“Ala kachuu” is Kyrgyz and translates as “Grab her and run”. What sounds like an entertaining popular sport is actually the widespread practice of kidnapping women and forcing them into marriage. With her initiative “Ala kachuu is not cool!” Kyrgyz Svetlana Dzardanova is taking a stand against the alleged custom.

read more

Sondos Al-Qattan recently gave herself a new title in addition to beauty blogger and social media influencer: slave owner.

read more

Charity Kyohirwe did not turn up to her local  church on the evening of March 23rd. The 32-year-old’s body was found the following day with marks of strangulation and sexual abuse. The suspects had used Kyohirwe’s own mobile phone to call her relatives and demand a ransom of five million shillings ($1,290). The family could not afford to pay.

read more

Last year, an  image of five extraordinary women, dubbed the “Silence Breakers”, was plastered on the cover of TIME magazine and seen by millions around the world. Selected as the face of the “MeToo” movement to break the silence about sexual harassment,TIME’s “person” of the year 2017 was five people Ashley Judd, Susan Fowler, Adama Iwu, Taylor Swift and Isabel Pascual.

read more

India is the world’s most dangerous nation for women due to the high risk of sexual violence and regressive traditions, said a new study. Activists disagree with its methodology, but agree that gender crimes are up.

read more

At the close of 2017, I was asked to research a Top 10 list of African women who had made an impact with regard to women’s rights that year was as excited as a kid in a candy store and was super confident that I would produce a forceful article featuring several legendary female African activists- I mean how rare and how cool would such an article be? I was so sure that I would construct my list in no time.

read more

When I was a rookie journalist in Malaysia in the mid-1990s, I was assigned to the “women’s desk” to cover “women’s stories.”

We often worked with feminist organizations to push the male-majority government to pass badly-needed legislation on rape and domestic violence. Later, there would also be calls for legislation on sexual harassment at the workplace.

read more