women

( Tomdispatch.com) – One hundred and fifty years ago, in the bloody wake of the Civil War, the abolitionist Julia Ward Howe issued a “Mother’s Day Proclamation.” The world, she wrote, could no longer bear such terrible violence and death. She called on women across the country to “rise up through the ashes and devastation” […]

Feminism

Blocked from Civil Dissent, Women in Saudi Arabia are turning to business as ‘quiet’ Feminist activism

The Conversation

By Sophie Alkhaled | – Prominent Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was released from prison on February 10 2021 after 1,001 days in custody. Al-Hathloul, a leading campaigner for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, had been sentenced to five years and eight months in prison in 2018 for pushing a foreign agenda and using […]

Books

Mrs. Hemingway, Israel, and the Palestinians

Shalom Goldman

Middlebury, Vt. (Special to Informed Comment) – In the current PBS series on Ernest Hemingway’s life and work, Martha Gellhorn, the journalist and novelist who was the third of Hemingway’ four wives, is sympathetically and vividly featured. But one important, perhaps defining, aspect of her life is glossed over. Similarly, in the 2012 HBO movie […]

Books

An Egyptian woman writer who dared: the Nawal El Saadawi I knew

The Conversation

By Omnia Amin | – Throughout the Middle East and beyond, the name Nawal El Saadawi is not one that can be received with indifference. During her lifetime and even after her passing on 21 March 2021, the Egyptian author, physician and activist evokes intense feelings that range from love and respect to hatred and […]

Egypt

Nawal El Saadawi: Egypt’s grand novelist, physician and global activist

The Conversation

By Adele Newson-Horst | – Egyptian novelist, physician, sociologist and global activist Nawal El Saadawi died on 21 March 2021 at the age of 89. The author of more than 50 books, she told me in one of our many interviews, in 2007, that she self-identified as an African from Egypt, not from the Middle […]

Donald Trump

University of Michigan Women Deans Decry Regent Weiser’s urging that ‘witch’ Gov. Whitmer be ‘burned at stake’

Juan Cole

Ron Weiser, a real estate billionaire, is the head of the Michigan Republican Party. In videotaped remarks last Thursday, he referred to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and two other top state women leaders (Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel [D] and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson [D]) as the “three witches” and spoke of burning […]

Turkey

Turkey’s Erdogan abruptly pulled out of Convention on Violence against Women; Women aren’t going Quietly

The Conversation

By Devran Gule and Leïla Choukroune | – In a single-paragraph statement issued at around 2am on March 20, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pulled his country out of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. Thus, at a stroke – and going completely against Turkey’s constitution […]

Asian-Americans

On a Quilt of Oppression and Injustice: From the Vietnam War to the Murder of Asian-American Women

An Thuy Nguyen

An Thuy Nguyen | – Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The deadly mass shooting on March 16 targeting Asian American women working at massage parlors in Atlanta, GA is neither a tragic happenstance, nor an isolated case of a (sexually) frustrated white man having “a really bad day” – as in the words […]

Feminism

How a ‘feminist’ foreign policy would change the world

The Conversation

By Rollie Lal and Shirley Graham | – The Biden administration has a woman, Vice President Kamala Harris, in its second-highest position, and 61% of White House appointees are women. Now, it has declared its intention to “protect and empower women around the world.” Gender equity and a gender agenda are two ingredients of a […]