Women's Health

The Open and Rocky Road Post-2015

By George Gao
What values does a Yemeni journalist who fuelled the Arab Spring hold in common with a former principal of the U.S. National Security Council? And how in turn will they see eye to eye with a Jordanian queen, or the president of Indonesia?

No Woman Should Die Giving Life

By Blain Biset
Every single day, 452 women in sub-Saharan Africa die from pregnancy-related causes; that’s 18 women every hour.
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Q&A: It’s the Beginning of the End for FGM

By Rousbeh Legatis
Journalists can play a crucial role in helping to shift traditional attitudes within societies where the cruel practice of female genital mutilation is an everyday reality.

Senegal Seeks to Curb the Baby Boom

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
A 25-year-old mother of five hailing from Senegal’s eastern Tambacounda province believes that contraceptives damage the womb and cause health problems in the long term, such as a rise in blood pressure and chronic headaches.

U.S. Health Worse Than Nearly All Other Industrialised Countries

By Carey L. Biron
U.S. citizens suffer from poorer health than nearly all other industrialised countries, according to the first comprehensive government analysis on the subject, released Wednesday.

Yemeni Women Struggle to Step Forward

By Rebecca Murray
Yemeni women have played an integral role in the protests against ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year regime last year. But despite the country’s upcoming political ‘National Dialogue’ - brokered by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and intended to bring together a cross-section of Yemeni constituencies - females still face a wall of discriminatory laws and practices, and a status quo willing to enforce them.

Paediatricians for a Healthy Environment

By Marcela Valente
A group of Argentine paediatricians has been combining work on environmental protection and child health for more than 10 years. It appears a basic principle to apply, but the task is turning out to be increasingly challenging and complex.
Alvilda Jablonko. Credit: Julia Kallas/IPS

Q&A: Global Ban Another Tool in the Fight Against FGM

By Julia Kallas
For the estimated 140 million girls and women living with the consequences of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), it is already too late. But since a global ban on FGM was passed at the end of last year, activists hope many more will now escape this brutal practice.

Grandmothers Taking the Lead Against Female Genital Mutilation


By Soumaila T. Diarra
In the southern Senegal village of Kael Bessel, female genital mutilation is no longer a taboo subject. Sexagenarian Fatoumata Sabaly speaks freely about female circumcision and girls' rights with her friends.

Anti-Prostitution Campaign Picks Up Speed

By Sujoy Dhar
In a small dingy room on the edge of a brothel in west Kolkata, capital of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, a 42-year-old former sex worker is trying to eke out a living selling cooked food in her neighbourhood, while tending to her sick husband and a paralysed son.

OP-ED: Women Out Loud

By Michelle Bachelet, Michel Sidibe, and Jennifer Gatsi Mallet
Global efforts to reach the “three zeros” for women and girls - zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths - are gaining momentum. Much of the progress we have seen is underpinned by the work of women living with HIV.

Longer Lives, Lower Incomes for Japanese Women

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
When Hiroko Taguchi retired this past April, at the age of 64, from her job as an insurance sales agent, she joined the rapidly growing ranks of Japan’s aging women who now outnumber their male counterparts.

Violence Against Afghan Women on the Rise

By Kreshma Fakhri
Afghan women are no strangers to gender-based violence. For decades now, violent crimes against women have been heading for epic proportions, as young girls are forced into marriage, wives and daughters are abused, and women are dealt harsh punishments for ‘moral crimes’.
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Q&A: Education Is Where HIV Care Begins

By Julia Kallas
When Shorai Chitongo founded Ray of Hope, a support group for female survivors of domestic violence in 2005, she discovered that three-quarters of the survivors in the group were HIV-positive. [caption id="attachment_114724" align="alignright" width="250"]

There’s Life in the AIDS Ribbon

By Stella Paul
Thirty-year old Swapna Raj of Hyderabad is a woman in a hurry: in time for the International AIDS day Swapna, a HIV positive person on anti-retroviral therapy (ART), has received a contract from the state government to deliver 5,000 red ribbons.

Major New U.S. AIDS Plan Disallows Funding for Family Planning

By Carey L. Biron
At perhaps a critical turning point in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, the U.S. government, the single largest funder in that fight, on Thursday unveiled a major new strategy for pushing towards achieving an “AIDS-free generation”, the stated U.S. goal.

‘Lifestyle Diseases’ Plague Indian Women

By K. S. Harikrishnan
Sreelakshmi, an office executive in a major diagnostic laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of the southern Indian state of Kerala, ends her 11-hour working day to return home at night to a mountain of domestic chores.
Water and sanitation are basic human rights that underpin health, education and livelihoods. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS.

Thinking Outside the Stall on World Toilet Day

By Thalif Deen
When the United Nations commemorates World Toilet Day next week, there will be a lingering question in the minds of activists: how best can water and sanitation be given high priority in the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the U.N.'s post-2015 economic agenda?

How African Men are Changing Traditional Beliefs

By Henry Wasswa
Charles Kayongo of Uganda is a father of two girls aged five and three. And even though age-old traditions among his ethnic group, the Baganda, say a man should have an unlimited number of children and a son as an heir, Kayongo refuses to have more children.

Family Planning Falters Despite Treaty Commitments

By Thalif Deen
Since the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the United Nations has consistently maintained that family planning is a basic human right to be exercised by all - not just the wealthy and otherwise privileged.

Family Planning Skips Millions in Pakistan

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Thirty-year-old Shahida Saleem, who was not educated past the tenth grade, is a mother of two, living with her family in Karachi. Six months ago she suffered a miscarriage and her doctor, concerned about her anaemic condition, advised her to space out her next pregnancy by taking contraceptives.
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