Remember all of the cheer and celebration when Saudi Arabia said it would allow women to perform in the Olympics for the first time? Well, you can forget all of that. They still don’t respect women enough to let them play. Saudi Arabia’s Olympic chief said Thursday that women would not be allowed to participate ...
A Saudi Arabian woman is suing traffic police in order to obtain a driver’s license and the right to drive a car. This is another step in Manal al Sharif’s fight against the law. She is one of the leaders of the Women2Drive campaign and was arrested in May for videotaping herself driving a car. ...
The Superbowl is almost here, and I couldn’t be more excited. Looking forward to getting rowdy and yelling at the TV also makes it all the more disheartening that Saudi Arabian women still aren’t allowed in sports stadiums. This has been the law for a long time, but we were reminded of the restriction this week. ...
Oh, Saudi Arabia. How you continue to baffle me with the problems you create for yourself around the segregating of the sexes. In 2006 a law was put in place that banned men from working in “female apparel and cosmetic stores.” I understand the basic principle here — women don’t want men around when they ...
There have been plenty of amazing women making the news this year in politics, arts, and many other fields and they all deserve a mention. It’s hard to narrow them down, but here is a list of my top ten women of 2011. Enjoy! 1. Samira Ibrahim — Egyptian activist. Ms. Ibrahim was subjected to ...
Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar, a Saudi woman, was beheaded this week for practicing witchcraft and sorcery. The evidence against her was a book on the subject, a number of veils, and bottle filled with a liquid “used for sorcery.” She also worked as a healer. And according to Amnesty International, these aren’t even official crimes ...
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 ...
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 age-old cliché about the beauty of womanhood is having the gift of life. Eva Ottosson, 56, will take that idea to the next level by giving her life-making gifts to her daughter Sara, 25, who was born without reproductive organs. The womb transplant could take place as early as next spring in Gothenburg, Sweden. ...
All eyes have been on Saudi Arabia these past few days as women fight with to obtain the most basic rights. They are met with extreme threats of violence just for wanting to learn how to drive. But that struggle is only the tip of the iceberg; inequalities between men and women in the country ...
The latest film in the American Pie series, American Reunion, contains a shocking scene – male full-frontal nudity including...
Dear Madame X, I have just started seeing this girl. She seems great, but she recently told me she...
Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved arrived in my hands via a public library, when I was a broke teenager with...
My attention was drawn this week to an article about the reaction at a Canadian university to proposals to...
Airport security. Bloody nuisance. Also a conspiracy designed to subjugate women. Allow me to elaborate. Despite flying quite a...
The Cannes film festival has kicked off this week with controversy over the lack of films made by women...
Dear Madame X, I seem to be only attracted to men who are macho assholes. I like them at...
When A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962, the term sexualized violence wasn’t in use. The distinction between sexualized...
