North Africa and Middle East

The political battle raging on Cairo’s streets is focused on President Mohamed Morsi’s autocratic actions in his efforts to rush through his draft constitution, but the anxiety of those on the street are equally based on the content of that constitution.

I keep wishing it is not true, too, but what I told the driver that day is that his story sounds all too familiar: Of the hundreds of cases of sexualized violence against Syrian women and men I have heard and documented as the director of the Women Under Siege project at the Women's Media Center, many fit this pattern of women and girls being raped at checkpoints.

Kuwaiti women are taking part in parliamentary elections both as candidates and voters for the fifth time since they won their political rights.

After failing to win seats in the 2012 parliament, which is currently dissolved, Kuwaiti female politicians are hoping this time to score political victory similar to 2009 when four women became MPS for the first time.

Female candidates in the upcoming elections include former MPs and political activists who won a large number of votes in the previous elections.

Former MP and First Constituency candidate, Yousef Al-Zalzalah says he will put on top of his priority demands of Kuwaiti women as part of his parliamentary work program when he wins a seat in the Parliament.

In a press statement, Al-Zalzalah said he will nominate himself for a post in the Parliamentary Women and Family Affairs Committee and make the committee’s priority to focus on the women’s social and civil rights law that was rejected by the former government.

There must be more women in the Knesset, the cabinet, and near the top of the Likud’s Knesset list, Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat said on Thursday, three days ahead of Likud’s primary.

Livnat, the head of the ministerial Committee on the Status of Women, has been the only woman in the current government’s security cabinet, which has fluctuated to as many as 15 ministers.

“Women provide a different perspective,” Livnat told The Jerusalem Post.

MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, condemns the growing violence that has killed at least 18 people in the past days: 15 in Gaza and three in Israel. We assert that all attacks against civilians must end immediately.

“The Kuwaiti woman remains unfairly deprived of leadership positions in the country even though the Constitution has equated between men and women,” said fifth constituency candidate Saleh Mohawish.

We’ve been looking throughout the day at new data from the World Economic Forum on gender equality throughout the world. We found that the U.S. is finally catching up and in some places exceeding Europe on gender equality and explored the surprising story of French women’s struggle for equality.