by Meghan Murphy, The F Word, Canada - While the concept of male privilege does not mean that women do not ever hold power, it is an acknowledgement that men's power, as a class is institutionalized in comparison with women, as a class.
Yet, not everyone agrees with this assessment.
by Zuki Zimel, Ear to the Ground, South Africa - No climate justice without gender justice.
by Lorraine Chisholm, rabble, Canada - Canada will spend $22 billion on its military forces in the current fiscal year. That represents a very rapid growth in expenditures over the past 20 years.
by Meghan Murphy, rabble, Canada - Why is the alteration of women's pubic hair, vaginas, and vulva such a common practice in our culture? Is there something inherently problematic about women's genitalia?
by Zahra Moloo, Pambazuka, Kenya - Along Mombasa's coastline, fisherman are increasingly having to compete with the expanding hotel industry for access to scarce land along the sea. As more and more hotels take over these areas, the fishermen fear that they will lose their only means of survival.
by Jane Gabriel, openDemocracy, UK - There are believed to be more than three million Iraqi refugees living in Syria: initially allowed in without restriction and treated as guests, they are finding it harder to survive as months turn into years. For the women refugees, often alone or widowed with children, poverty is driving increasing numbers to earn a living through prostitution and ‘muta’ marriages – ‘temporary marriages of pleasure’.
by Jane Gabriel, openDemocracy, UK - Dr Azza Baydoun has analysed every ‘honour killing' in Lebanon that has gone before the courts since 1999 and found that behind the plea of offended honour lies the crime of femicide. The women were shot, stabbed, beaten, strangled, burnt or poisoned, by men, because they were women: if they had been men they would not have been killed.
by Jane Gabriel, Open Democracy, UK - Behind the news of suffering and conflict in Darfur, some women are finding ways to move forward and claim the rights granted to them in the 2005 Sudan Interim Constitution.
