gender

Anchor Women Veil Ban – Egypt

Veiled Female News Anchor May Signal Waning of Secular Egypt Egypt State TV, Fatma Nabil reads out the headlines wearing a headscarf on the noon news bulletin on state television in Cairo, Egypt, Sept. 3, 2012. TEXT SIZE Edward Yeranian September 03, 2012 CAIRO — A long-standing ban against veiled […]

Old Husbands’ Tales

Huff Post: Rev. Martha Spong. I’ve been speechless for the past couple of days. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the words Todd Akin used to describe rape. I’ve been thinking and reading the words of others in their responses to him. On religious websites, the comments devolve immediately […]

Who decides?

The Express Tribune: Let’s temporarily come out of our latest feverish national dilemmas — whether the final word would be spoken by an elected or an unelected functionary of the state in the matter of the prime minister’s disqualification — and consider the significance of this question in other areas of our […]

Misogyny and the Muslim woman

the Atlantic There are two general ways to think about the problem of misogyny in the Arab world. The first is to think of it as an Arab problem, an issue of what Arab societies and people are doing wrong. “We have no freedoms because they hate us,” Eltahawy writes, […]

Is Demeaning or Beating a Child Ever Funny?

Huff Post Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., has now “apologized” for a delivering a sermon in which he told parents to “punch” their “limp-wristed” sons and force their “butch” daughters to “dress up” and “smell nice” from time to time. However, he claims that his words were […]

Age of consent for marriage of Saudi girls soon

By DAMMAM: ARAB NEWS The Justice Ministry will soon make an announcement to establish the age of consent for Saudi women to marry, local daily Al-Madinah reported yesterday quoting an official source at the ministry. Director of the Department of Marriage at the ministry Muhammad Al-Babtain said a decision on […]

Ashley Judd Has Grit

She first appeared on my radar after starring in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Judd played her Tennessee Williams-type role with an elegant, uniquely Southern neurosis. Throughout the film, human frailty seeped from every pore. I gained even more respect for her after reading her biography. Getting knocked around in […]

The wisdom of women written out of history

the guardian The female of the species is more deadly than the male, cautioned Rudyard Kipling. Given Kipling’s love of mythology and prehistoric studies, he should perhaps have added “and smarter”. Because of all deities of wisdom across the globe and through known time, the massive majority – 97% – were […]

The Afghan girls who live as boys

Source: BBC Author: Tahir Qadiry For economic and social reasons, many Afghan parents want to have a son. This preference has led to some of them practising the long-standing tradition of Bacha Posh – disguising girls as boys. When Azita Rafhat, a former member of the Afghan parliament, gets her […]

When Home Is No Refuge for Women

Source: The New York Times NEW DELHI — This month, two women’s stories, told courageously, helped to underline the reality of domestic violence in India. Nita Bhalla, a journalist, wrote for the BBC about being physically assaulted by her partner. Meena Kandasamy, a poet and writer on social issues, wrote […]