Despite the African Union's commitment to strengthening women's access and control of land by placing land rights in the public domain of human rights, it is silent on the issue of land grabs. This is a gap that the AU's land policy framework needs to plug, says Kathambi Kinoti
The Egyptian elections delivered a parliament that has one of the lowest rates of female representation in the world. Yet this is the parliament that expresses the political will of the people of Egypt. It may also be one that ignores the social realities of gender and of women’s political partici
"We are constantly aware of our gender and of being watched and judged because of it, so we end up "performing". But in taking to the streets there are no performative acts and there is no audience. Now I feel that there is no going back, After all, there is no text to follow, and no director. It
Will the rights of the women, who participated in the struggles leading to fall of Gaddafi, be put under pressure in the new Libya? Kathryn Spellman-Poots assesses women’s status under Gadaffi and points to the perils ahead.
Writing has come to mean place and presence, and presence gives us power to force those who don't acknowledge our existence to admit that they can hear the sound of our breath, says the young Egyptian writer Zainab Magdy
The renowned Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician, and psychiatrist wrote from the eye of the storm on November 25, 2011. This text is published in cooperation with the Norwegian weekly Ny Tid and it's "Voices without borders" project.
With only nine women senators representing 54 million women in Nigeria, international support should focus on the broader political cycle and the numerous obstacles to women's political participation, rather than on the election moment, says Lisa Denney
The dominant HIV intervention response assumes that HIV transmission only occurs in contexts of danger and violation. It is time to take into account young women’s actual sexual experiences and recognise that sex is also a positive and joyous experience, however unsettling this may be for the HIV
How do foreign migrants in South Africa's urban estuaries deal with the hostility they regularly encounter? The answer lies in 'tactical cosmopolitanism', say Loren Landau and Iriann Freemantle
Inequality in South Africa has deepened since 1994. Respect for fundamental rights, including socio-economic rights, must be rebuilt - for when rights begin to be seen as hindrances to development and change, people begin to question why they should be observed at all, says Isobel Frye
The majority of voters in the South Kordofan election in May 2011 were women. In the violence that ensued, women activists who had mobilised the women to vote were targeted, their offices destroyed and all record of their work erased from history. Zeinab Blandia told Amel Gorani their story
What do I do differently as a result of knowing this great woman? I utterly believe in the power of one local person to transform a violent situation. I know that humiliation is the driver of most incidents of violence, and that respect is the best antidote to humiliation, and I try to apply that.
