For many Pakistani women, talking about gender issues is not easy The Leadership for Environment and Development Pakistan has organized a workshop to promote gender equality and say that the involvement of men in gender discourse is crucial to end violence against women in Pakistan.

Noor Bano, a 16-year-old resident of Malangabad, a remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh province, believes that convincing men to treat women as equals is a Herculean task. Despite that, Bano is of the opinion that men should be involved in the

Woman in a man's world: Kazmi is Pakistan's first female cabbie

Pakistan is experiencing a rapid increase in the number of women joining its workforce. But the country is grappling with physical, psychological and sexual harassment of women in the workplace.

Afsheen*, an air hostess with the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), recalls when she was selected to work with the airline company. She was briefed on how to keep passengers satisfied, but the introductory training did not include any clues on how to keep the pilots “happy.”

A few months later, the pilots called her and her colleagues to go to the cockpit. “They would touch us on the back and the chest intentionally, and pretend it was a mistake,” she remembers. Things got worse when pilots started demanding sexual favours during flights and on the ground, and managed to get some too.

Wearing a headscarf is a conscious decision for most Muslim women

Wearing a headscarf is a personal decision for many Muslim women, but where does one draw the line between being forced to follow a tradition and asserting one’s own identity?

“There are so many gays, for example, and people tell them that they should be more open about their feelings, but if someone comes along and says ‘we want to show our religion,’ everybody is against it.” This is Sarah Benkhera’s answer to a question about the ban on headscarves imposed in France and some other European countries a few years ago. She is a German of Algerian origin and wears a “khimar”, a kind of cloak that covers her head and goes all the way down to her waist.

Sarah is accompanied by her friends, women in their early twenties, who are dressed in ordinary jeans and pullovers, in stark contrast to Sarah’s long black robes. They are quite

India has abnormally high numbers of maternal mortality

A poor health care system and lack of education is severely crippling India’s struggle in reducing maternal mortality. Resorting to traditional methods might give a hope of rescuing at least some victims.

Hansa, a 22-year-old mother of two, living in Matel village in district Rajkot, Gujarat is yet another victim. Her fate was like thousands of pregnant women in India who die because of poor health care facilities.

“This was her third pregnancy”, relates her husband’s aunt. “Hansa developed some problem in the fifth month of her pregnancy and her husband came to me late in the evening asking me to come to their home.”

She says that Hansa had been bleeding for 4 days and they put her in a ‘Chakda’ (make shift three wheeler) having no

Jannat Bibi has 12 children to look after

Steel coat hangers and opium sticks are the last resort for most women in Pakistan who want to do away with an unwanted pregnancy. Abortions are illegal in the Islamic Republic, affecting several desperate women.

38-year-old Jannat Bibi, a resident of Dawood Shah in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and a mother of twelve, has finally agreed to visit a government family planning centre in her village after five abortions. Her midwife, Rozina, 54, says she is now an expert in handling her cases, despite ‘hidden fears’ about Jannat Bibi’s health.