women's empowerment

Despairing news from Iran...

Nina Siahkali Moradi, 27, was barred from taking up her seat in Qazvin by the conservative electoral review board.
An electoral candidate who won a place on a city council in Iran has reportedly been barred from taking up the seat because she is too attractive.During the polls in the city of Qazvin, 27-year-old Nina Siahkali Moradi received 10,000 votes, placing her 14th out of 163 candidates.

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.

The women's reservation bill which has been pending for over 17 years should be taken up for discussion in the ongoing monsoon session of the Parliament and be passed before the next general election, demanded women's groups across India on Tuesday.

The All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) will observe demonstration and rallies across the city today to press this demand. The basis of the bill lies in the poor representation of women in state legislatures as well as the Parliament.

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.