WMC Women Under Siege
Video: Tracking violence against women in Syria—CNN
With Syria's war taking the lives of women at an average rate of 9 percent across the country, I spoke to CNN International's Hala Gorani about the terrible price women and children are paying as noncombatants.
WMC News & Features
India Tragedy Seen as Transitional Moment
Activists in India look to the unabated anger at the death of a young woman as a turning point in their struggle to combat violence against women.
WMC Women Under Siege
Video: WMC’s Women Under Siege director talks about the roots of rape on HuffPost Live
In this video hosted by HuffPost Live’s Abby Huntsman, our director, Lauren Wolfe, cites a finding that may get you riled up: that 65 percent of men surveyed in the Democratic Republic of Congo believe women should accept partner violence to “keep the family together.” More shocking is the finding she cites next: that 53 percent of girls in India think wife-beating is justified—girls who may one day be those very wives.
WMC Women Under Siege
End culture of rape in 2013
On December 16, a young medical student in one of India's major cities was gang-raped, her body destroyed by the bodies of the men who allegedly assaulted her and also by the rusting metal bar doctors say they used to penetrate her. The bar removed part of her intestines. The rest were removed in a hospital far from home where she struggled for her life for just a few days.
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The Opportunities and Perils of Being A North Korean Woman
While in the car I recently listened to an NPR story by Louisa Lim called Out of Desperation, North Korean Women become Breadwinners. Although considering North Korea's traditionally patriarchal socie...
WMC Women Under Siege
A garden in Afghanistan: Women, roses, and guns
Sometimes an image comes across my desk that really grabs me. I was lucky enough to have this happen recently when I received a holiday card from a Belgian photographer named Wendy Marijnissen in my email. I clicked and found a strange twilight enveloping a garden of soft trees and red roses. In the middle of the picture a guard stands awkwardly with a gun. Plastic tents billow in the background. What exactly was I looking at? I asked Marijnissen to tell me more:
WMC News & Features
December 24, 2012 | Jennifer Mattson |
Arts and culture,
Feminism,
Girls,
International,
Violence against women
The Year 2012 Is Reflected in "Emotional Creature"
Eve Ensler's latest play on the inner lives of girls treats topical concerns for feminists today throughout the world.
WMC Women Under Siege
Redefining the rapist: The line between 'nice' and wrong
It takes a lot to make me angry. My patience is so legendary, this one time a partner couldn’t take it anymore and threw a chair at me for not getting angry at her for something she’d done. On Tuesday, however, something really got to me.
WMC Women Under Siege
Sexualized violence in Syria: Keeping track of a crisis in motion
On a still warm day in October, I sat on a panel of mostly Syrian women at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. One woman wore a wool scarf draped around her shoulders in the black, red, and green of the Free Syrian Army. Most wore a hijab, the Islamic headscarf. Turn by turn, we described our work documenting and assisting Syrian women and children who were drawn into the ongoing Syrian conflict.
WMC Women Under Siege
Eight reasons why victim-blaming needs to stop: Writers, activists, and survivors speak out
About once a day someone comes to this website by searching “Are rape victims to blame?” I hope when these visitors arrive they find some solace in the message they find here that rape victims are not culpable, ever, no, never. Unfortunately, they will also find information on how rape survivors are blamed mercilessly around the world for the violence perpetrated against them.
WMC News & Features
On Susan Rice and How a Non-candidate Is Treated
Amid premature political attacks that were under-analyzed by the media, Susan Rice's actual record as a public servant was ignored. Did she ever have a chance? asks multimedia journalist Mary C. Curtis.
WMC Women Under Siege
Are women being targeted in Syria?
The baby's body was found near a checkpoint on the road that connects Homs with the ancient city of Palmyra, in central Syria, in January. At four months old, she was said to have been given over to a paternal uncle, dead, with bruises on her back, abdomen, and hands.
WMC News & Features
A Woman’s Place is in the ... State Department
The GOP is taking aim against the nomination of Susan Rice to head the State Department. Will the nation retreat from the precedent of women in this key post—for no good reason?
WMC Women Under Siege
Revealing rape: How to illustrate a crime
Women describe their rapes from behind black face scarves in videos on our site that documents sexualized violence in Syria. We have no photos of women whose faces aren’t covered. We have few photos of survivors of rape even with their faces covered.
WMC Women Under Siege
Rape is shredding Syria's social fabric
A woman approached me as I was rushing toward the D.C. Metro after giving a talk on rape in Syria last month. She asked in a low voice if she could share some information. She had DVDs, she said. On them were testimonies of Syrian women who'd been raped; in particular, a mother, a daughter and a sister all in one family.
WMC News & Features
A Human Rights Politician in the ‘Kingdom of Wonder’
Journalist Michelle Tolson took the occasion of President Obama's visit to the Southeast Asian summit last month to speak to a stalwart member of the opposition party in Cambodia, Mu Sochua.
WMC Women Under Siege
Does the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ matter?
You, as a reader, may not care about the behind-the-scenes debates over word choice, grammar, and punctuation that get journalists like me riled up. But readers and reporters alike are caught in an unusually public semantics discussion this week now that The Associated Press’ stylebook editors have announced that they’re dropping certain words.
WMC News & Features
Living in the Path of Drones
Pakistani women and U.S. peace actives agree: U.S. military drone strikes must stop, writes Lys Anzia of WNN - Women News Network.
WMC News & Features
Images of Femicide Displayed to Prompt International Action
A UN exhibit and seminar in Vienna marks a day devoted to ending violence against women. Alice Driver, whose photographs are included among the images, explains.
WMC News & Features
WMC Award Winners Assess Media Progress
Last week's awards ceremony in New York City celebrated women making a difference in the media. Marianne Schnall asked award winners how they achieved personal success and what it would take to improve women's overall status.
WMC Women Under Siege
What the UK can do to stop sexualized violence in Syria
I twisted around in the passenger-side seat in a red compact to Heathrow yesterday to trade ideas with a colleague. In the back of the car was Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, the executive director of the International Civil Society Action Network. We wondered aloud whether our discussion on Syria in the last few days at Wilton Park, a stygian but elegant castle on the English South Downs, might have any real-world impact.
WMC Women Under Siege
History repeats itself in Sudan
Jalila Khamis Koko and Nadia Teia Kafi are just two of the thousands of victims of Sudan’s war against the people of South Kordofan, which has seen starvation used as a method of warfare, the bombing of civilian targets, and the employment of rape as a weapon. Especially startling is how sexualized violence in South Kordofan mirrors the destruction we’ve already seen in Darfur.
WMC Women Under Siege
One man’s struggle to teach UN forces how to stop rape
Patrick Cammaert is often quoted as saying that it is now more dangerous to be a woman than it is to be a soldier in war. But perhaps he should be quoted more widely on another startling fact: that UN peacekeepers the world over turn away when they witness rape.
WMC Women Under Siege
Shocking attitudes point to deep misogyny in Congo
There is little violence on earth more merciless than what is happening to women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “When you talk about rape in New York or Paris, everyone can always say, ‘Yes, we have rape here too,’” Dr. Denis Mukwege, the founder of Congo’s Panzi Hospital, told Jeb Sharp, a producer at PRI’s “The World,” in 2008.
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Stand With Malala
Malala Yousafzai has spent the last 3 years of her life in the pursuit of education and equality. As a result, she has spent the last 13 days in a hospital bed in Birmingham, England.
At 11 years old...