gender

In her guest commentary on the occasion of 8 March International Women's Day, Berfu Şeker from the Association Women for Women's Human Rights analyzes recent political developments in Turkey regarding women's and LGBTIQ+ rights and what awaits women in after the local elections end of the Month.

Interview with Hamide Ayaz, whose house collapsed in the conflicts in Sur, Sociologist Mihriban İlbaş, and Selma Aslan, Co-Chair of the Diyarbakır Branch of the Chamber of Architects, about the earthquake houses undertaken by TOKİ and their impact on women's lives. 

In Iran, feminist foreign policy demands both short-term interventions to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population and a long-term approach to deal with the state’s structural violence against its own citizens.

Syrian lawyer Joumana Seif is the 2023 Anne Klein Women's Laureate. She strives for the political participation of women and the recognition of gender-based violence as a crime against humanity as well as its punishment. Kristin Helberg describes her journey from Damascus to Berlin.

Syrian lawyer Joumana Seif is the 2023 Anne Klein Women's Laureate. She strives for the political participation of women and the recognition of gender-based violence as a crime against humanity as well as its punishment. Kristin Helberg describes her journey from Damascus to Berlin.

Sibel Yükler's article on the process before the withdrawal of the Istanbul Convention and how LGBTI+s were systematically criminalized...

What happened since January 2, 2021 at Boğaziçi University, one of Turkey’s most prominent university, in which students exercised plurality...

A rebellion against the system designed to induce shame, a rebellion against violence, hate murders, exiles, and a rebellion against all odds! The History of the Pride March in Turkey...

On Monday night, a surprise draft ruling by conservative Justice Samuel Alito was released in the U.S. indicating that a majority on the Supreme Court wants to reverse the legalization of abortions. Ella Müller, director of the Democracy Program at the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Washington, DC, puts this impending caesura and the political developments behind it in context.    

Digital Rights Foundation, in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, conducted a series of focus group discussions with researchers from across the globe in order to deconstruct ‘gendered disinformation’, understand existing work on the subject and identify areas for future interventions.

More reports about rapes by the Russian army against the Ukrainian girls and women who are arriving in Slovakia have been exposed. In the meantime, the Slovak parliament is discussing proposals on banning abortion for women without permanent residency. This cynical targeting of Ukrainian girls and women is disturbing, says Denisa Nešťáková.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine tragically continues with brutal shelling of civilian targets, escalating into a humanitarian catastrophe. At the forefront of all this is the masculinity of war which caused these horrors in the first place, and which allows for ignoring the voices of Ukrainian women at all levels.

Physical or sexual violence is part of women's everyday experience in many places - also in the workplace. Often it is about abuse of power. There have also been cases of gender-based violence in some non-governmental organisations in recent years. Protective measures have been taken as a result. But is that enough? An interview with Christine Ash Büchner.

An example of misunderstood identity and representation politics on the part of the UN: the international intervention to include Syrian women in the negotiation process was not a success.

What does care mean in a Covid-19 pandemic context? Why does care fail and gender-based violence becomes even more resilient in itself, despite being conceptualised as a "pandemic within a pandemic" in a context of intensifying sexism, culturalist stereotypes and xenophobia, not to mention social policing and the intensive securitization of borders and mobility?

With a new governing coalition, Germany looks to dare more progress in Europe

Every single day, women are abused, threatened or slandered on digital social networks. Yet the operators of these platforms are doing very little to make the digital space a safer place for women. The whistleblower Frances Haugen talked to Spiegel journalist Ann-Katrin Müller and Alexandra Geese, Member of the European Parliament, about what needs to be done right now to stop violence on the net.

The inclusion of feminist principles is an important progressive step in the EU’s external relations policymaking. A result of this inclusion has been the development of gender equality policies aimed at conflict situations and in international development assistance. Arguably, the EU is a leader in gender equality within the foreign policy arena. Yet, while the integration of feminism has supported concrete gender equality policies, the narrow interpretation of feminism undermines its transformative potential and highlights coherency gaps in the EU’s approach.

Gendered disinformation is a form of identity-based disinformation that threatens human rights worldwide. It undermines the digital and political rights, as well as the safety and security, of its targets. Ellen Judson from Demos explains what gendered disinformation is, how it impacts individuals and societies, and the challenges in combating it, drawing on case studies from Poland and the UK. It assesses how the UK and EU are responding to gendered disinformation, and sets out a plan of action for governments, platforms, media and civil society.

The Hungarian government has received international criticism over a new law that bans the depiction or promotion of homosexuality to those under the age of 18. Andrea Pető argues that the law may well prove to be a miscalculation by the country’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.