Participation

(UN Photo)

Davao City has given birth to another groundbreaking initiative – The Women's Peace Table.

Of course, it is but natural that the city known for its empowered women and a Galing Pook-winning gender mainstreaming program should be the one to come up with this bright idea.

It's perhaps the only market in the world where all the vendors are women. Ima Keithal in Manipur's capital of Imphal (in the north eastern region of India on the border of Myanmar/Burma) is a tourists' paradise where women, sell everything from vegetables to beautiful hand spun shawls. But there's a bitter behind-the-scenes story here.

Some women groups marched through Abuja on Monday to demonstrate support for the fuel subsidy withdrawal by the Federal Government.
The women, including traders and members of the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS), pleaded with Nigerians to give President Goodluck Jonathan a chance.

At first Samira Ibrahim was afraid to tell her father that Egyptian soldiers had detained her in Tahrir Square in Cairo, stripped off her clothes, and watched as she was forcibly subjected to a “virginity test.”

Activists with the April 6 group distribute medicine in a neighborhood of Cairo. Few women have leadership roles in such groups.

How can we, as a nation in times like today, survive let alone talk of progressing if the women in our society are taken as nothing more than a tradable commodity?”

IN 2002, women in Liberia helped bring an end to one of Africa's bloodiest wars by staging a series of peace protests — including a boycott on having sex with their husbands. In 1996, a female political party in Northern Ireland helped push for an end to sectarian violence.

Just 15 years old, Sahar Gul has become the bruised and bloodied face of women's rights in Afghanistan. The teenage bride's eyes were swollen nearly shut as she was wheeled into the hospital seven months after her arranged marriage. Black scabs crusted her fingertips where her nails used to be.

Before we finally close the chapter on 2011, flipping a fresh page for a new beginning in 2012, let's not forget that the unresolved issues of 2011 and other past years are still in need of solutions.

Last week a woman was harassed for refusing to sit in the back of a bus, in order – “God forbid” – not to be seen by men. This did not happen on the outskirts of Tehran, but rather on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Public Protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela has urged women to take a leading role in their various respective responsibilities to help in the transformation of society.