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Friday, November 13, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Gender
MIDEAST: Palestinian Homes on ‘David’s Garden’ Spared for Now
Outside the Bedouin-style protest tent in the heart of this Palestinian neighbourhood, the anger is palpable, but controlled.
RIGHTS: Arab Women Caught Between Extremes
The status of women in a predominantly male-chauvinistic Arab world continues to fluctuate from one extreme to another.
U.S.: Detained Migrant Women Shackled During Childbirth
When Maricopa County sheriff's deputies raided Celia Alejandra Alvarez's workplace and discovered her hiding place, she says they lifted her off her feet and slammed her face into a wall, causing injuries to her jaw and teeth. Later, in detention for having false documents, she says she was not given medical care.BURMA: Amid Threats, Women Dissidents Stick to Political Beliefs
While Aung San Suu Kyi remains the most widely-known woman suppressed for her political views in Burma, the jails in that military-ruled country continue to be filled by lesser-known women dissidents being held on a range of questionable charges.
Q&A: More Women Journalists Doesn’t Mean More Gender Awareness
Young Indian women are taking to journalism in droves, but Ammu Joseph, author of several authoritative books on women in media, believes that these numbers do not necessarily translate into gender awareness.
MIDEAST: Occupation Turns Palestinian Women Into Breadwinners
Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, with its ubiquitous closures, checkpoints, military raids and arrests, has decimated the Palestinian economy in the West Bank and Gaza.RIGHTS: U.N. Women’s Agency Remains Politically Paralysed
A longstanding proposal for the creation of a special U.N. agency for women - officially called a "gender entity" - is apparently moving at the sluggish pace of a paralytic snail.RIGHTS-US: Justice Not Always Blind, Especially to Gender
When Legal Momentum, a U.S. advocacy group that works with all aspects of gender in the legal system, started its National Judicial Education Programme in 1980, gender discrimination was an unacknowledged problem in the country's courtrooms.
MIDEAST: Gap Lingers Between Women’s Political and Legal Rights
Last year, Kuwaitis elected their first female members of Parliament. Yet in countries like Yemen, child marriage remains common and personal status laws still discriminate against women in matters concerning marriage, divorce and child custody.GUATEMALA: Off Track for Millennium Development Goals
Guatemala knows that when it comes time to demonstrate compliance with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of global anti-poverty and development target to be met by 2015, it will make a poor showing.
MIDEAST: Piano Sounds Good in Gaza Too
At 14, Nour plays the piano, and she knows the facts around her. That the average age for marriage is 18, likely to a man found by parents, her place would be within that home, and a woman has on average 6.5 children.
EUROPE: Violence Comes Home
Development does not protect women. The number of women physically and psychologically abused at home is at alarming levels across Europe.
RIGHTS: Saudi Arabia Faulted for Feudal Justice
Against the backdrop of a two-week U.N. meeting on gender empowerment, the London-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has blasted the government of Saudi Arabia for its feudal system of justice where women continue to be victimised because of their gender.
RIGHTS-US: “He” the People?
Despite having equality on paper, women continue to be shut out of most leadership positions in the United States, and some experts say that the persistence of language in which male is the default gender is an overlooked factor.
CHILE: First Woman President Scores Points on Gender Front
When Chile elected Michelle Bachelet as its first woman president in 2005, thousands of women celebrated the historic victory as their own personal triumph, proudly marching in the streets wearing mock presidential sashes. Today, men and women both recognise the concrete and symbolic progress achieved in gender issues under her administration.
BOLIVIA: Cash for Checkups to Slash Maternal Deaths
A social programme in Bolivia that prevents the deaths of two mothers a day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth is making headway despite administrative difficulties, and has the potential to cut the alarmingly high maternal mortality rate in this country by up to 80 percent in just five years.PAKISTAN: Emergency Contraception More Popular, But Myths Abound
The first time he and his wife had an ‘accident’, 40-year-old Kamran Rehman worried that they may have inadvertently paved the way for child number three. A chemist he consulted, however, recommended that his wife try the emergency contraceptive pill (ECP).
RIGHTS: Rise and Fall of Gender Empowerment
The 45-member Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), presiding over one of the largest gatherings of women at the United Nations, listened Monday to dozens of speakers spelling out the successes and failures of gender empowerment worldwide.U.S.: Healthcare Should Include Abortion Access, Women Say
Last fall, the push to reform healthcare in the United States was all but hijacked by one of the country's most passionate recurring cultural debates.
ZIMBABWE: Informal Sector Lures University Graduates
From the rickety old buses that miraculously make long cross-border journeys to the frustrating red tape at the border post, from fending off sexual advances from bus crews and customs officials to losing goods worth thousands of dollars, 28-year-old Irene Moyo has seen it all.
RIGHTS: Women More Educated, Not More Equal
When it comes to female education rates, progress has been made around the world, and in many countries girls and young women have outnumbered and outperformed boys and men at all levels of schooling for decades. Nevertheless, these advances have yet to translate into greater equity in employment, politics and social relations.« Previous Page — Next Page »
Women make up half the world's population, but don't nearly share half of the world's wealth, well-being and opportunity. Two-thirds of the world poor are women, disproportionally exposing women to precarious living conditions, disease and unmitigated natural disasters. The media, meanwhile, remains a male-dominated sector in much of the world, contributing to women's voices lacking a crucial amplifier to put their concerns on political agendas and unleash the development potential of their ingenuity. Rather than then stereotypical victims of local and global forces, women are also organizer, innovators, conservators and community builders. These are some of their stories.
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