Iceland’s banking and financial sectors are the latest testing grounds for whether women’s leadership makes a difference.

In Uganda, culture – popular, modern as well as traditional – and religion converge to make it difficult for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people to live out in the open. In the past few years, LGBTI rights activism has grown. AWID interviewed Frank Mugisha and Pepe Julian Onziema on the human rights situation of the LGBTI community in Uganda. Frank and Pepe are from the organisation Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).

Egypt elected the first Arab woman to parliament in 1957, but in the half century since, the most populous country in the Arab world has gone from being a leader in women's political participation to a lagger.

Izet Samá has no regrets about her decision to devote every waking hour to her mission as pastor of the Presbyterian-Reformed Church, guiding a small congregation in the Cuban province of Havana.

African women play a critical role in ensuring the food security of the continent, writes Mary Wandia in the run-up to the 2009 African Union Summit (24 June-3 July), which has its official theme ‘Investing in agriculture for economic growth and development’.

Traditionally African culture dictated that elderly citizens be treated with respect, writes Anushka Sehmi, but as economic constraints erode the extended family system and fuel rural-urban migration, many old people languish in villages with no-one to care for them.

Today the global community faces widespread economic turmoil, which has implications of considerable scope for the inclusion and promotion of human rights in general and women's rights in particular.

Affirmative action is necessary, but insufficient, for building a sustained and representative female presence in politics, argues Anne Marie Goetz on openDemocracy.net, and it can only be a temporary measure. So what will it take to build democracies free from gender bias?

Development, the journal of the Society for International Development has dedicated its June 2009 edition to reporting on AWID’s 11th Forum. The articles in ‘Power, movement, change’ offer a comprehensive account of the diverse range of discussions and debates that took place at the Forum.
A cross section of experiences from grassroots to global movement building is covered. Although there was a huge array of presentations at the Forum, the journal highlights the need to consistently link racism, gender based violence and sexuality rights with economic and social justice.
In her editorial which is reproduced below, Wendy Harcourt writes about some of the prominent features, as well as some of the silences at the Forum.

On Jun. 19, 2008, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1820, expressly addressing the problems of sexual violence in conflict situations. One year later, three experts in the field gathered to speak at the United States Institute of Peace to evaluate the implementation of 1820 and consider how it might better prevent this widespread crime.

Now that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has placed himself shoulder to shoulder with his officially elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the very existence of the Islamic regime may now be questioned openly in a nation ever more divided between reformists and those who insist on maintaining the integrity of the 1979 revolution.

Critics dismiss her as foolish. Some even want her dead. For Malalai Joya, an outspoken women's rights activist and scourge of Afghan warlords, controversy is a kind of oxygen.

On Monday, June 15, more than 1 million people marched in the streets of Tehran to support Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi -- two defeated presidential candidates -- and to object to the results of last week's election.

"You don't have to make abortion illegal if you make it impossible"

The 11th International AWID Forum which took place in Cape Town, South Africa in November last year was the largest ever with over 1900 people participating. The theme of the Forum was “The Power of Movements.” Srilatha Batliwala, AWID Associate Scholar delivered the final address summarising the main ideas and debates of the Forum. In today’s issue of Friday File, we reproduce Srilatha’s address which highlights some prominent threads running through feminist movement building today.

The iconography dominating global television coverage of Iran’s biggest demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution is stunning: women are on the front line of the protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s allegedly fraudulent re-election.

Flavia Agnes is a leading feminist scholar, women’s rights lawyer and social activist based in Mumbai.

Family law reforms gave women the right to divorce. A look at the effects five years later.

We picketed bishops and Popes, stole their dresses, stood up at the consecration of the Eucharist and said the words out loud. We are the bad girls of Catholic feminism, and we have stood up, over and over again, for women's freedom.

Reform candidates promise to enhance their role if elected

In a country where over seventy percent of its population is under the age of thirty, the future of the Islamic Republic of Iran is undoubtedly in the hands of its youth.

From the stone carving adorning the War Museum in Tehran, two women, chadors wrapped tightly around them, stare grimly ahead. Their lips are contorted into determined frowns. One wields a rifle.

Cecilia Alemany gives an update on women's organisations' engagement with the global level policy making aspect of the Aid Effectiveness agenda. Cecilia is Manager of AWID's Influencing Development Actors and Practices for Women's Rights Strategic Initiative.

While everyone on both sides of the abortion issue seems to condemn the murder of George Tiller, few admit the malignant effects of "baby killer" rhetoric.

The United Nations, which aspires to protect human rights around the world, is struggling to deal with an embarrassing string of sexual-harassment complaints within its own ranks.

A physician in Uganda moves to outlaw FGM and find alternate income for traditional surgeons.

Sexual harassment is widespread in Egypt, but goes largely unaddressed. However this is beginning to change.

She's a politically savvy history student at the University of California, Los Angeles who is appearing on countless conservative talk radio programmes and cable television news shows.

Interview with 'Zoya' from RAWA (Revolutionary Assocation of the Women of Afghanistan)

Interview with Sussan Tahmasebi of the “One Million Signatures Campaign” seeking to change the discriminatory laws in Iran