The Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Mulikat Akande-Adeola, has expressed the resolve of female federal lawmakers to back proposals for constitutional amendments to increase women political participation in the country.
Women’s groups in Sierra Leone are hoping that at least 30 percent of seats in the West African nation’s parliament will be held by women after general elections due in November.
There are plenty of good yardsticks for the state of women’s rights around the world. Parliamentary representation isn’t one of them.
Source: RH Reality Check
During last year’s International Conference on Family Planning, IntraHealth promoted health worker empowerment with the slogan “Family Planning: It Takes a Health Worker.” We had the phrase printed on posters and buttons, proudly displayed at our booth and on our lapels. We posited that all of the contraceptive technologies in the world will not make a difference if there are not skilled health workers to deliver them. Visitors to our booth, seeing our theme, sometimes laughed and said, “Well, technically it doesn’t take a health worker to put on a condom or promote abstinence.”
Source: The Independent
Each year, more than 350,000 young women die after falling pregnant – one every two minutes. Now, a new international drive is under way to deliver contraception to poverty-stricken nations, and so slash mortality rates.
Source: Mail & Guardian
There has been a glaring absence of awareness and appropriate action internationally to address the link between intimate-partner dysfunctionality and HIV infection. Yet the reality is that intimate-partner violence is a hidden driver of the HIV epidemic, increasing psychosocial distress, risky sexual behaviour and sexually transmitted infections.
Source: WorldWatch
After days of negotiations, world leaders and the over 50,000 participants at Rio+20 will be presented with a draft outcome agreement, known as “The Future We Want.” The draft, which will be finalized on Friday, will be presented to heads of state at the end of the conference and will likely serve as the framework for future goals on economic, social, and environmental sustainability, including the Sustainable Development Goals, which could replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015
Source: Global Post
The ladies, as they have come to be known, arrive to work by 9 a.m. each day.
Their office is an old minibus (taxi) station in the center of Langa township. The dilapidated white building is dark inside; a table lined with blue plastic chairs is set up by the window, and two men sit in a small office behind security glass. Resembling a YMCA-meets-doctor’s office, this station has housed the Langa Action Community AIDS Program (LACAP) for seven years.
With more and more reports of sexual violence against women in Egypt becoming public, an anti-sexual harassment and violence against women organization in the country has called for a mass demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday to battle the social pandemic.
Women empowerment took the spotlight in Parliament yesterday with a historic launch of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) Namibia branch.
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi will appoint a woman and a Christian respectively to be his two vice presidents, CNN reported today. The Muslim Brotherhood leader initially inspired fears of a strictly Islamist state but after just two days in office, Morsi has alleviated that fear — at least a little bit.
The top United Nations envoy in Libya today stressed the importance of the equal participation of women in rebuilding the country, as he commended the number of women who have registered to vote and to stand for election in the upcoming legislative polls.
Source: Deutsche Welle
This year's Deutsche Welle Blog Awards - "the BOBs" - were presented on Tuesday at the Global Media Forum 2012. The first prize went to an Iranian blogger repeatedly arrested for his critical articles.
Source: Womens News Network
The nation of Zambia has started the process of domesticating legal protective and reporting mechanisms that may increase help to women inside the country revealed the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Gender and Development in Zambia, Mr. Edwidge Mutale recently.
Source: Vibe Ghana
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM ) is the practice that involves the complete removal or partial removal or alteration of the genital for non-medical reasons.
Source: Forbes
As a young woman working in public policy in Washington, D.C., who has also lived in Egypt for many years, I impart words of hope for my Egyptian female friends:
Be steadfast:
Source: IPS
When I was still at school I was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, along with 139 other girls,” says Grace Akallo. “I spent seven months in captivity, but I survived, I escaped and I went back home.”
Women’s Major Group Releases Final Statement on the Outcomes of Rio+20: "We believe that the governments of the world have failed women, future generations and our beautiful but fragile planet earth"
In the obstetrics and gynaecology ward of St Mary's Hospital Lacor in northern Uganda's Gulu District, Apilli Kilara lies on the floor under a blood-stained sheet, staring at the ceiling.
Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF-Ghana), a Pan -African women rights network, and Farmers Organisation Network in Ghana (FONG) have launched a project that seeks to reduce poverty among women farmers in rural areas.