The odds are heavily against any girl who wants to take up a sport in Pakistan. Even those with the best intentions and an unwavering commitment find themselves struggling for support in a male-oriented environment, let alone one where jeers instead of cheers will greet their success! Gender bias in sports is a hot-button issue […]
Gender
Pakistan to launch first ever National Climate Change Gender Action Plan
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is going to launch its first-ever National Climate Change Gender Action Plan (ccGAP) here on Wednesday with the aim to build capacities of the Ministry of Climate Change in institutional mechanism and mainstreaming gender in GCF (Green Climate Fund) funded projects. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in collaboration with the […]
Some girls return to high school in Afghan province
KABUL: Girls have returned to some secondary schools in a northern province of Afghanistan, Taliban officials and teachers said Tuesday, but they remain barred from classrooms in much of the country. Dozens of girls in black, some wearing white headscarves and others with black face veils, sat in chairs waving Taliban flags, in a video […]
Egypt steps up penalties for sexual harassment
Egypt’s parliament on Sunday passed a law toughening sentences for sexual harassment to at least five years in prison, Egyptian media outlets reported. The amendment makes sexual harassment a criminal offence, as opposed to a misdemeanour, and raises the minimum penalty from a year and half in prison plus a fine. It also imposes a […]
South Korean general arrested for sex crime: official
A South Korean two-star army general has been arrested for sexually harassing a female subordinate, officials said Tuesday, in the latest high-profile sex crime to rock the country’s military. The case comes just a month after the country’s air force chief resigned over the suicide of a master sergeant who was sexually assaulted by a […]
Yemen rebels launch ‘unfair’ trial of model: HRW
A model held for months by Huthi rebels in Yemen has gone on trial, according to Human Rights Watch, which called the process “unfair” and riddled with “irregularities and abuse”. Entisar al-Hammadi was arrested in February in Sanaa, where the Iran-backed Huthi rebels who control the Yemeni capital are enforcing a morality campaign. Born to […]
Former South Korean mayor jailed for sexual harassment
The former mayor of South Korea’s second-largest city was jailed for three years on Tuesday for sexually harassing two female staffers, the latest such high-profile conviction in a still patriarchal society. Oh Keo-don stepped down as mayor of southern port Busan — a city of 3.5 million that hosts Asia’s biggest film festival — last […]
Japanese Olympic Committee names first transgender member
A transgender former fencer hailed a “massive change” in Japan’s LGBTQ awareness after being appointed to the Japanese Olympic Committee’s board of directors just weeks before the Tokyo Games. Fumino Sugiyama, who was a member of Japan’s fencing team until retiring at the age of 25 and coming out, became the JOC’s first openly transgender […]
Japanese football star Kumi Yokoyama comes out as transgender man
Japanese Women’s World Cup star Kumi Yokoyama has come out as a transgender man — one of the few athletes to do so in a country where LGBTQ rights lag behind other developed nations. Yokoyama, who represented Japan at the 2019 Women’s World Cup and currently plays for National Women’s Soccer League side Washington Spirit, […]
The Struggle for Identity at Karachi’s Sunday Bazaar
Self-concept and identity are social products that provide answers to the basic questions “Who am I?”, “Where do I belong?” and “How do I fit in?” Gender identity is only one of many possible social identities, with each identity representing one’s relationship to a particular social category in which one has membership. To classify humans […]