women's rights

Advocates for women in Fiji say they are still hoping for special measures mandating women’s representation in parliament.

Fiji’s new constitution does not contain temporary special measures for women, a mechanism some countries use to speed up progress towards gender equality.

But a spokesperson for the Fiji Women’s Forum, Sharon Bhagwan Rolls, says there is still time for this to happen as the state has an end of year deadline to make changes to the constitution.

When I arrived at the Capitol in 2007 to take my oath as a new member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I had the privilege of filling the seat held for so long and so well by my friend Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress. I was so grateful to her.
I felt Patsy’s presence when I cast my first vote in Congress, which was to elect Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House. I rose and said, “In memory of Patsy Mink, I cast my vote for Nancy Pelosi.”

Morocco's Soulaliyate Movement has been gaining ground since 2007. On a daily basis, these women fight the absurdity of archaic laws and men whom they consider to be their enemies. The article provides details of a meeting with this movement.

Socialist Michelle Bachelet handily won a first round of Chile's presidential race Sunday, with voters putting her on track to replace the country's conservative leader following a runoff in December.

Bachelet, Chile's first woman president 2006-2010, is now eyeing a non-consecutive second term as leader of the South American nation with the highest per capita income.

A gathering of Washington's most important military leaders doesn't seem like the obvious place to champion the cause of increasing women's power around the world. Nor does Hillary Clinton seem like the obvious choice for an award from the National Defense University.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi sought to lure voters at a rally in Mizoram's Lunglei town on Monday with the prospect of joint sharing on a 50-50 basis the profits from oil and natural gas proceeds from the state.

Indigenous rights groups and opposition parties had been protesting against previous sharing agreements in which Mizoram was set to receive only 10-12 percent of profits.

By John Kerry

On my many trips to Afghanistan as a senator and as secretary of state, I’ve met with a remarkable array of Afghan government officials, businesses people, development experts, diplomats, brave American troops and their courageous Afghan counterparts — all of whom have sacrificed for the promise of a safe, secure and sovereign Afghanistan.

Former President Bill Clinton said Monday he would like to see a female president, but he has “no idea” if his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will run in 2016.

“I hope we have a woman president in my lifetime, and I think it would be a good thing for the world as well as for America,” Clinton said at a conference in China, according to Agence France-Presse.

There’s something I need to get off my chest. It’s been weighing on me, and I want to come clean before the next election cycle: I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary. That fact is only controversial because I’m a women’s advocate by trade, and there are certain feminist circles in which anything less than full-throated Hillary support is tantamount to heresy.