The Real Girl’s Guide to Everything Else, Strike.TV’s peppy new Web series, first struck me as ludicrous. Fast-paced and low-budget, it’s riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies, becoming more fantastical as the first season progresses. The writing lacks depth, the characters lack development, and the show’s thesis whacks you across the head with startling regularity. […]

It reads as if the pages were lifted right from the script of Mad Men. Dozens of eager women primping and pinning every loose strand of hair into place, applying the last touch of lipstick, giving each other catty glares and then waiting, like sitting ducks, to be called upon by the handsome leading male […]

Recently, Ahmedinejad’s closest aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, made comments that Iran must work to fight against the oppression of women where the religious framework of Islam would allow it. The Guardian article calls women’s rights a divisive topic in Iran, which is true. However, the sexist laws mentioned are those that involve the requirement to […]

With articles in Der Spiegel, Rue89, The Telegraph, and a YouTube video in recent weeks, the two self-described web-activists called Niqabitch are making a splash in the French (and European) media landscape. As they said themselves in the Rue89 article, throwing on a burqa in protest of France’s burqa ban would be “too simple.” They […]

One of the most anticipated Ramadan series this year was 3ayza Atgawez, (“I Want to Get Married”), based on a blog-turned-bestselling-book by Ghada Abdel Aal. The series stars Hend Sabry as Ola, an Egyptian pharmacist under pressure to marry having reached the age of thirty and facing the social stigma of spinsterhood. Each episode focuses […]

Founded by two sisters in 2008, the French webzine Hijab and the City has a unique place in the French cultural landscape.  In an interview given to the online news outlet Rue89, one of Hijab and the City’s stated goals was to “give a voice to those who are often talked about but never talked […]

After reading Nicholas Kristof and Sheryll WuDunn’s Half the Sky earlier this year, I began to frequent Kristof’s blog at the New York Times website, “On the Ground.”  While I found parts of his book lacking in portraying some of the women’s own voices (there are places where women from the developing world are portrayed […]

If you still haven’t figured out that wearing black chadors will save your worldly soul and that wearing lipstick and heels will get you sent to the hellfire, Iran’s “Cyber Group for Promoting Chastity and the Veil [Ifaf]” is here to clear that up for you.  They are sponsored by the Iranian government and have […]

About a week ago, a British woman in a Dubai shopping mall, allegedly wearing a shirt which seemed to reveal too much in relation to boobage and leggage, was scolded by a passing Emirati woman who felt the Brit’s clothing violated the modesty dress code put up by mall authorities in respect of the country’s Islamic identity and ethos (which, fortunately, do not effect the emirate’s use of slave labour for its self-glorification).

After watching Moolaadé, I recalled that I had come across a story several months ago of how FGM is combated in Senegal in Kristof and WuDunn’s Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, released in 2009. Kristof and WuDunn devote the thirteenth chapter of the book (chapter: “Grassroots vs. Treetops”) to looking […]