women's empowerment

During the country's most recent election, opposition parliamentarian Mu Sochua saw her brave countrywomen standing up to corruption and demanding change.
After intense campaigning throughout Cambodia that took more than 12 months—from the mountains of MondulKiri to the former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge in Samlot—the 2013 general election produced the result we’d all been aiming for: P'dho, Chneas. Change, We Can.

At 38, Julie Bishop had achieved what many young lawyers aspire to do. Having worked as a barrister and a commercial litigation solicitor, she was managing partner of a national law firm’s Perth office.

She was at the peak of her career, or so she thought, until a business trip to Burma led to an hour-long meeting with Burma’s then opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest.

Not a week goes by without reports of fresh fighting in the eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Violence and destruction have ravaged the Great Lakes region of Africa for two decades, claiming more than 5 million lives. Yet the situation rarely makes the headlines.

The Committee on Political Participation of Women (CPPW) urged political parties not to take advantage of the role of women in the 2014 election by using them as a tool to gain political mileage. The CPPW said that the need for sincerity in working to address issues of female political participation as despite the Afghan government's rhetoric about improving Afghan women's rights, no significant progress has been made.

“If you want to be influential in the political arena, you need to influence policy,” Ms Betty Murungi, a social justice advocate, recently told female entrepreneurs and corporate managers in Nairobi.

Hajiya Hafsat Baba is one of the major personalities in the North who have been speaking in support of women and child development in the region and Nigeria in general. The National Women Leader of the now defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and Coordinator, Global Initiative for Women and Children, a non-governmental organisation, speaks  with HASSAN IBRAHIM on the challenges facing women and how such could be resolved.

Albania's new government will include six women ministers, representing a drastic change not only in the country, but also setting a positive example in the region.

"Having six women in the government is a positive step for Albania and the region towards achieving gender equality standards and the intended democracy," Blerina Metaj, a programme co-ordinator for the Coalition for the Promotion of Women and Youth in Politics in Tirana, told SETimes.