It was predictable and in fact predicted. The British Government’s austerity programme has turned back the clock on women’s rights and hard-won economic gains.
The silence of our politicians on women’s security in public spaces is in striking contrast to their tremendous responsiveness to the sight of brown men insulting white women. The real problem is that in western society women’s equality and women’s pornographization have gone hand-in-hand.
Beyond the simplistic dichotomies within western feminism on the nature of sex work there is a complex picture in which many women take a pragmatic approach, negotiating with their sexuality an income while withstanding the ’occupational hazard’ of rampant violence, says Sehin Teferra
At a time in which the word ‘occupy’ has become synonymous with social movements, the threat of closure to The Women’s Library is a crucial reminder that women’s history must also occupy its own space in order to maintain the public profile of women's activism in Britain.
The top down medical bio-fix behind the new Global Plan for an AIDS-free generation will not work without shifting the status quo to include human rights and the science of phenomenology: that means talking to us, funding us and involving us, says Alice Welbourn
The trial of Pussy Riot is encouraging Russians to talk openly about corruption. But how is their message being received in a country where feminism is still a dirty word?
Tania Bruguera’s new art project at Tate Modern initiates a debate about the continuing oppression of migrants and the possibility of transforming a momentary experience of oppression into an act of solidarity with their struggle for justice
Is American fatherhood in crisis, and can it be solved by fathers becoming more like mothers? Susanne Kord takes a snarky look at how fatherhood organisations and Hollywood movies of the 1990s did away with mothers
The recent elections in Senegal signalled the emergence of a youth consciousness in the country. Young Senegalese people have sent a strong message to the ruling elite that the times have changed, and nothing in their country will ever be the same again. Khaita Sylla analyses the success of their
In the US more than 80% of women living with HIV are women of colour and poverty. Funding is drying up for prevention and supportive services, and HIV criminalization is on the increase. Alice Welbourn reports on the opening day of the X1X International AIDS Conference in Washington DC
Young women’s rights activists are using new media to give a voice to the 90% of Yemeni women who face street sexual harassment. Yet support for the campaign has been far from unanimous; it has come face to face with a new form of patriarchy in the media, says Ghaidaa al-Absi. (Also in Arabic.)
Interventions to link HIV-related and reproductive health services must not only include access to modern contraceptive methods and non-discriminatory antenatal, delivery and postnatal care, but also access to safe legal abortion, says Maria de Bruyn
