The ILO Domestic Workers Convention was unthinkable just a few years ago. It represents the culmination of years of effort by domestic workers, advocates, and officials to shine a spotlight on a long-ignored but significant sector of the workforce, says Nisha Varia
"As an 18 year old woman I wanted to join what I saw as the coolest and toughest force - not the Air Force, not the Navy, but the Army. I was the first woman to join, and arrived full of ideas of what life would be like as a woman in the army. Things were not as I had imagined at all...."
There is growing recognition by the international community that women human rights defenders are best placed to respond to violence against women and a crucial force for peace; but the international protection framework needs to be made more accessible to those in need.
Resistance to viewing women as a homogenous block can all too often provide politicians with an excuse to ignore women altogether. Women hold half the electorate’s voting power: which party will be brave enough to reach out for their vote at the next General Election?
The Australian Prime Minister's recent speech about “repulsive double standards on misogyny and sexism” in the House of Representatives has recast the debate about gender prejudice in politics. Even if most its arch-custodians didn't notice, says Zoe Holman.
Politics will always be a man’s world if you listen to the men, says Danish MP Liselott Blixt. She told her own story about why she entered politics and getting elected at an international parliamentary conference in London on gender and politics
Les femmes de la région de l’Extrême-Nord du Cameroun sont confrontées à une combinaison difficile de violence et de faim. Tant que les femmes seront sous l’emprise de ces formes de violence – y compris le déni du droit à la nourriture - elles seront des non-citoyennes, dit Aîssa Ngatansou Doumara
Jobs are disappearing in the UK, wages are dropping, and there is a shocking absence of political debate about the changing nature of work and the disappearance of full-time secure employment.
Women in the Extreme North Region of Cameroon face a brutal nexus of violence and hunger. As long as women remain under the domination of forms of violence – including the denial of their right to food - they will be non-citizens, says Aîssa Ngatansou Doumara.
The discourse of 'urgency' surrounding the public sector cuts masks their widespread reinvention of a Conservative vision of British women as mothers and carers.
Britain’s Olympic summer is over and now it’s back to reality. Marion Bowman looks at how a ground-breaking play on the murder of five prostitutes links to the struggles against the vulnerability of women and renewed attacks on women’s lives, rights and living standards
In the run up to next week's Presidential election in Somalia, Zainab M. Hassan writes an open letter to new women parliamentarians asking them to demonstrate collective leadership in their choice of someone to lead a ruined country.
