Why women remain outside the doors of political power is more nuanced than simply attributing it to sexism.
Brazilian TV star Barbara Thomaz says she was fired after taking maternity leave and reporting harassment by one of her superiors. Her experience isn't unusual.
When in August Brazilian writer and feminist activist Clara Averbuck refused the advances of an Uber driver, he physically threw her out of his car, leaving her bruised and with a black eye. He then sexually assaulted her as she lay on the ground.
Just out of graduate school in Mexico City, Lissette Marquez longed to travel the world on an American cruise ship. She was thrilled to obtain a guest-worker visa that allowed her to join a ship crew in California. But instead of the ideal job she had envisioned, Marquez said she found herself toiling long hours, earning less than a $4 hourly wage, and feeling isolated.
The father of the woman gang-raped and killed in Delhi in December has told the media that the crime against his daughter is “an awakening” for India. It certainly has been an awakening for much of the world, as I wrote in this op-ed for CNN. The local and international media have been cracking open issues from dowry-related burnings of women to street harassment, asking exactly what is wrong with men in India to have created such a culture of hate and violence against women. It is heartening to watch the introspection.
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.
In many regards, Safiya Ishaq is an unremarkable 25-year-old. She is excellent at braiding hair but terrible at being on time. She studied fine arts at Khartoum University in Sudan. Not unusually for a student, Ishaq became involved with politics.
