“We have included the Arab Spring in this prize, but we have put it in a particular context. Namely, if one fails to include the women in the revolution and the new democracies, there will be no democracy.” Thorbjoern Jagland, chair of the Nobel Prize Committee
Islamic militancy in Pakistan appears to be mobilising women suicide bombers as part of its religious trope. This trend unsettles the conservative divide between the public and private roles of women in traditional societies, and also attracts an anthropological defense of Islamist women's agency.
It is time to challenge the conventional explanations of gender based violence. Patricia Daley argues that it can only be understood in association with contemporary geo-economic forces and the Central African experience of modernity
Les agricultrices du Burkina Faso sont en train de s’organiser pour dénoncer les politiques agricoles erronées adoptées par l’Etat. Définies davantage pour répondre aux impératifs des grandes puissances mondiales, ces politiques ont omis de prendre en considération les besoins et les aspirations d
Women farmers in Burkina Faso are organising to denounce the misguided agricultural policies adopted by the state. Responding overwhelmingly to international demands, such policies have failed to take into account the need, knowledge and aspirations of those who feed the population, and hunger is
The policy of dispersing migrants in Britain has led to large numbers of Somali refugees in Smethwick, a town notorious for anti-migrant mobilising in the 1960s. In the first of her Letters from Smethwick, Jenny Morgan describes a meeting with charismatic Somali community organiser Hodan Rashid.
Is gender equality advocates' emphasis on women as agents of change helping to legitimize a neo-liberal vision of government, and working against women's engagement in promoting food security and peacebuilding, asks Rob Jenkins
"I was 12 years old.....my anguish ended when my family left Okinawa after this man had paid me $5 during our last encounter for my ‘services’," Betsy Kawamura
Security is impossible without people’s freedom to organize and defend their rights, a cornerstone of the exercise of citizenship. History gives us ample evidence of this, say Lydia Alpizar and Masum Momaya
From May 23-25, women activists and scholars from around the world will gather in Quebec at the invitation of the Nobel Women’s Initiative to discuss 'Women Forging a New Security: Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict'. Jenny Morgan and Jessica Horn will be reporting for openDemocracy 50.50
The women party activists who applied for nominations to stand in next week's local elections in Sri Lanka found themselves blocked by a system of entrenched patron-client relationships. As one of them said, " for how long will the men decide where the wells should be, even though it is the women
Based on her fieldwork research on Filipinas in the sex industries in Japan, the author examines the traps and contradictions government regulators encounter in their attempt to control trafficking
