Participation

When post-revolution Egypt holds presidential elections next year, Buthaina Kamel is set to become the first woman in the country's modern history to run for the highest office. Although she knows her chances of winning are slim to none, she says she's doing it out of principle.

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a joint subcommittee hearing on Wednesday on Women and the Arab Spring. The issue of the U.S. failure to ratify CEDAW, the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was raised several times. Senator Barbara Boxer (CA), who co-chaired the hearing, and Melanne Verveer, U.S.

Women should voice demands about their rights during the popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world to avoid being short-changed by post-revolutionary governments, Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi said.

Afghan women activists are at risk of being sidelined at a key international conference on Afghanistan's future scheduled for December 5, 2011, in Germany, Human Rights Watch said today.

Over these past weeks, Australia and Mexico have announced opening greater roles for women in their armed forces. Why had this breakthrough not been considered earlier? And why had many countries not seen it as a possibility? The simple answer lies in the stereotype of gender roles.

After dropping out of school in the sixth grade to help her mother, Fartun Abdi Hashi, 22, was given a second chance at earning an income with a sanitary pads project.

Hashi's family arrived at the Doro camp for the internally displaced in Galkayo, central Somalia, when she was 12. She enrolled at the Galkayo Education Centre for Peace and Development (GECPD) after dropping out of school in 2006 to help provide for her siblings.

As the Arab Spring moves through the Arab Autumn towards winter, there is hope but also anxiety and apprehension about the future. The elections in Tunisia — with a record 90 per cent turnout — have triggered the hope that countries like Egypt and Yemen and now Libya, will also witness a peaceful transition to a democracy they have never known. But the grounds for apprehension are abundant.

As Tunisians await final results in their national election, the first in a country remade by the Arab Spring, it's worth paying particular attention to the outcome for women there. One hopes it leads reformers in other Arab states to understand that it will be impossible to advance their societies if half of the population is held back.

In the African context, traditional leadership is a preserve of males while women are restricted to the kitchen and the house chores. It is not by design that women find themselves in such marginalized areas of everyday lives but the African society has socialised them into believing that they are subordinated to their male counterparts.

Eleven years since its adoption, once again, the international community will be debating progress towards implementing a UN commitment to ensure that women are included in peace deals.