Amid all the violence happening in Iraq, a workshop at a Californian University aims at building a working group consisting of women within the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education to increase the number of women in leadership roles in Iraqi universities. Egypt’s National Council for Women launched last month a media campaign under the slogan […]

International development policies have been my bread and butter for the past two years, both academically and professionally. When I first entered this field, I wanted to understand why development programming was only guided towards non-white people. Didn’t the world overall need “development”? As I soon learned, the word “development” as it is used in […]

I have a crush on a muppet. Yes, my most recent girl-crush is on a fuzzy magenta puppet in vibrant dresses. I am smitten with Sesame Street’s newest family member from Afghanistan: Zari. I grew up watching Sesame Street. My mom tells me how my schedule as a preschooler was set around watching Ernie & […]

Afghanistan In Afghanistan, half of all deaths among women aged 15 to 49 are because of pregnancy and childbirth. A video by The Guardian titled, “The imams, the Taliban and the condoms” follows two imams’ project to raise awareness about birth control methods and women’s health. Australia Susan Carland, an Australian academic, who regularly receives […]

Afghanistan Afghan rights activist Aziza Rahimzada has been nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize – an award previously won by Malala Yousafzai – and, like her Pakistani counterpart, hopes to spread her message of universal education and fundamental rights for Afghanistan’s youth. Australia A man attacked a 21-year-old Muslim woman outside the State Library […]

Who doesn’t love stories and reports of young Muslims girls in Afghanistan, leaping through the air and landing on their skateboards? The agility and passion for skateboarding is juxtaposed with general tomboy badassery, which it is implied, is surprising to find in in their homeland. Their long colourful dresses heighten the wonder of their athleticism. […]

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, CEO of Muslimgirl.net, explains how Muslim women are ‘spoken over by the public’ and their voices ‘ignored.’ In a rare protest in Afghanistan’s male-dominated society, female rights activists in Kabul carry coffin of a woman beaten to death for allegedly burning Quran to graveyard. A Muslim […]

A group of Afghan men have marched through the capital Kabul in burkas to draw attention to women’s rights. A group of Afghan men have marched through the capital Kabul in burkas to draw attention to women’s rights. Pakistani group “No Guts, No Heart, No Glory” hopes to change the way some media outlets depict Muslim women as […]

Last month, I looked at Eliza Griswold and Seamus Murphy’s work profiling Afghan women poets particular form of poetry, the landay. Their work, as they presented it in an article on Slate, came across as nuanced and reflective (my own words) of Afghan women’s experiences. I was eager to review their book, I Am the […]

Earlier this month, Slate featured a photography-poetry project, “The Secret Lives of Afghanistan’s Female Poets.” The photography-poetry collaboration stems from the work of journalist Eliza Griswold and photographer Seamus Murphy, who reported “Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry” for the New York Times magazine in 2012. Griswold and Murphy’s work will be published […]