Two decades of conflict and nation-building in Afghanistan have brought both suffering and hope for Afghan women. But any hard-won progress towards equality and human rights for Afghan women, once touted as a substantive moral basis for the war, is being incrementally dismantled by the returned...
Category - Gender and development
Bearing the heavy load of Hela province’s family violence
The second time I met Sergeant Alice Arigo of the Tari Family and Sexual Violence Unit (FSVU), who is known in the community as Alice, she was taking down the statement of a woman who had been brutally beaten, holding her pen in one hand while cradling the woman’s infant baby in the other. It was...
Cervical cancer prevention and treatment in PNG
On International Women’s Day 2024, we bring you an edited extract from Dr Pamela Toliman’s contribution to the 2024 Ruth Bishop Address, presented annually by the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security within the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I want to start by saying...
Impacts of the Taliban’s ban on women’s work and education
Upon reclaiming power, the Taliban banned girls from schools above year six and women from work, with few exceptions, such as in the health sector. These regressive and stringent policies have exacted a substantial socio-economic toll, not only jeopardising Afghanistan’s relationship with the...
Intimate partner violence in Port Moresby: drivers and outcomes
Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects 80% of women in Papua New Guinea, a rate that may be the...
What better data can tell us about Australian aid and women
In 2007, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer claimed that gender equality was...
Do no harm: supporting Pacific women leaders
The Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, last month committed to a...
How Southeast Asia pioneered female leadership, and lessons for...
This is an edited version of a keynote address delivered at the 2023 Australasian AID Conference on...
Workplace harassment of women in Port Moresby: results of a...
In a recent survey of 96 employed women conducted by academics from the University of Papua New...
Shifting social norms might unlock women’s economic...
A 2020 study found that 87 per cent of young, married men in Saudi Arabia supported the...