SOUTHERN AFRICA: "Women Can Be More Than Small-Scale Farmers"

"Government must lead in breaking down the stereotypes of women as tuck-shop owners, candle-makers, peasant farmers, teachers and nurses and create the reality in which they become hoteliers, large-scale commercial farmers, miners and proprietors of retail chains."

ZIMBABWE: Women’s Rights Activists Lobby to ‘Engender’ Constitution

Zimbabwe’s latest constitutional reform process has generated strong interest among activists in strengthening protection for women's rights. The early signs are that the drafting of a new constitution will not prioritise correcting legal, social and economic discrimination against women.

RIGHTS-SOUTH AFRICA: Women Want Land to Call Their Own

In 1956, twenty thousand women marched to parliament to protest discriminatory pass laws. The march, commemorated as Women’s Day in South Africa on Aug. 9 each year, has become iconic of women’s quest for equality.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Women in Pursuit of Knowledge

While Africa is still far from having adequate capacity for scientific innovation, women are more and more present in the field of research for the continent's sustainable development.

RIGHTS: Outspoken Activists Defend Africa’s Sexual Diversity

The second World Outgames, held in the Danish capital, offered up a veritable smorgasbord of sport, politics and arts while celebrating sexual and gender diversity. But it also reminded participants that bigotry against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, sometimes culminating in violence, remains a scourge across the world.

HEALTH: Fighting AIDS in Conservative Mauritania

Campaigners against HIV/AIDS in Mauritania face an uphill task to put their messages across, especially those that deal with safer sex and condom use. Campaigners have to cut corners in order to avoid angering the country's powerful religious clerics.

CULTURE-AUSTRALIA: Film on ‘Slavery’ Ignites Controversy

‘Stolen’, an Australian documentary film that premiered at the Sydney Film Festival last month, has ignited a controversy with its claims on slavery in the refugee camps of Western Sahara. The main protagonist has denounced the film for her portrayal as a 'slave’, but the filmmakers say they stand by their version of the story "one hundred per cent".

POLITICS-MAURITANIA: Election Results Challenged

Coup leader-turned-politician General Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz has been declared winner of Saturday's presidential elections by Mauritania’s Interior Ministry.

RIGHTS-UGANDA: Women Press for Domestic Violence Bill

"Man forces wife to breastfeed puppies," screams one headline. "Police boss shoots wife," shouts another; and a third: "Man batters wife over meat". These are typical headlines in Uganda’s newspapers today. Women daily report surviving different forms of violence in their homes: physical, sexual, emotional or even economic abuse.

ECONOMY: Accountability To Women Could Upset Business-As-Usual

A public presentation of the "Progress of the World's Women" report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in Pretoria, South Africa this week suggests that one of the most powerful constraints on realising women's rights and achieving the Millennium Development Goals is a lack of accountability to women's needs.

EAST AFRICA: Raising the Bar for Gender Equality

Mention of the East African Community (EAC) usually elicits thoughts about regional trade, but a campaign is under way to use the regional body to promote gender equality.

MAURITANIA: First Steps for Women's Cooperatives

In December 2008, a group of young women staged a protest against the common practice of fattening women before marriage, intended to make them more attractive in the eyes of men. The protest did not immediately result in the end of the practice, but it was a landmark event showing a new assertiveness among Mauritanian women in a society where men use tradition and sharia law to maintain their dominance.

GHANA: Tomato Queens Short-Change Farmers

When you meet Naomi Aframea, 60, in the streets of Accra, you could take her for any other Ghanaian woman going about her business. But step into her stall at Agbobloshie Market, one of the capital’s satellite markets, and amidst stacks of the wooden crates used to ship tomatoes, you sense her power.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Song and Dance to Empower Women Farmers

Community theatre will be the main thrust of an innovative pilot project that aims to give women farmers stronger influence in agricultural policy-making in Southern Africa.

POLITICS-BOTSWANA: Parties Block Women Candidates for Upcoming Elections

As Botswana prepares for general elections in October, gender activists are protesting against the lack of female parliamentary candidates.

POLITICS-SOUTH SUDAN: Women Ready To Take Their Place

When the women of South Sudan welcomed the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, they were cognizant of the fact that true democracy will be realised only when their human rights are realised.

POLITICS-MAURITANIA: 'Justice and Equality for All'

As Mauritania prepares for presidential elections on June 6, women's groups have outlined a clear and compelling agenda for women. The trick will be getting the country's mostly male politicians to listen.

Q&A: Uncertainty of Hope: Portrait of Survival

Valerie Tagwira, a Zimbabwean doctor living in London, chose Operation Murambatsvina as the backdrop for her first novel, a painful story of domestic abuse, poverty and the fragility of survival in Zimbabwe's high-density suburbs.

POLITICS-SOUTH AFRICA: 'One Miracle at a Time'

The African National Congress comfortably won almost two-thirds of the total vote in South Africa's recent elections, to retain power at the national level and in eight of the country's nine provinces.

RIGHTS-ZIMBABWE: Women Call for Truth, Justice and Reconciliation

Women’s rights groups have urged the establishment of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission in Zimbabwe as part of bringing to justice people who committed human rights violations - including sexual abuse against women - during the run-up to a second-round presidential vote in June 2008.

POLITICS: ‘Women Are Born Leaders’

When Margaret Mensah-Williams walked down the steps after presiding over the Namibian parliament for the first time, male parliamentarians rushed to ask her how she became so good at chairing the house.