Asia

An all-female delegation of women from Paktika Province convened for the first time April 25.

Influential female Afghan representatives, like the director of women's affairs for Paktika, attended.

“It is my responsibility to reach out and help the women and to let them know they have rights,” said Dr. Bibi Hawa, Paktika DoWA.

The "Arab Spring" has received copious attention in the American media, but one of its crucial elements has been largely overlooked: the striking role of women in the protests sweeping the Arab world. Despite inadequate media coverage of their role, women have been and often remain at the forefront of those protests.

A judicial commission in Bangladesh has concluded that "over 200 minority women were gang raped" in the violence following the October 2001 parliamentary poll that was intended to force families "to leave the country".

The penalties that Afghan women suffer whenever allegations of pre-marital sex and loss of virginity emerge, including death, are extreme, discriminatory and not in the penal code, activists said.

The Indo-American Community Services organization hosted the South Asian Women's Conference at the Chicago Marriott Oak Brook, 1401 West 22nd Street, Oak Brook, IL on April 17th, 2011. The conference was extremely beneficial to all who attended as the conference was filled with great discussions, workshops, speeches, personal stories.

Women in Saudi Arabia showed a great deal of tenacity recently at municipal voting centers where they showed up to register for their right to vote. But they were largely disappointed because female names are not yet listed in the electoral system. Nevertheless, they seem to be stepping up efforts to gain adult franchise for women in all walks of Saudi society.

Resurrecting the ‘undead Tiger' to secure the citizen: How the situation of women belie the dominant security narrative

Right through our one hour interview, she kept twitching her fingers nervously. A blue handkerchief, neatly folded when we sat down, was a crushed mess by the time the we stopped talking. She did not want her real name used; instead, she wanted me to call her Selvi. A former member of the women's wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Selvi is, for the first time in her adult life, unsure about what she will do next.

Tens of thousands of stateless Muslim Rohingya women and girls who fled persecution in Myanmar for safety in Bangladesh are facing abuse and sexual violence at the hands of Bangladeshis and members of their own refugee communities with little chance of redress, a human rights group said in its latest report.

Government of Pakistan

National Commission on the Status of Women

NCSW Press Release