North America | United States | Law

Women’s Rights Advocates Condemn DOJ Decision to Not Defend Female Genital Mutilation Law

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On Thursday, April 25th, Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12) (pictured center) joined elected officials and Equal Rights Amendment advocates to condemn a recent US Department of Justice decision to not  defend a federal law banning FGM/C, to call for Speaker Pelosi to step in to defend the law, and call for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Congresswoman Maloney is the sponsor of H.J. Res. 35, a bill to restart the ratification process of the ERA. While the Trump Administration has decided not to defend the 1996 law banning FGM/C, the House or the Senate could do s
Middle East | Iran | Culture

An Iranian Boxer Won Her First Official Match. Now She Says She Can’t Go Back Home.

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Sadaf Khadem, the first Iranian woman to compete in an official boxing match, won't return home to Iran after learning about an arrest warrant issued against her coach, she announced Wednesday. Khadem was in the western French town of Royan for the fight against boxer Anne Chauvin on Saturday. She won the fight while decked out in a green tank top and red shorts with a white waistband, matching the Iranian flag. Her head was also uncovered while she traded blows, all of which are against Iran's mandatory dress code for women.
North America | United States | Religion

Inside the horrifying, unspoken world of sexually abusive nuns

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It’s the line from Scripture that stayed with Cait Finnegan for nearly half a century as she tried to suppress the painful memories of the sexual abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her Catholic clergy educator. “God is Love,” Sister Mary Juanita Barto told Finnegan as she repeatedly raped her in classrooms at Mater Christi High School in Queens in the late 1960s. The abuse began when Finnegan was 15 and continued throughout her high school years — on school buses to out-of-town sporting events, at religious retreats in upstate New York, at Finnegan’s childhood home in
Middle East | Syria | Politics

Hoda Muthana ‘deeply regrets’ joining Isis and wants to return home

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An American woman captured by Kurdish forces after fleeing the last pocket of land controlled by Islamic Statesays she “deeply regrets” travelling to Syria to join the terror group and has pleaded to be allowed to return to her family in Alabama. Once one of Isis’s most prominent online agitators who took to social media to call for the blood of Americans to be spilled, Hoda Muthana, 24, claims to have made a “big mistake” when she left the US four years ago and says she was brainwashed into doing so online. Speaking from al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria, while her 18-mon
Middle East | Iran | Activism

Iran arrests 29 women as headscarf protests intensify

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Tehran police have arrested 29 women for appearing in public without a headscarf as protests against the dress code in force since the Islamic revolution of 1979 intensify, Iranian media reported Friday. Those arrested were accused of public order offences and referred to the state prosecutor's office, the Fars, ILNA and Tasnim news agencies reported without elaborating. Chief prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri had played down the escalating protests on Wednesday, saying they were "trivial" and "childish" moves possibly incited by foreigners.
Middle East | Israel | Religion

Orthodox Jews try to disrupt women’s service at Israel’s Western Wall

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Thousands of Orthodox Jewish men and women attempted to disrupt a group of progressive women from conducting a prayer service Monday at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. Police estimated between 1,000 and 2,000 female seminary students, primarily from religious Zionist high schools, tried to block the women from praying at Israeli's holiest site. Male students standing in the men's section attempted to drown out the women's prayers with shouting, cursing and blowing whistles. The ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and women were protesting the women wearing tefillin, yarmulkes, and p
Middle East | Iran | Activism

Was This the Poem That Sent a Young Iranian Woman to Prison?

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An award-winning poet has been taken into custody by Iranian officials after a video of her reading a poem critical of the head coverings women must wear in the Islamic Republic of Iran went viral. Hila Sedighi was arrested at a Tehran airport Thursday upon return from a trip to the United Arab Emirates, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group based in New York City.
Middle East | Israel | Religion

Netanyahu agrees with haredim not to allow Women of the Wall to read Torah at Western Wall

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apparently “forgot that women make up half of all Jews,” the Woman of the Wall organization responded Tuesday to reports that he agreed with the coalition’s haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties that women should not be allowed to read from the Torah in the women’s section of the Western Wall. The prime minister met with the heads of the haredi political parties last week and decided that WoW’s demand to be able to read from the Torah at the site would not be met, Army Radio reported on Tuesday morning.