Gender

U.N. Clears Final Hurdle to Create New Gender Entity

By Thalif Deen
After several rounds of intense eleventh-hour negotiations last week over the structure and composition of a proposed new "gender entity" and its executive board, the United Nations has cleared the last of the remaining political hurdles towards the creation of a separate and distinct U.N. agency for women.

Gender Equality Seen as Goal, Not Yet Realised – Poll

By Jim Lobe
While the goal of gender equality is embraced by almost all countries, the perception that men are - and should be - favoured in employment and education remains widespread, especially in poor nations or predominantly Muslim countries, according to a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project (GAP).

IOC Joins U.N. to Level the Playing Field for Women

By Beatrice Paez
The sight of girls and boys playing cricket and skateboarding together in the streets of Afghanistan and Iraq may be unexpected to some, but it is a homegrown effort aimed at fostering gender equality.
Nancy Caicho and Erika Almagro, left, at end-of-year ceremony at CENIT. Credit: Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS

ECUADOR: Like Mother, Like Multi-Tasking Daughter

By Gonzalo Ortiz
In Ecuador, girl workers conform to universal statistics: they drop out of school less than boy workers, because they learn from an early age to juggle earning an income with looking after younger siblings and getting an education.

Jobs Pact Spotlights Women’s Role in Economic Recovery

By IPS Correspondents
One year after the creation of the Global Jobs Pact, members of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are considering the measure's impact - and what comes next.
Forced to join the Tamil Tigers to protect her family, Ranjani, 32, yearns for better days ahead. Credit: IPS Correspondents/IPS

SRI LANKA: A Former Woman Combatant Struggles to Pick Up the Pieces

By IPS Correspondents
As a young woman, Ranjani (not her real name), a 32-year-old Tamil from Sri Lanka's eastern Batticaloa district, only had bright hopes for tomorrow.

Domestic Workers Begin to See Some Rights

By Claudia Ciobanu
Twenty-seven-year-old Maria Puscariu is about to complete her MA in philosophy at a Belgian university. The Moldovan has been working for over five years as a domestic worker in Western Europe in order to support herself and finance her studies.
South Korean language professor Kwon Hye Yang is proud of what she has achieved as a woman. Credit: Kwon Hye Yang/IPS

Despite Gains, South Korean Women Still Struggle for Equality

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
Forty-six year-old language professor Kwon Hye Yang views her life as a typical example of the growing confidence of modern women in her home country, South Korea.

ZAMBIA: Need to Mainstream Gender Equality into all Policies

By Kelvin Kachingwe
Despite the adoption almost a decade ago of a national gender policy that aims to ensure fair participation of men and women in the development process, most of the Zambian government’s policies still remain gender blind, say civil society and women's rights associations.

SPAIN: Women Entrepreneurs Pledge Support for African Counterparts

By Tito Drago
Senegalese businesswoman Marie Thiaré makes her business cards by hand, because she has no way to have them printed -- a sharp contrast with the situation faced by women entrepreneurs in Europe, where it is easy to order business cards, and most people even have their own home computer and printer.
Margot Wallström Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

Q&A: “There Is Almost Total Impunity for Rape in Congo”

By Jennie Lorentsson
Sexual violence against women has become part of modern warfare around the world. In some countries, women cannot even go out to draw water without fear of being attacked and raped.
More and more women are working in construction in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

Brick by Brick, Women Builders Make Their Way in Brazil

By Fabiana Frayssinet
It looks like any other construction site: wheelbarrows full of bricks, boards and steel bars trundling back and forth to a soundtrack of hammering, sawing and drilling. But there is a difference: some of the construction workers underneath the hard hats are women.

EDUCATION: EnGendering Awareness in Trainee Teachers

By Dalia Acosta
The teacher seats the most attentive girls in the front row and the troublesome boys at the back of the classroom. He punishes the liveliest pupil and lets the withdrawn one be. Dark-skinned boys sit with dark-skinned girls, boys play with boys and girls with girls.

Wrangling Continues over New U.N. Women’s Entity

By Beatrice Paez
Ahead of a week-long meeting on gender equality starting Monday at the United Nations, women's rights activists have been pushing for concrete progress on a pledge made last September by the world body to create a new, better-funded U.N. agency for women.

LITERATURE-CUBA: ‘Forbidden Stories’ by Sonia Rivera-Valdes

By Dalia Acosta
Lázara wakes up every morning in her home in New York, has a cup of coffee and, with the same passion with which she takes a stand for or against every cause, she turns on the radio, hoping to hear the news that she has been waiting for most of her life: the demise of former Cuban president Fidel Castro.
With baby strapped to her back, scrap metal collector Judith Sibanda prepares to leave for "work". Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

DEVELOPMENT-ZIMBABWE: Selling Scrap Metal to Scrape By

By Ignatius Banda
Gugulethu Mkhwananzi is another one of the many unemployed women who have become features of everyday life in Bulawayo’s poor working class suburbs as she moves from house to house, looking for "rusted gold", or scrap metal.
(Right to left) Felix Salvador, Mackenzie Baris, Christian Vasquez and Socorro Garcia came from Washington to highlight excluded workers' plight. Credit: Bankole Thompson/IPS

“Excluded Workers” Move from Shadows to Negotiating Table

By Bankole Thompson
The U.S. labour movement needs to be reorganised from the bottom up to include domestic workers, day labourers, restaurant workers, taxi drivers, farm workers, incarcerated workers, guest workers and those in the "right to work" states.

DEVELOPMENT: Women Adamant for Change as the Maldives Struggles to Reform

By Feizal Samath
Authorities in the Maldives view women’s issues as a core human rights problem and are keen to tackle them head on, but cultural and religious issues often stand in the way.

LATIN AMERICA: Majority Favours Legalising Abortion – But Not for All Cases

By Daniela Estrada
The majority of people surveyed in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Nicaragua are in favour of legalising therapeutic abortion, but not all forms of elective abortion, according to a study by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO).

Female Presence Growing in Brazil’s Gangs

By Fabiana Frayssinet
They are no longer simply the girlfriends of gang members. Women have increasingly become members themselves of Brazil's youth gangs over the past decade -- though they have yet to reach the leadership positions of their male colleagues.
Lydia Thembo is one of many women who have no clue about the writing of a new constitution and how they can contribute. Credit: Ignatius Banda

ZIMBABWE: A Chance for Women’s Voices to be Heard?

By Ignatius Banda
As Zimbabwe embarks on writing a new constitution with the countrywide collection of public submissions starting on Jun. 23, not all women are upbeat about the process.
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