Reaction inside Russia and further afield to the imprisonment of 3 members of a punk rock girl band after their performance in one of Moscow’s cathedrals has been by turns outraged and baffled. The girls are still on remand, awaiting trial for hooliganism (maximum sentence 7 years). One can only h
Gendered approaches to migration often emphasise the experiences of female migrants, at times privileging their assumed vulnerability, as a necessary counter to the ‘privileged’ status of men within contexts of migration and beyond. To whom is this approach beneficial?
In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood have offered to circumcise women for a nominal fee as part of their community services, a move that threatens to reverse decades of local struggle against the harmful practice argues Mariz Tadros
Why and how did verse 4:34, and not other verses in the Qur’an, become the foundation for the legal construction of marriage? Why are qiwamah and wilayah still the basis of gender relations in the imagination of modern-day jurists and Muslims who resist and denounce equality in marriage as alien t
Where the line will be drawn between childrens' rights and parents’ rights will always be heavily contested. Issues from the veiling of young girls to the manufacture of padded bras for seven year olds, may best be dealt with by upholding the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
If you are invisible as a producer in the GDP, you are invisible in the distribution of benefits in the economic framework of the national budget. As feminists we must embrace an ecological model if we are to transform economic power, and the market and commodification must be seen as the servants
The social cohesion and inclusion debate does not even begin to touch the lives of those invisible migrants who toil all hours of the day working out ways of pleasing their employers / traffickers / husbands. It is the existence of this population, more than any other, which exposes the myth of de
Women’s human rights discourse and movements have become entangled within a culture-versus-rights dualism. Yakin Ertürk argues that this is a false dualism which serves both private patriarchy and public patriarchy of neo-liberal globalisation
The argument is being made that “food sovereignty” is an organising principle so demonstrably strong that it has the potential to transform economic power. Can we really invest in it as the ecological principle to take us into the 21st century? Jenny Allsopp reports from the AWID Forum 2012
From the student protests in Chile, to the protests of the 'Arab spring' in the MENA region, the debate among young feminists about how to reclaim public space reveals tensions between an individualist model of autonomy and a collectivist reclamation of public space. Jenny Allsopp reports on day t
How can we empower women to participate in existing economic structures and also transform them? We need a model of economic power and citizenship that is not simply about sustaining capital or growth, but sustaining and celebrating life itself. Jenny Allsopp reports directly from the AWID Forum 2
How far can the flourishing "participatory state feminism" in Brazil expand into the state apparatus in order to counter the absence of women in decision making positions and redefine women's place in society?