Ugandan girls are missing school because they can’t afford hygiene products. Activists are helping out, but a crowdfunding campaign to buy millions of sanitary pads has fallen foul of the country’s authoritarian regime.

Child marriage impedes a girl’s education and fosters violence. It must be eradicated, says Monika Michell from the women’s rights organization Terre des Femmes.

Her family wanted to sell her as a bride. An Iranian film director saved her by breaking the main rule of documentary filmmaking: do not interfere. The story became one of the best documentaries of the year, “Sonita.”

© picture-alliance/dpa/EPA/J. Rezayee

In a country where daughters are locked up and music is frowned upon by fundamentalist extremists, Negin Khpalwak is determined to become Afghanistan’s first female conductor.

India recently launched its first women professional Kabaddi league. The popular South Asian sport has traditionally been dominated by men but women Kabaddi players say they are out there to demonstrate the ‘girl power.’

There was huge relief after one of the missing Chibok girls was found. She is one of the many captives who have been set free from Boko Haram. But those freed face a tough time of re-integrating back into society.

An Indian bride waits before a mass community marriage in Bahirkhand © AP Photo/Bikas Das

A recent statement, Maneka Gandhi, India’s Women and Child Development Minister, says that marital rape cannot be applied to the Indian context. Her comments have raised many disturbing questions.