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Friday, November 13, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Gender
POLITICS-BURMA: Conflict Pushes Karen Women to be Village Chiefs
In military-ruled Burma’s Karen state, tradition and a male-dominated social order have long guaranteed men the role of village chiefs. But this order is crumbling in the country’s eastern region, giving rise to the new phenomenon of women village chiefs.
Q&A: “We Can’t Continue to Pay Lip Service to Gender Equality”
During consultations of the 45-member U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) here, one of the lingering issues that is surfacing is the success - or failure - in the implementation of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action on gender empowerment.MEXICO: Ecological Smoke from Fuel Efficient Stoves
The lives of many rural women and children in Mexico are changing, and the country's high deforestation rate could be reduced, as inexpensive fuel-efficient cook stoves are being distributed by non-governmental organisations with corporate and government support.
JORDAN: Where Iraqi Women Are Also Fathers
Back in Najaf, Iraq, Khayzaran and her family lived in a well-kept house. They had two cars and a small orchard. Her children, two girls and three boys, attended school and came home to modest feasts.
Q&A: ‘Our Movement is Unique for Women from Burma’
Women who fled conflict and oppression in military-ruled Burma have become a potent political force during their lives in exile, says a leading women’s rights activist from the South-east Asian country’s Shan ethnic minority.SRI LANKA: Halt in EU Tariff Scheme Gives Workers the Jitters
For garment factory workers like Anoma Piyaseele, the European Union’s (EU) concessionary tariffs for imports from Sri Lanka meant little more than a vague term for policymakers to deal with – until news came that they would be suspended soon.
PAKISTAN: Smoke-free Stoves A Godsend for Village Women
Forty-something and unlettered, Sona Siddiqi never imagined she would become the most sought-after woman in her village of Ramzan Katiar.RIGHTS-BURMA: For Sex Workers, A Life of Risks
When Aye Aye (not her real name) leaves her youngest son at home each night, she tells him that she has to work selling snacks. But what Aye actually sells is sex so that her 12-year-old son, a Grade 7 student, can finish his education.RIGHTS: Women Still Battling Gender Bigotry Worldwide
Nearly 62 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaimed "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights," a few of the world's discriminatory laws against women are being progressively repealed in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America.
PAKISTAN: Transgenders Make Their Presence Felt at the Workplace
Dressed in women’s attire and a nose-pin errantly positioned on one nostril, 38-year-old Shahzadi adjusts her ‘dupatta’ (scarf) over her head as she enters the office of Cantonment Board Clifton, a provincial government bureau that recently hired her.THAILAND: Temple Grounds A Venue for Curbing Domestic Violence
When the conversation here shifts to domestic violence, even the way a woman got pregnant becomes an issue of concern, particularly if the price for bearing a child means getting infected with HIV.
EAST AFRICA: Improving Local Access to Family Planning
A severe shortage of highly-trained medical personnel is one of the many challenges to providing health care at a local level across Africa. Task shifting - permitting less-specialised people to carry out certain functions - is one proposal to over come this, but it is meeting resistance.
AFRICA: “Women’s Decade”: Greater Attention to Implementation
Fears that the impact of the global economic meltdown would affect funding to various development areas have been rife. Already, several governments have cut their budgets for HIV and AIDS and bilateral and multilateral funding partners have done likewise.
THAILAND: Women with HIV Break Silence, Confront Stigma
Veena Panudej makes a living in the night like so many other women and men in this quiet eastern corner of Thailand. They work under the light of the stars in rubber estates spread beyond this city close to the Cambodian border.POLITICS-PHILIPPINES: Rice and Condom on the Election Agenda
Rice and condoms do not usually land on the same list of household basics in the predominantly Catholic Philippines, but extremely poor couples here with huge families would choose rice if given the two options.
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Women Traders Demand Support
Support for regional trade is one of the cornerstones of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But the focus has been on large scale trade in goods and services, ignoring one important group trading throughout the region.RIGHTS: U.N. to Focus on Global Epidemic of Gender Abuse
The statistics relating to the world's socially and economically-distressed women are staggering.
POLITICS-MAURITIUS: Plea for More Female Candidates
Sandhya Boygah considers herself a victim of male-dominated politics. In 2007, she was asked by her party, the ruling Labour Party, to step aside and allow a man to stand for the elected post she sought.
RIGHTS: Iran Rebuffs U.N. Criticism, Denies Abuses
International human rights groups and Iranian activists say Iran's decision to reject major recommendations made by the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday is disappointing and signals that Tehran has no intention of easing the crackdown on dissent in the country.
BRAZIL: Carnival, a Complex Annual Revolution for Women, Gays
Fátima Oliveira, one of Brazil's few black women doctors, always goes to "the best carnival," in Sabará, a city of 130,000 people in the state of Minas Gerais, where "men dress up as women" at a celebration that is "very informal, very local, with few tourists."PAKISTAN: Backlash Rises against Bill on Sexual Harassment
As a bill against sexual harassment of women inches closer to becoming a law in Pakistan, it is drawing fire from male politicians and conservative groups that have called it anywhere from un-Islamic to one that would lead women astray.« 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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