THIS year has seen additional studies linking the empowerment of women with a reduction in HIV, and renewed programmes to give women the tools needed to prevent infections.
November 23, 2005 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is officially declared the next President of Liberia, making her the first elected female African head of state.
A decade ago, as a bookish schoolgirl in the southern Egyptian city of Sohag, Samira Ibrahim Mohamed was fascinated by Egyptology and yearned to see the antiquities at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo one day.
Myriad small farmers in Africa are being set up to fail by multinational corporations that end up assuming their land, a Canadian professor says.
Since 25 January there has been an overwhelming amount of media coverage of women’s participation in protests across Egypt, including mothers who felt it was safe to bring their newborns to protest sites, young female students painting the faces of family members
Source: IRIN News
GALKAYO, 3 November 2011 (IRIN) - Women's groups in the Somali town of Galkayo are lobbying the authorities in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland to enact a law banning female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), saying the practice was becoming widespread. Activists say FGM/C causes serious health problems to the women and is against their religion.
Source: IRIN
Nurse Zainab Blell’s mobile phone has been ringing all morning at the Aberdeen Women’s Centre, a clinic in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital. After explaining to countless callers that this is a hospital line, Blell gets a genuine request for help and tries to get more details. “When did you give birth? When did you start having a problem?”
Source: allAfrica.com
A new report released this week by ActionAid International outlines the serious challenges that young women in Liberia face on a daily basis. A multi-country report, Women and the City: Examining the gender impact of violence and urbanisation explores the violence and abuse that women in Brazil, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Liberia and Nepal encounter on a daily basis in urban communities. The Liberia research specifically focuses on the systematic experiences of violence young Liberian women suffer during their studies at university and whilst travelling to and from campus.
Source: allAfrica.com
WOMEN have been challenged to come out and take political positions in 2012 for them to attain a third representation in Parliament. Women who want these positions countywide are handful and it may be a big challenge for them to attain this requirement as stipulated in the constitution.
The United Nations official leading the fight against sexual violence during conflicts today urged the international community to never forget the deadly violence which ravaged Guinea in September 2009, noting that while justice in the country had been delayed, it could not be denied.
Strong laws are vital to ending violence against women, but the long road to tackling this scourge begins with a change in attitudes, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro stressed today during a visit to Ethiopia.
Whatever would Aristophanes, the Greek playwright of antiquity, think of the new PBS documentary, Women, War and Peace? In his play Lysistrata performed in the fifth century B.C.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) hosted a successful two-day Continental Consultative Dialogue on the Impact of Climate Change on Women from 19 to 20 November 2011 in Pretoria under the theme: "Women Unite: Towards a Fair, Transparent, Equitable and Inclusive COP17/CMP7 and Beyond".
Source: The Independent
On Sept. 21 Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff became the first woman ever to give the opening speech at UN General Assembly session. She called this ‘the century of women’.
On the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF today joined with World Day of Prayer and Action for Children in launching a new three-year initiative in more than 30 countries to protect children against violence.
Ms Malonin Asibi, Brong-Ahafo Regional Director of Department of Women, on Monday expressed worry about the low participation and representation of females in decision making processes in the region.
Government has been urged to implement the domestic violence Act to protect the lives of people especially the vulnerable women and girls.
When people think of Africa, they don’t associate it with gender equality.
Tunisia’s first free elections have been won by an Islamist party whose leader is set to head the country’s parliament. Now concerns are rife that women’s rights will be eroded as the country is gripped in the vice of narrow Islamic traditions.
Source: allAfrica.com
There are over 750 million Muslim women in the world and the question that often crops up is who speaks for them? Who leads them? This October about 200 Muslim women leaders from about 40 countries attended the 'Muslim Women Leaders at the Frontline of Change' in Istanbul, Turkey, a conference organized by the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE).