Women's Health

Kenya’s Population Growth Decreases as More Women Embrace Modern Family Planning

By Wilson Odhiambo
According to a family planning brief, more than 370 million women in middle and low-income countries were finally embracing modern contraception to help curb unintended pregnancies. This statistic suggests that one in every three women from middle and low-income countries use contraceptives today.

Social Activists Demand Real Equality for Chilean Women

By Orlando Milesi
Women social activists recognize that gender equality is gaining ground in Chile, but maintain that there is still a long way to go to turn into reality the promises to "level the playing field" between women and men, while they highlight the importance of addressing the issue of care work.

Taking Stock of Two Decades of Trailblazing Protocol on Women’s Rights in Africa

By Joyce Chimbi
It promised to be the most defining, groundbreaking, and transformative protocol on African women’s rights. Specific in its approach, broad in its reach, and unique in its all-encompassing nature, covering issues such as HIV/Aids, widow inheritance and property disinheritance in a most unprecedented manner.

“No” to Sex Education Fuels Early Pregnancies in Central America

By Edgardo Ayala
Pregnancies among girls and adolescents continue unabated in Central America, where legislation to prevent them, when it exists, is a dead letter, and governments are influenced by conservative sectors opposed to sex education in schools.

A Shot in the Arm Can Prevent Cervical Cancer

By Zofeen Ebrahim
“Listen to your body, and if there is anything strange happening, do not ignore it,” is the advice of 57-year-old Afshan Bhurgri, a cancer survivor.

Lawmakers’ Vital Roles in Ensuring Dignity for Aging Populations

By Cecilia Russell
Countries with falling population growth face twin dilemmas: Ensuring their aging population live healthy and fulfilling lives and removing barriers to parenthood. This was the focus of a recent workshop in Thailand reviewing the ICPD30 process and preparation for the Summit for the Future slated for next year (2024).

Wood Smoke Continues to Make Women Sick in El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
Using a few dry sticks as fuel, Margarita Ramos of El Salvador lit the fire in her wood stove and set about frying two fish, occasionally fanning the flame, aware that the smoke she inhaled could affect her health.

Medical Abortion Expands Women’s Rights in Argentina

By Daniel Gutman
Viviana Mazur is a doctor at the Santojanni Hospital in Mataderos, a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires. She has witnessed the advances in women's rights in Argentina, where until 2020 abortion was only allowed on two grounds, while it is now available on demand up to 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Menstrual Health and Hygiene Is Unaffordable for Poor Girls and Women in Latin America

By Humberto Márquez
Menstrual hygiene management is elusive for millions of poor women and girls in Latin America, who suffer because their living conditions make it difficult or impossible for them to access resources and services that could make menstruation a simple normal part of life.

Population Denialism is Reminiscent of Climate Denialism

By Kirsten Stade
A new study estimates that global heating will push billions of people outside the comfortable range of temperature and weather in which we have evolved.

Parliamentarians Ask G7 Hiroshima Summit to Support Human Security and Vulnerable Communities

By Cecilia Russell
Parliamentarians from more than 30 countries agreed to send a strong message to the G7 Hiroshima Summit in Japan later this year, focusing on human security and support of vulnerable communities, including women, girls, youth, aging people, migrants, and indigenous people, among others.

Our Wonderful Differences Enriches Societies

By Saima Wazed and Zain Bari Rizvi
When is too much Autism awareness still not enough? This thought recurs every April as we near World Autism Day on April 2, and parents reach out to me after reading enthusiastic and well-meaning news and journal articles – which are actually harmful and hurtful.

Beatriz v. El Salvador Case Could Set Precedent on Abortion in Latin America

By Edgardo Ayala
An open hearing in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is raising hopes that this country and other Latin American nations might overturn or at least mitigate the severe laws that criminalize abortion.

Health – It’s Time for Women to Lead the Sector

By Roopa Dhatt and Ebere Okereke
Women health workers are more than two thirds of the health workforce and represent 90% of the world’s frontline health workers, yet hold less than a quarter of senior leadership roles - a situation which is unfair and a significant risk for global health security.

Solar Powered Freezer Improving Immunization Coverage in Hard-to-Reach Rural Villages

By Joyce Chimbi
Up until 2019, nurses in three health facilities located in the semi-arid south-eastern Kenya region of Makueni County struggled to bring critical health services closer to a hard-to-reach population scattered across three remote, far-flung villages.

Breaking Barriers: Why Free & Public Education Should be Every Woman’s Right

By Dana Abed
This month, government and civil society organization representatives gathered in New York for the United Nations’ 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to discuss technology as a tool to facilitate access to education for women and girls.

Breaking the Link between ‘Polycrisis’ and Poverty

By Vidya Diwakar
This year marks the halfway point— eight years in and eight years out— of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty and reduce inequalities.

International Women’s Day, 2023
Women and Girls: Innovation and Higher Education

By Giulia Ribeiro Barao and Bosen Lily Liu
In September 2020, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action for women’s rights celebrated its 25th anniversary. It was, however, a bittersweet commemoration, mixing joy for the progress in gender equality achieved since 1995, and the stark realization about the multidimensional gaps awaiting tackling and the new divides brought by the social consequences of COVID-19.

International Women’s Day, 2023
Digital Inclusion is Vital for Strengthening Women’s Rights in Africa

By S. Mona Sinha
The internet has a pivotal role to play in empowering women and girls across Africa, but preexisting forms of gender discrimination and marginalization are underpinning a widening digital gender divide.

International Women’s Day, 2023
First Ever Women Council of Elders Making In-roads in North Eastern Kenya

By Joyce Chimbi
Low literacy levels, a high prevalence of outlawed Female Genital Mutilation, early marriages, forced marriages, low contraceptive usage, multiple births, as well as high maternal, infant and child deaths, define the life of a woman in Kenya’s vast North Eastern region.

International Women’s Day, 2023
The Power of Technology—& the Increased Exclusion, Inequalities & Gender Discrimination

By Achim Steiner
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tremendous power of technology and innovation has become clear to the world. However, it has also increased exclusion, discrimination, and inequalities -- especially for women and girls.
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