One week into the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women meeting, it seems possible that the negotiations will once again end at an impasse.
Across the globe, men are making key decisions about women’s most basic human rights. Women’s, feminist, queer and LGBT groups, however, have claimed a space that cannot be denied and are standing up for our rights. One poignant example of these efforts culminates today, November 9.
Young Arab women have led and are leading the charge for women’s rights in the Arab world. Yet spring has turned quickly to winter and the prospects they face are grimmer than the world may have realized. At AWID 2012, young Arab women activists speak for themselves.
Weekly global roundup: “virginity test” doctor is acquitted in Egypt while women’s football gathers momentum; condoms may literally save South Africa; a rosier picture of sex work in Thailand; journalist threatened for exposing female genital cutting in Liberia; and a steamy drama series in Kenya tackles sexual taboos.
There are so many courageous women around the world engaged in peace work at all levels, including protest. But they are often met with violence, rape, or torture.
A huge generation is coming of age as a result of high fertility rates in Arab nations and elsewhere. How will this affect women’s rights?
Planned Parenthood is touring the country in a hot pink bus to rally support, a march for women’s equality in Egypt turns sexually violent, and men in Texas don’t want to play politics with forcing ultrasounds. Except that is exactly what they are doing.
Rather than “where are the women,” we might ask: Why does much of U.S. public discourse frame Egypt’s revolution through Islamophobia and why have corporate media focused mostly on men?
Maine’s newest anti-choice legislation; Mike Huckabee wants you to forget you don’t have a job or health care and that the value of your house is plummeting – because the most important issue we face is legal abortion for women; CBS News correspondent is sexually assaulted while covering Egyptian protetsts and more.
Egypt is celebrating new freedom and pending Democracy. We in America, on the other hand, must deal with Republican obstructionism against our own freedom of choice.
