Chief minister argues initiative will empower women, but move sparks controversy in conservative Indian state
When women reach the polling booths to cast their vote in current village council elections in Rajasthan, they may be asked to remove their veil, showing their faces in front of strangers.
The move is controversial in this vast, conservative rural hinterland, where the veil is worn by Hindu and Muslim women as well as other groups.
Continue reading...Startling scale of inequality laid bare as Oxfam report highlights chronically undervalued nature of care work
The world’s 22 richest men have more combined wealth than all 325 million women in Africa, according to a study.
Women and girls across the globe contribute an estimated £8.28tn ($10.8tn) to the global economy with a total of 12.5bn hours a day of unpaid care work, a figure more than three times the worth of the global tech industry, claims an Oxfam report published on Monday ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Continue reading...Lawyers move to make headway with inquiry into accusations of police abuses during post-election violence
A group of lawyers in Malawi is taking legal action against the police for failing to investigate allegations of rape against their officers during post-election protests.
Mphatso Iphani, a spokesperson for the Women Lawyers Association of Malawi, said that three months since the alleged attacks, “no concrete action has been taken, despite the sheer amount of evidence that the girls and women were assaulted”.
Continue reading...From the first Ebola-free baby to advances in women’s rights, we take our pick of the breakthroughs
There was a glimmer of hope amid the rising death toll in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s largest Ebola outbreak when a baby called Sylvana tested negative for the virus.
Continue reading...All-female Genji Hip Hop collective use rhymes and art to fight cultural stereotypes and gender violence
Aminata Gaye picks up a grey scarf and stretches it into a T shape. She ducks under the fabric, wraps it around her neck and crisscrosses it over the crown of her head.
It is almost dusk outside, but in this windowless room there is no indication of time as Gaye gets dressed for a concert starting at 9pm. Her veil in position, the 27-year-old old is transformed into Mina la voilée (Mina the veiled one), her stage name as a rapper in Dakar, Senegal.
Continue reading...Around the world people took to the streets in pro-democracy protests, while extreme weather, disease and violence wreaked havoc in some of the most vulnerable communities. But amid disaster, new grassroots leaders came to the fore, women fought to claim their rights and radical treatments for diseases were trialled
Continue reading...Campaigners hail year of key global gatherings and events as vital opportunity to secure ‘bold, accountable commitments and action’
World leaders, civil society and the private sector are preparing to make 2020 the biggest year yet for the advancement of women’s rights.
Over the course of the year, thousands of people are expected to attend high-level UN events and forums in Mexico City and Paris to mark the 25th anniversary of the Beijing platform for action, a landmark agreement to end gender inequality.
Continue reading...Teresa Xu says doctor told her to hurry up and get married before having children
At the end of last year, Teresa Xu visited a hospital in Beijing to discuss options for freezing her eggs. The doctor said she could not help Xu, a single woman, because it went against regulations. Then she gave the 31-year-old some sisterly advice: hurry up, get married and have children now.
Xu was shocked and disappointed. “I had no way to express my anger,” she said. She felt like she was being treated like a wayward child. “Like I was an intruder, delaying other couples … like my demands were too much. I felt powerless and depressed.”
Continue reading...A choral singing project is harnessing the power of music to help heal the mental and emotional scars of women trafficked into Britain
Photography by Alecsandra Dragoi
In a large, festively-decorated church just off London’s bustling Piccadilly Circus, a women’s choir prepares to sing in front of a lively, 400-strong crowd.
Their first song quietens the room and acts as an introduction. “We are Amie, beautiful and strong,” they sing acapella, their floral headdresses complementing the reds, golds and greens of the Christmas trees behind them.
Continue reading...Martina Brostrom, who accused senior UNAids official of sexual harassment, claims her dismissal is an act of ‘retaliation’
A high-profile UN whistleblower, whose claims of sexual assault at the main agency dealing with Aids prompted a long-running scandal, has been sacked along with another colleague for alleged sexual and financial misconduct.
Martina Brostrom publicly accused a senior director at UNAids of forcibly kissing her and trying to drag her out of a Bangkok elevator in 2015. She also said he had sexually harassed her on other occasions.
Continue reading...Regional court ruling hailed as ‘landmark moment for thousands of girls’ who will no longer be forced to miss lessons and exams
Pregnant schoolgirls in Sierra Leone will no longer be banned from attending class or sitting exams, after a regional court ordered the immediate overturn of a “discriminatory” policy that has denied tens of thousands the right to finish their education.
In a ruling handed down in Nigeria on Thursday, a top regional court found that a 2015 directive barring pregnant girls from attending school amounted to discrimination and a violation of human rights.
Continue reading...MPs speak out in parliament and demonstrators take to streets over killing of 27-year-old vet
Outrage has continued to grow in India over the gang-rape and murder of a 27-year-old woman, with protesters taking to the streets and politicians calling for the offenders to be “lynched”.
Demonstrations spread to cities including Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata and MPs spoke out in parliament following the discovery last week of the woman’s burned body in Hyderabad.
Continue reading...Activists welcome passing of key demands of protest movement that toppled Bashir
Activists in Sudan have welcomed a decision by the transitional government to dissolve the former ruling party and repeal a public order law used to regulate women’s behaviour under the former president Omar al-Bashir.
Bashir has been in detention since being forced from power in April, when security forces withdrew their support for his regime after months of protests in which more than 100 people were killed.
Continue reading...Peace campaigner’s car struck by stray bullet while passing airport, security officials say
Almaas Elman, a prominent rights activist, was shot dead in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Wednesday.
Almaas, who came from a leading family of peace campaigners, was travelling by car inside the heavily fortified airport compound when she was hit.
Continue reading...Campaigners urge global action on reproductive rights as US comments embolden anti-choice groups at Nairobi summit
The US will only support family planning programmes that offer alternatives to abortions, a senior policy adviser has told a conference in Nairobi.
In a statement that has emboldened anti-choice groups in the city, Valerie Huber, the US special representative for global women’s health, also told a summit on population and development that her country sought to combat gender-based violence by investing in programmes that respected the rights of women and girls, but didn’t compromise “the inherent value of every human life – born and unborn”.
Continue reading...UN urges major push to meet targets as researchers at Nairobi summit also sound alarm over family planning and violence
The global push to stop mothers dying unnecessarily in childbirth, meet family planning needs and end violence against women could be undermined by a massive funding shortfall, researchers have found.
World leaders have pledged to redouble efforts to end preventable maternal death, satisfy family planning demand and stop violence and harmful practices against women and girls by 2030.
Continue reading...Family planning services are reaching more women, but population growth is hampering efforts to reach 2020 goal
More women and girls in low income countries are using family planning than ever before, but global efforts to widen access to contraception are still falling well behind targets, according to a report.
One year away from a global deadline to widen access to modern forms of family planning, such services are accessible to less than half of the women that policy makers hoped to reach.
Continue reading...A conference on sexual violence in Iraqi Kurdistan has given women an overdue opportunity to voice their experiences
When I received an email from the Kurdish feminist writer and activist Houzan Mahmoud, asking if I would speak at the first conference on sexual violence against women and girls to be held in Iraqi Kurdistan, I could barely contain my excitement.
Mahmoud, a campaigner for Kurdish and Iraqi women’s rights – “honour” killings, the rape and abduction of women in Iraq and the imposition of Islamic sharia law are among the areas she tackles – was supporting the Sofia Society, a group of roughly 40 young feminists.
Continue reading...Respect in childbirth is a human right. As a midwife of many years’ experience, I am calling for a global effort towards more compassion in maternity care
Respectful maternity care is a universal human right due to every childbearing woman in every health system around the world. So why do women continue to endure violence, abuse and substandard care during childbirth?
As a midwife with more than 44 years of international experience, I have seen disrespect and abuse in many countries.
Continue reading...Award-winning documentary Rising Silence preserves the testimony of some of the 200,000 women abducted during the country’s war of independence
In 1971, during the nine-month war that gave Bangladesh its independence from then West Pakistan, four sisters – Amina, Maleka, Mukhlesa and Budhi Begum – were abducted by Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators. They were among the more than 200,000 women held in rape camps and were detained for two and a half months.
“Twenty-two of us would lie like corpses in that room,” says Maleka as she explains how her elder sister Buhdi, “unable to bear the pain”, died before they were released.
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