5050

Legal reform in Egypt establishing Family Courts with mandatory mediation ( see Mulki Al-Sharmani: Egypt's family courts: route to empowerment? )   and the introduction of no fault divorce proceedings known as ‘khola'  is prompting discussion about relations between men and women in marriage, including women's sexual rights.

Women's rights activists in Iran have been hit by a fresh crackdown that threatens a vital campaigning tool

A few days ago we hit a new low in systematic filtering of women's rights websites in Iran. Along with the website Change for Equality, 11 other sites and blogs belonging to local branches of the One Million Signatures Campaign in several cities or regions in Iran (Arak, Rasht, Mashhad, Esfahan, Shiraz, Zahedan) were blocked simultaneously. The list of blocked blogs included Men for Equality, set up by male activists in the campaign and those of a few Iranian immigrant populations in other countries (Kuwait, Cyprus, Germany, and the US). Campaign websites in Kurdestan and Azarbaijan had been blocked in April 2008.

The plight of the many women having to undertake long, distressing, often expensive journeys in order to gain access to safe abortion due to restrictive legislation in their home countries was the focus of discussion on day one of the conference.

Welcome to the 50.50 blog. Here you will find ongoing discussions involving men and women concerned with gender parity, as well as reports from conferences, news and commentary. Blogs which are also part of our 50.50 initiative:

In 2007, openDemocracy covered the G8 process from a women's perspective. This blog gathers contributions from women across the world, writing about what they would like the G8 to adress.

The first international conference of the Nobel Women's Initiative took place in Ireland in June 2007. The openDemocracy team live-blogged it.

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is the principal global policy-making body dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. openDemocracy observed the process closely.

The 7th World Social Forum brought the world to Africa as activists, social movements, networks, coalitions and other progressive forces converged in Kenya. Patricia Daniel blogged live from Nairobi.

A lot of skepticism linked to feminist theory steams from the lack of practical initiatives inspired by the second and third wave movements. Josephine Ahikire, senior lecturer in Kampala, would agree with these criticisms: she explained her love and hate relationship with a movement she thinks is often too abstract.

Sure enough, development agencies and individual countries do have gender policies - but they have yet to be really efficient. Their themes are distorted and do not make way for actual changes in women's lives which are not yet fully understood by bureaucrats and other UN agencies. In her words, 'the world is listenning, but the distortions are overwhelming'.

(part of openDemocracy's '16 days against gender violence' blog series)

by Cynthia Cockburn

Of all the many women around the world organising this week for “16 days”, some will be focusing on violence in everyday life, while others will be focusing on violence in war. They are two sides of a single coin. In Guatemala for instance (as Yolanda Aguilar described for oD Today) women are still struggling to emerge from the trauma of three decades of appalling sexual violence in a genocidal war. At the same time, they’re being driven off the ‘peacetime’ streets by an epidemic of femicide.

My research over the last three years has taken me to countries like Colombia, Sierra Leone, Israel/Palestine and Serbia to learn from women who have experienced war at first hand and are speaking out boldly against the militarists.

What I’ve found is that there are two widely touted understandings of war that simply don’t connect up. Women war survivors, for their part, say what stares them in the face: men, masculinity and misogyny have something to do with every war, from bush raids to nuclear rivalry.