In the wake of the contested Iranian election, Ahmadinejad's regime is seeking to silence political dissent through coercion and arbitrary imprisonment - where men as well as women are vulnerable to rape and torture. Women's organizations have actively campaigned against such violence, but analysi
Zainab Magdy describes her journey as a young feminist writer in a storytelling workshop in Cairo. “Many people ask me about these storytelling evenings and I tell them very seriously about "patriarchal society" which is killing the person inside each and every man and woman slowly. They don’t usu
He liked playing with the Jack in a Box more than any other toy. It had been his favourite since childhood, and he continued to have the same passion towards it until he approached his thirties.
The number of love marriages might have increased in India's cities but the reality remains different in many of its villages
Alice Welbourn charts her own personal experiences of what she learnt about HIV, about herself and about others during her early years of living with her diagnosis. She reflects on how traumatic experiences can also be ones of growth and self-knowledge – and how HIV has much to teach us all.
In the UK the number of women living with HIV has been steadily growing since the beginning of the epidemic. Newly diagnosed women were only twenty percent of the new infections in 1996, but over forty percent in 2007. There are now more than 25,000 HIV positive women in the UK, but while governme
The hinterland of acknowledging and dealing with the links between gender violence and HIV/AIDS is mostly unexplored and unmapped. Neither the British government's strategy on gender violence nor that on sexual health deal with the link between gender violence and HIV/Aids. This serious policy gap
What prevents politicians from discussing national security issues and violence against women in the same sentence? Why do politicians continue to treat gender as a stand-alone issue?
Islam is more tolerant of male-female relationships than some would have us believe. The issue of ‘honour killing’ is not one of dishonour and immorality, but of disobedience and control. At the end of the day, one has to say what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong. Honour killings are
There is a growing wave of unrest among young women at the failure of governments to recognise and implement reproductive rights as a human right for all.
Joining the Reclaim the Night march in London last weekend, Vanessa Alexander asks how can we advocate for the adoption of UN resolutions for peace and security for women in war time, when women world wide do not yet experience peace and security in peace time?
The shift of funding from central to local authorities has led to the loss of essential services and misinterpretation of Equality legislation is further discriminating against women fleeing violence.
