One step the Obama administration can take immediately is to develop a comprehensive strategy outlining the actions it will take to end child marriage globally. Lyric Thompson asks whether it will do so at today's GIRL Summit in London on ending forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
Looking back, it feels as if Salwa Bugaighis embodied not the hopes and aspirations of the majority of her country's people but a dream of revolution, shared by a minority of educated Libyans and nurtured by western journalists and democracy activists, says Lindsey Hilsum
Women played a largely unreported role in last year’s revolution in Libya. Now they have to fight both Islamist and secular men if they’re to have any influence in the new Libya, says Lindsey Hilsum.
In a dramatic turn of events last week, the US Supreme Court overturned a 2007 law that separated and protected women who sought abortions and health care from the zealots who intimated and threatened them.
Will the latest military operation launched by Pakistan against the Taliban in North Waziristan expose and loosen the ties between the military establishment and their jihadi protégés? So far a sceptical silence surrounds the operations, says Afiya Zia.
A Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for National Women in Engineering Day addresses both the underrepresentation of female editors of Wikipedia and the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering.
Is separation between religion and the state essential to human rights? Meredith Tax says secular space is necessary for the protection of religious and sexual minorities, freedom of thought and expression, and women's rights. It might even be central to the survival of the planet.
Consistent promotion of gender equality has to drive foreign, security and development policy if sexual violence in conflict is to be stopped.
Last December, a small group of volunteers organised a production of ‘Trojan Women’ with female Syrian refugees now living in Jordan. Heather McRobie speaks to two of the organisers about how art speaks to those who have survived conflict, and the significance of ‘Trojan Women’ in a modern context
For many Syrian women in Algeria, the gendered experience of violence and displacement has been compounded by the discrimination they now face as women refugees, says Latefa Guemar.
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.
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.
