Tomboys, masculinity and the unmaking of a girl
When I woke up to International Women’s Day celebrations last week, the first thing on my mind wasn’t politics, but the personal connections I didn’t know I would forfeit the minute I stopped wearing...
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Saved by education: A Somali woman’s story
Growing up in Mogadishu in the late 80s in a house full of young single women, the standard dress code for us was a traditional costume called a dirac (a long transparent loose dress), worn with an...
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Is my skirt too short or too long?
As we walked down a street in Grahamstown recently after a long day of learning about the fundamentals of social accountability, I observed my companion tracking the women around us on campus with his...
View ArticleCulture, patriarchy and the Shona woman’s curtsey
Dating back four generations it has been customary for Shona women in Zimbabwe to get down on their knees or at the very least curtsey when serving their husbands a meal. This custom is prevalent in...
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Sexual violence in Egypt: ‘The target is a woman’
Randa, a 22-year-old from Cairo, has been dressing as a teenage boy throughout most of her country’s so-far disastrous two-year “transition” to democracy. The medical student thinks it is the only way...
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Car shopping with the help of Dar Es Salaam’s taximen
It may be that nothing brings out a man’s emotional side quite like helping a woman buy a car. A few months ago I lost Maggie, my trusty chariot of several years. She was a big-hearted Suzuki Jimny...
View ArticleCelebrating extraordinary women
The M&G has launched the 2013 Book of South African Women, celebrating women across diverse fields doing remarkable things. Here’s what it’s all about. The post Celebrating extraordinary women...
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‘Walk-in vagina’ kindles anger and approval in SA
It lets out a high-pitched scream as you enter, then a sneering laugh. It’s a walk-in vagina, a conceptual art installation that has South Africans wagging their fingers and scratching their heads....
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Tunisian women waging ‘sex jihad’ in Syria: minister
Tunisian women have travelled to Syria to wage “sex jihad” by comforting Islamist fighters battling the regime there, the country’s Interior Minister Lotfi ben Jeddou has told MPs. “They have sexual...
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Rape: A weapon on the battlefields and in the suburbs
Women take part in a campaign at the hospital ‘Heal Africa’ which advocates an end to sexual violence and rape against women, and complications which arrive from this, in Goma, DRC. (Pic: AFP) American...
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Ethiopia’s game-changing abortion law
(Pic: Flickr) After decades battling high maternal death rates – at least a third of which were due to botched abortions – Ethiopia took a stand: it prioritised newborn and maternal health, and in 2005...
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Women, girls at risk in South Sudan camps
The UN base in Malakal is home to 17 000 displaced civilians. (Pic: IRIN / Jacob Zocherman) Julie Francis’s self-imposed curfew starts when the sun sets. The widowed mother of four has been living at...
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