When Ayesha was 13, she fell in love with a man who promised to marry her and nurture her singing aspirations, but instead turned out to be a sex trafficker. He took her far away from her family and village in Bangladesh to Kolkata (also known as Calcutta), India, where he promptly sold her to [...]
The United Kingdom’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) recently released a report highlighting the complexity—and scarcity—of false rape allegations. The report was issued in response to a 2010 court appeal in which a woman pleaded guilty to falsely retracting true allegations of rape that she had made against her husband, and was then sentenced to eight months imprisonment for [...]
A remarkable and unusual sort of civil disobedience has been triggered in Marivan, a city in the Kurdistan Province of Iran. On April 15, an Iranian court in the city forced a male convict to wear traditional Kurdish women’s clothes in public, perceiving it as a humiliating punishment. Kurdish feminists of the Marivan Women’s Community [...]
It wasn’t bad enough that a 23-year-old woman was gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi last December and later died of her injuries. That alone, besides setting off worldwide protests, seemed to open a box of secrets about how women are too-often treated in India. But now, the news out of India is even [...]
New Zealand became the 13th country to legalize same-sex marriage on Wednesday, when members of parliament voted 77 to 44 to amend the 1955 Marriage Act. After the votes were read, loud cheering and applause broke out in the room. Then, something even more heartwarming happened: The lawmakers spontaneously started to sing! The song, “Pokarekare Ana,” [...]
Former Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher was the first and only woman premier Britain has ever had. But despite being a leader in a crucial time for women’s rights internationally, the Iron Lady never considered herself a feminist. She said to her adviser, The feminists hate me, don’t they? And I don’t blame them. For I hate feminism. [...]
Rafael Correa, the popular and newly re-elected leftist president of Ecuador, is driving a “citizens’ revolution” committed to progressive principles and economic growth. This week he voiced unconditional support for contraception, including emergency contraception. This unprecedented support for access to sexual and reproductive health care is particularly welcome, as women’s rights advocates were beginning to [...]
Women are now allowed to ride bikes in Saudi Arabia —with a few tiny restrictions. They’re only allowed to bike if they are: in a restricted area, with a man, have covered their bodies completely under the rules of Islamic abaya, biking strictly for entertainment (not transportation) and staying away from places where groups of [...]
The 17-page document produced by the latest global gathering here on women’s rights leaves open what appears to be a long-term fight between conservative and progressive factions within the Commission on the Status of Women. “It’s turning into a battle ground over women’s rights and that was not the original intention of the Commission on [...]
A few weeks ago, there were news reports that six Spanish tourists were raped and robbed in the famous Mexican city of Acapulco. The Spanish women were residents of Mexico and decided to take a vacation along with another Mexican woman and six men. The Mexican woman was not raped, and the six men were [...]
