Feminists: Bring Out Your Beards!

As scores of people lined the streets of Paris yesterday in celebration of Bastille Day, they may have noticed something slightly odd about the statues of women around the city: Many of them–even the famous Marianne de Paris–were wearing beards. La Barbe, the Paris-based feminist group responsible for these facial-hair installments, has been enlivening French [...]

Does the Reaction to IMF Rape Charges Show Progress?

International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn is being held without bail in Manhattan today on charges of attempted rape, sexual assault and unlawful imprisonment. The powerful French politician is accused of confining a maid in an upscale New York hotel and sexually abusing her on Saturday afternoon. Theories of a plot to defame the beloved [...]

France’s Sham Veil Ban

On Monday, France’s controversial veil ban went into effect. Backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, the law does not explicitly mention Islam, but it prohibits the act of covering one’s face in public and would outlaw the full-face veil, or niqab. Offenders must pay a fine of 150 € ($217.47) or take French citizenship classes. Supporters [...]

Support Anti-Street Harassment Day: Hollaback!

Earlier this month, Hollaback! Buenos Aires founder Inti Maria Tidball-Binz was featured in Argentina’s El Guardián newspaper, but the coverage was far from celebratory. Writer Juan Terranova belittled the movement, stating that street harassment is okay. As if Terranova couldn’t be any more infuriating, he ended by threateneing Tidball-Binz, I finish here with a wish [...]

Concluding Thoughts on Love Your Body Week

Today marks the last day of “Love Your Body Week,” and the blogosphere has been actively posting useful tips on how to love one’s own body even if it does not live up to the marketed ideal. Of course many women find it hard to love their bodies when they’re “overweight,” even though the fashion-model [...]

Global Roundup: MDG, Women Cabbies, the Roma and More

In the last two weeks, the United Nations hosted the Millennium Development Goals summit, women cab drivers navigated Cairo’s streets, the dispute between France and the European Union over Roma expulsions heated up and women’s rights activists stepped up the legal pressure to decriminalize abortion in Argentina. Global: Last week, the United Nations hosted a [...]

Global News Roundup: Michelle Bachelet Heads UN Women, France Bans Veil, and More

This week, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is named new head of UN Women; maternal mortality has fallen for the first time in decades; the French Senate votes to ban face veils in public; a senior British cardinal says women can’t be ordained; and a woman purporting to be Sakineh Ashtiani, who was sentenced to [...]

Global News Roundup: Morocco, France, Afghanistan, DRC, Japan

This week: Moroccan women banned from Mecca; Carla Bruni called a “prostitute” who “deserves to die”; Afghanistan woman MP’s aides found dead; suspicion of poison gas attacks in Afghanistan girls’ schools confirmed; U.N. denied protection to citizens before DRC mass rape; victim toll of mass rape now at over 240; and a new program for gender [...]

State Department Dining, Muslimah Style

I recently accepted an invitation to attend a dinner at the State Department hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in honor of the holy month of Ramadan. The dinner itself, which takes place on Tuesday, September 7, is a formal iftar—the meal eaten every evening after sunset when Muslims break the fast during the [...]

Will Elisabeth Badinter’s New Book Rile Oprah Mommies?

Élisabeth Badinter’s new book, Le Conflit: la femme et la mère (Conflict: the woman and the mother) is causing quite a stir on the European continent. Badinter, a French feminist and philosophy professor at the prestigious École Polytechnique, is no stranger to controversy. In her previous book, Fausse route (Wrong Way), she blamed American feminists Andrea Dworkin [...]

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