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Category: Women

  • ‘We’ve dreamed for a road into the villages and now it has happened’

    By Hezron Kising in Lae

    It takes up to 6 km for women from Milampipi and Kaisia villages in the mountainous hinterlands of Papua New Guinea’s Nabak local government in Nawaeb district, Morobe province, to reach the nearest roads by foot.

    For more than 40 years they have had to do this before they could catch a vehicle to sell their garden produce in the markets in Lae city 21km away.

    For the women — especially mothers — the struggle is real. They have walked for six to seven hours, climbing steep rugged mountains, crossing dangerous fast flowing rivers with heavy loads of vegetables, bananas, taro and sweet potatoes to reach Situm or Hobu to get on a PMV (public motor vehicle).

    November 7, 2021, is a day the villagers will never forget –– on that day, the first PMV truck nicknamed “Dignity” drove into the village for the first time to bring the mothers and their produce to markets.

    That was made possible after the national government, through the Department of National Planning and Monitoring, with Nawaeb and Finschhafen districts allocating funds, initiated the construction of the Nawaeb-Finschhafen Highway this year.

    The road will link rural villages in the two districts to the provincial capital, also enabling some of the best organic coffee to reach market.

    One mother, Wangeng Akundi, was emotional and shedding tears of joy when she put her bilums (string bags) packed with garden foods and sako (vegetable) on the truck for the first time.

    Walking for years with heavy loads
    She says that for years, they had walked long distances with their heavy loads.

    “Sometimes we also carry our babies on top of the loads to seek medical services in Situm or Lae,” she adds.

    “We are thankful to Anutu (God) for the road access that has reached us and now we will just get on a PMV and travel to Lae for our marketing.”

    John Kamsi, a person living with a disability, says it takes him longer to reach the main roads to seek medical services.

    “I am very happy with the new road,” he said.

    A mother of one, Sandra Yaling, says: “We’re very happy with the new road, because some of us put our lives and the lives of our children at risk many times just to get to the nearest road.

    “The main things that we need are cooking oil, soap and salt.”

    Real struggles for food
    PMV owner Eric Piving, whose vehicle was the first to bring the women and children with their produce to Bumayong and Igam markets, says many times he felt sorry for the mothers.

    They had to walk long distances with their foodstuffs to sell and meet their basic household needs.

    “We’ve dreamed for a road into the villages and now it has happened,” he says.

    He said many times people see them selling their produce at the markets, without knowing the real struggles they have to go through to bring those food items to the market.

    “Since first the Lutheran missionaries came to Finschhafen and took the same route towards Nawaeb, then to parts of Morobe — the new highway should be named Miti Highway’, which means ‘God’s Word highway’),” Piving says.

    “We thank the government and our local MPs for their support.”

    Nawaeb MP Kennedy Wenge told the PNG Post-Courier that the District Development Authority allocated K100,000 (NZ$43,000) each year to support the new stretch of road from Hobu to Momolili.

    K280 million allocated for road
    “The Department of National Planning and Monitoring allocated K280 million (NZ$120 million) in 2020 and has continued funding the road that will connect Lae-Nawaeb and Finschhafen,” he says.

    “I want our people to appreciate what the districts and the national government have committed and support the work. The Nawaeb to Kabwum road will also take shape once K100 million (NZ$43 million) funding is made available.”

    Wenge says the villages also produce high tonnes of coffee and the road will assist them greatly in terms of accessing markets.

    More than 2000 people from villages in Nawaeb will benefit from the road. Apart from road Wenge, says he is also ensuring maintenance on rural airstrips so people can transport their coffee and garden produce to the markets in Lae.

    That is to support villagers gaining some income.

    Republished with permission from the PNG Post-Courier.

    A woman puts a rock under the "Dignity" PMV wheel
    A woman puts a rock under the “Dignity” PMV wheel to support it climbing a steep hill on the new Nawaeb-Finschaffen highway. Image: PNG Post-Courier

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Fourth Feminist Walking Tour

    Another Feminist Walking tour heard from a range of feminist speakers. Rachel Evans reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • ‘The Taliban say they’ll kill me if they find me’: a female reporter still on the run speaks out

    We return to the story of a journalist forced to flee as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August. Unable to return home without putting at risk everyone she loves and hounded by threatening calls, she remains in hiding in the country four months on

    I am an Afghan female journalist and I have been on the run for more than four months. I have lived in numerous safe houses and the homes of people who’ve offered me refuge. I am constantly moving to avoid being caught, from province to province, city to city.

    The Taliban insurgents have been threatening to kill me and my colleagues for two years, for our reports exposing their crimes in our province. But when they seized control of our provincial capital, they started to hunt for those who had spoken out against them. I decided to escape, for my own and my family’s safety.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Chris Hedges: American Satyricon

    The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell which began this week in Manhattan will not hold to account the powerful and wealthy men who are also complicit in the sexual assaults of girls as young as twelve Maxwell allegedly procured for billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

    Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, hedge-fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Secretary of the Treasury and former president of Harvard Larry Summers, Stephen Pinker, Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, billionaire Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner, the J.P Morgan banker Jes Staley, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barack, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell, Harvey Weinstein and many others who were at least present and most likely participated in Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia, are not in court.

    The post Chris Hedges: American Satyricon appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • El Salvador ‘responsible for death of woman jailed after miscarriage’

    Inter-American court of human rights orders Central American country to reform harsh policies on reproductive health

    The Inter-American court of human rights has ruled that El Salvador was responsible for the death of Manuela, a woman who was jailed in 2008 for killing her baby when she suffered a miscarriage.

    The court has ordered the Central American country to reform its draconian policies on reproductive health.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Part of the ‘great resignation’ is actually just mothers forced to leave their jobs

    By Moira Donegan

    Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/19/great-resignation-mothers-forced-to-leave-jobs

    During the pandemic, women have exited the labor force at twice the rate of men; their participation in the paid labor force is now the lowest it has been in more than 30 years

    They call it “the Great Resignation”. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in September. The analytics firm Visier puts it in even starker terms, reporting that one in four workers quit in the past year. Job separations initiated by employees – quits – have exceeded pre-pandemic highs for six straight months. After the insecurity of the pandemic and the mass layoffs in hard-hit industries, many had predicted that the Covid crisis would yield more job retention and sterner worker competition as people sought stability in an uncertain time. Instead, employees are showing themselves more willing than ever to quit or change their jobs. The result has been a labor shortage, as employers struggle to find people to work and wages have finally been forced up. In an unexpected twist, the dawn of the post-pandemic era has brought with it a surprising moment of labor power.

    Most popular explanations for the Great Resignation focus on the shifting sentiments of workers. “The pandemic was sort of a nationwide awakening during a very stressful time,” Anthony Klotz, a psychologist at Texas A&M who coined the term “Great Resignation”, told NPR. “Most people were reflecting on their lives at the same time that work was causing them burnout, or they were really enjoying working from home.”

    But while the introspection occasioned by quarantine may have led some workers to reassess their priorities and willingly change their lives, such an explanation for the sudden disappearance of so many people from the job market might be better explained by material factors.

    The fact of the matter is that when we speak of the Great Resignation, we are really referring to a great resignation of women. During the pandemic, women have exited the labor force at twice the rate that men have; their participation in the paid labor force is now the lowest it has been in more than 30 years. About one-third of all mothers in the workforce have scaled back or left their jobs since March 2020. That labor shortage? It’s being felt most acutely in sectors like hospitality, retail and healthcare – industries where women make up a majority of workers.

    When we speak of the Great Resignation, we are really referring to a great resignation of women.

    Why are women leaving the workforce at such a disproportionate rate? It’s not because they have been on personal journeys of soul-searching and self-discovery. It’s because they have nowhere to put their kids. Schools were closed for much of two straight school years; many still face interruptions, quarantines and closures. And for the parents of even younger kids, daycare centers, already unaffordably expensive and in dramatically short supply before the pandemic, closed in record numbers over the past year. Now, costs have been driven even higher; waiting lists can stretch for months.

    It might be more accurate, then, to say that as far as working mothers are concerned, the Great Resignation doesn’t reflect women leaving the workforce. It reflects them being forced out.

    The pandemic made women’s exit from the labor force rapid and highly visible. But the loss of female workers is nothing new. Women’s workforce participation rate has been declining steadily since the 2008 financial crisis. The pandemic merely accelerated an already alarming trend. Childcare – along with its generational inverse, elder care – have always been among the primary culprits. American disinvestment in the care economy has waged a war of attrition on women’s employment, with women forced to chose between jobs where they are paid too little and childcare solutions that cost too much. The result has been a massive loss of talent, creativity and human potential from the paid economy. When care is not invested in, women are not prioritized – and that means that half of the nation’s minds risk being exiled to the domestic sphere.

    Women are forced to chose between jobs where they are paid too little, and childcare solutions that cost too much.

    The economic impact of women’s expulsion from paid work is being felt acutely now, as the service and healthcare sectors struggle to find workers. But the moral impact has been felt for decades. The first time the first woman sat down and calculated that sending her kids to daycare would cost more than she could earn at her job, the nation was already in crisis. The loss of women from the paid workforce – a trend not seen on anything like the same scale in countries with sane and responsible investments in their care infrastructure – makes the US economy less competitive, and makes families less prosperous, leading to worse outcomes for households over the long term. And it also makes women less equal, less powerful and often less challenged and fulfilled in their individual lives – a great loss unto itself.

    The trend of women leaving the workforce to care for their children has often been explained as a matter of women’s personal choices. But to the women facing the stark financial reality that they can’t afford both their own professional ambitions and to meet the needs of their kids, it doesn’t feel like much of a choice at all. It feels like their options have been narrowed so much that the choice has been made for them.

    Maybe commentators have become blind to women’s needs, or accustomed to ignoring them.

    With so much of the labor shortage being driven by women’s forced exit from paid work, why has the “Great Resignation” been spoken of as a shift in sentiment and attitudes, rather than as a response to women’s caregiving responsibilities? Maybe one reason is that commentators have become blind to women’s needs, or accustomed to ignoring them. That might explain why major economic shifts have been explained with theories about gender-neutral emotions – rather than gender-specific material realities.

    But to be fair, not all of the labor shortage can be explained by the childcare crisis pushing women out of the workforce. No doubt there are, in fact, many workers reassessing their priorities and demanding more from their employers – as well they should. But workers who are quitting their jobs for other reasons have the power and flexibility to do so because of a labor shortage caused in part by a mass forced exit of women from the workforce. It’s a reality that casts the victories of rising wages and employer concessions in a more complex light. This moment of worker power – a social good – has been in part subsidized by the expulsion of mothers from the workforce – a generational tragedy.

    The post Part of the ‘great resignation’ is actually just mothers forced to leave their jobs appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Three months of Taliban occupation: Barbarism unlimited

    November 16 marked exactly three months of Taliban occupation of Kabul, reports Yasmeen Afghan. The world cannot turn its back.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Abortion was legalised in Northern Ireland in 2019 – so why are we still waiting for it? | Elizabeth Nelson

    The Northern Ireland Office move to uphold our human rights is welcome. But it shouldn’t have come to this

    • Elizabeth Nelson is a writer and activist based in Belfast

    Just over two years ago I was in a pub in Belfast celebrating the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland. This heady day of vindication came after decades of campaigning by countless activists. There was a feeling of relief, not only for campaigners, but for those who have endured the trauma of being forced to travel to access basic healthcare that was readily available throughout the rest of the UK. The end was finally in sight. Our fundamental human rights would be enshrined in law, though it had taken Westminster to step in where our own government would not. At last, free, safe, legal, local abortion was imminent.

    But the promises of that day have yet to materialise. For two years the Northern Ireland Department of Health has failed to commission abortion services. Access to abortion in Northern Ireland remains piecemeal, with much of the support delivered by charities like Informing Choices NI. When they had to stop their work due to excessive pressure on resources, access to abortion again became practically nonexistent in Northern Ireland. In the midst of a once in a generation pandemic, people needing abortions – UK citizens and residents – are still forced, at personal and financial cost, to travel to Great Britain for care.

    Elizabeth Nelson is a writer and activist based in Belfast

    Continue reading…

  • Ecosocialism conference brings together feminists and anti-war activists

    Australia’s second Ecosocialism conference drew activists from across the globe to discuss how we can liberate humanity, reports Alex Bainbridge.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • NSW affirmative consent bill finally introduced

    Long awaited sexual consent law reforms have been introduced in to New South Wales parliament after years of campaigning by sexual assault survivors and feminists. Reports Isaac Nellist.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Women in the UK military facing bullying, sexual harassment and assault

    Women serving in the UK military face a considerable risk of emotional bullying, sexual harassment, and physical assault, a study has found.

    Systemic abuse

    Those who are younger, have held the rank of officer, or had a combat or combat support role were the most likely to have suffered such treatment, according to a study published in the BMJ Military Health journal.

    Of the 750 women veterans who were surveyed, 22.5% said they had been sexually harassed, while 5.1% recalled having been sexually assaulted. Emotional bullying was suffered by 22.7% of those women, while 3.3% said they had been physically assaulted.

    There are currently around 16,500 women serving in the UK military and they make up approximately 11% of personnel. Women have been able to serve in the UK military for many years and all roles were opened up to them, including deployment to frontline combat, in 2018.

    The team of British-based scientists, who made contact with those who took part in the research through a UK charity which supports women veterans, believe there is an urgent need to provide more support to military women. All forms of bad treatment left the women at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the study.

    Sexual harassment was “significantly” linked to a situation where the women found themselves in pain or fatigued due to the mental distress causes they were suffering. It was also found that sexual assault could be linked with the women having “a greater risk of alcohol difficulties”, while emotional bullying left them to cope with issues such as anxiety, depression, low social support, and loneliness.

    The study found that women who held a rank as an officer were at greater risk of sexual harassment as well as emotional bullying, but the scientists also state that “even women holding higher power positions may be at risk of victimisation from their own superiors”. Since women were in the minority within the military “it cannot be ruled out that victimisation of women holding higher ranks may be perpetrated by their own peers as well as those in lower ranks”.

    “Fear of the consequences”

    The study states:

    Many women do not report adverse service experiences due to fear of the consequences of doing so and may continue to suffer from increased mental health distress during and after military service. It is essential to consider whether current reporting procedures may not provide sufficient confidentiality to encourage women to report adverse experiences and more appropriate disclosing procedures should be considered.

    Furthermore, it is essential to consider whether existing support is adequate to support the mental health needs of women who experienced military adversity.

    They add that it may be worth considering whether organisational and leadership changes can be made to better protect military women. The scientists say that no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect behind their findings as it was an observational study. Further research is needed.

    It involved women, who were mostly aged over 61, who answered questions about their experiences and feelings of their former lives in the military. The experiences of these older women may not be similar to a younger generation of army personnel. The study was also based around self-reported events, which means it could under-estimate or over-estimate the true picture of what was experienced.

    A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said:

    We are committed to improving the experience for women in the armed forces in every area of their lives and do not tolerate abuse, bullying​, harassment or discrimination.

    We have taken a range of steps to improve the experiences of women in our armed forces, as we continue to do for all serving personnel. This includes launching a 24/7 confidential and independent whole-force bullying, harassment and discrimination helpline with trained advisors to support personnel.

    All allegations are taken very seriously, with unlawful behaviour investigated ​by the relevant police service as necessary.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Why the witch-hunt victims of early modern Britain have come back to haunt us

    The women killed as witches centuries ago are starting to receive justice. But let’s not glamorise the murder of innocents

    Lilias Addie’s body was piled into a wooden box and buried beneath a half-tonne sandstone slab on the foreshore where a dark North Sea laps the Fife coast. More than a hundred years later, she was exhumed by opportunistic Victorian gravediggers and her bones – unusually large for a woman living in the early 18th century – were later put on show at the Empire exhibition in Glasgow. Her simple coffin was carved into a wooden walking stick – engraved “Lilias Addie, 1704” – which ended up in the collection of Andrew Carnegie, then the richest man in the world.

    It was no sort of burial, but from the perspective of the thousands of women accused of, and executed for, witchcraft in early modern Britain, Lilias’s fate had a degree of dignity.

    Continue reading…

  • A new Met Police scheme to ‘keep women safe’ misses the point entirely

    The Met Police still don’t get it. Or at least that’s what people are saying about their latest scheme to rebuild women’s trust since Sarah Everard’s murder. The force’s new rules mean that plain-clothes cops must prove their identity as police to lone women.

    But there is a problem. Sarah Everard was murdered by a real cop who was in active service. So it’s not altogether clear exactly how this new initiative would make a real difference.

    Killer cop

    In September 2021, firearms officer Wayne Couzens was given life in jail for murdering the 33-year-old Everard in March 2020. He used his authority as a cop to arrest, handcuff and kidnap her.

    Now the Met says plain clothes officer dealing with lone women will videocall headquarters, where someone will confirm the officer’s ID:

    But as many people on Twitter were quick to point out, even if Couzens had done this he would have been confirmed as a real cop. Because that is precisely what he was:

    Another Twitter user agreed that the new process did nothing to address the issue. And that the video itself was pretty creepy:

    While another Twitter user was concerned whether the new ID process will tell you about the officer’s own background. Such as if he is has a history of sexual misconduct:

    And another person pointed out how quickly the Met had created a narrative that Wayne Couzens was somehow an outsider, rather than what he was: an actively serving cop. And we should add, a serving cop with a long and identifiable history of sexual misconduct:

    It seems like the Met Police will have to do a lot more than dream up these kind of madcap schemes if they want to win back the trust of women – or anyone else for that matter.

    Featured image – Wikimedia Commons/Philius.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • After 20 years, occupation has failed Afghanistan – but our struggle for freedom continues

    The only way to save Afghanistan is solidarity of the progressive, democratic and secular forces, writes Malalai Joya.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Shadow minister criticises Kathleen Stock for being LGB Alliance trustee

    Taiwo Owatemi says group should be ‘rejected by all those who believe in equality’ but fellow trustee calls comments a ‘catalogue of lies’

    The shadow equalities minister has entered the controversy over the Sussex philosophy professor Kathleen Stock, criticising the academic’s role as a trustee of an activist group accused of anti-trans campaigning.

    Stock has attracted protests over her views on gender identification, and last week was the victim of a poster campaign at the university’s campus in Brighton that accused her of transphobia and called for her to be sacked.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Break the media monopoly over women’s bodies

    Whistleblower Frances Haugen has called out Facebook and its sister site Instagram for exacerbating body image and mental health issues in teenage girls. Janet Parker argues it helps feminists campaign against the system that commodifies women’s bodies.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Kabul Dairies Part 17: In this dead end!

    The Taliban are hunting down women’s rights activists in Kabul. Yasmeen Afghan files this account of one such activist who is now underground.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Domestic violence shelters essential during COVID-19 lockdowns

    Domestic and family violence shelters with good connections to communities have fared better in the lockdowns. Markela Panegyres spoke to Liz Scully from the Parramatta Women’s Shelter.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Morrison’s Porter gamble vs safety for women and girls

    The extent to which the ruling class will go to protect those accused of sexual violence is on full display in the case of the PM’s treatment of the former Attorney General Christian Porter, argues Markela Panegyres.

     

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • United States: More than 200,000 march to defend abortion rights

    Supporters of abortion rights turned out across the United States in protest against laws in Texas and Mississippi that effectively outlaw most abortions, reports Barry Sheppard.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • United States: R Kelly’s conviction sends message that Black girls and women matter

    R&B singer R Kelly’s conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking is a victory for Black girls and women, who have not been listened to in sexual assault cases, writes Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Kabul Diaries Part 15: Afghanistan is on an undeclared general strike since Taliban occupation

    Civil disobedience and stay-at-home strikes continue in Kabul against the Taliban regime, reports Yasmeen Afghan.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • The revolutionary Afghan woman who stayed to fight: Exclusive interview with Selay Ghaffar from the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan

    In this exclusive interview, Marcel Cartier speaks with Selay Ghaffar from the leftist Solidarity Party of Afghanistan.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Solidarity shown to Afghan women standing up to the Taliban

    Green Left joined with the Australian Kurdish Women’s Movement, Socialist Alliance and the Hunter Asylum Seeker Advocacy in a zoom speak-out with Afghan, Kurdish, Afghan, Chilean, Sudanese and LGBTIQ+ activists. Rachel Evans reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Kabul Diaries Part 14: ‘Our privacy is now subjected to Taliban vigilantes’

    Since the Taliban occupation, women largely stay at home because they are scared of being beaten and humiliated by the Taliban for just being women, reports Yasmeen Afghan.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Australian anti-harassment website given ‘woefully inadequate’ budget

    Tanya Plibersek criticises lack of funding for a Respect@Work portal compared to the government’s controversial $3.8m ‘milkshake and taco’ site

    A key part of the Respect@Work program to prevent sexual harassment has a “woefully inadequate” budget, especially compared to the $3.8m dedicated to the widely panned “milkshake and taco” site, shadow minister for women Tanya Plibersek says.

    A website to help workplaces tackle sexual harassment was the 48th of 55 recommendations in sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins’ landmark report on making workplaces safer.

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    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Australian anti-harassment website given ‘woefully inadequate’ budget

    Tanya Plibersek criticises lack of funding for a Respect@Work portal compared to the government’s controversial $3.8m ‘milkshake and taco’ site

    A key part of the Respect@Work program to prevent sexual harassment has a “woefully inadequate” budget, especially compared to the $3.8m dedicated to the widely panned “milkshake and taco” site, shadow minister for women Tanya Plibersek says.

    A website to help workplaces tackle sexual harassment was the 48th of 55 recommendations in sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins’ landmark report on making workplaces safer.

    Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘We buried our sportswear’: Afghan women fear fight is over for martial arts

    Female taekwondo and karate trainers are forced to practise in secret since the Taliban takeover and fear they may never compete again

    On the morning of 15 August, when the Taliban were at the gates of Kabul, Soraya, a martial arts trainer in the Afghan capital, woke up with a sense of dread. “It was as though the sun had lost its colour,” she says. That day she taught what would be her last karate class at the gym she had started to teach women self-defence skills. “By 11am we had to say our goodbyes to our students. We didn’t know when we would see each other again,” she says.

    Soraya is passionate about martial arts and its potential to transform women’s minds and bodies. “Sport has no gender; it is about good health. I haven’t read anywhere in Qur’an that prevents women from participating in sports to stay healthy,” she says.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Family and domestic violence survivors are ‘being failed’

    Jacqueline Kriz reports on a forum discussing the limits of the justice system delivering justice to victims/survivors of domestic and family violence.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Kabul Diaries Part 13: Not without my sister

    After the Taliban announced that only boys and male teachers should resume their studies and work, a trend went viral on social media, reports Yasmeen Afghan. Children are posting their pictures, holding placards with slogans against the unofficial ban on girls’ education.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.