Women

At the UN, Mexico Works for Women’s Rights. Back Home It’s a Different Story.

March 29, 2021

Mexico and France are hosting a United Nations forum that aims to accelerate the agenda laid out 26 years ago at the landmark Beijing women’s conference: securing equal rights and equal opportunities for half the population of the world. Beginning in Mexico City on March 29-31 and culminating in Paris in early July, the …

Gender-Based Violence, Human Rights, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

The Chances for a Woman Leading the UN Soon Are Fading Fast

March 24, 2021

by Sonah Lee-Lassiter

Unless a strong candidate backed by an influential member state comes forward soon, it looks unlikely that Secretary-General António Guterres will be denied a second term and that a woman could be elected to succeed him, starting in 2022. Any challengers for the United Nations’ top leadership post will need to step up in …

Secretary-General, Security Council, US-UN Relations, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Democracy Depends on Women’s Empowerment, Kamala Harris Says in Her UN Debut

March 16, 2021

by Barbara Crossette

Facing a world unsettled and even shocked by what has happened to the United States in recent years and not sure what to expect of Americans now, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke today in clear, reassuring terms to a United Nations audience, tuned in globally. But she warned that democracy everywhere was in peril …

Gender-Based Violence, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Surrogate Motherhood as a Business: New York State Defies a Global Trend

March 15, 2021

by Barbara Crossette

In the middle of the night on April 2, 2020, buried in a 400-page state budget, a provision to make commercial surrogacy legal in New York was adopted despite a campaign against the move by leading advocates of women’s reproductive health and rights. The law took effect on Feb. 15, and surrogate pregnancies became …

Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Women Gain Power in the African Union, While Rwanda’s President Strives for More Too

March 1, 2021

by Barbara Crossette

The African Union, living up to its longtime promise to improve the gender balance in its leadership, has elected the first woman as deputy chair of the organization’s operating commission. She is Monique Nsanzabaganwa, an economist who was deputy governor of the National Bank of Rwanda and earlier Rwanda’s minister of trade and industry. …

Africa, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

What the World Learned About Women’s Talents in a Hellish Year

February 22, 2021

by Barbara Crossette

It was a tough and discouraging year, 2020, for women around the world as they prepare for the 12-day annual session of the Commission on the Status of Women. It begins at the United Nations — mostly virtually — on March 15. Last year, it was canceled, though a large UN forum commemorating the …

Gender-Based Violence, Women

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US Aid Returns to UNFPA Amid Efforts to End Global Gag Rule Permanently

January 31, 2021

by Barbara Crossette

Fulfilling promises that he made in his 2020 election campaign, President Joe Biden restored United States contributions to the United Nations Population Fund on Jan. 28. Through another executive order, he also overturned crippling US aid restrictions worldwide that had been demanded by anti-abortion lobbies. The Mexico City policy restrictions — also known as …

Gender-Based Violence, Health and Population, Human Rights, US-UN Relations, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

The UN’s First Feminist, ‘Peg’ Snyder, Is Dead at 91

January 30, 2021

by Barbara Crossette

Margaret C. Snyder, the founding director of Unifem, now folded into UN Women, died on Jan. 26, 2021, after a brief illness while staying in Syracuse, N.Y., near her relatives and the city where she was born. “Peg,” as she was known, was 91, days short of her birthday on Jan. 30. Her grandniece, …

Africa, Development, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Feminists Grade the UN’s Guterres With a ‘B’ for 2020

January 27, 2021

by Barbara Crossette

The widely shared hopes in 2016 that a woman could finally be elected secretary-general of the United Nations at the end of Ban Ki-moon’s two terms were crushed when the big powers chose a man from a large field of candidates from across the world — seven women and six men. The General Assembly …

Gender-Based Violence, Secretary-General, Women

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For Women in Politics Globally, the Job Can Mean Abuse, Jail or Death

January 4, 2021

by Barbara Crossette

In the early afternoon of May 13, 2020, Joana Mamombe, a member of parliament in Zimbabwe, was seized by security officers after she participated in a pop-up protest, demanding aid for the poor during the Covid pandemic. She and two other rights advocates were accused of violating a lockdown, an act intended to demonstrate …

Gender-Based Violence, Human Rights, Women

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Woman of the Year? You and Me and Every One of Us

December 31, 2020

by Laura E. Kirkpatrick

How bad was 2020? So awful that Match.com made a commercial in which a woman named 2020 falls in love with the Devil and they live happily ever after. As annoying as it is that 2020 is portrayed as a woman, the ad sums up the year pretty well. The year began promisingly, at …

Gender-Based Violence, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

The Sole Woman Running for President of Burkina Faso Says: ‘I Will Win’

November 19, 2020

by Clair MacDougall

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Monique Yéli Kam’s war room is not a typical campaign headquarters for a national presidential candidate. A dusty white marquis stands next to stacked blue chairs fanning out to a balcony that leads to a room where teenage boys jostle to play a soccer video game. Upstairs in her apartment, …

Africa, Governance, Women

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TOPIC: WOMEN

The UN General Assembly President Turns His Focus on Women, but Why?

November 10, 2020

by Barbara Crossette

When it comes to power and influence in the United Nations system, the president of the General Assembly has little control beyond a procedural role in managing an often-fractious body of member nations, now numbering 193, each with policies of its own. The Assembly is forbidden by Article 12 of the UN Charter, for …

Gender-Based Violence, General Assembly, Women

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For This Afghan Woman, Midwifery Is a Labor of Love

November 8, 2020

by Lori Silberman Brauner

From a young age, Zahra Mirzaei, 32, decided to become a midwife after she encountered a kind doctor who encouraged her to pursue studies in the field. Observing the role that midwives played in her country — Afghanistan — while challenged by extremely limited educational opportunities for women and girls, Mirzaei said: “It spoke …

Health and Population, Women

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Women’s Rights Are Human Rights: How Equality Became a US Foreign Policy Priority

October 14, 2020

by Rebecca Turkington and Melanne Verveer

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Twenty-five years ago this month, tens of thousands of women (and some men) gathered in Beijing for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. It was a profound moment in the history of women’s rights, convening 5,000 official delegates from nearly every country in the world and more than 30,000 …