Despite parallels with Iran, Haideh Moghissi notes more hopeful prospects for the future of women’s rights and democracy in post-Arab spring regimes
The recent cultural wars between the Orthodox Jewish Hasidim in Brooklyn, New York and their neighbours are really about women’s appropriate role in their families and communities, as well as youthful rebellion among the Hasidim,says Ruth Rosen
The narrative of splits in Protestantism which is based on convenient binaries, with African and Asian churches emerging as the conservatives, and the US and Europe as the liberals, fails to capture the complexity of what is going on at ground level, says Rahila Gupta
“Violence against women and girls is not in anyone's culture, tradition or religion. This is about power, inequality, a lack of political will and courage to work towards a better world," says Shareen Gokal. Will those with the political will to end violence against women and girls prevail in the
In the final days of the UN Commission on the Status of Women summit on eliminating violence against women and girls, the Vatican, in alliance with Iran, Syria and Russia, is working to roll-back agreement on women’s rights. No other religious institution or special interest group has this level o
On February 12, 2013, women of the Middle East, in the region and in the Diaspora, officially and publicly re-appropriated shame and honour. Suddenly, they are wearing the experience of surviving sexual terrorism and violence as a badge of honour, using their tragedy to fight for an end to violenc
Today sees the launch of a new Global Campaign to Stop Stoning. Rochelle Terman examines the history of this gendered practice of violence against women. With stoning, as with all forms of culturally-justified violence against women, it is very difficult to see where culture ends and politics begi
The engagement of women as suicide bombers in the Taliban insurgency manifests fresh directions in the approaches and ideologies of those who are behind it. Counterinsurgency measures need to pay attention to the factors that drive women and girls to join the Taliban as suicide bombers, says Masso
The 57th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women opens today with member States - and thousands of women's rights advocates and organisations - set to debate how to end violence against women. Valeria Costa-Kostritsky reports from New York
Recent controversies over women's sexuality, abortion and reproductive rights in Turkey reveal unacceptable violations of women’s sexual privacy by male politicians, says Sertaç Sehlikoglu
Dhaka has been witnessing a youth uprising against Islamism in Bangladesh. The UK is also witnessing daily events in solidarity with demands to end to Islamist politics, and punishment for those responsible for war crimes committed during the Bangladesh War of Liberation in 1971
Instead of sanitizing the Muslim right as a way of fighting racism in the North, Meredith Tax argues that the left should develop a strategy of solidarity with democrats, trade unionists, religious and sexual minorities, and feminists struggling in the Global South against both neo-liberalism and
