Advocacy and Lobbying

Prof. Wangari Mathai passed away on the 25th of September, in Kenya, after a prolonged battle with cancer. The first woman in Africa to win a Nobel Prize, Wangari steadfastly and courageously lobbied and advocated for the rights of women, the environment and for justice and democratic leadership.We owe the beautiful Uhuru Park in Nairobi to her courage and resilience against property developers, who had already demarcated part of the park for construction.Wangari mobilised fellow women and went on a hunger strike at the site.

Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai has died in Nairobi while undergoing cancer treatment at the age of 71.

Maathai was the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for promoting conservation, women's rights and transparent government. She was the founder of the environmental group Green Belt Movement, and had served as a member of parliament in 2002.

The organisation also campaigned on education, nutrition and other issues important to women.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has overturned a court ruling sentencing a woman to 10 lashes for breaking a ban on female drivers, reports say.

The ruling, although not officially confirmed, was tweeted by a Saudi princess and reported by AP news agency citing an unnamed official.

Rad the whole story on BBC News, reported 29. Sept

The 66th General Debate of the UN General Assembly closed this week with evidence of firm commitments to gender equality throughout the speeches of high-level government representatives.

This year’s debate was the first since the formation of UN Women in January 2011. Held annually, it is attended by heads of state and government, foreign ministers and other officials of UN Member States. In 2011, in another first, a woman opened the session — H.E. President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil.

Lebanese women are fighting a silent revolution on the football field through the popular club programme of the Cross Cultures Project Association (CCPA) in Lebanon, which provides educational activities for those in post-conflict countries.

Farah and Mirna are two young women on an important mission: they want to change Lebanese society by promoting gender equality and giving young girls the opportunities they didn’t have themselves.

The top and the bottom of the list of countries in Newsweek's recent cover story, "The 2011 Global Women's Progress Report", evoke images of two different worlds.

At the top of the list - the "Best Places to be a Woman" - we see the usual suspects: Iceland and the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Canada.

Afghanistan has been called one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, and much of that danger lies in the home.

According to the United Nations, more than 87 per cent of all women there suffer from domestic violence.

But now, a radical television show is challenging attitudes to this abuse, inviting women to speak candidly and anonymously about their problems at home.

See the whole story at BBC News, published 25 October

Norway vies with its Nordic neighbors for the title of most gender-egalitarian country in the world. Yet gender equality still seems to stop at the bedroom door, and even here, women who recounted their experiences declined to be identified, fearful still of retribution.

You can find the future of the world’s women not in Scandinavia or the U.S., but among the entrepreneurs who line the streets of Mumbai, Manila and Sao Paulo. Selling everything from mangoes to home-made blouses, these women, usually considered the very bottom of their home country’s employment barrel, represent the cutting-edge of progress for women in the 21st century.