Stories: Women
-
China: The Best and the Worst Place to Be a Muslim Woman
A woman’s solitary voice, earthy and low, rises above the seated worshipers. More than 100 women stand, bow, and touch their foreheads to the floor as a female imam leads evening prayers at a women-only mosque during the first week of Islam’s holy month of Ramadan in the northeastern Chinese city of Jinan. Reclining beggars line...
-
Women in Nepal Look to Rebuild and Recover in Aftermath of Devastating Earthquake
According to the U.N., the magnitude-7.8 earthquake that ravaged Nepal on Saturday has impacted more than eight million people. The death toll has climbed over 5,500, CNN reported on Thursday, and more than 10,000 people have been injured in the worst earthquake to strike the Himalayan nation in eight decades. Thousands have been left homeless,...
-
A Boon for the Women of Ecuador
For the 60,000 residents of this rural county of green hills and small villages, migration is something of a rite of passage. The share of Cañar’s people leaving the country is greater than that of any other district in Ecuador. More than 70 percent of its households receive remittances every month, and rely on them to cover basic...
-
A Boon for the Women of Ecuador
For the 60,000 residents of this rural county of green hills and small villages, migration is something of a rite of passage. The share of Cañar’s people leaving the country is greater than that of any other district in Ecuador. More than 70 percent of its households receive remittances every month, and rely on them to cover basic...
-
Women Beyond the Veil in Mali
Women gathered in the streets of Timbuktu to celebrate a three-day wedding. Less than a year ago, these women would have been put in prison for such activity. There are no beds in the small concrete home Madame Gassamba shares with her four teenage daughters. When night falls, cushions pushed against the spotted walls serve as makeshift beds. Everyday...
-
Farming While Pregnant in Tanzania
Across Tanzania's multicultural landscape of an estimated 47 million people and more than one hundred ethnic groups, women, wives in particular, play major roles in sustaining family livelihoods. With more than 75 percent of the population living in rural areas, farming comprises up to 75 percent of Tanzania's workforce and farming while heavily pregnant has lead to considerable cause for alarm...
-
Liberation Ecology: Poo to Compost to Nutrition and Sustainable Living
World Toilet Day [on 19th November] reports that 40% of the world’s population do not have access to toilets, which is about 1 in 3 people. Sanitation and waste disposal is a human right, but like most rights it exists only on paper and in echo chambers of election promises, UN organizations, and NGOs. The consequences of this...
-
New Report Highlights Motherhood in Childhood
When I traveled throughout Tanzania and Zambia recently I noticed young mothers at every turn. With sleeping babies closely wrapped on their backs I often thought how fortunate these girls were to have survived a pregnancy and delivery at such a young age and then my thoughts would wander off thinking how many children might they already have at...
-
‘There Are Thousands of Malalas’: What Pakistan’s Teenage Activist Has Already Won
When the news came that Malala Yousafzai missed out on the Nobel Prize for Peace, there were groans of disappointment across Pakistan. In the lead up to the announcement, Pakistan’s lively news channels had been running clips of her speeches, and keenly promoting the cause of education—a cause for which Malala was...
-
Walking to Promote Global Development and Girls’ Education From India to Indonesia
A little over a year ago I highlighted the work of PAWA, the Pan Asian Women's Association, which focuses on global development and girls' and women's empowerment across multiple territories. By raising and carefully apportioning funds for credible, manageable-scale local charities, PAWA's work covers 30 countries from Iran to Japan, Indonesia to Kazakhstan. At the...