April 2016

For women throughout the world, fundamentalism in politics and religion have often been described as oppressive. Accusations of human rights abuses are made by global watchdog agencies, but often the world has few options available to intercede in behalf of these women. As we have seen in Syria, Nigeria and a host of other countries, women bear the brunt of fundamentalism in terms of restrictions to basic necessities, limited health care, lack of control over their own bodies and even […]

1- Turkey Fatma Aliye Topuz, credited as the first female Turkish novelist, appears on the 50 lira bill, where she was installed in 2009. 2-  Sweden Sweden has a handful of woman on their currency. The Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind was placed on the 50 krona note in 1996. The first female writer to win the Nobel Peace Prize for literature, Selma Lagerlöf, took her place on the 20 krona note in 1997. In October of last year, Pippi […]

The Association of Italian Jurist (AGI) of Palermo, Italy held a three-day conference from April 20 – 23 to focus on women’s rights, immigration rights and to study the Istanbul convention. The topic of the event was “Different lands, common goals”. The conference was held with members of the Fédération Internationale des Femmes des Carrières Juridiques (FIFCJ) presided by Mrs. Maria Elena Elverdin. On the occasion of the arrival of the bureau of the Federation Internationale des Femmes des Carrieres […]

As a boy growing up in post-war Korea, I remember asking about a tradition I observed: women going into labour would leave their shoes at the threshold and then look back in fear. “They are wondering if they will ever step into those shoes again,” my mother explained.   More than a half-century later, the memory continues to haunt me. In poor parts of the world today, women still risk death in the process of giving life. Maternal mortality is […]

This work of street art was made by Shamsia Hassani, widely known as the first prominent woman street artist in Afghanistan. Hassani was born in 1988 in Tehran to Afghan parents, eventually moving to Kabul to pursue her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in visual art. She currently resides in Kabul, where she turns the city’s walls into colorful canvases that spread a message of peace and hope to her community. A woman in a purple hijab sits playing the piano, […]