09/03/2010

When the conversation here shifts to domestic violence, even the way a woman got pregnant becomes an issue of concern, particularly if the price for bearing a child means getting infected with HIV.
 

Dressed in women’s attire and a nose-pin errantly positioned on one nostril, 38-year-old Shahzadi adjusts her ‘dupatta’ (scarf) over her head as she enters the office of Cantonment Board Clifton, a provincial government bureau that recently hired her.
 

Nearly 62 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaimed "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights," a few of the world's discriminatory laws against women are being progressively repealed in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America.
 

When Aye Aye (not her real name) leaves her youngest son at home each night, she tells him that she has to work selling snacks. But what Aye actually sells is sex so that her 12-year-old son, a Grade 7 student, can finish his education.
 

Forty-something and unlettered, Sona Siddiqi never imagined she would become the most sought-after woman in her village of Ramzan Katiar.
 

For garment factory workers like Anoma Piyaseele, the European Union’s (EU) concessionary tariffs for imports from Sri Lanka meant little more than a vague term for policymakers to deal with – until news came that they would be suspended soon.
 

Back in Najaf, Iraq, Khayzaran and her family lived in a well-kept house. They had two cars and a small orchard. Her children, two girls and three boys, attended school and came home to modest feasts.
 

The lives of many rural women and children in Mexico are changing, and the country's high deforestation rate could be reduced, as inexpensive fuel-efficient cook stoves are being distributed by non-governmental organisations with corporate and government support.
 

In military-ruled Burma’s Karen state, tradition and a male-dominated social order have long guaranteed men the role of village chiefs. But this order is crumbling in the country’s eastern region, giving rise to the new phenomenon of women village chiefs.
 

When it comes to female education rates, progress has been made around the world, and in many countries girls and young women have outnumbered and outperformed boys and men at all levels of schooling for decades. Nevertheless, these advances have yet to translate into greater equity in employment, politics and social relations.

From the rickety old buses that miraculously make long cross-border journeys to the frustrating red tape at the border post, from fending off sexual advances from bus crews and customs officials to losing goods worth thousands of dollars, 28-year-old Irene Moyo has seen it all.
 

Last fall, the push to reform healthcare in the United States was all but hijacked by one of the country's most passionate recurring cultural debates.
 

The 45-member Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), presiding over one of the largest gatherings of women at the United Nations, listened Monday to dozens of speakers spelling out the successes and failures of gender empowerment worldwide.
 

The first time he and his wife had an ‘accident’, 40-year-old Kamran Rehman worried that they may have inadvertently paved the way for child number three. A chemist he consulted, however, recommended that his wife try the emergency contraceptive pill (ECP).

When Chile elected Michelle Bachelet as its first woman president in 2005, thousands of women celebrated the historic victory as their own personal triumph, proudly marching in the streets wearing mock presidential sashes. Today, men and women both recognise the concrete and symbolic progress achieved in gender issues under her administration.
 

Despite having equality on paper, women continue to be shut out of most leadership positions in the United States, and some experts say that the persistence of language in which male is the default gender is an overlooked factor.

Against the backdrop of a two-week U.N. meeting on gender empowerment, the London-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has blasted the government of Saudi Arabia for its feudal system of justice where women continue to be victimised because of their gender.
 

Development does not protect women. The number of women physically and psychologically abused at home is at alarming levels across Europe.

Guatemala knows that when it comes time to demonstrate compliance with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of global anti-poverty and development target to be met by 2015, it will make a poor showing.
 

Last year, Kuwaitis elected their first female members of Parliament. Yet in countries like Yemen, child marriage remains common and personal status laws still discriminate against women in matters concerning marriage, divorce and child custody.
 

When Legal Momentum, a U.S. advocacy group that works with all aspects of gender in the legal system, started its National Judicial Education Programme in 1980, gender discrimination was an unacknowledged problem in the country's courtrooms.
 

A longstanding proposal for the creation of a special U.N. agency for women - officially called a "gender entity" - is apparently moving at the sluggish pace of a paralytic snail.
 

While Aung San Suu Kyi remains the most widely-known woman suppressed for her political views in Burma, the jails in that military-ruled country continue to be filled by lesser-known women dissidents being held on a range of questionable charges.
 

When Maricopa County sheriff's deputies raided Celia Alejandra Alvarez's workplace and discovered her hiding place, she says they lifted her off her feet and slammed her face into a wall, causing injuries to her jaw and teeth. Later, in detention for having false documents, she says she was not given medical care.
 

The status of women in a predominantly male-chauvinistic Arab world continues to fluctuate from one extreme to another.
 

Advanced new legislation and constitutional reforms on women's rights are paving the way for equal opportunities for women in Latin America and the Caribbean. But application and enforcement remain a distant goal.
 

With assured backing from India's main opposition groups, the ruling Congress party hopes to see voted through in the upper house of Parliament Monday a bill reserving 33 percent of seats in national and provincial legislatures for women.
 

While South African parliamentarians attended a swanky pre-International Women’s Day celebration at Cape Town’s International Convention Centre, a group of destitute women in decaying Kewtown, just seven miles away, worried about looming homelessness.
 

‘Equal rights; equal opportunities’ may be the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, but while women around the world celebrate, a group of Ugandan women are protesting against the suppression of their rights.