Good afternoon!
This is the second last issue of Solidaritas for 2021. If you enjoy Solidaritas, you can choose to support the newsletter through a paid subscription for just US$5/month or US$40/year. Please click below to subscribe.
Take care,
Kate
Afghanistan
UNICEF has raised concerns over reports of increasing child marriage in Afghanistan due to economic problems among poor families.
Women want to return to work but the Taliban won’t let them.
A 29-year-old activist and economics lecturer, Frozan Safi, has been shot and killed in northern Afghanistan, in what appears to be the first known death of a women’s rights defender since the Taliban returned to power.
Australia
A hospital program is supporting women to give birth in their own homes, and the results are positive.
A group of women, including 13 Australians, who were subjected to invasive gynaecological searches at Doha airport, will sue Qatari authorities. They were inspected late last year when authorities searched for the mother of a newborn found abandoned in an airport bathroom.
Bangladesh
How are women on the coastal frontlines of Bangladesh being impacted by climate change?
China
How China’s ‘leftover women’ are using their financial power to fight the stigma of being single.
India
Mamata Banerjee is the popular chief minister of West Bengal. Beloved in her home state, especially among the poor and women, she preaches inclusivity and accuses Modi's Hindu nationalists of trying to divide Indians along sectarian lines.
Two female Indian journalists, Samriddi Sakunia and Swarna Jh, who were arrested for their coverage of anti-Muslim violence in Tripura state, have been granted bail.
Indonesia
Women’s micro and small businesses have been hit hard by COVID-19. Can a weaving-led revival take place?
An all-women coral conservation team is helping to revive the world-famous Gili reefs.
On the floodplain of Sabah’s milky-brown Kinabatangan river in Borneo, teams of local women have been working to restore the area’s degraded rainforest for more than a decade.
Japan
A young Afghan woman who emigrated to Japan became ensnared in a nightmare, caught between an abusive partner and a rigid bureaucracy.
Malaysia
A study by the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) suggests that many Malaysians have poor regard for women’s decisions and choices when it comes to intimate and sexual relations. Only 34.3% of the respondents supported the idea of consent.
Nepal
The tale of a Nepali woman who was smuggled, raped and left in the lurch by a Nepali man abroad.
Pakistan
A wave of abductions amid military crackdown in conservative Balochistan has mobilised women to protest.
What Malala Yousafzai’s marriage means for young people in Pakistan.
The Philippines
When women lead in conservation, indicators of success often go up — yet they are routinely excluded. Could a group of local leaders in the Philippines provide a model?
Mara La Torre went to great lengths to meet the Miss Universe Philippines. But she was rejected over a legal technicality: her passport says her gender is still male.
Sara Duterte, the daughter of Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, has filed her candidacy for the vice-presidency.
How a global campaign against sex trafficking has ended up restricting Filipina women from leaving the Philippines in the first place.
South Korea
Digital sex crimes – digital images, almost always of women and girls, captured and shared without consent, and sometimes manipulated – have become pervasive in South Korea. More than 1,200 teenagers have reported being victims of digital sex crimes so far this year.
Thailand
Thailand has reopened to fully vaccinated foreign travellers from more than 60 low-risk countries, but bars and entertainment venues are still closed because the government is concerned about the virus spreading in them. Sex workers worry it will be years before their industry recovers, so they are calling for their industry to be legalised.