In the days ahead a struggle looms over women's human rights and gender justice in Egypt. Will the Muslim Sisters rise to the occasion?
It’s not an individualist but a collective feminism that we need, one that measures success not by how high a woman can climb, but by the condition in which most women remain, says Shereen Essof
More than a hundred women's seminaries have been set up by the Iranian state since the 1979 revolution. Yet the number of women candidates standing in next month's parliamentary election is the lowest for twenty years, Mirjam Künkler explores why this may be so
The Egyptian elections delivered a parliament that has one of the lowest rates of female representation in the world. Yet this is the parliament that expresses the political will of the people of Egypt. It may also be one that ignores the social realities of gender and of women’s political partici
"We are constantly aware of our gender and of being watched and judged because of it, so we end up "performing". But in taking to the streets there are no performative acts and there is no audience. Now I feel that there is no going back, After all, there is no text to follow, and no director. It
Saudi Arabia’s response to the ‘Arab spring’ has been an attempt to co-opt movements for change in a bid to maintain the status quo. Madawi Al-Rasheed talks to Deniz Kandiyoti about the contradictions of a ruling elite that promotes a conservative Islam, that threatens women’s existing rights abro
With only nine women senators representing 54 million women in Nigeria, international support should focus on the broader political cycle and the numerous obstacles to women's political participation, rather than on the election moment, says Lisa Denney
Sri Lanka's Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission has no mention of gender in its mandate and no dedicated expertise related to women; it has just one female commissioner out of eight. For Tamil women, the LLRC simply reaffirms bad old habits.
The Fawcett Society believes that the UK coalition government has broken the law in not assessing the impact of budget cuts on women. Ray Filar marched with them last weekend to hear their reasons for protesting
As increasing numbers of articulate women use Islamic sources to defend varying ways of life, they are challenging western feminist models, at least in name and quite often in substance, making detailed study of the full range of female Islamic leadership crucial, say Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmb
The UK government says it wants to end abuse against women and girls but at the same time it is cutting vital funding to organisations in the front line. In London last weekend, the FEM 11 conference called for a new political strategy and for better funding of women’s services. Ray Filar was ther
The majority of voters in the South Kordofan election in May 2011 were women. In the violence that ensued, women activists who had mobilised the women to vote were targeted, their offices destroyed and all record of their work erased from history. Zeinab Blandia told Amel Gorani their story
