Expropriation of their land by the Israeli state is an ongoing injustice for its resident Palestinians. Cynthia Cockburn recalls the 'politics of land' in an alliance forged between Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian women between 1983 and 2008.
A Gallup poll finding that women in Rwanda and Bangladesh felt safer on the streets than women in the UK and Sweden needs to be treated with great caution. There is no correlation between 'feeling safe' and the objective reality of whether women are actually safe or not, says Rahila Gupta.
French anti-veil laws are steeped in racism and have opened the door to abuse against Muslims, argues Valeria Costa-Kostritsky .
President Morsi’s ill-advised and badly executed attempts to concentrate power in his hands will exact high moral, economic and psychological costs while the US administration looks on, says Hania Sholkamy.
As Tahrir Square fills up again and the Arab uprisings continue, the power of words and the battle over who owns them is captured by six middle eastern playwrights whose work Arab Nights is being performed in London
President Morsi’s latest constitutional declaration, even if it is cloaked in democratic and revolutionary rhetoric, presages a slide to authoritarianism, argues Mariz Tadros.
Religion is back in public space, and the thesis that modernization means the privatization of religion has been seriously questioned. Some religious and feminist dogmas need re-examination. What do ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ or ‘feminist’ mean in today’s contexts?
In a response to openDemocracy's 'Citizenship after Orientalism' series, Rahila Gupta says there's no need to ditch values such as secularism and modernity - just point out that they’re not associated wholly with the West. This, she argues, would be the appropriate response to orientalism
The actions of Code Pink may be a natural consequence of the endorsement by many on the left and amongst feminists of multicultural values. Indeed, it may also, and more insidiously, be a consequence of some recent initiatives on the part of the UN, says Alison Assiter.
Meredith Tax responds to Rebecca Johnson and Pam Bailey: a movement must ensure that its short term tactical aims and alliances do not contradict its long term strategy.
The Tunisian experience with state feminism is a model to draw lessons from, especially for the Arab-Muslim countries whether governed by liberal autocratic regimes or Islamist regimes: whenever the regime talks in favour of women, read between the lines.
Alarm about the declining ratio of girls to boys in the Indian population, evidence of a particularly lethal form of gender discrimination, has overshadowed the more positive trend that is emerging in neighbouring Bangladesh where the ‘aversion to daughters’ seems to be weakening
