear test, experts may be able to spot ovarian and breast cancer or predict their likelihood of developing, according to two papers published in the journal Nature Communications. Further results are due on the ability of the WID-test – women’s cancer risk identification – to predict womb and cervical cancer, researchers said.

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Protests flare across Poland after death of young mother denied an abortion

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Family of Agnieszka T say they want to ‘save other women in Poland from a similar fate’, as case met with anger over restrictive termination laws

Protests are under way across Poland after the death of a 37-year-old woman this week who was refused an abortion, a year since the country introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

On the streets of Warsaw on Tuesday night, protesters laid wreaths and lanterns in memory of Agnieszka T, who died earlier that day. She was pregnant with twins when one of the foetus’ heartbeat stopped and doctors refused to carry out an abortion. In a statement, her family accused the government of having “blood on its hands”. Further protests are planned in Częstochowa, the city in southern Poland where the mother-of-three was from.

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Honduras: can first female president usher in a new era for women?

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Xiomara Castro’s inauguration will cap a remarkable rise but she faces daunting challenges around femicide and abortion

Xiomara Castro has been sworn in as the first female president of Honduras on Thursday, marking the culmination of a remarkable rise to power that began just over 12 years ago when she led a massive protest movement in response to the ousting of her husband, former president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, in a military-backed coup.

Castro’s resounding victory in the 28 November election has generated hope for a new era for women in the country with the highest rate of femicide in Latin America and some of the region’s most draconian laws with regards to reproductive rights.

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‘I’m free at last’: Uganda’s rudest poet on prison, protest and finding a new voice in Germany

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Stella Nyanzi talks about challenging Uganda’s President Museveni from her new home and why she had to leave the land she loves

The first few days of Stella Nyanzi’s new life in Germany have not been without their challenges, from navigating the TV and internet in a different language to finding the right school for her three teenagers. On the second day, the family went shopping for clothes – “thick jackets, mittens and scarves” – to see them through the fierce Bavarian winter. For her 14-year-old twins, who have lived their whole lives in sub-Saharan Africa and who insisted on wearing Crocs with no socks on the flight over, the sub-zero temperatures were a rude awakening.

At the centre of it all, however, has been deep sense of relief. Nyanzi, a 47-year-old outspoken scholar, poet and human rights advocate whose irreverent writing about Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has seen her jailed twice, decided enough was enough. She has been accepted on a writers-in-exile programme run by PEN Germany, and has no intention of returning to Uganda while the 77-year-old Museveni is in power. And while there are many concerns about how she and her children are going to settle into Munich life, the sense of freedom is powering her on.

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Polish state has ‘blood on its hands’ after death of woman refused an abortion

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Family says young mother’s health deteriorated rapidly after the twins she was carrying died a week apart in the womb

The family of a Polish woman who died on Tuesday after doctors refused to perform an abortion when the foetus’s heart stopped beating have accused the government of having “blood on their hands”.

The woman, identified only as Agnieszka T, was said to have been in the first trimester of a twin pregnancy when she was admitted to the Blessed Virgin Mary hospital in Częstochowa on 21 December. Her death comes a year after Poland introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

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Catalonia expected to pardon up to 1,000 people accused of witchcraft

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Hundreds of people, mostly women, condemned during witch-hunts that persisted well into 18th century

The Catalan parliament is on Wednesday expected to pass a resolution to pardon up to 1,000 people – the majority of them women – condemned for the crime of witchcraft in the region 400 years ago.

The move follows similar gestures in Scotland, Switzerland and Norway after more than 100 European historians signed a manifesto titled: They weren’t witches, they were women.

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‘Virginity repair’ surgery to be banned in Britain under new bill

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Move to outlaw procedures to reconstruct the hymen welcomed by campaigners and survivors of ‘honour’-based abuse

“Virginity repair” surgery known as hymenoplasty has no place in the medical world, British healthcare professionals were warned today, as legislation to criminalise the practice was introduced by the government.

An amendment added to the health and care bill on Monday will make it illegal to perform any procedure that aims to reconstruct the hymen, with or without consent.

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