Empowerment

Afghan women excluded from peace talks with Taliban, says Oxfam

Women’s rights have been held up as one of the most tangible gains of the international intervention in Afghanistan. Yet after 13 years of promises that women’s rights are a high priority, these gains remain fragile and are at increasing risk of erosion, especially as expected peace talks with the Taliban gain momentum.

Noorjahan Akbar at TEDxLafayetteCollege: Education and empowerment in Afghanistan

In this TEDx talk, Afghan women's rights activist and WLUML networker Noorjahan Akbar shares her personal journey for getting an education and the impact that education has on empowering women around the world and in Afghanistan.

New Feminist Leadership Web Portal Offers Online Home to All Generations of Activists

Shirkat Gah - Women’s Resource Centre, the Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE), and Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) have today announced the launch of a new feminist leadership web portal as part of their Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Development for Democratisation (WELDD) programme. The portal will act as a virtual pathway to feminist activists, organisations, and dreamers of a gender -just and egalitarian world. The portal is a space to share useful resources, a forum for sharing experiences and holding discussions and debates about how to nurture feminist leadership that is transformative and sustainable. WELDD is committed to Global South knowledge production, and will hold a space for theoretical/conceptual explorations emerging from Muslim majority contexts in Arabic, Bahasa, English, French and Urdu.

Striving for Gender Justice: Overcoming Obstacles

While on one hand a PIL has been filed for UCC, there is another significant development in this direction. This relates to the personal laws of Muslim community. That ‘Muslim women are subject to more domination and gender injustice’ has been a widespread perception. While as such the Personal laws of different religious communities are not giving adequate justice to women, the popular focus is mainly on the Muslim community. This despite the fact that there are number of Muslim women’s groups who are striving for gender just civil codes within Muslim community. The recently released Nikahnama (Marriage Norms) by Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) is one such leap by Muslim women to overcome the shackles of patriarchal grip on the Muslim women. Model Nikahnama released by BMMA (June 23, 2014) is an important step in this direction, in the direction of empowering Muslim women This tries to give the solution to various problems faced by Muslim women. It outlines the various steps for which the large section of Muslim women is longing for.

Think Feminism

Some would call me ‘unsexy’,’ uncool’ and brutally hardcore but Yes, I am a feminist and I am not sorry about it. I was born one, I have always been one but maybe I just needed a push to tilt my head above the “surface” and realize that I will be sinking if I don’t defend my identity, my being a woman and the essence of my living.

Laughter and Learning in the Sun: Feminist Leadership Workshops in West Africa

The last two months at WLUML have been a busy time! Two feminist leadership workshops took place in West Africa under the Women’s Empowerment and Leadership for Development and Democratisation (WELDD) programme. Banjul, on Gambia’s ‘smiling coast’ was the setting for the Anglophone Africa training, and the following month saw the Francophone Africa workshop take place in Dakar, Senegal.

Ziauddin Yousafzai My daughter, Malala

0:12 In many patriarchal societies and tribal societies, fathers are usually known by their sons, but I'm one of the few fathers who is known by his daughter, and I am proud of it.

WLUML Feminist Leadership Workshop Underway in Banjul

Banjul, on Gambia’s ‘smiling coast’, is currently hosting WLUML’s fourth transformational feminist leadership workshop. The workshop - part of our Women's Empowerment and Leadership Development for Democratisation programme (WELDD) – started on Monday and will go on until Friday. The workshop has brought together young female activists from around the African continent to furnish them with the tools to effectively fight for women’s rights in their respective contexts.

فيديو: الرقص في مصر الجديدة

فتيات رقصن بشكل مفاجيء أمس الجمعة في منطقة الكوربة في مصر الجديدة في إطار الحملة العالمية ”مليار ثائر لأجل العدالة 201

What the WELDD training meant to me

I've always felt that I have an inside voice which guides me and opens my eyes to the kind of things that many other women feel nothing towards and just cope with. I was born in a country which suffers from a hierarchical authority. What makes this worse is that the women inside it are often part of that; they remain neutral or, even worse, support this authority. As women are an integral part in the dilemma, their negativity towards being subjected by men is perhaps the worst part of the equation.