The current Turkish government is threatening women’s right to abortions. On Saturday at a rally in southern Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called abortion murder, saying that women had no right to abort a fetus in their uterus. The next day, thousands of demonstrators protested in the capital city of Ankara. There were also ...
Saudi Arabia’s 88-year-old king gave women the right to vote and to run in municipal elections on Sunday. This is a big step towards equality, although women will have more power in theory rather than in practice. They won’t be able to vote until 2015 and will be barred from next week’s elections. It’s disappointing ...
In September, Italy could be the next country to pass a law banning burqas, following in the footsteps of France and Belgium. A parliamentary commission approved a draft of the law on Tuesday. The current draft forbids women from wearing a burqa or naqib, but also prohibits anyone from covering their faces with a motorcycle ...
Tolerance is a quality a lot of people think they possess. In practice, it’s a little more complicated, especially when we tackle the subject of burqas. A Saudi student, Gawheer Saud Al Thaubity, was left in tears on the side of the road after she tried to board a bus with her son in Auckland, ...
The intactivist movement has a strong candidate for a new spokesman in Russell Crowe, who went on a violent rant against male circumcision on Twitter yesterday after one of his followers asked him if he should get his son circumcised. Calling the practice “barbaric and stupid,” he indiscriminately shot down any objections his followers made ...
Fans always want it to be about the love of the game, but for Iranian women following Islamic tradition, their sneakers are laced with deep religious ties. In an Olympic qualifying round held in Jordan, the Iranian soccer team was disqualified because women refused to take off their hijabs. The head of the Iranian soccer ...
Divorce is usually a mutual decision by two people. It’s not always amicable, but the blame for the dissolution of marriage can rarely be placed on one spouse. But women alone are being blamed for the high divorce rate in the UAE by judicial officials. The tradition was that men had to make three statements ...
A group of three men are being charged with the murder of Katya Koren in Ukraine, after allegedly stoning her to death for apparently violating Islam as a beauty pageant contestant. The men in question believe that Katya was betraying Sharia Law by not dressing modestly and participating in the competition, in which she placed ...
Two big changes regarding transgender rights have been proposed this week. One would legally recognize transgendered citizens as a third gender, and one would refuse to recognize a sex change. Let’s see if you can guess which law was proposed in the US and which in Pakistan. If you guessed that Pakistan proposed recognizing a ...
God’s wife was erased from the Bible, a British theologian has discovered. Back in the day before Muslims and Christians, God was called Yahweh and he was worshiped along with his wife, Asherah. At least according to Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a lecturer at the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter. “After years ...
So, we’re having this baby. It’s due in a few weeks and we’re trying to get organized with all...
I recently heard about what is claimed to be the rising phenomenon of Japanese men remaining virgins for longer...
Ladders. Patriarchal conspiracy. I’ll explain… This week I climbed a ladder. I was trying to reach a loft space,...
Dear Madame X, My boyfriend needs to look at porn while we have sex. It bothers me because I...
Mrs. Dalloway is yet another feminist classic that I had to grow into. Wrapped up in Woolf’s instantly recognizable...
Last week saw a Big Thing come to our soggy little island. Well, it was a Big Thing for...
Last weekend I was entertaining a guest, you know, the sort I was planning to have lots and lots...
All little girls want to be princesses… right?! It’s bad enough that toy aisles are separated out by what...
