Ruth Michaelson is a freelance journalist based in the Middle East. She has produced work for Radio France International, Index on Censorship, The New Statesman, Huffington Post and Vice Magazine among others. She'd like it if you followed her on Twitter: @_Ms_R
Women in villages on the West Bank are making their voices heard by creating lists of all-women candidates in local elections.
An estimated 150,000 people have fled Syria for Jordan since March 2011. Temporary solutions to what may be a long-term problem include how to integrate those fleeing across the border to Jordan. In this environment, “marriages of convenience,” or even forced marriages, can thrive, essentially undetected.
Syria’s media war is being waged with gory images from the ground. But preconceived notions about subservient Middle Eastern women could lead the world to assume that there have been no women active on the ground in Syria. This is simply not true: we’re just not looking hard enough.
