Asia

Women in Southeast Asian countries are urged to play more role in the government sector as an effort towards equality to men, ASEAN Foundation Executive Chairman Makarim Wibisono said here on Wednesday.

“My sole motive is to serve my people, especially women who have had no role in politics so far. I feel we can make progress only by bringing in women into mainstream politics.”

In Egypt, women's rights groups are pushing back against some Islamists' attempts to blame women for an upsurge in sexual harassment.

Post-revolution, the number of women reporting sexual harassment and violence has skyrocketed. So, too, it appears, has the tendency to blame women for the assaults against them.

The Taliban may have placed a ban on theatre, but women in Pakistan's northern provinces won't allow the threat of the militants' reprisals to keep them off the stage.

Around 95 representatives from civil societies and governments from Southeast Asian countries namely Indonesia, Cambodia, Timor Leste, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia and the Philippines call on more participation of women in corruption eradication programs.

The statement was made during the Southeast Asia Regional Conference held in Jakarta here on Tuesday.

Finance Minister Yair Lapid on Friday appointed Yael Andorn to be the next Finance Ministry director-general. Andorn, who was previously deputy director of the ministry's budget department, will be the first woman ever to fill the position, replacing current director-general Doron Cohen.

The cell was small with iron bars across the door. Three women, all naked, were chained to each corner. Nour was stripped, taken to the fourth, and handcuffed to the wall.

Every day, for more than 60 days, Nour says she and the other prisoners were raped in one of Syria's most notorious detention centres. Some of her attackers at the Palestine Branch of Military Intelligence in Damascus were in uniform, others in civilian clothes.

The male tormentor of the young women of the Madiyav slum did not spot the danger until it was too late. One moment he was taunting them with sexual suggestions and provocations; the next they had hold of his arms and legs and had hoisted him into the air.

This year's World Social Forum, a transnational gathering of social activists, took place in Tunis, a city bubbling with unrest as it struggles to shake off a legacy of authoritarian rule while navigating tensions over women's rights, labor and nationalism. At the gates of the gathering last week, these faultlines became starkly apparent when a caravan of trade unionists and rights advocates found themselves unexpectedly blockaded.

Another Islamic cleric has gone public to announce a fatwa that permits US-backed FSA rebels to rape non-Sunni women in Syria as part of a “sexual jihad” that has seen girls as young as 14 transported into the country to service the needs of anti-Assad militants.