women's rights

The call for more women to participate in politics need more commitment than mere political rhetoric.

Women's role in African politics must go beyond being voters or 'airport dancers'.

Women in Parliament are better placed to fight vices like gender-based violence, child slave, sexual assault and defilement, early marriages, abortions and unfair distribution of wealth.

The population of women in Zambia is large and hence the need for fair representation in Parliament (of course not the unrealistic 50 per cent).

Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

A national meeting of Labor women has been told the government is making gender equality a tougher battle in Australia.

Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek told the convention on Saturday that a range of budget measures announced in May will work against women and used as an example the story of a single mum living in her Sydney electorate.

Women should not laugh out loud in public, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç has said while complaining about “moral corruption” in Turkey. 

Speaking during an Eid el-Fitr meeting on July 28, Arınç described his ideal of the chaste man or woman, saying they should both have a sense of shame and honor.

When 26-year-old Carol Rossetti started drawing and writing about things that bothered her, she had no idea people on opposite corners of the world would feel the same.

Her sketches of women, with accompanying stories, have gone viral in 24 languages and attracted a following of more than 91,000 people on Facebook.

A prominent Libyan human rights lawyer and activist has been assassinated in her home in Benghazi.

Armed men fought their way into the house of Salwa Bughaighis before shooting her.

Ms Bughaighis was an outspoken critic of many of the armed groups, which still control much of Libya.

Her husband Issam has disappeared, and relatives believe he has been kidnapped.

While we were meeting with women journalists in Afghanistan this past May, another group of Afghan women journalists were in Washington, D.C., meeting with congressional staff members. The overlap was coincidental, but both groups of Afghan women recounted similar stories of their growing role in Afghan media and, more importantly, the fight for Afghanistan’s democracy.

Human rights activist Salwa Bugaighis was shot dead by unknown assailants at her home in the restive east Libyan city of Benghazi late Wednesday, hospital and security sources said.

“Unknown hooded men wearing military uniforms attacked Mrs Bugaighis in her home and opened fire on her,” said a security official, who did not wish to be named.

She was shot several times and taken to hospital in critical condition, where she died shortly afterwards, a spokesman for the Benghazi medical center said.

The bicycle, when it was still new technology, went through a series of rapid iterations in the 19th century before it really went mainstream. Designers toyed with different-sized front and back wheels, the addition of chains and cranks and pedals, and tested a slew of braking mechanisms. 

By the 1890s, America was totally obsessed with the bicycle—which by then looked pretty much like the ones we ride today.