Category Archives: Women’s rights and gender equality

Clashes erupt after Ecuador fails to decriminalize abortion for rape victims

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Pro-choice activists say decision is a death sentence, after illegal abortions resulted in 15.6% of maternal deaths in 2014

Clashes have erupted between pro-choice demonstrators and police outside Ecuador’s national assembly after lawmakers rejected a bill which would decriminalize abortion in cases of rape.

Abortion is illegal in Ecuador except in cases where the life of the mother is in danger, or if the pregnancy is the result of the rape of a woman with mental disabilities.

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Kenyan schoolgirl, 14, kills herself after alleged period shaming by teacher

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Teenager who had her first period during school lesson was reportedly branded ‘dirty’ and expelled from classroom

A 14-year-old schoolgirl in Kenya took her own life after a teacher allegedly embarrassed her for having her period in class.

The girl’s death has prompted protests from female parliamentarians and reignited a national conversation about “period shaming” and access to menstrual products.

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#MeToo Bangladesh: the textile workers uniting against harassment

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Women routinely face sexual assault and exploitation in factories, many of which supply western brands. A grassroots movement is helping victims to seek justice

Dolly Akhtar was only 16 when she started work in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, stitching clothing destined for shop floors in western countries thousands of miles away. She accepted the long hours and low pay, but what she wasn’t expecting was the sexual advances of her older, married line manager.

“When the line manager at the very first factory I worked at tried to get me to sleep with him, I was terrified,” she says. She left her job and found another but encountered similar problems there. “At the other factory, the management would curse and hit us. The men leered at us,” she says.

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Sally Mugabe should never be forgotten | Letter

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Robert Mugabe’s first wife did a lot of good work for Zimbabwe’s women and children, writes Margaret Owen

I am saddened that your obituary for Robert Mugabe (Journal, 7 September) omits any reference to the work of his wonderful first wife, Sally (though it mentions her name). She was secretary general of the Zanu-PF women’s league, founder of the Zimbabwe Child Survival Programme and a backer of the pan-Africa consortium Akina Mama wa Afrika. She also launched the Zimbabwe Women’s Co-operative in the UK. She was a great feminist, inspiring many of us women’s rights activists and NGOs around the world, and died far too young.

How different she was from her successor, Grace. But why are her unique initiatives for Zimbabwe’s women and children omitted in all these eulogies? More gender bias? She should never be forgotten.
Margaret Owen
Director, Widows for Peace Through Democracy

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Thousands protest in South Africa over rising violence against women

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President promises to do more after the most deadly month for violent crimes against women country has ever seen

Thousands of South African women took to the streets on Thursday to protest at the government’s failure to deal with rising violence against women in the wake of a string of brutal attacks that have shocked the country.

Women from across South African society marched to parliament in Cape Town dressed in black and purple in commemoration of those who lost their lives in August, the most deadly month for violent crimes against women the country has ever seen.

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Politician scolds female professor for not having child

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‘Failing to fulfil her duty to the nation’ criticism sparks outrage on social media

A South Korean politician has sparked anger after he criticised the female nominee for head of the country’s fairtrade commission for “failing to fulfil her duty to the nation” by not having children.

Jeong Kab-yoon, a member of the conservative opposition Liberty Korea party, was widely condemned after suggesting to Joh Sung-wook, an economics professor, that she had focused on her career at the expense of the country’s birth rate.

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‘The silence is suffocating’: family abuse ‘epidemic’ uncovered in Samoa | Eleanor Ainge Roy

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The beautiful Polynesian island is home to a fiercely traditional society rife with domestic violence

Blood on the walls. Bruises like smashed plums. As long as Sefina* can remember, family violence has been part of her life. She watched her mother routinely attacked by her stepfather. “Sorry,” her mother would whisper afterwards to the children.

Then, Sefina’s elder sister was nearly killed by a group of male relatives for breaking the curfew. “Sorry,” her sister told her as she later left the island for good.

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Every G7 country should have a feminist foreign policy | Emma Watson, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Katja Iversen and Michael Kaufman

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We members of the G7’s Gender Equality Advisory Council are urging countries to ditch archaic and discriminatory laws and promote empowerment

The sheer tenacity of women raising their voices and organising for fundamental change has been, and will continue to be, the driving force for achieving women’s rights and a gender-equal world. Yet we cannot ignore the fundamental role that governments can play in either promoting or thwarting change.

That is why the four of us accepted French president Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to join 32 colleagues to form a G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council. On Sunday, we will present the culmination of our work; a package of recommended laws focused on ending gender-based violence; ensuring inclusive, equitable, and quality health and education; promoting the economic empowerment of women; and combating discrimination, ensuring full gender equality in policies and public life. In each area we point to laws from around the world that illustrate the type of action countries should take.

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Wrong peace deal could mean ‘return to chaos’ for Afghanistan

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US-Taliban agreement will not be successful without involvement of government and citizens, say Afghan women’s rights groups

Afghanistan could “return to chaos” with the wrong peace deal, say women’s rights groups in the country. A poorly negotiated agreement without proper representation of Afghan citizens and a clear counterterrorism strategy would place the democratic gains of the past 18 years at risk, says Suraya Pakzad, founder of the Voice of Women Organisation.

Talks between the US and the Taliban are running alongside campaigning for twice-postponed presidential elections, now due to take place on 28 September.

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‘Men fear us’: Kampala’s market women unite against harassment

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Tired of suffering physical and verbal abuse at one of the Ugandan capital’s largest markets, female vendors are holding perpetrators to account

All photography by Alice McCool

Some men are in the habit of touching women, says Nora Baguma, a vendor at Nakawa market, in Uganda’s capital Kampala. “We call them bayaye,” she says, sitting at her banana stall.

“We give men punishment for this. I take men to the office if they cause problems. They can suspend that man for a week or a month,” Baguma explains. “It makes them stop. They fear us.”

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Praise for female aid workers rings hollow when harassment is pervasive

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Aid agencies should be champions for gender equality – so why do female employees face violence and discrimination from men who see them as ‘too pretty for complex issues’?

Is sexual harassment the most important issue facing female humanitarians? If you say yes, you are not alone. In a poll promoted on social media, 41% of respondents identified harassment as the top concern for female aid workers.

Our survey results reinforce decades of research – evidence that has fallen on deaf ears and failed to spark concrete change. For women working in humanitarian settings, the greatest risks they face in responding to emergencies come from their very own employers.

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Bosses force female workers making jeans for Levis and Wrangler into sex

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Women at factories in Lesotho owned by Taiwanese firm say jobs and promotions in jeopardy if they refuse advances, claims report

Women producing jeans for American brands including Levi Strauss, Wrangler and Lee have been forced to sleep with their managers to keep their jobs or gain promotion, an investigation into sexual harassment and coercion at garment factories in Lesotho has found.

Brands have responded to the “extensive” allegations by the the US-based Worker Rights Consortium by signing enforceable agreements with labour and women’s rights groups to eliminate gender-based violence for more than 10,000 workers at five factories owned by the Taiwanese company Nien Hsing, one of the southern African country’s largest employers.

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El Salvador rape victim who suffered stillbirth faces murder retrial

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Evelyn Beatríz Hernández Cruz gave birth in a toilet and was initially jailed for 33 months before successful appeal

A rape victim who delivered a stillborn baby as a teenager is facing decades in prison for aggravated homicide as prosecutors in El Salvador seek to prove she deliberately induced an abortion.

On Thursday, Evelyn Beatríz Hernández Cruz, 21, from a poor rural family in Cojutepeque, will go on trial for the second time in a case that highlights the aggressive criminal persecution of Salvadoran women who suffer obstetric complications.

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‘Men said we were immoral’: the aphrodisiacs challenging taboos | Wana Udobang

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Nigeria’s traditional ‘Kayan Mata’ recipes have grown into a booming industry that’s empowering women to be more open about sex

When Amra Mansur was working as a makeup artist in Abuja, while she studied law, she would overhear conversations between would-be brides and older relatives about how to please their men in the bedroom.

The older, mostly female relatives would recite aphrodisiac recipes that involved ingredients like fenugreek, dates, honey, watermelon and the fruit silky kola.

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Kenyan MP forced out of parliament for bringing baby into chamber – video

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An MP was ejected from the Kenyan parliament after she brought her baby into the chamber. Zuleikha Hassan brought her five-month-old daughter into the chamber because of an emergency at home, but she was ordered to leave because house rules state 'strangers' are not allowed in the area 

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‘We lose so many women’: the tragedy of unsafe abortion in Kibera

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With terminations outlawed in Kenya, women and girls in its largest slum have to rely on expensive and unreliable under-the-counter pills, toxic chemicals or other homemade remedies. The consequences can be fatal

Podcast: The women fighting back in Kenya’s biggest slum

Edita Ochieng sashays up in her “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt – bright and new in a place where clothes are aged and faded.

“Got them,” she stage-whispers, a flash of silver foil in her hand. Four pills carefully cut from a longer strip. Ochieng has just been attempting to buy abortion pills from among the numerous kiosk-sized “quack” chemists in the Nairobi slum of Kibera. Just to show how easy it is.

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Saudi women can now travel without consent – but this progress is fragile | Madawi al-Rasheed

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Bit by bit, the Saudi feminist movement is winning more freedom for women

After the lifting of the ban on women driving last year, the Saudi feminist movement can now celebrate its second victory: the authorities have announced that women can be granted passports and travel abroad without the consent of their male guardians. They can also register a birth, marriage or divorce. But they still cannot marry, or leave prison or a domestic violence shelter without the consent of their male guardians – often a father, brother, or other male relative.

The bizarre guardianship system is pervasive in Saudi Arabia. It stipulates that women are not legal persons, and consequently, they have to be represented by male relatives to work, marry, study, travel, and seek medical care.

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Activist who branded Uganda president ‘a dirty, delinquent dictator’ is jailed

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Stella Nyanzi vows to persist with criticism of Yoweri Museveni after receiving 18-month prison sentence for cyber harassment

Stella Nyanzi, the Ugandan women’s rights activist and staunch government critic who once called head of state Yoweri Museveni “a pair of buttocks”, has received an 18-month jail sentence after she was found guilty of cyber harassment against the president.

Nyanzi, a former researcher at Makerere University, was arrested on 2 November after posting a poem on Facebook that the state deemed abusive towards Museveni and his late mother.

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Power play: reclaiming the story of Canada’s missing and murdered

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Tara Beagan’s drama about a Blackfoot woman seeking to avenge her sister’s murder confronts the violence suffered by Indigenous women from the standpoint of those affected

“You think we’re not at war here? As a Blackfoot woman I can tell you it sure as fuck feels like we are.” So begins Tara Beagan’s one-woman play Deer Woman, about an ex-soldier avenging the murder of her sister – and the 4,000 other Indigenous women and girls who have gone missing or been killed in Canada since the 1970s.

The show, set deep in the woods with nothing but a cooler, holdall and bundled-up tarpaulin as props, is delivered as a mesmerising, shocking, and at times terrifying confession to a smartphone on a tripod. Lila, whose primary goal in life has been to protect her sister Hammy, is eventually deployed with the army overseas – only to discover that something horrible has happened while she was away.

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How Hong Kong maids became caught in a ‘humanitarian tsunami’

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Migrant workers who become pregnant by their employers face dismissal, homelessness and a swift return home

The sun had not yet risen in Hong Kong when Sally*, a domestic worker, was woken and told she needed to leave immediately. As she lay on the sofa, confused, Sally saw her employer standing over her with a piece of paper he wanted her to sign. It was a resignation letter he had written for her. She was being let go because she was pregnant. Her employer, a German man in his 50s, is the father of the child.

Sally, 39, from Manilla in the Philippines, is one of the 390,000 domestic workers – mainly from poorer Asian countries – who keep Hong Kong functioning. One in every 20 employees in Hong Kong is a migrant worker, and most of these are women of child bearing age.

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