While the proliferation of domestic violence legislation worldwide is a positive and much-needed development, the explicit criminalisation of marital rape needs to be central to these legal reform initiatives - ensuring that women’s rights are fully protected. Even within marriage.
Thousands of soldiers, mostly women, have been the victims of rape and sexual assault in the American military. Politicians and the Pentagon are worried about the growing epidemic of this behaviour. All twenty women Senators decided “enough was enough”
Although female participation in science and engineering has won recent high-profile victories, the appropriation of diversity for corporate branding and neoliberal agendas is creating the gender equivalent of green-washing
The patriarchal framework of justice which reflects gendered stereotypes, cultural and traditional prejudice has to change. Whilst there is slow progress in implementation, international law is drifting inexorably into recognising the integrated role of human rights in addressing sexual violence.
In dialogue with feminist, queer and transgender groups, the Challenging Male Supremacy Project works with male activists to raise consciousness and strengthen practices of accountability in order to counter the harms of male violence and privilege, and build broader struggles for transformative j
What is the legacy and future of women’s liberation today? Kathleen B Jones reports from a conference in Boston where scholars, activists and artists met to re-examine the revolutionary years of the 1960s and early 1970s.
At the launch of 50.50's series on women peacebuilders in Northern Ireland, we explore the connection between the failure to include women at all levels of political life in building a shared future and the ongoing search for peace in Northern Ireland.
Last month a young woman was mob attacked on Cairo University campus. Socially and culturally constructed circles that control our lives seem to be tightening at a time when individuals are trying their hardest to crack them open. Zainab Magdy explores whether women will ever find a space that is
Foreign policy reporting in the British media is dominated by an elite and a false neutrality presenting a particular ideology simply as authoritative. The question of who is positioned as the voice of reason must be examined.
Youth-led mobilisation has mocked and exposed patriarchal power by unmasking its politics of social control. Are we on the threshold of a new politics of gender creating cross-gender alliances around struggles against autocracy?
The emphasis in Martha Nussbaum’s work on the importance of the emotions in moral philosophy also posits that story-telling plays a central role in expanding our empathy and as such is a necessary part of a just society.
Every generation of little girls and women needs to learn its past so that it can imagine a future in which gender equality is the norm and not the exception. As part of openDemocracy's International Women's Day series, Ruth Rosen argues that it is still necessary to have a token month every year
