Women are conditioned to live in fear. All over the world. Don’t walk on those streets, don’t wear those clothes, don’t be too intimidating, complex, complicated, loud, because men don’t like that. We live in patriarchal societies in which we pander to male preference. In Nairobi, men on the streets got to do what every…
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It’s no surprise that the G20 Summit has a common theme: wealthy, powerful people dictating how we should manage the wealth of poorer, less powerful people. I cringed as I heard my television bark at me that the G20 is a gathering of the ‘most powerful men in the world’. This begs the question: where…
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Last week, monolith companies Facebook and Apple both announced that they would pay female staffers a whopping $20,000 to freeze their eggs. Egg freezing is fast becoming a popular way to delay child bearing, as it allows women to have a baby later on in life with eggs that are “younger”, therefore lowering the risk…
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In the face of pervading poverty and corruption, football fans are experiencing extreme cognitive dissonance during this year’s World Cup in Brazil. Many international fans seem aware of FIFA’s shady and corrupt history and the Brazilian government’s lack of conduct regarding its impoverished citizens, but the concept of boycotting this year’s World Cup is…
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Two girls hanging from a tree in India: gang raped, murdered. On the internet, images of the teenaged cousins from Uttar Pradesh in the country’s north have gone viral in recent weeks. The images, which contravene India’s media laws about identifying the victims of rape, have caused international outrage. But just as concerning is the…
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If upon hearing the words ‘sex tourism’, you conjure up images of white, privileged, Western men embarking on journeys to developing countries with the pursuit of engaging in paid sexual activity, you would not be mistaken. Yes, sex tourism is actually a thing happening all around the globe. And in most cases, this conception…
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April 14. I was probably studying on April 14. I was probably complaining about the amount of study I was doing on April 14, taking for granted my privileged education that has made me a better analyser, empathiser, and questioner. Almost 300 girls between 14 and 18 were sitting their exams on April 13 in…
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When I was in Kathmandu, Nepal in January 2014, I went to a shop called Local Women’s Handicrafts, and I met Nasreen Shekh. A friend of mine, Beth Collins, had been told about Nasreen’s shop by another Australian. On the program, the two of us had seen a lot of gender discrimination and women…
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Coachella fashions in the past years have stirred raucous debate, with the terms ‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘racist’ thrown about over Twitter. The feathered headdresses of the Native American people and the bindis and henna of the South Asian cultures have been embellishing the bodies of people who do not understand the significance of these…
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Last week, at an event in New York, Chelsea Clinton announced that she and husband Marc Mezvinsky ‘have our first child arriving later this year.’ The world immediately reacted, asking ‘But what does it mean for 2016?’ Mainly via Twitter – ‘news of the pregnancy spread rapidly throughout the political twitter-verse.’ Vanity Fair has concocted…
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India’s high court has ruled that its transgender community will be recognised as a third gender. India is home to a significantly large trans* community who have campaigned for their equal treatment and the end of discrimination. Because trans* people are not legally recognised in India, many have to resort to prostitution or beg for…
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Hundreds of women hit the streets of Rabat, the capital of Morocco, over the weekend, to demand that their country implement a constitutional guarantee of gender equality. Article 19 of the constitutions states that ‘men and women have equal civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights and freedoms’ and ‘the state shall work towards…
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The Philippines High Court has passed a controversial bill that allows birth control, after years of the Catholic Church pressuring the government to maintain a ban on the contraception. Philippine President, Benigno Aquino passed the bill which will allow sexual freedom for Philippine women, and require health institutions to provide free condoms and contraceptive pills….
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**Trigger warning: discussion of rape and rape culture** This just makes me incredibly angry. In an open, anonymous letter to Harvard, a student has shared her story of sexual abuse by a fellow schoolmate that has, at this stage, been ignored by the school itself. The student, who has been diagnosed with depression and has…
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