Women in Iran have resisted attempts by the Islamic theocratic regime to render them second-class citizens following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Haleh Esfandiari said in her lecture, “Iran's Indomitable Woman.” Abigail McGowan, a history professor at the University of Vermont, followed with a discussion about the instability in Kashmir on W

It was one o'clock in the morning, and raining, when Frances's employer threw her out in the street, angry that she had asked for a day off. "She said that I should leave straight away," Frances says quietly. "She threw all my things into the road, but kept my passport, bank card and national insurance card."

Amnesty International has condemned the Pacific Islands Forum leaders for being all talk and no action on reducing violence against Pacific women.

After the forum, which concluded in Vanuatu yesterday, Pacific leaders commended themselves for their action and acknowledged a recommendation to set up a reference group on gender-based violence in the future.

Rape is one of the world's greatest peace and security challenges, a senior United Nations official said today, adding that rape in times of conflict remains one of the least-condemned war crimes, leading to impunity for perpetrators.

The picture tears into you. Her eyes are haunting and courageous, her face brutally butchered. This is the face of an Afghan girl named Aisha who was attacked by her family that was supported by the local Taliban commander, according to the August 8th TIME magazine.

It's at dusk, a young woman is returning home outside the countryside town of Soroti. Crackling of military uniform and sound of army boots and gun butts by approaching patrol soldiers are heard. “Wewe nani?”(Who are you?) a thundering order comes through the darkness. There is a sudden halt.

Her father died when she was two, one of her brothers was killed by a landmine, and her home was burnt down by soldiers, forcing her family to make a dangerous border crossing through the jungle. Yet the first thing you notice about 19-year-old Day Wah Htoo is her smile.

"We are out on the streets with a message -- kill us before you kill our young boys and girls," says Rehana Ashraf, a female teacher in Indian Kashmir.

It is a stance which makes the security forces deeply anxious as they battle to suppress a surge of violent protests against India's rule of the Muslim-majority region.

In military-ruled Burma's Karen state, tradition and a male-dominated social order have long guaranteed men the role of village chiefs. But this order is crumbling in the country's eastern region, giving rise to the new phenomenon of women village chiefs.

Mother of two Nyasha, desperate to put food on the table for her family back home in Zimbabwe, turned to prostitution in neighbouring Mozambique after being told that it was a surefire way of earning US dollars."The money is little, but if I save it properly I will be able to send groceries that will sustain my family for some days," the 23-year-old told AFP in the central Mozambican town of Chimoio.