WMC FBomb
Saturday Vids: What Else Were You Expecting?
Upon my first viewing, I had a visceral reaction to this film, finding the violence against women repulsive. But I think I misinterpreted it. After a second viewing, I realized its true message -- t...
WMC FBomb
You Don't Have To Walk In High Heels To Protect Me From Sexual Violence
Recently, there was a heated discussion over the International Women’s Rights Collective (IWRC) email thread. It started when a member posted an article from the Huffington Post about 50 members of a ...
WMC News & Features
The Feminicide Debate
The author, who has been researching feminicide for the past three years, explores how language—the use of a term—can affect resources and state policies in fighting violence in Juárez, Mexico.
WMC Women Under Siege
Judgment call: Survivors of rape in Rwanda find themselves at odds with courts
Everyone wants justice. Don’t we? It seems easy—a crime is committed so we bring a lawsuit. Witnesses testify and justice is either served or punted over some kind of event horizon, never to be seen clearly again.
WMC FBomb
April 08, 2012 | Julia O |
Economy,
Feminism,
Gender-based violence,
International,
Media,
Violence against women
Nujood Ali: A Real Life Heroine
The quote I have taped to the lower right hand corner of my bathroom mirror is "I no longer think about marriage." Nujood Ali spoke those words after successfully gaining her divorce at the age of 10....
WMC Women Under Siege
Q&A: How Susan Brownmiller fought the media on rape in war, and won
Back when the media was writing about the rape of a woman in war by describing the shape of her buttocks, Susan Brownmiller was busy preparing her offensive to change how we talk about this atrocity.
WMC News & Features
Martin-Zimmerman Tragedy—Could It Have Been Prevented?
The author, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, explores how appropriate attention to everyday violent behavior can protect potential victims and save potential perpetrators as well.
WMC Women Under Siege
For women displaced by war, can a new stove spell safety?
Usually, headlines about women and kitchen appliances conjure anti-feminist rhetoric. But as we've reported previously, the cooking tools that women in refugee camps use—and lack—may have a key effect on whether they're targets of rape.
WMC News & Features
Male Bonding—Military Massacres By The Book
The author of "Unmaking War, Remaking Men" writes that the behavior in Afghanistan of alleged killer Robert Bales was anything but unexpected.
WMC Women Under Siege
The cartography of suffering: Women Under Siege maps sexualized violence in Syria
When we hear about conflicts in foreign countries and imagine terrible acts, our thoughts don’t turn immediately to rape. We think of bombings and refugees and government suppression.
WMC News & Features
Gender Is Key to the Bullying Culture
To reduce bullying and its deadly consequences, argues Jessie Klein, author of the "Bully Society," schools must make the gender connection.
WMC FBomb
Saturday Vids: Shit Men Say to Men Who Say Shit to Women on the Street
In honor of International Anti-Street Harassment Week please enjoy these awesome guys demonstrating "Shit Men Say to Men Who Say Shit to Women on the Street." And if you know guys like this, please se...
WMC Women Under Siege
License to rape: How Burma’s military employs systematic sexualized violence
Last week, a young woman from the Karen ethnic minority in Burma reported being “beaten, drugged, and sexually assaulted by two men wearing army fatigues.” In November 2011, reports emerged that four women were being kept as sex slaves by the Burmese military near the Kachin-China border; forced to cook and clean during the day and gang-raped at night by the soldiers in the Light Infantry Battalion 321. These reports, unfortunately, are not rare.
WMC Women Under Siege
13-year-old rape survivor struggles to care for baby in Malawi
“I have lost hope,” a 13-year-old rape survivor tells Inter Press Service. After fleeing war in Congo, she was attacked by her own stepfather in a Malawi refugee camp, where she lives with 11,000 others. Now, she must care for the baby produced by the rape.
WMC FBomb
You Do Have A Voice
When I was 13 years old, I was raped by my then 15 year old boyfriend. For years, I held back from telling anyone except for some of my closest male friends. Why did I hold back from telling anyone? I...
WMC Women Under Siege
Guatemala’s war may be over, but the battle continues to be fought on women’s bodies
Guatemala City—There’s a heavy green to this place, layered. Clouds weigh on the hills and seep into the trees and grass and leaves and bushes. Every clearing we pass turns to depths, and in those reaches lie the dead.
WMC Women Under Siege
Ask before you tell: How to make the world better for girls in conflict areas
The most positive, most productive way to improve the lives of girls in conflict areas may appear to be to sharply steer them away from stigma and violence. But as researchers and fieldworkers, advocates and policymakers, we have to consider the pitfalls of thinking we know best.
WMC News & Features
Much to Celebrate
Today is International Women's Day. Christine Ahn and the Global Fund for Women mark the occasion by recalling substantial wins for women in 2011.
WMC Women Under Siege
‘Dawn of a new hope’ for whom? Systemic violence and impunity plague women in Ivory Coast
Laurent Gbagbo should have gone quietly. After a decade as President of Ivory Coast, mostly everyone—Ivorians and outsiders—agreed that he had lost the November 2010 election to Alasanne Outtarra. But he didn’t go and certainly not quietly, instead plunging the country into sinister chaos until his arrest in April.
WMC Women Under Siege
Minerals, militias, and rape: How do we make peace a reality in Congo?
As nightfall approached on July 30, 2010, hundreds of armed men streamed into the village of Luvungi in eastern Congo from the nearby forests surrounding the area. At first they told the villagers they were just there for food and shelter and that their presence should cause no alarm. However, what unfolded over the next four days marked one of the worst attacks against a civilian community in Congo in the last two years.
WMC Women Under Siege
Secret Holocaust files may finally see the light of day
We know that thousands of women were raped during the Holocaust. We also know that rape was never part of any charges against anyone responsible for the era’s atrocities. In a thrilling new turn of events, files long locked away at UN headquarters in New York have revealed details of investigations into the use of rape by Nazis. Could this lead to justice for women brutalized in other wars?
WMC Women Under Siege
Haiti’s women face echoes of a violent past
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, stories of the disaster dominated international news media. Journalists rushed to report on the wreckage. Photographers scrambled for shots of the rubble. Aid agencies struggled to overcome obstacles to sending humanitarian aid.
WMC Women Under Siege
February 24, 2012 | Javier Zurita, Ofelia de Pablo |
International,
Race/Ethnicity,
Violence against women
The invisible genocide of women
More than 100,000 women were raped in the 36-years Guatemalan genocide—at least 200,000 people died. In this video, photojournalists Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita interview survivors and document the ongoing forensic and legal investigation that recently indicted former Guatemalan President Efraín Ríos Montt.
WMC Women Under Siege
Sexual violence against women is the result of the cult of masculinity
Gangs of young men rape girls. They also sometimes act as pimps that seduce a girl, then subject her to gang rape or otherwise insist that she sexually service gang members. Some girls are so desperate for acceptance and so convinced by sexual abuse that they have no other value: they see this as inevitable.
WMC News & Features
Date Rape Revisited
Twenty-five years after an historic campus study, why are colleges still struggling to deal with the problem?