Women Farmers Feed the World

It’s harvest season in Burkina Faso. Throughout the West African nation’s rural regions, small farmers—mostly women—are harvesting millet, rice, and sorghum to feed large families. After a full day gathering grains, each wife will continue the work, tending her own small garden to feed her children. The harvest marks the end of the “lean season,” [...]

NEWS BRIEF: Global Population Hits 7 Billion

Today, according to projections from the United Nations Population Fund, the global population hit 7 billion—a number that continues to grow by more than 200,000 a day. As Ms. reported in the latest issue (on newsstands now or available here), the increasingly steep climb in the Earth’s population raises serious concerns about sustainability. The Feminist [...]

Obama Sends Troops to East Africa; Women and Girls Deserve More

Last week, the Associated Press announced that the U.S. would be “venturing into one of Africa’s bloodiest conflicts.” That’s a theatrical way of saying that Obama is sending 100 U.S. military advisers to East Africa to counsel the Ugandan government in its fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that has evaded national [...]

High Dropout Rates, No Simple Answers, for Northern Uganda’s Girls

On the brick wall outside Oloo Primary School in northern Uganda, a small chalkboard displays the “attendance record” for students by gender. From first to seventh grade, the number of girls enrolled sinks drastically, from 51 to 4. The dwindling number of girls in school is the product of many factors, some of which go [...]

Violence Against Women Impedes Economic Development

We all know the ways that violence against women affects bodies, minds and souls. Less understood are the broader impacts of violence on women’s economic lives, and how it impedes not only their personal development but that of their communities and even their nations. On August 11, attendees at a Swiss Agency for Development and [...]

In a First, UN Holds Brazil Accountable for Maternal Death Under CEDAW

Nine years ago, 28-year-old Alyne da Silva Pimentel died needlessly from a difficult pregnancy after her care was both delayed and botched. A Brazilian of African descent, Pimentel lived in one of Rio de Janeiro’s poorest areas. When she delivered a stillborn pre-term fetus in her district’s local hospital, she languished without proper care until [...]

7 Billion Reasons

By Suzanne Petroni Chances are, you’ll hear or read soon that the world’s population is about to hit 7 billion. Get ready for cool graphics demonstrating its remarkable escalation over the past century, as modern medicine and agricultural advances helped people live longer and societies flourish, while fertility rates remained higher than “replacement level” in much [...]

A Mother’s Day Wish for the 7 Billionth Child

At this time last year, I wrote an article to commemorate two important events that were being celebrated on the same day: Mother’s Day and the 50th anniversary of “the Pill.” In that article, I described my mother’s childbearing experiences in Tunisia in the mid 1950s and how she would most certainly not be alive [...]

Newsflash: World Population To Reach 7 Billion This Year

The UN announced Tuesday that the world population is estimated to reach 7 billion by October 2011. And that, says United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) executive director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, underscores the need to provide “safe and effective” family planning to the 215 million women who lack it because it’s not readily available or prohibitively [...]

Across Africa, Women Peacekeepers Needed

As conflict rages in various regions of Africa, Ghana has just won dual accolades from the United Nations: for its transparent, democratic elections and, of note to feminists, for its inclusion of women in peacekeeping missions. Ghana has 55 women on the front lines of the 700-person contingent of peacekeepers it has sent to Liberia [...]

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