A protestor at Tahrir square, January 2013

Women in Egypt are clamoring for more rights. Pakistan prepares to advertize for more contraception to decrease birth rates. Read more for the women’s news that made it to the headlines.

As the sixth most populous country with one of the lowest contraceptive usage rates in the world (2 percent according to the Contraceptive Performance Report 2011-12), social marketing campaigns to increase awareness and promote family planning measures play a crucial role in Pakistan. Read more in Aurora.

The latest crime figures available from Nepal Police show that at least 30 children and minors (a majority of them girls) were abducted across the country in the last 10 months, including the two latest cases in Kathmandu Valley. Read more in My Republica.

When men fear women, they silence them. They rape and murder them, enacting on their victims’ bodies a furious revenge. Stories of this revenge go back generations in Madhya Pradesh, where a Baiga myth tells of a woman whose vagina punishes men by amputating their penises. Read more in the Washington Post.

Unless our political revolutions are accompanied by social and sexual revolutions, our political revolutions seen in the Arab Spring will fail, according to Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy. Read more in the Telegraph.

I feel oddly naked without fake eyelashes. I have deep-fried, bleach blonde hair. You probably won’t ever see me without the thickest cat eye and the reddest lipstick on anytime soon. I wear mini skirts, and I consider fishnets appropriate workplace attire. And I’m a feminist. Read more in the Huffington Post.

Despite the election of new President Hassan Rowhani in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), women continue to face new challenges in exercising their civil rights. For women this means a great challenge to reach equality as well as accessing educational and workforce resources. Read more in Women’s news network.