Forty-five-year-old Shan Bibi belongs to Ghora Khela village of district Swat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. She got married at a very young age. According to the customs of the area, it was not an unusual thing to happen. Her husband was not very welcoming towards her and treated her badly. She tried her…

Kohistan video scandal case is one of the most brutal cases in the history of Pakistan. Five young women were murdered in the name of honor on a jirga’s order after a video of them from a wedding ceremony was uploaded on YouTube in which they could be seen clapping and enjoying the dance of…

Sixty-five-year-old Naseem Bibi runs a grocery shop inside her house in a village near Hyderabad, Sindh. She opened this shop a year ago after attending Financial Management Training (FMT) organized by Shirkat Gah – Women’s Resource Centre as part of its project ‘Drivers of Change’. ‘Now, I buy my medicines myself. I do not have…

East Kalimantan, an Indonesian province in the east of the island of Borneo, is home of indigenous Dayak culture and rainforest areas like Kutai National Park. If we try to uncover the problems of local women in Kalimantan, we will find horrific stories of pain and miseries. Women, here, not only struggle against domestic violence…

“It was like a Doomsday for me when I finally decided to part ways with my husband. Had I not done so, he would have. The new love of my husband had conditioned to marry him only if he leaves me first.” The 35-year-old slim structured Noreen Huda was narrating her story with exhausted eyes.…

What is a home? It is a secure place to live in, four walls to call your own, a place where you can rest, express yourself, are respected, loved, socialize with loved ones and replenish your physical and mental health. A safe home is the fundamental right of every human being. An individual’s right to…

I am a woman and I pay a heavy price for being that. Though I had no say in choosing what gender I will be born with and in which country or family but still I have to pay for what I was born as. A major chunk of my income or my family goes…

It’s a gloomy day in Hyderabad, the pearl city of India. There is love in the air. Love that stinks of fear, obsession, toxic masculinity, and misogyny. 27-year-old Ajay is waiting outside a girls’ college ready with the ‘song of the day’ for his ‘love’. He plays a new Bollywood song on his phone for…

Jakarta has become one of the most insecure cities for women in the world – a bad achievement for Indonesia which has 135 million female residents. The issue of sexual violence in Indonesia is one of the scary scourges. The high rate of sexual violence is also because of the reason that there are no laws…

Malala Yousafzai is a hero for the world but an agent for Pakistanis. No big surprise. Any girl or woman who stands out and lives her life on her own is considered bad here. Malala had to meet the same fate as she was raising voice for education for the girls who were being stopped…

Nepal is a landlocked country which heavily relies on remittance as the main source of income. National data shows that more than 30 percent of the countries income is generated from the remittance. In the gloomy time of moist insurgency when what little income the country generated domestically went to an anxious downfall, the remittance…

Gender discrimination has held women back for ages. Even in the post-feminism world, stereotypes which have evolved with culture are still alive. South Asia is rigid in general when it comes to norms and traditions but gender stereotypes are also deeply rooted here. The problem has grown to an extent that often modern societies with…

The pressure cooker is steaming with boiled chicken. It’s been whistling with boiling chicken every single day for the last 11 months. Hooting for Tanya’s big ‘fat’ race. The race to ‘size zero’. It’s been exactly 328 days since she started the race. Just like any other race, this one also needs perseverance and a…

As I was doing my daily skincare routine, my house-help who was looking on as she worked said, “I’ll tell you a remedy for skin whitening!” I told her that I do not believe in such remedies and I am comfortable with my complexion. But that discussion made me think that the desire to appear…

Amna (a pseudonym) is engrossed in her work – plying the machine with skill and impeccability. When called her name, she takes a few seconds to get familiar with the surroundings before putting a smile on her face and turning to answer me. It is 10:30 am and she needs to get back to work…

I recently visited a huge Toy Store in a posh mall in Mumbai, India to buy a toy for my niece’s birthday. As I was walking in, I was greeted by a staff member at the entrance. Very proactively he walked towards me and asked, “Ma’am are you looking for a toy for a boy…

“You have to sign these documents,” said the brother indifferently. Slowly making her head up, she glanced at the papers. Her face vividly depicted the turmoil she had been through… After her father died a few days ago, she didn’t even get the time to process the grief since she was a mother too, and…

Though interview went very well but I knew I had to let this opportunity miss mainly of the following three reasons; first the office was situated in an outmost location – a real backwater; second no appropriate means of commute was available and I actually mean it – from public transport to pick and drop…

Not so long ago, I didn’t know terms like patriarchy, misogyny, emotional and unpaid labor, and many other such words. However, the most fascinating part was that I knew the meanings of these words all too well but didn’t have the language to explain terms which have been dictating my life since perhaps, my birth.…

Sitting just behind the striking Lahore Museum on Mall Road there is another impressive building of equal importance. Established in 1884, Punjab Public Library is the city’s oldest library. In fact, it is the country’s first public library and the largest. This library is home to a forgotten treasure of books, archived official reports going…

Basnama is a 46-year-old tribal woman living with her family in a native village of Mardan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Her husband is a farmer. The couple has three children – one son and two daughters. The son is eldest of all. He is working in another province. Their elder daughter is studying…

“ I was about 14 years old when I was sexually harassed in a bus for the very first time. I was traveling on a bus with a friend after school for the first time. We were excited as this was a little adventurous for us. The excitement did not last any longer. I noticed…

Last year in July, Indonesian netizens were shocked by an Instagram post that showed a 15-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy posing together as a bride and groom. The photo was taken at a village in South Kalimantan province of Indonesia. The two teenagers were married after they met at a night market. Two months later, in…

You perhaps have heard the joke about the crash of an aeroplane when the only conscious and available captain on board who happened to be a female – out of her rage and fury – chose not to communicate and then under her presumed notion that she would not be understood by the men sitting…

Staring at the railway tracks and wondering what if I just push myself forward onto the oncoming train, was a frequent thought I used to have at the age of 18. It didn’t matter that I got into the university I wanted to or that in many ways I was blessed and lucky to have…

I have always asked myself is bleeding a shame? And does it really make me impure? Sometimes I do wonder; what if we [women] are really impure? Then I see all the amazing women around me and I tell myself that there cannot be anything purest than them. I wish I had known this when I…

“The higher you build your barriers The taller I become The farther you take my rights away The faster I will run You can deny me You can decide to turn your face away No matter, cos there’s Something inside so strong” Human rights are universal and egalitarian. Thus, each and every human being is…

Women are weak and exist to be subdued by men. These are the things I learned as a kid as I saw my mother get emotionally and physically abused by my father. Both of them were university graduates. My dad was a businessman while my mum was a housewife so she could take care of…

For a country that has a legacy of oppressing women, a country where women are treated based on patronizing culture and a country where religion considers women nothing but subordinate to men, a country where women are sent out of their houses during one of their most natural, life-defining monthly cycle; things are changing – though…

Being a woman in South Asia and South East Asian, we all have heard that a woman’s place is in the house, while men work outside the house.  Women stay at their house while men roam around the streets to look for other women to be kept in their cages. They collect women as trophies…

Ever since the concept of Aurat March came into being last year, it seems like the weeks following the March are more than enough to prove its importance. The same has been happening time round when Aurat March was held in multiple cities of Pakistan. From using slurs against those who participate to personal attacks…

Curled in a blue printed duvet on a floor bed, struggling with the body aches that couple with heart’s, trying to figure if the evening tea sauce pans lying in my all white Australian kitchen need an instant wash, here I am. The window across the road shows the rapidly moving city of Sydney. It’s…

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” This line was spoken by Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino, in 1990 classic The Godfather: Part III. Ironically, at the outset of an article that is meant to capture women’s voices, I am forced to quote from a movie that was itself…

We often see people talking about the things required from a woman before she enters into the union of marriage; such as how to please her in-laws, how she should be a perfect housewife, a role which we see on and off as a selfless sacrificial person who will go to any measure to sustain…