Are universities necessarily transformative spaces for women students? Research at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, raises critical questions around how conservative gender norms are replicated by young students, in particular in the burgeoning culture of religious student organisations.
Feminist grassroots activism has raised the voices of women during the Scottish referendum campaign, and to some extent forced both campaigns and the media to engage with their demands. The question now is whether this engagement can be harnessed to advance gender equality under either outcome.
It's twenty years since the US Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act which right-wing conservatives targeted as subversive, but which helped ignite a global movement against all kinds of violence against women and girls.
Rahila Gupta argues that the term ‘victim’ needs to be reclaimed by feminist politics; whilst 'survivor' is important because it recognises the agency of women, it focuses on individual capacity, but the notion of 'victim' reminds us of the stranglehold of the system.
The ‘not all white people’ defence is narcissistic defensiveness that upholds a structurally unequal status quo. Treating those who accurately identify the problem of racism as though they themselves are ‘the problem’ leaves racism itself to fester.
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
The death of Reeva Steenkamp has highlighted the problematic way in which the media treat the issue of domestic violence. We need a better way to transmit and therefore tackle the reality – how violence is built into our lives and how space is gendered, says Heather McRobie.
The experience of female asylum seekers is distinct to their gender, particularly when survivors of rape and torture, perpetrated by male state officials, are imprisoned and guarded by men here in the UK. Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi reports on the campaign to set them free.
The reasons why up to 500,000 people in the UK need emergency food aid are inherently gendered. Low pay, the rise in food prices, and punitive welfare reforms work in tandem with regressive Tory gender policies to push women and the poor to the brink.
In its recent report on sexual exploitation in street gangs, the Office of the Children's Commissioner for England is eloquent on the need for better protection of girls. It lacks any policy recommendation for a conscious remodelling of young masculinity.
Sexual bullying in the classroom rarely makes the headlines. But one in three 16-18 year old girls in the UK have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school. What does this tacit acceptance of harassment teach our children?
The Activist Mothers of Xalapa have united their individual power as mothers to create a collective political motherhood that has resisted many patriarchal institutions in the past, and could well be the driving force of a new society based on nurturing life instead of selling it, says Alda Facio.
